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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now that former police officer Derek Chauvin is officially the convicted murderer of George Floyd, some of the focus for systemic change will be on Washington with what's called the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act of 2021. Reading from the bill's official page on the website of the House of Representatives, the bill, "includes measures to increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct, to enhance transparency and data collection," we'll talk about data collection "and to eliminate discriminatory policing practices."

The bill, it says, facilitates federal enforcement of constitutional violations, for example, excessive use of force by state and local law enforcement. That's a key, federal enforcement of excessive use of force in local police departments, and among other things, the bill says it would do the following: Lower the criminal intent standard from willful to knowing or reckless, to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution. Authorize the Department of Justice to issue subpoenas in investigations of police departments for a pattern or practice of discrimination.

That's very relevant with the breaking news just this hour that the US Justice Department is going to investigate the Minneapolis Police Department beyond Derek Chauvin, for patterns and practices of discrimination. The bill also creates a national registry, the National Police Misconduct Registry, to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct, and it establishes a framework to prohibit racial profiling at the federal state and local levels, as well as establishing new requirements for law enforcement officers and agencies.

Here's the data part: To report data on use of force incidents, to obtain training on implicit bias and racial profiling, and to wear body cameras. Now, that's all from the language on the bill for the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act of 2021. It is anything but a slam dunk that this will pass, but there's some of the language. We played some clips earlier of Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, from his remarks after the verdict. Here is one more Ellison clip addressing what he sees as the work of today's generations beyond the one verdict.

Keith Ellison: Finally, this verdict demands us to never give up the hope that we can make enduring change. Generations of people said slavery would never end. Generations said Jim Crow will never end. Generations said women would never be equal to men. Generations said if you are different in any way, you could never be a full and equal member of our society. Today we have to end this travesty of recurring, enduring deaths at the hands of law enforcement.

Brian: With us now is journalist and commentator Jamil Smith, who's been on many times in recent years and just started a major new job this week as senior correspondent at Vox. Jamil, congrats on the new gig and welcome back to WNYC.

Jamil Smith: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate you having me on.

Brian: Listeners, our lines are still open for anyone who feels fear and not reassurance when you see police on your block, and for people in law enforcement too. For any of you on any side of this, what has the racial justice movement of the whole last year, including now the process of the Derek Chauvin trial and his conviction as a murderer, changed how safe you feel around police or how differently you view your job if you're in law enforcement yourself? 646-435-7280.

Jamil, part of the conversation we've been having since last night is how much to see this verdict as a turning point in police accountability and how much to be cynical about it as a kind of throwing one bad apple under the bus so they can say he was just one bad apple. Where would you say you are on that scale?

Jamil: I'd say I'm probably somewhere in the middle, Brian. I think what's important to realize is that we did not really have a racial reckoning last summer after George Floyd's murder, as we can officially call it, and also Breonna Taylor's killing by Louisville police, and Ahmaud Arbery's killing by local men in Georgia.

We did not really have the racial reckoning that maybe we thought we had or we'd like to give ourselves credit for. What we did is, as Reverend Otis Moss put it in a comment to The New York Times, we have just simply addressed the symptoms. The disease is still there and we're really not doing much to address the disease if we simply wait for Black people to die at the hands of police and then produce moments of empathy and moments of outrage, and then don't see the kinds of systemic changes that prevent such happenings in the future.

Brian: I read some of the House of Representatives website summary of the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act there. How much do you think real change and safety from unnecessary police violence runs through Washington, versus local politics, versus something more like a cultural change?

Jamil: It seems to me that communities are looking to Washington to provide a systematic and thorough comprehensive solution to all of this. Now, the solution really doesn't have to start necessarily with reckoning, it has to start with the terms. How do you get police to understand that they need to operate within certain parameters or else they won't be police anymore?

How do you get them to operate more safely in communities so that, say, when they respond to a young woman calling the police as Ma'Khia Bryant did yesterday in Columbus, and finds that she is in fact the one who's shot four times by a police officer when she's attempting [unintelligible 00:06:28] to defend herself.

We have to understand that the rules like ending no knock warrants and doing other things that are in this policing act, would certainly prevent a lot of things, but it wouldn't prevent all of the terrible things that police can perpetrate, but that only means that police have to take it upon themselves, as long as police exist, to make the kinds of changes that have them seen in a better light.

If they care about this. In fact, there are good apples on this rotten tree, then let's have them get involved in making the solutions. Instead what we've seen time and time again, is we see law enforcement officials and their unions fight against these kinds of systemic changes or pretend that they don't exist and currently in the watered down Republican version of this bill, we see that perspective reflected.

Brian: Let's take a phone call from Lauren who says she's former NYPD now living in, is it Nashville, Indiana Lauren? Hi, you're on WNYC.

Lauren: Hi Brian. Say that Nashville, Indiana quietly, because I'm a [unintelligible 00:07:52] New Yorker.

Brian: We'll send you a T-shirt.

Lauren: The reason I'm calling is because I had a very interesting vantage point. Even though I was a professional actor and singer in New York for 25 years, when I wasn't doing that work, I did other things and I had a propensity for criminal justice and also for counseling, and years and years ago in-between the New York years, I was a deputy. When I'm listening to your show today, a couple of things are very stunning to me. When I was a deputy and we had roll call and this was about 20 years ago--

Brian: Just to clarify that role, when you say deputy, what is that? Is that a police officer or what's a deputy?

Lauren: A deputy for the Sheriff's department.

Brian: Got you.

Lauren: I did [unintelligible 00:08:45] and I also was on the road, and after roll call many years ago, when you would be partnered up with somebody, people used to high five and say to each other, "Let's go out there and keep the peace." Many, many years later, 10 years ago, when I was also in New York and in between jobs, I was a counselor and I worked also for counseling families of homicide victims. I did suicide hotlines, but I also went to train to be an auxiliary officer and I got placed in Midtown south.

After roll call this time, I was hearing everybody give high fives and instead of, "Let's keep the peace," I was hearing, "Let's go kick some butt." In that 20 years the attitude had changed so dramatically. When I would go out, be partnered with the younger officers that were coming up in the police, I was stunned by their attitudes. Their homophobic attitudes, their racism, and people are not talking about video games, which was their original training as they were coming up. It was shoot to kill since they were seven and eight years old and this young-- you have to think about who is attracted to criminal justice?

You start there. Who wants to do this job and where do they start to learn it? What do they fantasize? What is the power they are dreaming of having? It's such a important factor to consider, both the video games of shoot to kill and blood doesn't really kill people. It doesn't really hurt when we shoot a gun, and also who is drawn to it. I had to quit after two years because I couldn't stand being in Times Square late at night with these young guys who hated me because my attitudes were old school where I was there to help and to serve. It's changed dramatically.

Brian: Lauren, I'm curious if from your perspective, and of course we can't verify that they used to say, "Let's go out there and keep the peace," and then they changed to, "Let's go out there and kick some butt." But since it's been 10 years, if you've been in touch at all with that world since you stopped doing that work, and we've been talking about police reform certainly for at least the last eight years after the stop and frisk era in New York when DeBlasio was elected on curtailing that and all of that. Do you have any reason to believe that it's changed back at all to more of a courtesy professionalism and respect, which is the official motto for the last 10 years or so of the NYPD?

Lauren: Great question. First I just want to tell you that those things of the high five, those were just the spirit of the guys after roll call. It wasn't a mandate or any part of the official ritual that they would say those things. I'm just giving you what the guys and the attitudes would be and the differences. In terms of your question, I can't speak to New York, staying in touch with New York guys, but I can speak to what's going on here in this strange and awful state of Indiana where it's gotten worse. They haven't become any more informed or there's not more compassion. It's actually worse. It's young guys looking for power and harboring the-- It's Trump people here and so that says it all.

Brian: Lauren, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for your call and good luck out there, whatever you do. Of course, I will say it's very easy for New Yorkers to feel very superior to places in the Midwest.

Jamil: Indeed it is, considering I come from Ohio

Brian: Yes, you're a Cleveland boy, aren't you?

Jamil: Indeed. I live in Nashville, Tennessee currently. It is useful for us to take a little bit broader perspective when it comes to how other people are living throughout the country.

Brian: That aside, what were you thinking listening to Lauren? There is, to the very last point that she made about what happens during Trump time where there Trump supporters, there does seem to be this-- Part of the political culture wars in this country seem to be that you have more law enforcement, more military lining up on the Trump side of things, and that Republican side of things is increasingly radical, so to the extent that that really all lines up in any numbers, it's disturbing.

Jamil: It goes back to something you were talking about with Jamie earlier. The history of police in this country has been essentially an appendage of white supremacy. Really, we have to think about these things in a historical context. We also have to think about what the police have the power to do, which is to imprison, to jail. That's something within the 13th amendment, the loophole still exists where slavery is banned except as punishment for a crime. I believe it says "Whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," if I'm remembering correctly. That gives a loophole, says basically if you were imprisoned, you're a slave again. This is the legal system that we seem to be okay enough with, that we're not pressing for it to be changed.

We are upset. We are horrified by the videotapes of people like George Floyd being murdered, but we're not moved enough as a society yet to have this be a real catalyst for change. We've been depending upon Black death for decades now to push us further towards being the country that Dr. King said be true to what they said on paper. But how many of us need to die in order for people to try to realize what this country could and should, what should be.

That to me is the question that should come out of this trial. Not what kind of reforms can be pushed now. Yes, it's opportunism on behalf of politicians and if they can use this to make change that's going to be effective and lasting, go for it. But this should be the end of that. We should be doing this kinds of changes even when there aren't any Daunte Wrights or Ma'Khia Bryants and George Floyds and Philando Castilles Tamir Rices. We need to be taking the initiative to make these changes in our society because frankly, I don't understand how we live like this. I really don't.

Brian: This is WNYC FMHD NAM New York. WNJ TFM 88.1, Trenton WNJP 88.5 Sussex. WNJY 89.3 Net Kong and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio. A few more minutes with Jamil Smith from Vox. I want to mention that you retweeted an article that I think was written by somebody else on Vox that questions the way the media handled videos of the death of Black people, including the George Floyd video, which of course was instrumental in the conviction of his murderer, but also spread traumatization and retraumatization as it got played over and over again on TV and on our phones and everywhere.

As a media person yourself who has done TV and who I see you'll be doing some video things for Vox, what do you see as the mix of video being important evidence to not hide in the shadows of the repeated Black death at the hands of police that you were just referring to, versus it being a source of sensationalism or unnecessary trauma?

Jamil: Just to clarify also that the person who wrote that article you mentioned is Dr. Allissa Richardson of University of California's Annenberg School. She has a book Bearing Witness While Black that I encourage people to check out. My feeling, I've written about this for going on seven years now. This is something that when I was with the New Republic, I wrote about how videos are making us as a nation numb to the spectacle of Black death. That was when Walter Scott was shot in the back on video.

I think about the Newtown moment for gun control, when you saw 20 children and [unintelligible 00:18:26] teachers mowed down by automatic weapon. We don't see the kind of reform or systemic societal change that would prevent something like that from happening again. What is the Newtown moment for Black death at the hands of police, or disproportionate Black death? Because frankly white people are getting killed by police too. Asians, Latinos, Indigenous folks, are all getting killed by police, and yes, it's happening disproportionately to my communities, but at the same time, this is something that should upset all Americans.

[unintelligible 00:19:07] white people in the street. At the same-- if that's not really the pathway to change, then let's figure out another way that we can do this efficiently and peacefully. Because right now there are parties who have a vested interest in not making this happen and not allowing change to occur. I would like to know, especially after today, do they really think George Floyd's body murdered itself or do they agree with the verdict? Because if you agree with the verdict, that means you need to understand that this kind of stuff happens every day.

That Derek Chauvin is not some kind of anomaly or bad apple, and that the kinds of systemic changes that it seems like the Justice Department is about to investigate in Minnesota and some other places, that these kinds of systemic problems are things that require real and potentially "radical solutions".

Brian: I mentioned at the beginning of the segment, the data aspects of the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act that's now before Congress. Collecting data about police misconduct and about any use of force. I'm curious, when you think about these turning point moments and how systemic the whole thing is and people are disconnected from all the other incidents, except maybe the one that happened near them, except people in the movement. How much do you think seeing those numbers, whatever they are, might help clarify something that could lead to the right kind of change? Because I think about the gun debate in this country, where conservatives in Congress have long put up a barrier to even collecting data about shootings in this country. Maybe the same has been true about police use of force.

Jamil: Yes. As I was saying before, we need to ask, why are they so opposed to us collecting data? What do they not want us to know? What do they not want us to see? I think that this case was particularly interesting because at the end of the day, the defense had no answer for what was on that tape. In this regard, will they have an answer for the data when that data is collected?

It depends upon, I guess, how many of them there are, if there are enough of them in the Senate to block a new legislation, perhaps it won't matter. If there are enough of them in state houses across the country, perhaps it won't matter. But that's where we as the voters need to get involved. We need to be looking for people who are interested in actually finding out what the reality of America is about and finding out what needs to be fixed, as opposed to painting [unintelligible 00:22:08] over it and pretending that everything's okay.

Brian: On what needs to get fixed. Last question. I could take calls from people all day who say, or you'll see it a lot in conservative opinion media, one of the threads is to ask why there is so much focus proportionately on this case and on police violence generally, bad as the Derek Chauvin murder of George Floyd was, and bad as some of these other cases are, but to them appears to the exclusion, or at least disproportionate downplaying of the many more people who are dying in civilian murders than in police killings. I'm sure you've been asked that question.

Jamil: Yes, it's the Black on Black crime question. To me I think it's a red herring. I would ask those people to go to communities where there is a lot of this urban violence and see the protests that people have, demanding that their communities be safer, demanding that their communities be insulated from this violence, and demanding, frankly, that police do better in trying to protect them. These people don't all necessarily want to abolish the police. Defunding the police actually might help, because if you're putting the funding, instead of trying to hire more officers who don't know how to handle mental health crises or know how to deal with people who are without homes. If you take that money and you allocate it to people who actually know what they're doing, it actually frees the cops up to do their [unintelligible 00:23:51] job which is to protect and serve.

If we are going to have police in this country, we need to have police who understand that they cannot do everything and they should not be entrusted to do everything. We should be very specific about what we empower them to do. It's very important that they understand that this actually probably benefits them, as much or if not more than anyone, these prospects for reform, because it enables them to possibly be a lot more assured that they are going to go home safely at night.

Right now for a lot of us in America, we can't even take the wheel and just drive to the grocery store without wondering if we're going to be coming home safely. I ask those people to generate just even the most tiny smidget of empathy for those of us who every single day worry about whether or not a police officer is going to end our lives.

Brian: Jamil Smith, now, as of this week, senior correspondent at Vox. Vox is one of our great news organizations. In my opinion, now it's going to be even better that you are there. Good luck over there and keep coming on with us, Jamil.

Jamil: I thank you very much, Brian. I appreciate that very much. Take care.

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