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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. One of the things to emerge from the racial justice movement this year is an order from Governor Cuomo that every local police department in the state has to develop a police reform plan by next April. As part of fulfilling that requirement, the NYPD has embarked on what they call a listening tour with in-person sessions and collecting comments and proposals through other kinds of community engagement as well. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea recruited a number of major nonprofits to do this with, the New York Urban League, the Anti-Poverty Group, RobinHood.org, and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.

With us now to invite your calls is Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO and executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. The group describes itself on its website as advocating for just public policies and strengthening human services organizations. Miss Austin, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jennifer Jones Austin: Good morning, and I'm really glad to be with you. Glad to have this conversation, important conversation.

Brian: Listeners, the phones are open for your comments and questions for Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO and executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies helping the NYPD to do this listening tour that's part of the state-mandated police reform process. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet @brianlehrer. Before we even get into content, could you tell our listeners, why did you team up with the NYPD for this? Many people might be suspicious and think, "This isn't real. Dermot Shea has no credibility anymore. Why risk us by getting involved?"

Jennifer: I don't think of it as much as teaming up with NYPD as I do teaming up with all of New York City. This is a very important issue, policing in New York City is an important issue, it's of critical concern to many of us. I'd rather be engaged in the conversation, doing my best to ensure that all voices are heard in this process, so I look at it as teaming up with the city of New York. Yes, I'm spending a lot of time with Commissioner Shea, with other persons in New York City Government, but I'm also trying to spend a lot of time with the community to make sure that their voices are heard.

Brian: What's the basic invitation to the public? Help us open the phones in the most constructive way for what you're inviting the public to tell you on this listening tour.

Jennifer: You referenced Governor Cuomo's executive order establishing the Reform and Reinvention Policing Collaborative. The word collaborative is the word that should be most emphasized. This endeavor requires collaboration with community, and so what we need to do in this moment is hear the community express their concerns, their frustrations, their experiences about policing, how they've been policed, how they've been engaged, how their issues have been addressed, how race they believe and have experienced has played a factor, bias, what they see as matters that concern police, and matters that should not concern police.

Collaborative is the most keyword in all of this, even more than reform and reinvention, because if the collaboration isn't there, if the community doesn't say what's bothering them, what challenges them, what are the obstacles that have to be overcome, how do we address the power differential? If they don't bring that forward in a very strong and clear manner, then we're not going to get anywhere.

Brian: What have you done so far and what are you hearing so far? I know some of these in-person listening sessions have already taken place. What would be the top line if you were writing your report on the listening tour to date?

Jennifer: If I were writing to date after having learned from eight patrol meetings that were set up by the NYPD, there are many, many more meetings that are underway. I just want to note that there are going to be meetings with the most impacted communities, meetings with the communities that have experienced the highest concentration of policing, very often, most often, I should say all the time, they are Black and brown communities with the highest concentrations of poverty and justice involvement at the incarceration level as well.

Those meetings are going to continue but so far, what I've seen and heard in the eight patrol meetings that have been had, a lot of talk about trauma, the experience that people have having been over-policed, having had encounters where they feel that they had been treated with disrespect, and I also hear that sometimes in the police as well but the trauma, how that just continues to play out, how they feel like they can't trust the police because of what they've experienced before.

I hear a lot about training, how police officers are trained today, and whether or not they understand, are sensitized to the issues of the community, whether or not they understand and have an appreciation for different cultures and different religions, and just how different communities look one from the other, the need for training to be centered more on individuals and families, and communities. I've even heard police officers themselves, say, "We're turning out people who have robotic in nature, and we need to do better."

Then we hear a lot about discipline and accountability and the lack thereof, a lack of transparency in the process, people raising questions about who gets hired, who gets promoted, and how those decisions are made. A lot of its centers on trauma, training, trust. Wow, I didn't realize I was doing a lot of PR this morning, and transparency during a lot of that.

Brian: T words, trauma, training, trust, and discipline and accountability. Listeners, call in with your suggestions for NYPD reform with this listening tour underway, Jennifer Jones Austin from the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, collaborating on doing the listening. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Let's take a phone call from Q in The Bronx. Q, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Q: Hi. Thanks for taking my call, and thanks, Jennifer, for having these listening tours. My two concerns, one is the listening tour itself. I think, over the summer and spring, there was a high level of outrage in the city regarding in policing and I feel like the awareness campaign regarding the tours was not equivalent to the level of outrage. For instance, I found out about this tour just in the wee hours of the morning on 1010 WINS when they mentioned it and I had to then try to rush to see what are the dates and luckily, I had a conflict, but I was able to attend virtually one of the last ones in my area.

I feel like this policing issue is equivalent to the pandemic issue and the city has done a great job, in terms of awareness in the train stations and so forth in terms of ad campaigns, and I know city agency's budgets are limited and I know that whether it's maybe WNYC or television, there's a certain amount of free ad space for public service announcements, and so there should be a great awareness, because there are people who are not, maybe professional activists like in terms of nonprofits, who are aware of this, but they're ordinary people who would like to participate and don't know when these things are occurring.

Then also the range, like the one that I attended covered Brooklyn North. Brooklyn North is big. There's Brooklyn South. I think these meetings to be more effective, if you have presinct level virtual meetings because each precinct is very different and has unique challenges, people in communities have unique challenges and things that they're concerned with.

Then the last thing is the mindset of officers. Unfortunately, during this pandemic, dealing with this pandemic, I'm a person of color, I had a police issue my family had to deal with, and what really sucked for lack of a better word is that you had these young cops, who are younger rather than all of us in the family, and we had a family member who had a medical issue which, of course, this member was a Black male, larger than them and not violent or anything, but because EMS felt that they probably couldn't handle the person, they called for assistance. In that case, when I had asked what assistance that there were calling for it before I knew they were calling the cops, and then when the cops showed on the scene, they were very disrespectful, they cursed.

Brian: Q, let me jump in for time because I want to get a lot of people on here. It's a troubling story and I think it goes to Jennifer Jones Austin's first T, which is trauma. Do you have a policy response to this that you would like to see implemented to prevent things like this happening to other people? Q, I'm asking you?

Q: The policy response is like several months ago I saw I think it was maybe on France 24, something in either Denmark or Sweden were cops were in situations that are not violent and that may be psychological or whatever, instead of-- the EMT come but the law enforcement is in the background, if they even need-- IF they need extra help, they don't even call them. I know that there are some pilot programs I think, around the country, but it started in Scandinavia. I think those are the things that you can incorporate. Why are, for whether it's mental health issues of non-violent issues, where EMTs or people need assistance, they call the cops.

Brian: Q, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much. Please call us again and the mayor did just announce something along those very specific lines yesterday, having to do with fewer police responses to mental health crisis.

Jennifer: Indeed. An initiative when calls are made to 911 to divert them and have them be responded to when persons are presenting with mental health challenges, have them be responded to by EMS and mental health crisis counselors. They're going to begin that pilot in two communities. One of the things that we've heard and we've seen happening in other jurisdictions is that people are beginning to look at whether or not police should be involved at all in mental health issues, especially where you don't see the onset of maybe like the presence of the potential for violence or something getting out of hand and putting people at risk.

We heard a lot through the summer talk about defunding the police and putting resources where they would better serve communities. This is one aspect of that. I'm increasingly with the help of people thinking about it as budget justice, that when we talk about policing and police reform, we need to be looking at what are the actual roles that police officers are presently engaged in?

Where are they the default, if you will, for issues that really aren't policing in nature, criminalization of poverty, criminalization of mental health, criminalization of homeless services of education, and making sure that we invest budget justice, invest in those services, in those programs so that police aren't brought in to address matters that they shouldn't be engaged in.

I just want to say that Q is absolutely right, not enough has been done to market these listening tours and these conversations. That's one of the reasons why I and Wes Moore and Arva Rice pressed for a more concentrated conversation in communities most greatly, most significantly impacted by racialized policing in New York City.

Brian: Craig in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Craig. Thanks for calling.

Craig: Thank you, Brian, and good morning to you and your guests. My thing is accountability. Can you hear me, Brian?

Brian: Yes, sir.

Craig: Everybody says, ask the community. I'm from Southeast Queens. I have different relationships with cops and maybe somebody in the South Bronx or in Brownsville, but we all want respect. We all want the person hired to do their job. Everybody has jobs and the criteria in their job, they have to meet. If they don't, there's punishment, there's magistrate uptaken. Why is it on the public?

You spoke with the mayor last Frida, and he spoke about the protest and some protesters acting up towards the police and that shouldn't happen, but when it's the reverse, the man never singles out one police officer. He saying, "Oh, that's just an isolated incident. Look for more facts." It's always the people versus the police. If the police do something, we have to give them all the benefit of the doubt and then some. These are public servants. They're paid to do a job.

Some people, bus drivers, police officers, garbagemen [unintelligible 00:15:04], some people can't do the job and they should leave the job, not bust a union, not not give people due process. When that guy in the lower Eastside was on the pretense of getting out of the car for social distance-- mind you, he was an undercover cop. What undercover cop is assigned to a social distancing task force?

At the time when the lower Eastside and the upper Eastside was experiencing a string of burglaries from restaurants, the business there was closed down, but us in the community know what that was. This cop seen these guys and then on the pretense of social distancing, he was going to get out and see if they have a gun or marijuana on him.

The man wants to post stats all the time, but before the pandemic, the Southeast Bronx had the highest rates ticketing rates of jaywalking. Excuse me, not the Southeast Bronx of the South Bronx. Jaywalking. These cops that don't tell them that it's another form of stop and frisk. Like jaywalking? All the jaywalking in Manhattan, but all the tickets are going to the Bronx. Accountability, you got to start at the top. It's not the people, it's the top.

Brian: Craig, let me get you a response. Jennifer Jones Austin, wow, and he was so specific on so many things. The bottom line is where's the accountability, why do police officers always seem to get the benefit of the doubt in cases where civilians don't?

Jennifer: One of the issues that we all are trying to unpack is why is it? One of the things that we know is that there is a power differential that often bends, most often, more often than not, in the great majority of cases, it bends in favor of the police. A lot of that I believe is, I'm learning and I'm unpacking, have to do with leadership and trying to keep everybody rowing in the same direction. It concerns when you have to discipline somebody, what does that do for overall organization morale, but we need to get beyond that.

A lot of it centers on how the unions and the union organizations respond when police officers are held accountable and what does that do in terms of how you lead and you manage the uniform police officers. We've got to get beyond that. A lot of it has to do with the prosecutors across the state and across the country, prosecutors that in years past and still in the present day, rely upon police officers to help back up and support their cases and so the power differential is off in so many different places and spaces.

In order to bring about greater discipline and accountability and transparency, we're going to have to unpack and address that power differential in every respect. I agree with the caller, beginning with how the NYPD leadership is holding people accountable, and not just for small infractions, but for the most egregious of infractions as well.

You may see that police officers will be held accountable for maybe not being properly dressed or for interactions with other police officers but we're talking about interactions with people on the street. There's got to be greater accountability, but it's got to be NYPD leadership. It's got to be at the mayor's office. It's got to be in the unions. It's got to be with the other parts of law enforcement. It pervades all those spaces and it needs to be addressed in all of those spaces.

Brian: Craig, thank you so much and keep calling us. Let me take host's prerogative here for a minute and follow up on Craig's question. When the mayor was on recently, I asked him about the international human rights group, Human Rights Watch accusing the NYPD of a violation of international human rights law for the way they kettled peaceful protestors in the Bronx during one of the protests in the summer. The group, Human Rights Watch called for Commissioner Shay himself to be disciplined or fired by the mayor.

The mayor responded by saying the city has its own investigation into that June incident. I followed up with the mayor like this. That protest was in June. You promised when we talked about it on the show, I think the very morning after, that you would launch a review. You just refer to the review again. Now it's October. Have they figured out whether the NYPD misbehaved or not?

Mayor: Again, it's not my personal review. It's an independent review looking at it by our Department of Investigation, which is known for being very rigorous, and our Law Department and our Corporation Counsel Jim Johnson, who has a long history of work on civil rights. I'm waiting for their conclusions. I know they're done very extensive investigatory work. I think they are doing some additional work now. That's going to be what I look to as the final word on what happened here.

Brian: Jennifer, that incident was in June. That question to the mayor was on October 2nd. Now it's November 11th. That would be another suggestion that maybe should come out of your listening tour. Accountability for police misconduct should come in a reasonably short period of time. Again, like Craig said in his phone call, not to throw due process overboard in any way, but do you happen to know what's taking the Department of Investigation so long to come up with its own conclusions on that one particular thing.

Jennifer: In this issue, I don't know what's taking the Department of Investigation so long, but what I will tell you is that, I think one of the things we should be looking at is just as we've done now in New York State with chokehold bans, I'm going to use that as an example. There are specific incidents that you should look that, that people in leadership should be looking to and addressing with respect to whether or not laws have been violated, people's human rights have been violated, and then it should make opinions and decisions, but there also are policies, policies that are implicated that we can know right off the back, are not good or not effective and that threatened people.

In this instance, I guess what I'm saying to you is that, we can look at the incident itself, but we should also be looking at the policy of kettling and how kettling in itself restrict people's freedom to move about and other freedoms. That does appear to be a human rights violation, and we should be looking at the policy in and of itself, and then one can look at the policies implementation in particular situations but I do think we can do both. It's the policy in of itself, the practice of violation of human rights and then what happened in a particular instance.

Brian: Here's a question from someone who used to work for the Civilian Complaint Review Board. It says, "I'm interested in how much can be changed, even legislatively, with a union so reticent, even to acknowledge that there are problems with the way police conduct themselves? Are these conversations going to achieve anything with Pat Lynch, Ed Mullins, et cetera, still in power?" I would add even structurally with the police unions having as much power as they do.

Jennifer: It undeniable that the unions have significant power. They are the only force that has in their contracts often provisions concerning discipline and how discipline should be handled. That in itself is something that we need to be looking at. I think one of the things that we should note and it may be unpopular by some to hear me say this, is that the other thing that we're contending with, as we look at racism in America, is that racism is present in every pillar of our society, whether it be education, health, jobs, wages, each and every pillar of our society is impacted and affected by racism, structural and institutional and the NYPD is no different.

One of our challenges is that we engage with the NYPD and we call them out on racist and bias behavior and practice, which we should, but what that does sometimes is that it shuts people down and it creates an unwillingness to engage. I think that if we look at our entire society and appreciate how racism is pervasive in every one of our structures and systems, and that we all are contributing to it, then maybe we can get the police to open up a little bit more and see themselves and how they contribute to it.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:24:00] in Elmont, you're on WNYC. Hello, [unintelligible 00:24:03].

Caller: Yes, thank you, Brian. Greetings to the beloved radio family. First of all, language is key. For decades, we've heard this, we're full-on ad nauseam. I think the language must be "Redesigning the Police", because in Camden, New Jersey, when they took that approach, they shut down the all too powerful union as it operated. A lot of the abuse and corruption was dealt with. Also this idea of the robotic aspect nature of police, that has to deal with, we must drill down into the history.

The history is, as the fugitive slave patrol, when reconstructing that derailed, the KKK infiltrated the police departments and that's become embedded in them throughout the country. When Irish became wide, there the root of police as immigrant gangs, so the Irish would hold the immigrants going against the Italian. We must look at the root. When we change the language for "Redesign" versus "Reform", we look at traffic stops, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland and the thousands of others that have been impulsively, maliciously killed by police would not exist and of course, the mental health piece.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:25:52] thank you very much. We can respond to anything you want in there. One thing that jumps out at me when just that little piece of it, where she mentioned the large Irish population, Irish American population in the police force over time, I'm curious if the idea of a residency requirement and maybe even neighborhood-based, not just city-wide or at least don't let such a percentage of a forest live on Staten Island and Long Island, come out of this and anything else you want to say to the things that [unintelligible 00:26:31] raised and then we're out of time.

Jennifer: Okay. The first thing, let's talk very quickly about that residency requirement. We need to look very closely at that, but I think that we have to appreciate that it is not the end-all-be-all answer. There is some research that we're looking at now that suggests that a residency requirement doesn't make all the difference and that is because of what is essentially the term identity allegiance that when you become a police officer, you become part of the system and that and you become-- you can't help, but necessarily become indoctrinated into some of the less than favorable, the negative practices and ways of engaging with community.

We've seen in some of the most tragic cases, let's use Freddie Gray, as an example, the situation that resulted in Freddie Gray's death. A couple of those police officers were persons of color. Sometimes we equate residency requirement with people being of the community, in the community and we talk about Black and brown communities, we think, that's going to be Black and brown people. We have to go beyond or deepen our understanding of what it is we're really seeking and appreciate that the residency requirement, I'm not saying we shouldn't have it, but that alone is not going to solve the problem.

The point that she made about robotics. I've heard police officers themselves talk about how the training today seems to be robotic in nature, that we're just churning people out who are not engaging community with compassion, with sensitivity, with cultural competence. People are coming in being more militant in nature, being more like the hard enforcers of the law. What happened to just working with community? What happened to getting out of the patrol car and saying, "Hey, what's going on here? We got a call. Are you guys okay? Are you safe? We got a call, so what's going on here?"

Rather, we've got police officers jumping out of the car and throwing people against the wall, not knowing if maybe the people who made the call are the ones that you're throwing up against the wall. We need to look at the training and make sure that it is more sensitive and understanding of the community.

Brian: Just as we wrap this up, you want to tell people how, as your listening tour continues, they can be of the process of informing whatever does come out of this in April as an official recommendation to the state for police reform in New York City?

Jennifer: First and foremost, I want to tell people to engage with their city council members because their city council members have responsibility for ultimately approving the plan and they should let their city council members know that they want to be a part of the process. We're reaching out to city council members to let them know when these impacted community meetings are so that they can be present there.

The other thing that I would suggest people do, write to NYPD, but you know what? You can also write to me and you can write to me @fpwa, jjaustin@fpwa.org, so that I can make sure that your voice is heard as well. jjaustin@fpwa.org. As I said, I'm here for the community. I'm not here for the police. I'm here for all of us.

Brian: JJ Austin is Jennifer Jones Austin. The FPWA is the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies of which she is CEO and executive director. Thank you so much for this. We really appreciate it.

Jennifer: Thank you. Thank you.

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