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Broke/Broken
Welcome to Broke Broken, a newsletter and podcast about our broken systems, the disparities they cause, and how we might address these issues. Before we get into the interview today, we wanted to just take a step back and talk a little bit more about why we're talking, why we're starting this newsletter and podcast. And I'm using the word "we" because there's two of us behind Broke/Broken. But you won't be hearing our names because we want things to be really confusing. Is that right?
Yeah, we wanted to create a podcast and newsletter that is as ambiguous and confusing and alienating to people as the systems in which we currently live.
In all seriousness, we want to remain anonymous because, you know, we have full-time jobs and we don't want to jeopardize those jobs, just like many people out there who are afraid to sort of take risks or sort of cheating the system by hopefully remaining anonymous, not trying that hard. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Yeah, we're broke. And we're living in a broken society and we don't have time to look for new jobs once they fire us for being dissidents.
For saying that. For saying that out loud. If you haven't yet, you can go over to brokebroken.substack.com to see the first two sort of releases that we did. We had an interview with author and fellow at New America, Lee Drutman. We talked about the two-party system and also we wrote a piece-- my colleague here wrote a piece about how our inequality is killing us. So awesome. Very bright stuff so far, really uplifting stuff.
If you need like something to take the edge off your day. You just pop on over to BrokeBroken.substack.com and that's where you find things to cheer you up.
That's the remedy right there. So, a little bit about this interview that you're about to hear is, first of all, you know, the one of the biggest things, one of the biggest trials that our nation has seen in some time.
The trial of Derek Chauvin recently happened (note: Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict was announced less than 24 hours from the time of this recording) and we wanted to talk about obviously individual accountability, but more so— and something that we're really interested here is systemic accountability. So, you know, obviously, Derek Chauvin was found guilty of all three charges that he was charged for. But, you know? What happens next in terms of systemic accountability? So to help us, you know, really dive into this conversation, we talked to Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland and Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Dr. Rashawn Ray. So I'm really excited to share this interview with you all.
And I wasn't able to sit on the interview this time, but my colleague did a great job interviewing him, and I hope you like it.
Broke/Broken
Well, I'm actually really excited for this conversation because I think we can go a little bit deeper into what we normally do. And I know that you've done so much research on the subject of police brutality and kind of looking at sort of the structural issues in the systems. But before you get into all of that, first of all, thank you so much for joining today. And you know, we're less than twenty four hours of hearing of the guilty verdict of Derek Shoven, the former Minneapolis police officer who was charged in the murder of George Floyd. So I would love to just kind of get your reaction to that, you know, since we're so fresh from the news.
Dr. Rashawn Ray
Well, thank you for having me. I mean, when I think about the George Floyd murder, the Derek Chauvin, the Derek Chauvin conviction, I think that it was a slam dunk. I mean, based on the myriad of evidence that was involved, not only a lot of video evidence, but also an all star prosecution team from across the state, a racially diverse jury, which research documents is more likely to lead to equitable outcomes across groups, which is what we ultimately want. Also, a string of medical experts and law enforcement officers testifying against children. But yet and still, we were worried whether or not the ball that we saw going on the net was going to count on the scoreboard. That is race and racism in America, that everyone was waiting, bracing, hoping that that occurs, that justice will be served in this case and that an individual will be held accountable. So that was my my thought. But of course, we know as well that one individual case does not change policy or a system. I actually think this case has the potential to do that. And it has galvanized quite a bit of change and really kind of led led the process for this. But as the verdict was being read, there was a 15 or 16 year old girl in Cleveland, Ohio, who was killed by police and probably innocent. And based on what I've seen, watching the body worn camera footage would have been better dealt with with a medical with a mental health expert or someone who was able to directly employ de-escalation. And then, of course, there were reports that after that there were officers saying blue lives matter. You know, these are the type of incidents that just rip off the Band-Aid of an open wound when really what we need is surgery for policing in our criminal justice system and not simply a Band-Aid to put over something.
Broke/Broken
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, kind of just off of that, we have been so you obviously have written a lot. The piece that I was thinking about is when you kind of laid out this, the saying that we hear a lot is that, you know, there's just one bad apple, but you kind of laid out well, you know, bad apples come from rotten trees. And this is sort of an example of that. Since we are we're it's at a time right now where these instances are being documented. They're being talked about in a sense. So can you sort of speak to that a little bit more and just kind of lay out your case for this country that we have as a as a police system?
Dr. Rashawn Ray
Yeah, so, I mean, we have this narrative in America that police officers are overwhelmingly good and because they're we perceive they're overwhelmingly good, then we perceive that they're only a few of them that are bad. And if we only deal with the bad ones, that policing will be perfect or near perfect because it has to be. Policing is like being a pilot. If you're not perfect or near perfect, people die. And that's the bottom line about that profession. If you don't want to be perfect, go work Smoothie King. They mess up my smoothie all the time and I still keep going back in this movie. Right, because the implications are low, unlike being on a plane or interacting with law enforcement. But for the past decade or more, actually, I've been researching policing and I've worked with thousands of police officers. And at the University of Maryland, we have a virtual reality training program for law enforcement that's just second to none. We have hundreds of officers go through that program. And the thing that I've discovered from all the research that we've collected is that, yes, bad apples come from rotting trees and policing in those rotten trees are laced with roots that are part of white supremacy ideology. These are just facts like historically law enforcement originated from slave patrols in the United States. All of a sudden, slavery ended and the police officers did not. In the 1960s, we know that there was overt racial discrimination and police brutality against black people. In fact, that was pretty much the height of police killings, which was in the 1960s, mostly involving college educated middle class black men. Who were these individuals? These were our civil rights leaders literally being killed by law enforcement. All of a sudden, the Civil Rights Act passed and those same cops were still there. So we act like these changes don't happen. Then we fast forward, of course, and we have Department of Justice, a Department of Homeland Security reports showing the way that white supremacists are infiltrating law enforcement. That is the roots. Part of what happens then is that bad apples are allowed to proliferate. They're allowed to spread. They're allowed to create a toxic and poisonous culture within their own department. And then even if they're let go from that department, oftentimes they can go work at another department. So what does that mean for good apples? Because that's what we normally don't talk about. We act like they're good apples. Supposedly we can just debunk bad apples. But that's not how it happens. Actually, what happens is that good apples get poisoned in the rotten tree by the bad apples. And I've seen is so much. What do I mean by that? Good police officers get pushed down and pushed out. Pushed down means that I've watched officers who who report misconduct by other officers that they are more likely to be stigmatized and internally they are less likely to have other officers back them up. They are more likely to be demoted, less likely to be promoted, and also more likely to be disciplined for low level offenses. And I found that these officers are disproportionately more likely to be black and women such as the 19 year old veteran in Buffalo, New York, who essentially jumped on our officers back to stop him from putting a black man in a chokehold. She thought he was going to die. You know what happened after that incident? She was fired 19 years on the force. Lost her pension. She just recently was able to go through court to do something about it. What is the significance of Buffalo? Well, last summer, summer, twenty twenty people remember all of the Black Lives Matter protest. And there was one video clip of a seventy five year old man who was standing in front of police. They pushed him down. His head was busted on the street bleeding, and the officers just just kept walking by. What police department was that? Buffalo. The other thing is police officers get pushed out who are good apples. They get burned out. They get frustrated with trying to create change and they leave. These are the officers who should be police chiefs. They're the ones who should be leading police departments. So I suggest that it's over. Individualization of police officers just simply does not hold at all.
Broke/Broken
Right, no, exactly, and the I think it really plays into this perception of what is the police system, what is the point of policing right now? You talked about it, the origins of coming from slave patrols. But, you know, in our media narrative, in TV shows and movies, we see police officers as the protectors of the public when in fact, you know, that isn't necessarily the main purpose based on history, based on what we actually know from what happens with policing. So would you say, my question for you is, do you think that, you know, our policing system isn't actually broken, it's doing what it's supposed to do in the sense that it's policing people of color and protecting private property and sort of perpetuating white supremacy. And are the public is we've a sort of a I'm going to be optimistic and saying this, we've advanced as a society and the public perception and public opinion is kind of pushing back on what the purpose of policing really is. What do you think about kind of that idea there?
Dr. Rashawn Ray
I completely agree, I mean, there are a lot of people talk about that policing is doing exactly what is supposed to be doing. And part of thinking about this is that some individuals perceive that the same state sanctioned police violence that disproportionately brutalizes people who look like me and then stereotypes people, they look like me. Oftentimes, they perceive their state sanctioned violence as giving them a level of privileged protection that should only be preserved for them. They view police killings, particularly against black people, as part of a system that keeps them safe. And it's been designed that way since the beginning. So what that means is that whenever there are good people, because overwhelmingly this is the party, people get it right. They just never continue the narrative like they get the good apple part right. They never continue to the rotten truth. That's because it's difficult for people to make sense of systems is difficult for people to make sense of systemic racism. Like what does that look like? Well, systemic racism is baked into our policies, our procedures, our rules and our laws that disproportionately lead to group differences. And policing is the front line of defense of our criminal justice system. So what happens is these bad apples come into the rotten tree and they get poisoned. They inadvertently end up engaging in police misconduct. They inadvertently watch another officer engage in this. We saw this recently in a myriad of clips. Not only is it with George Floyd where one of the officers, a former officer King, who, mind you, was the one who initially pulled the gun on George Floyd, for what seemingly no reason that he was the one actually saying, should we roll him on his side? But he never actually did it. And you know what? If he had done it, he probably would have lost his job. First week first. We got the gate the other day, we know with the Army lieutenant in the state of Virginia that if you look at the younger officer, he was petrified at what the other officer who was recently fired was doing. He was looking like, do I go along with this or do I not? So part of it is the way you see the complicit this of these so-called good apples. But you know what? What they realize and recognize is that if you try to crack the blue wall of silence, that there are consequences to that. Officers aren't just loyal to the blue wall of silence. They realize there are consequences for doing something about it. And no one wants to be on that side of the blue wall of silence. So, yeah, I mean, the system is doing exactly what is designed to do, pulling people over for an air freshener, tinted windows, a broken taillight. I mean, who am I talking about here? I'm talking about that. I'm talking about that. Right. I'm talking about the Army lieutenant. I'm talking about Orlando Castillo. These are low level, nonviolent, non felonies, offenses that are civil citations at best. But their justifications to double down on on racial profiling, to disproportionately stop black people and Latino people. And truthfully speaking, I've been stopped actually for all of those things that have led to, yeah, we're going to search your vehicle. Can you step out the car? And you're like, look, I know my white friends are being treated like this. And then it leads to a confrontation is instantly escalated. It's almost like some of them are looking for a reason to do it. And we have to be very realistic about these particular outcomes. And I mean, the bottom line, as you said, for a lot of people, the system is designed that way. And for a lot of people, then they say if the system is designed that way, then how will we ever change it if it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do?
Broke/Broken
Right, exactly. And I think, you know, this summer and continuing into this year more than ever, I think we've seen conversations about, OK, how do we actually address what's going on? Partly because with the rise of social media, with the rise of people taking videos, it's so in the face it can't be ignored. And the conversations that have come about, obviously, there's the defund the police movement, there's police reform, there's also abolition of police in general. So what you know, based on the research that you've done, can you first just lay out a little bit of each of those things? And from the research that you've really taken the time to compile, what do you what are your kind of. Thoughts about each of these options here?
Dr. Rashawn Ray
So when we talk about police reform, there's actually quite a bit of bipartisan agreement on police reform. The problem is that it's what I call low hanging fruit is hanging so low that it is clear that not only is the public overwhelmingly on board with it, it's also clear that it's not going to change the outcomes that we ultimately want to focus on, including the reforms that have bipartisan support, include body worn cameras and crews in place of bias training. These are kind of overwhelmingly individual in in kind of prescriptive type of solutions. Now, it doesn't mean they're not important. They're part of the puzzle, but they're not the big pieces. There are some other big pieces that Republicans and Democrats do agree on, and that's to create national databases, to collect data on use of force and to also create a bad apples list so that officers like Timothy Lohman, who killed Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, cannot simply go to another department and do what he did, not only after he killed Tamir Rice, he then went to another department. So that's the agreement. Now, the disagreement comes down to some other things, primarily dealing with money in and real accountability. Prosecution is the first big one is dealing with qualified immunity, even though I actually think that starting to wane a bit. I think even Republicans are starting to realize there's something that needs to be changed. Now, of course, there are certain states like Florida, for example, this doubling down on a lot of this. But Colorado and New Mexico have both repealed qualified immunity. New York City has done the same. The state of Maryland actually repeal the law enforcement bill of rights, which allows for qualified immunity on steroids. And then, of course, you have the use of force databases. The other thing that I think really needs to shift, though, is dealing with how we grapple with civilian settlements for police misconduct. If we just look at the major 20 metro areas in the United States, the largest 20 over the past five years, taxpayers have paid out over two billion dollars with a B, two billion dollars in civil settlements. This money does not come from police budgets. It does not come from police pensions. And due to qualified immunity, officers are completely absolved from any financial culpability. So one recommendation that I have that starting to pick up steam is to have police department insurance policies and individual officer liability insurance. I guarantee you, if that was the case a decade ago, Derrick Chauvin would have been uninsurable. He wouldn't even have been a cop to be able to to kill and murder George Floyd, to be specific about. So I think those are the changes now. Of course, the big elephant in the room is defund the police versus abolish the police. And really, I think I'm not sure if it's really a versus more like a they go together. I think people get a bit confused with the terminology abolishing the police's you want police to go away or you want to see a department dismantled to be built a new in a very different way, not in the way that we've talked about here, about the origins of policing, but something different. That's what reimagining policing is. And then, of course, there are some who just who just are are police abolitionists and also prison abolitionists. And that's their perspective. But then you have defund, which is about reallocating funding. Reallocating means you shift funding from the police budget and you move it to other social services. There's a lot of a lot of a lot of a lot of reasons to do this. So I wrote a piece at Brookings about does this fund the police have merit? And I found that it did. In short, nine out of 10 calls for service that have nothing to do with violence doesn't mean they can't turn violent, but they're not violent. A lot of them deal with mental health, cause traffic stops, low level disputes. Mental health experts could control that. Denver has a program called Star. Second to none. No one's been arrested. No one has been killed. And they've got people, the services they need. The police chief loves it. He's able to reallocate those calls for service and then do would allow for officers to focus on the violent crimes that no one wants to see in their communities. Nationally, 40 percent of homicides go unsolved every year. If we had officers focusing more on those instead of doing menial tasks, I actually think we would see the solve rates go up. The clearance rate would increase, in other words, in terms of solving these homicides. And then I think we would also see more investments in education and work infrastructure. And in the final point is there are some cities that are completely out of whack, like in in Oakland, for example, they spend over. Forty percent of their entire budget on law enforcement in Minneapolis or Chicago, close to 40 percent, 40 percent. By comparison, Washington, D.C., in Prince George's County, Montgomery County, they spend in the twenty twenty five percent range. That gives people an idea. So that could mean that the departure of the large departments in the D.C. area are where they are, where they're supposed to be budget wise. And it could mean that other places are out of whack if we take a market driven, evidence based approach. It could mean reallocating five to 10 percent of, say, the budget of Oakland or Chicago or Minneapolis. That still will put them above where large departments are in the D.C. area. So that's what people mean by defunding. And we also need to shift funding as well within police departments to ensure that officers get the wellness they need, that they get incentives to live in the communities we want them to be in, and that they also get mental health services because we know that hurts people, hurt people.
Broke/Broken
Right. Yeah, going back to the thing you said, you know, about insurance, and I think that's such a really good point about, you know, if these situations were hitting the pockets of police headquarters and police systems, I think that's such a good point that we would see more consequences when it comes to things like this. But, you know, for civil cases, a lot of the payouts are, as you've said, taxpayer. Right. So that that that's such a good point that I don't think enough people are kind of taking into consideration. But when we're speaking about sort of the broader, bigger ideas of how do we kind of treat our society holistically and not just throw more money at sort of the sort of violent and of of policing makes a lot of sense. And so I guess I wanted to ask your opinions about defund. The police had a lot of there's been a lot of controversy around that that logo or that motto, that movement, the specifically the defund the police sort of framing of it. But when you look at some of the things that you mentioned already that's happening at the community level when, you know, one could argue has come out of that movement, say, for example, that the program in Denver, we’re seeing some police budgets being reallocated at the community level.
So taking the politics push back out of it, what do you think about the movement in terms of effectiveness and sort of the stuff that we're seeing already?
Dr. Rashawn Ray
I think the defund the police movement as being highly effective. I think the other thing that people need to recognize is that reallocation happens all the time. I mean, I sit in meetings with mayors and county executives, and even when people at the state level that they talk about moving funding around, we're going to move 20 million from the police budget to pay for this thing. Oftentimes, though, is we're going to move 20 million from this thing and give it to the police. And it's not just giving it to the police. To give it to them is giving it to them to do something.
For example, we have a lot of potholes and in our area we have a lot of potholes in the D.C. area. But they say we have a lot of potholes. How are we going to ensure that we're going around checking for them? Well, police officers on the street, how about when they're riding around we let them tell us? That's another report they got to fill out. Why are they doing that? They shouldn't be doing that. But you know what? Their budget got larger for doing that. But you know what that also means now, they can't focus as much on the sorts of things people think police officers should be focused on. So, look, the defund the police movement has been very big. It's been effective, it's worked. And people don't like the word defund and always say, I mean, if it was called reallocating, not only is that longer to feed on a protest sign, but it just doesn't sound as flashy, doesn't sound as hard. And, you know, things catch on. And that's the one that did.
Broke/Broken
Right. And you could argue, you know, we might not be talking about reallocating the police, you know, because like you said, it's just not as capturing of a phrase.
Dr. Rashawn Ray
I don't think, I don't think we'd be talking about it at all if defund the police was not the slogan. And it's important we talk about it because it's an entre to money when you follow the money. Not only is it about how large police budgets are and how how large they have become, but then you also look at the civilian payoffs for police misconduct and how on top of how large their budgets are, that doesn't even come from that. Defund the police help people to have a lexicon and a narrative by which you make sense of that.
Broke/Broken
Right. And so my last question for you is kind of getting back to the Chauvin trial.
Some of the things that people have been talking about is how, you know, not only did his superior, the police chief, kind of testify against Derek Chauvin, but some of his peers did as well. And that's kind of goes back to the thing that you were talking about, about the so-called good apples being pushed out.
Do you think that set some sort of a precedent or what do you think about that? And I guess sort of what are you going to be looking out for after this trial when it comes to sort of addressing police brutality?
Dr. Rashawn Ray
So, as of now, I don't think so. I think the Chauvin case is an outlier. That if we look at, say, the past 15 years, less than 10 officers, including children, have been charged and convicted of murder, and every single year there are over one thousand people killed by police. What's important for people to note is that while a lot of them are justified, according even to the FBI, only about half of them are justified. That means you have about half that are ruled as unjustifiable. And you know what happens in those? Police officers go back to work and taxpayers pay the money. So, look, I think I think the word is out.
It would be nice to be optimistic to see that be the case. I mean, I would imagine… this is what people need to pay attention to, what Derek Chauvin is sentenced to, what happens in the cases of the other officers, and also what happens in these related cases that have come to be more public. That's what we need to focus on, because right now they're firing officers. And that sounds great. But look, our court system is completely over individualistic and it lets systems off the hook.
And all I'm seeing right now is individual accountability and not systemic accountability, which is what people ultimately want.
Broke/Broken
Yeah, absolutely. Very well said and thank you so much, Rashawn, for your time, as always. It was a pleasure to have you join the show.
Dr. Rashawn Ray
Thank you so much. I look forward to the next time.
Broke/Broken
Thanks for listening.
You can follow Rashawn's work on Twitter @sociologistray
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And you can also find us on Twitter @brokebrokennews
Until next time.
System Accountability > Individual Accountability