77: Police Reform, Public Safety, and Gun Violence Prevention

Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, streets and communities across the United States have echoed with protesters’ demands for the reform or defunding of police departments. To break down the root causes of these demonstrations and what changes their impressive momentum might bring, host JJ and Kelly Sampson, legal counsel at Brady, are joined by Dwayne Crawford, Executive Director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), and Clayton Rosenberg, Chief of Staff for the Alliance of Concerned Men, for a discussion about police reform, public safety, and gun violence prevention.

Mentioned in this podcast:

• Rage and Promises Followed Ferguson, but Little Changed (NY Times)
• Policing Task Force (Tribune News Service)
• Brady Joins Americans Across the Country in Expressing Outrage (Brady)

For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.

Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.

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National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. 
Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support 
℗&©2019 Red, Blue, and Brady

Transcript

JJ  0:08  
Hey everybody, this is the legal disclaimer where I tell you that the views thoughts and opinions shared on this podcast belongs solely to our guests and hosts, and not necessarily Brady or Brady's affiliates. Please note, this podcast contains discussions of violence that some people may find disturbing. It's okay. We find it disturbing too.

Welcome back everyone to Red, Blue and Brady. Today, one of your favorite co hosts Kelly Samson and I are joined by Dwayne Crawford, the Executive Director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives also called NOBLE and Clayton Rosenberg, Director of Operations for the Alliance of Concerned Men. Together, the four of us are talking about police reform, public safety and gun violence prevention. Then in our Unbelievable But segment, I have a story that involves a woodchuck and you know, yes, woodchucks are real, surprising us all. Finally, in our news wrap up, we're commemorating two shootings that led to conversations about police reform and racial justice. 

Clayton, Dwayne Kelly, it's so wonderful to be able to talk to all three of y'all, I think. I don't know what it is. But I think for some reason, COVID is finally you know, the physical distancing is finally starting to get to me a little bit. And so it's been really wonderful to be able to still have these really important conversations with phenomenal people through the medium of the internet. So I just want to thank all three of you for really taking the time to be here. And I'm wondering if maybe just one after another, I can have all three of you introduce yourself and your organization's?

Kelly  1:59  
Hi everyone. My name is Miss Kelly Sampson. I'm an attorney here at Brady, where I focus on racial justice issues, constitutional issues and our legal alliance. Really making sure that we are focusing on gun violence in all its forms all the ways that gun violence manifests in American society, to make sure that everyone comes home safely.

Dwayne  2:19  
This is Dwayne Crawford, the Executive Director for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives- NOBLE. And we've been in existence for forty years founded in 1976. Our mission is to ensure equity administration of justice, and we do that by really trying our best to act as a consciousness of law enforcement. We have a model of justice by action, but we're made up of primarily African American chiefs, and sheriffs and other high level executives, rank and file, so all of our members are African American.

Clayton  2:50  
Yes. Hello, everyone. Clayton Rosenberg, the Chief of Staff for the Alliance of Concerned Men. We have been dealing with youth and gang violence for the past two decades. Really brokering and a lot of truce in the city and trying to do good work on the grassroots level, bringing the community together. This work is definitely work for the spirit. A lot of this stuff that we do, we do because someone has to, so that's what we've been doing for the past two decades. 

JJ  3:22  
Well and I want to thank you two gentlemen for coming on. And Clayton, I think this is your third time on the podcast.So thank you for

Dwayne  3:33  
Now Clayton, you didn't tell me that!

JJ  3:36  
I was gonna say the way that Clayton kind of has you beat in terms of this process, he actually got to come in pre-COVID. So he saw us when we had a studio.

Dwayne  3:50  
Okay.

Clayton  3:53  
It all started make sense. But I'm very thankful to have you both and I'm really thankful Kelly that you've been able to continue co-hosting, in addition to all of your duties at Brady, because I think one of the things that we're seeing is, the work isn't getting easier. It's just getting more complicated, even though it's really nice that people are paying attention now, I think, to work that a lot of us have been doing for a while. And so I'm wondering if we can just start by kind of calling out the elephant in the room, which is talking about, you know, the background like why now are we seeing all these conversations about race and policing, beyond, you know, maybe just some of the recent shootings that have drawn attention to police reform?

Dwayne  4:37  
Well, I guess I'll start then. Again, good morning, everyone. And I didn't mention this earlier, but greetings on behalf of our [inaudible] Jay Davis, where she's actually the police chief of Durham, North Carolina City. And as she puts it, sadly enough, police culture wins out a lot more times when you compare it to policy and I think when you look at what's occurred not just in recent months, but historically, for decades, and in some cases, even probably go back to hundreds of years. Fortunately, this is nothing new in our communities, whether it be communities of color, African American communities, I think we look at what occurred to Mr. Floyd, it really caught the country where it was pretty much all able to view here. And I think get some public confirmation that even eight minutes and 46 seconds is not enough to address the injustices of our country. And so the complexities go well beyond law enforcement. I will say this law enforcement for most persons, in my opinion, represent the government. Meaning most citizens will probably never meet the mayor of their city or their city council or do we encourage them want to meet those person go to those meetings, but in many ways that rank and file offers to that Beat Cop is the government. And so when I look at this definitely from a NOBLE standpoint, we're outraged by what occurred with Mr. Floyd to be very frank, outrage even going back before even Emmett Till we're outraged by really just decades and decades of things that have occurred in this space of how do we respect and honoring everyone's humanity? And so from a noble standpoint, and we sit in front of Congress, but the US in the US House of Representatives is that these issues go well beyond law enforcement, we in law enforcement have to own it. And so when I look back to Ferguson, Missouri, many of us tried and continue to try to get the kinds of reforms and things we felt were needed after Michael Brown's death and many others, Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and so on, and we were not successful. I think what you're seeing now is a cross section of not just African Americans, but all races and genders and demographics across the board. Say this time, we're going to put a stake in the ground and do our best to adjust we saw over those eight minutes and 46 seconds. And then the broader thing is this issues of class and education, housing, jobs, etc, is a whole lot more complex than just what occurred. But we at NOBLE are asking for corporate reform, not just in law enforcement, but looking at kind of how we have  shared resources across our entire national landscape.

JJ  7:27  
No, I mean, I think that that context that larger placement is huge. And Clayton, I wonder sort of what your perspective is, as someone who literally as you described it on this podcast is also boots on the ground, but maybe from a different direction.

Clayton  7:44  
Yes. You know, this is what they say the straw that broke the camel's back. That's pretty much what we're experiencing right now. I mean, a lot of the injustice and the stuff has been going on for decades. And we knew about you know, but some, the people that were in power always turned a blind eye because, as you say, the video wasn't prevalent, a lot of things just wasn't out there. But now and I think as society changes, you're starting to see, you know the people should wake up almost, you know, as they say that now they're starting to be woke. But when you have a system that's been put together for, you know, decades generation and this is the status quo of the system, it's so hard to change overnight. It's so hard to make adjustments. Where, you know, a snap of a finger is going to take a lot of sacrifice is gonna take a lot of love. It's gonna take a lot of, you know, just community effort in order to put forth certain things to make sure that you know, we change the system from within and from without people tired. Like no one wants to keep getting pulled over by law enforcement. No one wants to keep going. You know, the same old same old when all they want to do is live all they want to do is live, and a lot of folks in our communities, they are in survival mode, because they've been surviving for so long, that that's all they know. So when you got individuals in survival mode, and they're trying to move around, or they're trying to, you know, make sure certain things for a family is good, you know, individuals development, willing to do anything, anything and everything to anybody. Because that's survival mode. They're not living anymore because they feel like it's not worth it don't matter. Regardless of what happened, everything will still be the same. That's how they feel. And you know, that's what we have to do and change that mindset on how they perceive certain things. Because if they always feel defeated, and in survival mode, it's going to stop progress from really, you know, getting in the places where it needs to be, because they're not thinking about their future. They're not thinking about nobody else future they thinking only in the present, and that day to survive just for the next day.

Kelly  9:57  
Kind of along with all the complexities that both of you have named in this moment, one of the things that society has been talking a lot about in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other people's deaths is public safety and what does it mean? And both of you, you know, police and also violence interrupters are organizations that, you know, that claim that the role is your role is part of public safety. So, just when I how would both of you define your roles as they are right now? And ideally, what way would you in a perfect world expect for your role to intersect with one another?

Dwayne  10:40  
My role really is to ensure delivery of our mission. Starts with my service to both the profession and to NOBLE and let me also say that it's my honor to serve law enforcement. I just think, along with all of it, you know, as someone says, The buck stops here and so part of that is how do we train and equip our chiefs and our sheriffs and all of our members and ensuring our mission is being delivered. But at the same time, we're just as accountable to our community stakeholders. I've said this many times at the Department of Justice that, yes, we're law enforcement, but everyday citizens have just as much say so you know, a mother calling from Chicago has just as much say as a board member, as far as what she may be asking or the admission she's requesting our services. So it's making sure that we at NOBLE have the resources to be able to respond accordingly. And at the same time, that we're able to leverage the influence that our members have, we leave so much of these large cities, whether you're looking at Boston or Chicago, Detroit or Atlanta, or you know, San Francisco, I mean, all these cities have NOBLE chiefs and  sheriffs. And so we have to take that responsibility, though, and my job is the support mechanism in our staff, to provide every resource, every tool at our disposal to ensure that people are being equally protected. I need to say that too. You know one as I said it's the communities all the time that 14th amendment is so important, equal protection under the law. What Clayton said I agree with. I'm from North Philadelphia, everything's relative. So many people, it's just survival. What do I have to do today to survive and I think at noble how do we best we can change that mindset in a way of how do we either show demonstrate or from a law enforcement standpoint, create a safe environment for people to flourish?

Clayton  12:30  
And and I think for us and the perspective we come on, we look at reality versus perception. And for us, it's about addressing those root causes of violence, and doing the work to address poverty and other issues on the front end. And these are the typical things that will prevent violence in the first place. But then, you know, sometimes we are saying that there are other people that are better suited to address the issue other than the police especially for certain communities, you know if their mental health issues if they are certain things where that's not the law enforcement job, or they're not trained enough to go handle certain issues because they have a goal and once they on the scene that goal is pretty much it's determined, especially when you're dealing with in a black community. We see it all the time. So from their frontline workers, what could we do in order to, you know, we work in parallel law enforcement has their duties and jobs that they do. We have our duties and jobs that we do. And we're the ones that the individuals in the community, they trust. They speak to us, they talk to us about things that's going on because we are them. And even if some of like say their friends and family became law enforcement, they believe that they're no longer able to speak to them or talk to them as they with someone that's community based community oriented, like from the community, which hires individuals from, from that community. So now they feel like okay, I can trust these individuals with certain things in order to improve the community overall, we're going to explain the services and we're going to help them if they need help in different stages in life, because we know that there's so much trauma that's been built in that community that some people feel really defeated because they don't know how to, you know, climb up yet, because they just been hurt so much they deal with the poverty they dealing with, they're dealing with just trauma in general, like hearing gunshots every single day, like seeing their family members die right in front of them. It's like all of these things occur. And for us, we have to be there to give them a way to believe again.

Dwayne  14:49  
What Clayton has said, I'll give you a quick testament. My grandmother had 16 children and she buried 12 of them before she passed on and that's people's reality. Not everyone's reality, but enough. And you know, I agree with everything he just said, you know, it's interesting because as a kid growing up, and I got in my adult life, I looked at life as it was [inaudible] a 5050 proposition because you're seeing death happening so quickly. And so many people this point earlier, the issues are vast and law enforcement will not be able to address it can be part of the solution. But how a person gets a job, a quality place for the person to live, an opportunity to get employment, housing, jobs, health care, you look at COVID-19. Oh, you're seeing what a disproportionate impact of that pandemic on people of color. Hopefully the country is listening enough to realize that these issues of inequity are real. And in some cases, it could be what death.

Kelly  15:56  
The ways that violence specifically obviously public safety is much more than violence. But when it comes to violence specifically, it's not just about the moment of any one event, but it's about all these different factors coming down to bear. And so violence interrupters do a lot of that work in addition to dealing with violence, but also dealing with, you know, these root causes and law enforcement, you know, a lot of times comes in at the moment of an event. And so I'm wondering how violence interrupters and police, in your experiences obviously, this can look very different in different states and cities, but in your experiences, how police violence interrupters do work together or don't work together or should or shouldn't, you know, what is that relationship actually like in trying to make sure that everyone is safe?

Clayton  16:49  
From the perspective of just violence interrupters and just like being on the front line. I think there's that's what it is. It's we own the front line because we are there to prevent the violence from occurring. So if we are there to prevent and law enforcement job, they pretty much arrived when this stuff already occurred. Right. So for us, within the community, certain communities to prevent violence from happening. And there's so many times where, you know, it's not sexy data because you can't, we can't show how many shootings that we did stop. How many violence incidents in the community that we did stop, right. But they only see the ones that, you know, probably happened, and then we were able to mediate, but at the same time, there's there's 1000 more that could have occurred that we got in front of because a community member called us or somebody reached out to us and told us something was about to occur. We need to go talk to xyz to to make sure that it don't escalate. Those type of details from the community help us do our job better and when they helps us do our job better than we're able to now, get in front of it and prevent it from occurring. But because there's not a lot of resources invested in the violence interrupter work, it almost pit everything against each other. If we are the front line preventing, then it that means it's less cost to law enforcement because we're preventing it from occurring. But if we don't have enough resources, almost backed us up against the corner, because we don't have the resources to be in every community. Like even in one of our communities, that we in, we have something monumental, this was one of the worst communities in DC. But we have stopped them from shooting each other for the past 45 days. And we already developed something that's going to be monumental for the city, but yet the investment isn't there though. They they don't continue to see that. This work is what matters this work is is on the front line, like we need more, you know, but you know, it sort of doesn't add up to to what we're trying to do and it almost defeats our people that's going to work, you know, let them know that this stuff doesn't matter to the people that's making the rules.

JJ  19:08  
And I wonder, too, if this is something that it's a hard conversation to have in a nuanced way for a lot of folks, when we're talking about like budgets and whatnot, because it's so contextual or so different based on the place like what one department once a police department needs, or one group of violence interrupter needs, is going to be so different maybe from another city or another location. One of the reasons why I kind of want to shout that out a little bit, as you know, and I've talked about this on the podcast a few times is that, you know, I have law enforcement in my family. And last week I was talking I'll give a shout out to my cousin David, who's a police officer in western Pennsylvania. And even one of the things we talked about is just the difference of maybe what his department needs versus what like a department in Pittsburgh would need versus obviously what the department in DC would need and then what are like the community engagement levels and needs of every single different community. And that's a really, I think, hard conversation to have, because it's so nuanced. And it involves looking at every single stakeholder that's present in every single community. And I wonder if we just haven't had that ability or seen that willingness yet, because there hasn't been an acknowledgement that there's a bigger problem.

Dwayne  20:24  
I do think, what the sequence of events have caused are these conversations. For example, NOBLE has been advocating for years and years that you can't arrest yourself out of issues that are complex from a  social services standpoint, meaning for example, we recently about a year ago, pitched an idea of community based crime reduction like if law enforcement was part of a bigger effort by the community itself, whether it is violence interrupters, or whether it's other types of community based organizations that are present, but how do we begin to own our communities in the sense of, you're right there's approximately 18,000 [inaudible] a year to justice resolve every agency, every community, but I will say that we know it does work. You know, with Clayton's organization or other groups, we do know that, especially right now, we know that trust between communities and law enforcement are at a significant low point where we know the legitimacy of the actual institution of law enforcement right now is probably at a very low point. Well, at the end of the day, what's that middle area that someone can fill or is filling to somehow address so for example, we mentioned earlier, before we began our podcast in Atlanta, for example, eight year old girl was killed on Saturday. I know Mayor Keisha had a really, a very emotional speech where she talked about the issue of yes, it's important to march important. I agree with that. But it's also important what how we protect our own citizens how we protect each other. So I do think the conversation is warranted. I do agree that from a local standpoint, assessing what law enforcement in many cases become what kind of the safety net for a lot of social ills. And I do believe this issue of gun violence is not going to be solved by law enforcement. I think law enforcement can help. It's going to really take I think, all levels of local engagement, whether it's formal violence interrupters, or those are in front, like the black church, for example. I do think that as a conversation we're having and I do think you start looking at how resources are being allocated, who's most equipped to to address this violence?

Clayton  22:44  
And I definitely concur. I think that we are in a really different time. I think this is something where, I know in my lifetime, I never had the experience where you know, we're dealing with multiple bodies. You know, we have the COVID-19. We have law enforcement and we have ourselves like we're battling ourselves. It's one of those things. If you have so many battles, how do you know how to prioritize your enemies? Or how do you know how to prioritize your, you know what's going on? I think that in what this movements is saying, it's like, if you have a system that, you know, was built and put in place that didn't have everybody at the table, how could you trust that system, and that system is what we're currently dealing with. I think from my personal experience, that we have to flip the system upside down, and it has to have everybody at the table to put it together. The system has to be rebuilt. Like we have to take you know, long breath, deep breath, and say, You know what, we can do this, but it has to be every key stakeholder at the table. It cannot just be people from certain communities that don't understand what it means to grow up in poverty or what it means to grow up to where you got one grocery store that serve 80,000 people, you know, like they don't understand, like those little things where every other day you hear gunshots, but yet you're still supposed to go to school. But yet, you're still supposed to act like nothing is occurring, you're still supposed to smile, you're still supposed to do the things where you're dealing with mental health stuff, you're dealing with trauma, and you're dealing with all these circumstances. And then you also got to deal with with the law enforcement that want to harass you and take things from you and your community. And then it's like, now, that system right there it doesn't work, it has to be completely flipped. And they have to have people at the table who understand. You see now that that helps the organization. It helps the communities that they serving, but then it also puts ease everyone that you know, the government and the people that we're electing are really truly believe in in the work and trying too put an end to the violence and trying to put it into the gun violence in our time.

Kelly  25:04  
Talking about budgets and investment. I'm wondering what both of you think--well, first of all, how do you understand the differences between calls to defund police versus calls to reform police. And in the ways that you understand those calls, what do you think about each of those propositions?

Clayton  25:25  
I think for us when it comes to reform, I definitely think the law enforcement needs to be reformed. And it needs to be like is one of those things always think about like when you have, they say internal affairs, right? And when you have internal affairs and looking at these law enforcement, but yet, when certain shooters or things occur, we see that these police officers have 15, 20, 30 complaints, and nothing was ever done. Like what is the point of Internal Affairs if they're not really doing anything, and it's just the status quo is back to back. And that's what I say anytime you have the law enforcement pretty much overseeing law enforcement. Like it's gonna be like one of those things, Oh, you might get my people you know, I, if it's not too bad, like, status quo you're back again. It's like that stuff right there man that's heartbreaking to the community because they're like, this stuff cannot be real nothing, nothing occurs these people don't keep living their lives and the status quo and if we don't penalize them and hold them we gotta hold on to a higher standard they gotta be held to a higher standard where this can't go. And one thing about like, you know reform that I think should be in place it should be in each state, each city, a community board that oversees even internal affairs to where we hold everybody accountable and keep transparency in the forefront. One of the key subjects is we say like refund is not even a defund. It's like a refund where the police should refund some of their money to put towards things that, you know work in parallel to them. It's like they should refund certain things because in that budget line item, they should employ community based organizations to train them. It's like certain things occur where police officers got to have empathy. Everything does not require a lock up. Everything requires somebody losing their job, getting a DUI, all of that stuff has got, you have to have more empathy, man, just think if this was you, you'll give yourself a chance. It's like certain things has to be the reality. And law enforcement got to be taught by community based organizations how to deal with certain issues, because every issue does not require putting somebody in prison or messing that person life up to it. Now they lost a job. Now, they can't even provide for their family. Well, so you know what you just created, you created a criminal, even though we all make mistakes.

Dwayne  27:52  
And it's part of our conversation is that I don't buy in to this narrative that the police And the community are two separate elements. We look at their earliest form of policing, it's stated very simply, police are the public, public are the police. And we don't talk about reforming we at NOBLE are asking for comprehensive reform of the entire criminal justice system. Now, definitely law enforcement policing as part of that, you know, so think about the use of force. And if you did a collection and police was caught all those things. Yeah. We also think areas of corrections. You look at our prison systems, look at our sentencing systems. We're asked multiple times and again now for comprehensive reform. I'll say this again, though. You know, you've got literally nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies, I'll say it a different way. You have 18,000 forms of the police, and there is no national oversight. Now I'm not suggestion you could have a pentagon [inaudible]. Don't want to be against it personally, I'm not suggesting that. What I am saying is later in our podcast is we're gonna need national standards, we're gonna need some level of thorough oversight to get the kind of reforms we've been asking for. But I will also say we can't stop there. And we've got to also go upstream. But yes, we at NOBLE are asking for comprehensive reform in the area of the defunding. Whether it's reform, defunding or any--every citizen has their God given right to demand, communicate, request, be informed on how they're being policed, how they're being governed. I tell this to people all the time in our local communities. Citizens hold the key to this. Meaning citizens, their taxpayer dollars, are paying for the salaries, the benefits of law enforcement. As well as other social agencies or community based agencies and municipalities. And so the reality of this thing is we in law enforcement, my humble opinion, have got to say to people listen and look, the vast, vast majority of officers do a great, great job. However, you take what happened in Minneapolis, those four officers wrote a check, they couldn't cash. And now you've got the entire profession having to do what--cash that check. And so the buck stops with law enforcement. We have to own it. Whether it's what occurred to Mr. Brooks in Atlanta, whether what occurred in Minneapolis, even Michael Brown, even going back to historically, that law enforcement enable Jim Crow, that was the enforcement end. Meaning at the end of the day, Jim Crow was legal, it was wrong, but it was legal. And the reality of that is what--law enforcement played a role in supporting that. So from a from a comprehensive standpoint, we're in full agreement there. And when you get to the defunding part of conversation, that is a fair conversation. In my opinion, every community leader, every elected official, anyone working, as an administrator should be analyzing, for the taxpayer dollars we are spending on social services, are we getting the return on our investment? And based on where my city is, is my police department, my social safety net, and they're the ones that are dealing with mental illness or substance abuse or homelessness? I don't know every city maybe a little different. But there should be an analysis saying who's most equipped to deliver those social services? It may not be the police department. You know I look at it more as a comment on reallocation who's most equipped to deliver the expectations to deliver on what are our community members asking? What are our citizens asking? Who's most equipped to deliver that and return on investment, that analysis should be going on all the time. Not saying it isn't going on but it should be going on. But these are fair, fair conversations. It could be a law enforcement entity in that community is not equipped to deliver the expectations that citizens are asking for. But I'd also say this. That is a tough conversation. Meaning, okay, if you [inaudible] for the police department, do you have the infrastructure to assume the responsibilities--maybe asking your police department to do. But I do think every community should be doing this analysis. Every citizen, I'm going to say this again, has the right to ask these questions, to hold their public servants accountable. And then lastly, we should also be doing what holding our elected officials accountable. Look, I don't know a police chief that I've met, that he or she is not what responding to, listening, understanding the needs of what, the mayor, the City Council, the county commissioners, the city managers. And I think sometimes he's also all elements accountable to what actually gets done on the ground.

JJ  33:12  
Well, and I think that this is a perfect time to sort of try and bring it back. Because while I think the conversation we've been having is incredibly important, I think our regular listeners of the podcast are like, well I kind of get how this is related to gun violence. But you know, why is Brady, why is a gun violence prevention organization, hosting this conversation and wading into this conversation?

Kelly  33:33  
I mean, I think it goes back to a lot of what Clayton said, which is that when you're talking about violence, you're not just talking about, you know, an interaction between the perpetrator of the violence and the victims of the violence, but you have to kind of zoom out and look at the whole system and structure that goes to the root causes of it. And when it comes to issues around policing, those are manifold because you have what's known as police violence in and of itself, which is when police misuse their authority to hurt citizens, or to hurt each other. But in any case, it's when police are, you know, using their authority to harm people. And that's a form of gun violence, as well. But also, when you're talking about gun violence that might happen between private citizens, policing plays a big role in that too, because as Clayton was saying, there's, you know, in communities where there may be trust or lack of trust, that can impact the violence that goes on between citizens. And so when we're thinking as Brady about, okay, how are we going to make sure that gun violence and all its forms, whatever that looks like, is reduced and ultimately eliminated, policing plays a big role in that whether it's how do we stop gun violence perpetuated by police or how can policing better address gun violence that happens between individuals. So there is a strong link. So the long way of answering this short question, which is what is gun violence have to do with policing, I think they're connected in so many different ways, because it's a public safety issue. And we're talking about how guns and violence linked.

Dwayne  35:20  
So we were talking about how we can improve policing, right? Part of that reason we're having this conversation in that area is the outcome will be what in improving the public safety. You know we're trying to figure out how does our society get to the point that we feel safer as citizens, as communities, and let's be very frank about it: a significant amount of our citizens don't feel safe, and it isn't just about perceived or a real problem in their community. They don't feel safe because of what--the police. So part of this thing is, how do we get to that result of how to ensure a high level of public safety well, a big determinant on public safety, what you said earlier, is issues of gun violence, issues of violent crime. You know, for example, sadly enough, I remember talking to a company called ShotSpotter. And I asked a question of them, So I'm assuming your services, because of the pandemic, have gone down. And this is back in early March. And they were like, Well, no, actually, we're finding and we're detecting gunshots at the same levels as before the pandemic. Which is surprising. You all know better than I do over Brady, all this stuff come out of gun sales, want to say maybe 80% plus, since March of this year, compared to a year ago of a significant increase in guns. Have you asked any chief or sheriff or law enforcement official that's in an urban area? One of their biggest concerns is what--illegal guns. So these things are very, very, very connected.

Clayton  36:52  
And I definitely think when we speaking about gun violence. We see that gun violence. It comes from somewhere. It comes from something. And if we're dealing with all of these issues, and that's going to occur, it's like if we can't heal the community or we can't heal people's perception, just mindset about them as people, then we're going to continue to deal with all of these circumstances and all of these different things because of that, as I mentioned before that survival mode. We can stop gun violence, if we invest in everything else that's needed for these communities. And there's so many different things that you have to almost reset or retool or reteach for the community because they've been hurt. They've been traumatized. I mentioned they've been going through so much, that you can't just okay change something and then automatically think the community is going to change too. Let them believe again, that when they actually vote that it matters. Let them believe again that their elected officials work for them. Let them believe again that regardless on how things are today that tomorrow will be a better day. 

JJ  38:00  
I'm curious, where do you two particularly see these conversations around police reform, where do you see them going in the months to come? Or have we reached a point in 2020, where we just can't predict what's going to happen, in the next minute, let alone in the coming months?

Dwayne  38:17  
Well, I'll tell you as recently as yesterday, I got a call about 2-3 in the morning, from some of our hip-hop pioneers that reached out, and I will tell you [inaudible] probably hasn't been as strong in I guess, recent weeks, but I really see a lot of pressure still being put at the federal level forcing as best that can be done for a bill to be done that responds to what our nation is asking for. I also see which I think is gonna be a lot easier. At the state level, you're already seeing it in places like Iowa, New York, those two extreme states, right, and geographical regions of the country, where you're going to start seeing the states decide, you know what, well [inaudible] I will ban chokeholds. Or we'll set up a database of officer misconduct or we'll look at issues around qualified immunity. I mean, you're gonna, in my opinion start seeing at the federal, state and local level, a lot more push down on the local level you're already seeing city council already beginning to enact many of the reform efforts that our citizens are asking. From another side, though I'm really hoping is you're going to see people as it gets closer to the elections, people have the vote. And you know, we always say, you know, voting matters your life depends on it, I think we realize it literally, your life depends on it. And as you can also see a lot of efforts and we at NOBLE are kind of parallel processing, actually in three areas there's COVID-19 response. There is, of course, the police reform efforts that we definitely support. And also making sure that we stay focused on the November elections. It's going to be, and I'm not by the way suggesting that the election is gonna fix everything, but I do think people are really looking for change. And whatever your political persuasion is at the end of the day, lives are at risk right now. And so we at NOBLE are looking to put our resources and our time in those three areas. I think you're gonna see voices louder and louder, demanding for change and not just in one demographic, what you're seeing in these marches is that it's an effort of all kinds of people. And so my hope is that that will translate to people going to the ballot box.

Clayton
right? I really hope that we as a society can understand that this system is not fair. The system isn't, isn't right. And that they always say, in certain communities that I go in that, how could we expect the system that wasn't built for us? It wasn't built inclusive of us. And it just goes to show you how the community understands what's going on. They know that these injustices exists. It's just they realize they don't have any power to change it. And just as you mentioned it if we can, can really emphasize that these people that elect work for us, these people that we elect, like they in and this is our city, these people have to understand and put forth the best effort to make sure that everyone's held accountable.

JJ  
So on that note, I'm wondering if, do you have maybe like one thing that you would recommend to our listeners either to go do to educate themselves or to do to better serve their own communities? If, you know they're trying to have these, like really hard conversations about police reform, if they're trying to have these really hard conversations about gun violence, you know, things that they could be out there doing.

Dwayne  
We want to again, to say to your listener audience, and we want to encourage them to not give up, the change is probably going to be the easiest in their local communities. And many people say what do you mean? I'm going to say this again, and ask your listeners to try this. Have you engaged either your elected officials, your police chief, your sheriff? At the end of the day, you could have that conversation. Here's some tools to use for that. Number one, President Obama, at the height of what occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, with the death of Mr. Michael Brown, they created a task force. There's actually a roadmap on police reform, not suggesting this is perfect, but it's a roadmap that has 21 first century policing task force recommendations. 21st century policing task force recommendations, be that executive summary. It is a great document this executive summary, to inform yourself and ask questions of your law enforcement community, are we doing these things? One regulation, the focus on based on this conversation is trust and legitimacy. Really understanding the dynamics of that and understanding what needs to occur to get the kind of trust and legitimacy between your community, you as a private citizen and the police department. Number two, I mentioned federal legislation right now there's a bill called Justice in Policing Act. It is a bill that we at NOBLE are supporting, but it calls for comprehensive police reform. And then lastly, I'll say this, is if you don't know anything about the US Constitution, I want to encourage the First Amendment. That is one the right to have your voice heard. Right, the right to also assembly to protest. That is your constitutional right to assemble and to use your voice and then the 14th amendment equal protection under the law. At the end of the day, every chief, sheriff, anyone in a leadership role including your mayor, governor should be able to answer a very basic question: Do all of our citizens, are they being equally protected under the law and if they are then show that to me. Because at the end of the day, no citizen should be fearful of their police, fearful of anyone that's an elected official or by their own neighbors. And it goes on absolutely. But I'd also say this is it's unacceptable for any citizen to be fearful of our police department. We got to own it though. We in law enforcement have to own that. Because trust and legitimacy right now is at an all time low. But I would encourage our citizens not to give up, to fight the good fight, but please hold all persons that have some level of responsibility and your quality of life accountable.

JJ  
I really want to thank all of you for being here. Clearly, this is something that we could talk about for hours and hours and hours and honestly something we should be talking about for hours and hours and hours, but I think we did an amazing first go at it today. So I want to thank you all so much for being here. 

This week's news wrap up, we remember Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37 year old black man was shot and killed by two white Baton Rouge police officers. The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders led to protests in Baton Rouge and a request for a civil rights investigation with the US Department of Justice. Only a day later on July 6, 2016, Philando Castile a 32 year old black man was fatally shot during a traffic stop by a 28 year old police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile was driving with his partner Diamond Reynolds and her four year old daughter when police pulled him over. After being asked for his license and registration, Castile told the officer that he had a firearm which he was licensed to carry, to which the officer replied, don't reach for it then. The situation quickly escalated with Castile trying to convince the officer he was not pulling out his firearm as the officer reached for his own and then fired seven shots at Castile. Castile died at 9:37pm at the hospital about 20 minutes after being shot. Reynolds posted a live stream video on Facebook of the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which prompted the incident to achieve national notoriety and lead to local and national protests. Finally, it has now been more than 500 days since the House of Representatives passed bipartisan gun safety legislation to expand background checks on gun sales and close dangerous loopholes. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to refuse to bring this life saving legislation to a vote. Meanwhile, every single day in America, more than 100 people die by gun violence. 

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Thanks for listening. As always, Brady's life saving work in Congress, the courts and communities across the country is making possible thanks to you. For more information on Brady or how to get involved in the fight against gun violence, please like and subscribe to the podcast. Get in touch with us at Bradyunited.org or on social media @Bradybuzz. Be brave and remember, take action not sides.