SIO245: Brandon J. McKoy on #defundthepolice

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 245, I'm Thomas Smith, that's Jamie Lombardi, how you doing, Jamie?

0:00:36 Jamie: You know, I'm plaguing along.

0:00:37 Thomas: Yeah, just keep plaguing, I guess, that a good, good way to do it. I am similar, similar, but I'm very excited because we have another guest today. I'm, I'm very excited. Why don't you introduce our guest? Yeah.

0:00:42 Jamie: Just keep, just keep plaguing. How are you, Thomas?

0:00:52 Jamie: We do, we have one of my favorite people on Twitter today. We have Brandon J. McCoy, who is the chief executive of New Jersey Policy Perspective. He is a graduate of the 2013 class of the New Leaders Council and currently serves on Good Jobs First, Shelter Force, and the I.M. Trenton Community Foundation. He received an M.A. in City and Regional Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University's Edward J. Blaustein School of Planning and Public Policy and holds a B.S. degree in Social Psychology from the College of New Jersey. Welcome, Brandon.

0:01:25 Brandon: Thank you, nice to be with both of you today, how are you?

0:01:27 Jamie: Very excited to dig into all of the weird economics of defunding the police and what that means, and for you to try to to help us understand what is actually at stake here.

0:01:40 Brandon: Oh, yeah, definitely, it's a little bit of a top-of-the-mind conversation, I suppose.

0:01:45 Jamie: Yeah, so I guess maybe to get us started, could you tell us exactly what defunding the police means?

0:01:52 Brandon: Sure, so I think it's important to recognize that, you know, traditionally, the call to defund the police is based in an abolitionist movement, and they absolutely 100% mean what they say. They mean defund police departments, you know, police systems, police infrastructures, etc., just divesting from that as a strategy, as, as sort of an institution completely. That does not mean, at least from my understanding, that they don't believe in a system of public safety, and I think that they, they're envisioning public safety being much more community-based, uh, and having a lot more, um, different, uh, expertises, and, you know, professionals filling, uh, a bunch of different roles in that system, um, but, you know, for that, for that group of abolitionists, uh, which is not some fly-by-night, you know, movement, like it's a very serious one that's been around for a long time. I think I saw some folks, you know, at some major news outlets saying, "Oh, this is an unserious proposal." No, it's very serious. And there's a lot of work and research behind it for decades. But that's where they sit, their full abolition.

But then I think there's also a lot of folks who, when they think of defund the police, much more on conservative end, you know, really just focusing on police reforms, and, you know, things like banning chokeholds and changing rules around use of force, weakening or ending law, shielding officers from accountability, um, you know, providing more resources for awareness and sensitivity training, or diversity,

0:03:29 Brandon: Equity and inclusion training, things like that. And then I think there's like a very wide space between those two positions, whereas folks who, you know, it's made up of everything from folks who significantly want to reduce funding and do, uh, want to still have, maybe we say, semblance of a police force, but augmented by other public safety experts, like I said, social workers, mental health professionals, and the like before. And then there's also folks who just want to see greater community oversight of police departments, like civilian complaint review boards and things like that. So it really depends on who is saying the words. But sometimes I get frustrated because I think that people put too much of a premium on what is meant to be a rallying cry.

0:04:16 Brandon: And a rally and cry is not going to be a comprehensive policy position and we should not expect it to be one. But there's definitely an abolitionist movement that exists that should be taken seriously.

0:04:26 Jamie: Awesome. So when you talk about more sorts of, like, community, I don't even want to say community policing, but community-based solutions to the addressing of social harm, that sort of, I think, is at the heart of what this debate is about, because ultimately this is about how financial resources get allocated to communities. And so what are some of the first steps that could be done, or could you provide an example of how moving funds from the type of policing that we tend to see in the United States to what sort of initiatives we could do that could result in a more meaningful decline in the sorts of situations that even warrant calling the police in the first place? So

0:05:11 Brandon: Yeah, I think a good sort of example to compare this to is education policy. My partner works in education policy, and good for her, I never will, because it is rife with challenge, and nobody is ever happy about about what your solution is, because their kid is in school now and your solution is four or five, six years away. But there's a lot of challenges that exist in schools that cannot be fixed by education policy alone, right? And you have to address the conditions of the environments and the communities that children and teachers are coming from and living in when they come to school. And poverty and disinvestment in other parts of the community are gonna really have a major impact on how successful kids are in the school system.

0:06:02 Brandon: I think similar things exist in this conversation with regards to policing, right? Like, yes, there's certain things that are needed to be focused on and addressed when it comes to how police behave. And I think there's a good point to be made. There was a great article by Shelter Force, which I'm on the board of, that said that, you know, yes, there's lots of ways to talk about the implications of various investments in community and how we need to address that, and budgets at large in general, and how governments spend their money. But there are things in policing that need to be addressed with regards to specific interactions, because there's obviously a major racial component there, and that exists across class distinctions, right? It doesn't matter how wealthy you are.

0:06:47 Brandon: If you're a black American or a black resident in this country, police are going to be a threat to you in various situations. And so regardless of the economic situation, regardless of investments, that there are still things there that need to be addressed. But having said all that, yeah, there's a ton of things that go underfunded. There's a ton of critical assets and resources and services and programs and communities that have not received proper support. And by and large, policing systems, incarceration, incarceration, industrial complex, arresting, and all the systems of just enforcement of the law have received significant and consistent support and increases in their budgets over time.

0:07:35 Brandon: So I want to be careful about not seeming like this is a conversation where there's like a static size of the pie, and that police are taking up a significant portion of that pie, and therefore that's the solution. We also need to focus on how we grow the pie and grow the amount of revenue that's available for government to invest in critical programs and assets. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of police budgets that have grown over time, and you could definitely argue at the expense of other priorities.

0:08:12 Jamie: I have a bunch of questions, but now that you just said that, I want to skip over to something that you had just mentioned, because you talked about, you know, thinking of this in terms of a pie and the resources not being restricted to the pie as it is, but being able to expand those resources as well. And one thing that I thought a lot about as I was preparing to do this, I was struck by just the sheer percentage of people who are in prison for drug-related offenses. And so it seems to me the obvious place to start is somewhere like marijuana decriminalization or full legalization. Could you talk about, I know we're sort of debating that in New Jersey, and our dear Senate president has some personal issues that keep him from being able to sign off on it. But could you talk a little how that actually works and how the policing of drugs like marijuana continue to to bloat our prison systems and harm our community.

0:09:08 Brandon: Yeah, and I wish I had some more salient statistics on hand right now. We actually have somebody at my org who's working on this topic right now and is actually supposed to provide me with a rundown tomorrow. But basically, I mean, the gist is that, you know, by enforcing the prohibition of cannabis in the state of New Jersey, or even just in the country, we are asking and requiring law enforcement to spend significant time on something that's just having tons of harm. Very, very costly, both with regards to enforcement, you know, the whole process of booking people, incarcerating people, you know, holding people in facilities, that's very, very expensive. And then it's very expensive just for the individuals and their families, right?

0:09:56 Brandon: People who are arrested and, you, you know, held for weeks and months before trial and are not able to go home, and then end up, you know, losing their job, and you know, all sorts of other consequences because they've been held for so long. You know, New Jersey, not that long ago, passed bail reform, where we ended the practice of holding people just because they couldn't afford bail, and so that sort of, you know, bit into that problem, took a big chunk out of that problem, but still, just the prohibition of cannabis and the entire infrastructure that is propping that up is incredibly costly, um, and you know, a police officers could be quote unquote spending their time doing much better things, you know, focusing on other issues, um, you know, a lot of other crimes that go unsolved and are dismissed and ignored for various reasons.

0:10:50 Brandon: There's the racialization of cannabis prohibition and, and obviously, most of the people who are harmed by that system are Black Americans and brown Americans who have been marginalized for, since the, since the dawning of this country and way before. But it's just a situation where there's the cost of the situation, and then there's a cost of not sort of reforming and legalizing, like you identified, where if we did do those things, not only would you be able to shift resources to a more productive use, but you would raise revenue from the legal market of cannabis use and be able to then repurpose those revenues into more investments into communities, to make up for the war on drugs, to address some of the harms, and the crimes that were committed because of that, and to sort of do, have a reparative justice approach.

0:11:42 Thomas: I, uh, I wonder if we could step back, if this isn't going to derail you guys too much, because I imagine that, I imagine the three of us are roughly on the same page with regards to policing, but I wonder if we could try to shift the, the, the way we're talking about it for a second, for the time being, for anyone who's maybe really put, put off by the idea of defunding the police, um, you know, maybe five years ago maybe that would have been me, or something, because I thought maybe that's too far, you know, but I've been kind of radicalized by all this. Not so clearly. So I just want to get, rid of them, but assuming maybe somebody who is, who's, um, not, not that far left on their journey or something, like why shouldn't people be scared of the ideaof defund the police, you know, if, if, if someone's out there and they're like, oh, but who am I gonna call if there's a, you know, a robber and a, blah blah blah blah, you know, what's the reason that this should, should not scare people? I

0:12:10 Brandon: Well, I think you shouldn't scare people because this, you know, this is not the only way to have public safety in this country. And, um, as somebody who currently lives in Trenton, which has a culture of urban policing and surveillance that is very different from the place I grew up, which is South Orange, which is a very quiet, very diverse, but also very white suburb of New York City, um, the way I interacted with police in my formative years is way different than the way I interact with police now, and see my neighbors interact with police.

And so, um, you know, first there's a situation of police are being called on to do things that they really shouldn't be called on to do, uh, they're asked to do, you know, insert themselves into situations where they don't have all the skills necessary to successfully manage that situation, uh, nor honestly should they, necessarily, right?

Like if we did have a broader public safety infrastructure where we were, um, you know, employing and training and supporting social workers, mental health professionals, etc, to go into situations, uh, even, you know, the gentleman who was killed in Georgia, in Atlanta, because he was sleeping in, um, in the drive-thru, like, just like a, like I've seen, I've seeing ideas as simple as like a public safety, you know, check of somebody, just going and just saying, hey, are you okay?

Like, I, I don't have any weapons on me, I don't have anything to escalate the situation, I'm just checking to see if you're good, right? Just like that. Why, why is that so difficult to imagine having that be part of our public safety infrastructure? Uh, not,

0:14:05 Brandon: Not every situation has to be responded to by police. I can, I can tell a quick story where I was in college and, um, I was home, um, by myself. I lived with three roommates at the time, I was, at night it was like 1 a.m., I heard someone, like, what sounded like crashing in the back door to the house, and like rushing up the stairs. And so, like, I had no idea what was going on, and like I, I like hide between, like, my wall and my bed, and like frozen with fear is a real term, I learned that, that night. Um, so I call 911, uh, and there's this whole big thing of like, am I in Trenton, am I in Ewing, whatever, blah blah blah, finally they send, send, uh, law enforcement, and they say to me, you can either stay where you are, you can go outside. And so I go outside, and there're like six cops, and for me, basically just describing a situation where, like, there might be somebody in my house.

0:14:59 Brandon: I don't know, that was like a lot. That was a lot of people, right? That was how people show up, right. And so, do we need that much force? Do we need that much of a heavy handed response every time? Would it not have been better to have maybe, you know, definitely fewer cops, and maybe some different professionals in that situation? It's just getting us to think differently about how do we respond to crises in this country, how to respond to instances of trauma, how to respond to individuals who clearly have mental health challenges, and having somebody show up with a gun and a baton and some spray is not the best way to go about it. And this really shouldn't be that hard to think of, because I don't know why we have a hard time looking at what other countries do, in America, but we really do. But other countries doing this pretty well, right? And they have police or they have public safety infrastructure that does not rely on deadly force. Why is that so hard to imagine here?

0:15:46 Thomas: Can Speak as a, someone who grew up in a Fox News household, Republicans think this is the only country, or the only country that's worth anything, or something, like they look with disdain on any other system, uh, it's a joke, uh, I agree. And also, I think it was an AOC recently who said, like, hey, this is not that radical, it's just like living in the suburbs, there's practically no, no police, like where I am, there's almost, I have no interaction with police, you know.

And the one time I did, it was when our bikes got stolen out of our backyard, and so we call, you, and file the report, and absolutely nothing happened, they did nothing, there was no detect, no gumshoe work, nothing happened, and, uh, shortly after that I was able to have a couple parking tickets on my car that was parked in front of my house, so they're really good at that kind of stuff, there's no, know, it's interesting that white people are freaking out about this because, like, for people living in that kind of privilege, there's no interaction with the police on a daily basis at all, um, so it shouldn't be that scary, and

0:16:03 Jamie: Yes.

0:16:59 Thomas: And I want to say one more thing about the, the, uh, the man who was killed in Georgia, it was so depressing that, like, the police were the danger there, like, there was no, they were the, the lethality, they were, yes, he, he did fight them and stole a taser, but they brought the taser, they brought the gun, like, if it had been, as you say, if it would have some other kind of response, you know, there wouldn't have been that potentially lethal situation, yeah.

0:16:58 Brandon: Very rare.

0:17:23 Jamie: No, I was going to say it's one thing that is really, I think, interesting when these sorts of conversations, um, get brought up is just how divorced from reality most people are when they think of what the police are actually called for. According to, you know, the Federal Bureau of Prison, it's fewer than 15 percent of inmates are incarcerated for so-called violent crimes, of like burglary or homicide or aggravated assault. Almost 50 percent of people in prison are in prison for drug related offenses. And so this concern about, oh my god, well what are we going to do without the police, how are we going to be safe, sort of takes for granted that, absent the police, there's just this crazy amount, amount of violence in the United States. And the numbers just don't bear that out.

0:17:24 Brandon: Though I

0:18:11 Jamie: Even with police, very few of the people in prison are actually doing the sort of crimes that we have in mind when we think of needing to be protected by the police.

0:18:23 Brandon: Think this is where you get down, get down to brass tacks really, right? Because then you get into this conversation of, well, how much violence is there really, and then, okay, like if we can agree on how much violence there really is, what type of public safety system do we want to respond to that, right? So, like, I'm not personally a total police abolitionist, um, I can see, I totally understand the point, I totally understand the perspective and the argument, I just think there's a way to have a very much so reduced police presence that is augmented and supported by other professionals, because I, I do have friends who are have been EMS in the past, um, EMS professionals, you know, emergency medical professionals, things like that, who have said, like, there have been situations where they did need an officer to step in because they did not have the skills, and other people, people did not have the skills to handle, handle what was going on.

0:19:19 Brandon: But it just seems like, you know, it's almost like I play golf. People say there's too many golf courses. Yeah, there are. There's way too many golf courses. We don't need that many golf courses. We could probably reduce them by 90%. And now it's the, we perfectly happy. I'll still find my golf course to go play. We can probably reduce police force by, like, you know, 75% something like that, and augment it with professionals elsewhere who would have a much more, I don't know, bet, just better, safer, for less violent, uh, outcomes for our country. Yeah.

0:19:47 Thomas: I wanted to throw in, Jamie, I wonder if that stat was federal prisons, because I think that often times that's an issue with some of those stats, I think in state level it's going to be a lot different because of the way statutes work and all that. So I think there are a higher percentage of violent offenders in state prisons, um, but still it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's not, it's not, I don't think the, and a lot of it is how much of it has been offenders that are over policed. Like, it just, what strikes me about some of these books I've been reading lately is how depressing it is that it really feels like over policing just results in more desperation, poverty, and crime, and stuff that wouldn't be there to begin with. I wonder if that's something, Ben, and if you could talk about, over policing is we.

0:20:33 Brandon: So, I, you know, definitely poverty manifests situations where people are judged to be engaging in criminal behavior, where, you know, I think a lot of research and reflection shows that if folks weren't low paid or destitute, they would not be viewed as engaging in political hit behavior, I'm sorry, criminal behavior. Um, you know, the, the presence of poverty sort of creates the situation and sort of create this context where you must be doing something wrong, right? We criminalize those who are impoverished, we criminalized what they're doing, uh, and then just creates a vicious cycle, because all it does is make their situation worse, it just sets them further back, system further behind, uh, makes it more difficult for them to, to get out from under the challenging situations they find themselves in.

0:21:24 Brandon: So addressing poverty, sort of the point we were making before where I said not everything that needs to be fixed with regards to the situation can be fixed in and of policing itself, there's a lot of situations where we can make a big positive impact on this problem by investing in communities, making sure they have the proper resources and supports so that everybody who lives in this country can thrive, no matter who they are, where they're from, what their situation is, right? And I work a lot in tax and budget policy, and this is totally tied to refusing to have a proper and rational and fair and progressive tax code that can fund a lot of the investments that we need to see throughout New Jersey and throughout this country.

0:22:12 Brandon: And so if we can drive down poverty, focus on driving down poverty that will also reduce the number of instances of violent interaction between, you know, officers of the state and the public.

0:22:23 Jamie: I have two things that I want to say. One, I'd love it if you could give us a more precise example about how these municipal budgets or budgets more broadly could be used to redirect resources to target poverty in these ways that might do a better job of mitigating what ends up resulting in these sort of criminal interactions between, you know, civilians and the police. But I also want to talk about, because you brought it up, when you talk about the way that just how poverty results in lives that are themselves criminalized, that this is one of the bullet points that 8 to Abolition has raised to push back against the 8 Can't Wait campaign. And one of the things they identify specifically in their eight bullet points is that we need to repeal laws that criminalize survival. So, for example, targeting drug laws, targeting sex workers, for example, and that seems to be in line with what you're talking about here. So,

0:23:14 Brandon: Yep, yeah, definitely, um, with regards to, like, municipal budgets, um, it's, it's tough, because, you know, New Jersey is one of these unique places where, um, you know, our largest city is like in the 200 thousands, uh, population wise, so, like, you know, when we're talking about big budgets, it's not really anything compared to, like, a New York City or Philadelphia or places like that.

And we, you know, home rule is the only rule when it comes to New Jersey, just like all these tiny towns that have, have their own, you know, their own little fiefdoms, and, you know, their own 20, you, 10 to 30 million dollar budgets, and they just do what they got to do. Um, so I think for a state like New Jersey, you know, municipal budgets don't offer as much, uh, opportunity for success as other major metropolitan areas do.

But still, having said that, um, yeah, like, you know, Why do we have police budgets where they are receiving enough funds to purchase tanks, banks, you know, to purchase military equipment? Um, you know, we, we see so many, uh, law enforcement members who are showing up to protests just totally decked out in the latest RoboCop, you know, um, get up. And like, how much, I've, I saw some, um, graphic, I forget what the numbers were, but it was breaking down how much that costs just for one, just for one person to be wearing all that riot, riot gear, how much you could, you know, instead of paying for that, pay for textbooks, and, you know, school meals, and you know, school buses, and just things in education. And, like, it was a, it,

0:24:47 Brandon: Was a huge amount of resources in the education space that just one riot gear set up for one officer would provide for. And so when you think about just the militarization of police and how much they've received support, I think, you know, I'm starting to get into these numbers and sort of these sources of funding more as we go along here. But it just seems like a lot of the support comes from the federal government. And so if we're going to have an impact on reducing the militarization of our communities, it is municipal budgets, but it's also federal support and federal budgets that are feeding, that are flooding the streets, basically, with this type of gear for law enforcement.

0:25:35 Brandon: And I think it's important to recognize the difference between federal budgets versus state budgets versus municipal budgets, different constraints, different powers, different impacts and influences. But regardless of which one you're talking about, at the end of the day, you're still arguing for a moral budget that recognizes the challenges that everybody faces, no matter who they are, but also recognizes the challenges that people who have been marginalized and disenfranchised forever face. And how do we make investments that reduce the barriers to opportunity that they have, dismantle white supremacy, and then therefore you're going to have better outcomes, that then you don't need to be investing or making excuses to invest in a very violent law enforcement infrastructure and system.

0:26:19 Jamie: I looked it up while we were talking, and I found a source that said the cost of one riot gear outfit for one police officer would provide personal protective equipment for 31 nurses in hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

0:26:32 Brandon: There you go.

0:26:35 Thomas: Need that, Jamie. We'll use this personal protective gear if we don't have a pandemic. As Trump said, we can always just get it when we need it, right? We can get it right away.

0:26:41 Jamie: Well, yeah, well, I heard.

0:26:45 Brandon: If you stop testing, thing it doesn't exist. Oh.

0:26:48 Jamie: Yeah, exactly. So I just wanted to ask you, and I don't want to make it too New Jersey based because even though you and I are in New Jersey, Thomas is in and I do not think many of our listeners are, but Camden has been getting a lot of national attention because it did not defund its police force, but it did disband and rebuild it from the ground up. And so this is really interesting to me, because one of the ways that they did this went after what tends to be a sort of progressive pillar, which is union support. And one of things they targeted specifically in Camden was a bit of union busting. Do you know much about this? I'm sorry, I'm tongue-tied today. Could you talk to us about what happened in Camden and the effects of this restructuring of the police department there and the limitations, if any, of that being a model for other cities?

0:27:02 Brandon: Man. Yeah.

0:27:46 Brandon: And um, I think Camden is a good example of there being no such thing as easy answers, um, when it comes to any policy, but also especially, um, police policy, uh, in, in, um, in cities like Camden. And so there's a good article, from it was in the Appeal, um, from from June 12th. It was written by Brendan McQuaid. It's about Camden, saying how it's not a model for policing as people are looking at it right now. And so what happened in Camden was it was a very violent, ineffective department. And there was a ton of violence in the city. And, uh, the approach was that the, uh, the county would come in, you know, Camden city is, is in Camden County, New Jersey. We were in Camden, cities right across the river from Philadelphia.

0:28:43 Brandon: Um, and so what they did was they disbanded the police department, um, in the city, as part of really state imposed austerity measures, uh, because a lot has took place in the wake of the Great Recession.

And then what they did was they moved to a county-based police department and police infrastructure, and that allowed them both to sort of get rid of all the police officers who were in place and sort of hire their own, um, and then also, um, it sort of was more cost efficient because now you have a whole county, uh, that you're, that you're, you're in charge of, rather than just, you know, every every single city having to pay for their own police force.

And in New Jersey, a state that's very somewhat tiny but has 565 different towns, uh, consolidation is a big buzzword that a lot of people want to move towards, and they've, you know, county government is something that's like sort of the golden, the holy grail for a lot of folks when it comes to government spending. And so, um, this was meant to be an example of how to do it, at least in one area. The problem was, like Jamie said, you know, um, there was a lot of union busting in that effort. There was a lot of undemocratic processes to get to that solution.

And what you ended up having was a county police system that is very reliant on significant surveillance infrastructure. And so even though, yes, is violence down in the city? For sure. Like, you know, is major crime down inthe city? Absolutely. But there's multiple things that are contributing to that. One is the surveillance infrastructure. To is there's been a ton of gentrification in Camden, especially along the waterfront, uh, across

0:30:19 Brandon: From Philadelphia, um, and then also there's a situation where, or the situation that exists now, where you still have a lot of folks who live in the city, um, especially Black residents, who say that, um, you know, police response times are still not that great, um. So there you can even talk about maybe possible under policing right, if they're not responding to calls, uh, and and and cries for help. And as the gentrification has continued, um, in the city, along sort of the shore, along, along the waterfront, uh, there's a, um, an amphitheater there that a lot of folks will come over the river from Philly to go see shows. Uh, you have residents who are, who will report that, you know, if they want to go see a show at the amphitheatre, they feel like they're being followed 24 7 almost like they're in a store, and that the police seem to be there. They're more so to make, you know, Philadelphians and folks from the suburbs feel safe in the amphitheater and less so to make everybody feel safe, right?

0:31:18 Brandon: And so folks who are residents of Camden feel unwelcome in their own city. So it's really not a great answer. I do think there's things that they have done that are, you know, replicable, like de-escalation tactics and things like, like that, um, that that have helped reduce violence and had and improve outcomes, uh, in general. But there was a situation where, you know, they had, um, I think it was like the first weekend or the second weekend of protests, and there were a lot of really, really, uh, you know, protests were getting turning kind of violent and getting, you know, quote unquote out of hand, um. And New Jersey in particular had, quote unquote, peaceful protests, right? Newark had a peaceful protest, Camden had peaceful protest. So everybody was like, what's, what's the secret sauce in New Jersey, why, why is it all okay there, right? Uh, and I think, you know, instead of seeing these places as, and I think Newark is a separate story that deserves its own consideration, because that's a very different situation in a city with a very different history, um.

But what, you know, what's going on in Camden has been almost used to say, hey, everything going on this city is like meant to be looked at and replicate it, whereas the way I would view it is the city had one good day of policing. It should seek to have a good week, and turn that good week into a good month, and turn that good month into a year, right? Like, and we shouldn't get overly satisfied with one good day. Like, yes, it was a good day, there wasn't

0:32:51 Brandon: Any violence, people felt like they were heard. But, you know, what, you go talk to Camden NAACP representatives, they'll give you a different story, right? They'll say, nope, there's a lot of problems here, we still have a lot of issues with law enforcement, we still have a lot of problems with gentrification and white, white gentrifications especially, uh, and and how that's pulling resources out of our city. And so just, just looking at Camden saying, hey, it's working, uh, I definitely would encourage people to go read that, that article in the Appeal, because it really gets into a little bit deeper and has some interviews with a couple of folks who live in Camden, including Darnell Hardwick, who's part of the Camden County and Double ACP. Yeah.

0:33:29 Jamie: Excellent. And so, and how is that different than Newark? Because the Newark protests were also peaceful, but Newark has a little bit different of a history, as you alluded to. And then more recently, under the new mayor, they've been taking back some community control in their school boards, not necessarily the police. Does that factor into that, or is there just something totally else that I've missed at play in what made Newark able to have peaceful protest, is peaceful protest while the rest of the country was setting precincts on fire.

0:33:57 Brandon: Yeah. And I appreciate your proper pronunciation of Newark, um.

0:34:04 Jamie: So.

0:34:06 Thomas: You're not going to get that

0:34:07 Brandon: That's. How. That's.

0:34:07 Thomas: From me.

0:34:10 Brandon: That's, we do it here, um. So I think, you know, with regards to Newark, um, even, I'm trying, that's not how, I'm supposed to say, anyways, um, um, you know, it had the rebellion in the 60s, in '67, '68, um, after MLK was, was assassinated, um. So it's got that history in the back of its mind, and there's a great book called, um, like, Reimagining Newark, whatever it is, um. But Newark is a city that has a Black mayor, uh, who is the son of Amiri Baraka, right, Ross Baraka as the son of Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka was an incredible poet, um, who, who was very revolutionary and a major civil rights figure, um.

You know, Newark has sort of been on the rise, uh, ever since, um, you know, Mayor Sharp James's term, uh, ended. Yeah, Corey Booker come in, and, like, you know, people can agree to disagree about the impact and effect of, um, Senator Booker as a mayor in Work, but, uh, he, he definitely gave it, quote unquote, legitimacy, right? And it went from a city that people made fun of, to people, that a city that people, you know, were interested in, wanted to invest in and everything like that. You know, now people are coming in, it is gentrifying in its own way. But critically, there is still a huge focus on community in Newark. And when the demonstration was occurring, at least from what I know about it, there were community leaders peppered throughout the crowd.

0:35:43 Brandon: There was a ton of work beforehand by demonstration leaders with Newark Police Department and the governor. I'm sorry, and the mayor, Mayor Baraka, to make sure that, hey, this is what we're doing. This is where we got to go. This is what I need to be. And, you know, total cooperation. Newark police did not show up decked out in their Robocop riot gear. So they did not show up in sort of the physical manifestation of looking for a fight. And just all that put together really helped them have a great day and a great demonstration. And there's a ton of investment in how NORC moves forward as a community. There's a community, a civilian review board of the department. And there are a lot of challenges right now with regards to that in the New Jersey court system.

0:36:32 Brandon: But they have a civilian complaint review board that has been considered a pretty good success that they want to continue to strengthen. Um, they, they are taking back control of their school system, right? So more investment and more quote-unquote skin in the game uh from people who live there and want to see their public schools do well. Um, and so there's definitely a more focus on what do Newarkers want to be able to do with their city and making sure that they have the ability to control it and take pride in it and take responsibility for it in a way that I don't think totally uh transfers one-to-one to Camden, whereas it's a city where there's a lot of gentrification that's out of their hands, uh, there's the school system that's really being privatized and charterized, uh, you know, um, the public assets are being privatised left and right, uh, it's just totally a different system. But having, having a black mayor who is attuned to the history of that city, understands its pain, understands the challenges it's gone through, makes a huge difference.

0:37:36 Jamie: It sounds like to me that you keep coming back to this answer of community involvement as a sort of a solution to the problems that we're seeing in modern day policing. Is that correct? Okay. So

0:37:49 Brandon: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, just got to, you know, if I, if you're an officer and you don't know me or and I'm resident, I don't Know You, that makes things a lot harder.

0:38:00 Jamie: That was sort of, I don't know if you had a chance to read the article that I had sent you by Olufemi Taiwo. He is a philosopher at Georgetown University, who works in a number of areas, but including the radical, Black radical tradition. And he put out an article trying to forge an alternative to these more, I guess you could call them radical call to just defund and defang the police, and he introduced this notion of community control, which he sees as distinct from community policing, where it would put community boards in charge of the police department in the ways that we have school boards sort of in charge of our education policies, and he thought that that would create a wall between the the police lease and the sort of financial incentives that have resulted in mass incarceration and would empower them with the ability to hire, fire, or just restructure their budgets entirely.

0:38:57 Jamie: Is that something feasible or is there more things that we need to do in between as individual citizens to get us there?

0:39:07 Brandon: I think it's totally feasible, and I think, um, like a civilian review board is like a step on the road to that, to realizing that as a vision. Um, I think that there's been a ton of challenges to civilian review boards, and so figuring out how to overcome those challenges. Like, there's been legal challenges from police unions, you know, sort of dismissing their authority.

Um, and then I think there's been a lot of places that have cited with the unions in in those, in those arguments, and so, uh, figuring out how to get around that as, as, as a roadblock and a barrier to success is going to be important. Um, but definitely, you know, across the board, when it comes to the way that government interacts with residents, um, having more, in, you know, impact and sort of, um, engagement by community members is going, gonna be beneficial. The same, same way that we have health boards, you know, and you have people who live in communities who are on your local, you know, city council health board, who are helping determine, you know, where are different, um, health care assets going in the city, in your, in your town.

Uh, that even extends out to some environmental issues, like that just allows folks who live the community, who are bought in to where they are living and and wanting to see it succeed, have a more comprehensive and 360 view of the challenges facing the place that they live, right, and having more people who are able to have that view and then have that responsibility over how the town and the city moves forward with regards to

0:40:42 Brandon: Those issues is going to be better. And I think, you know, part of the challenge of seeing so much privatization of various assets, and when I say privatization, you know, I kind of mean even beyond the like legal definition of privatization. To, you know, basically privatization is meant to take power out of the hands of community members and take, um, you know, sort of their their their influence over their own destiny away from them.

Um, I consider the fact that so many law enforcement officers live in, you know, in places that are not the communities that they serve to be sort of a form of privatisation, because now you're not beholden to me as a community member. I don't have to see you, I don't have to know who your kid is, right? I don't to see you, you know, in the park on the weekends. I'm to see you downtown. We have no way of knowing each other. And when it comes to issues and sort of engagements between the public and the state that are as important and critical as public safety, involving more community members is going to be a major, major win. I think it's just right now it seems to be a major challenge of how we accomplish that legally. And it seems that there might be a lot of status quo legal precedent to prevent that from happening in the way that we want to see, at least soon.

0:42:00 Thomas: Yeah, along those lines, it seems like police unions might be, I don't know, could be the biggest barrier to progress in a lot of these areas. I know that when it comes to Minneapolis, it seemed like there was a real effort in past years to reform the police, and it just met an impossible, an immovable force in the police union. So no matter how much voters wanted something or the mayor wanted something, whatever it is, it seems like it just isn't impossible. What can be done about that? I mean, first off, is that valid? Do you see that as one of the biggest barriers? And if so, what can be done about police unions? Yeah.

0:42:43 Brandon: It's a challenge, right? Because I think there's definitely an effort by people who oppose unionization to take advantage of this moment and use the criticisms of police unions right now to apply them to all unions and being like, oh, they're just useless and terrible in all situations. And I think we need, need to be very careful to avoid that, because unionization is very critical towards achieving economic viability and success for millions of people in this country, especially people of color. But when it comes to police unions specifically, I think it's fair to question how much they are operating in service of the good of the health of the community, right? Right.

0:43:28 Brandon: I remember I was watching, or I was, I saw one of the leaders of the AFL-CIO had a long Twitter thread where they were saying, you know, I've never seen a police union official stand on the picket line for another union. And so, to what point, you know, how much are they really acting as a union, or are they just acting in service of their own interests? It's different to be a union and you believe in union values no matter what the sector, no matter what the profession, no mater what the situation. But if you're in a union only to preserve power, that's a totally different situation. And that's one that can be a big block to progress. And so for any police union that is behaving in that manner, I think a lot of major city police unions do that. I think, excuse me, the NYPD union clearly acts in that way.

0:44:20 Brandon: It's a difficult thing to figure out, because how do you address the powers of police unions without undermining the important powers and protections of other unions? That's an honest question that I'm not totally sure about.

0:44:33 Thomas: Just because of the risk of, if you're going after police unions, you're doing so in a way that might undermine other unions, you say. Yeah, I guess I don't understand, like, what level of law to hand us, if there's gonna be something that, that's too broad strokes, and and would, but my understanding is that, and I've been looking for the studies that we'll see, they're gonna link it or something, but police unions are not like other unions. Like, they've, they're not accomplishing higher wages and retirement and health care and the kinds of things that you would want unions to accomplish. They've accomplished more killing of people. Like, it pretty much is protecting officers who have killed people. They never, you know, I saw somebody joking online like, I love unions, but if you know, if a teacher kills a kid, the teacher's union isn't going to go out there and defend the teacher, you know, that's just different than other unions. So, yeah, I hope we can go after them in a way that doesn't jeopardize actual legitimate unions.

0:45:23 Brandon: So.

0:45:33 Jamie: I posted something on Facebook, a New York Times article about defunding the police. And someone that I had gone to high school with, who is now a police officer, had responded. And I think they meant this sincerely, but they asked why I wasn't calling to get rid of all teachers, because some teachers sexually assault their students. And I was sort of taken aback by this, because as far as I'm aware, never anywhere have I seen the teachers, any teacher or the teachers union come out and not only defend a teacher who had committed such an egregious act, but insist that the student deserved it because of their disrespectful behavior or something. So these do seem to come apart in meaningful ways. But listening to all of this and sitting at home and there's a plague and I'm obviously a privileged white woman, I'm just struck by, like, what do I do? Like, do I look into my town's budget to see how it's allocating resources? Is the best move for me to put pressure on my county police organization? Is it best to go to the state?

And I was wondering if you have any advice for people who want to get more involved. Maybe they're not quite ready to defund the police or totally restructure police departments, but they realize that things cannot continue the way that they are and that the power of the purse strings really needs to be leveraged to make meaningful change.

0:46:07 Thomas: Right,

0:46:55 Jamie: Where is a place that people can start to put pleasure to make meaningful change and how we manage our police organizations?

0:47:04 Brandon: If it's with regards to police systems explicitly and directly, I think, you know, while I've been a little bit suspect and critical of, you know, a lot of these, like, the LAPD came out and said, oh, you know, we're gonna reduce our budget by 10 percent, uh, or, you know, some dollar figure, and, um, committed to other community investments, and, like, you know, I ran the math on it real quick, it was basically what they were said to receive it in an increase this year, right, uh, so it wasn't like this huge sacrifice, sacrifice that they were

0:47:35 Thomas: Right. And someone else pointed out that everybody else has had to cut, so, like, it's even worse because of coronavirus. Like, the budget should be cut that much anyway already.

0:47:39 Brandon: Right right, exactly, so, like, this, this, like, huge show of sacrifice, not so much, um, but I think it is worthwhile to start looking into, you know, where does your police department get its resources from? You know, is it, is it from them, and have, is it for them having control over local revenue from your, like, you know, property tax revenue and stuff like that? Is it from county resources and support? Is it from the state? Is that from the federal government?

Because those four different sources mean very different things, and you have different levels of control over them, right? If it's from your property taxes and from your local town, you have tons of control of that, right, and you can raise a huge stink about, wait, I don't want my property taxes going to X, Y, and Z, and this is a big problem, and we need to reduce the amount that our department is receiving from local sources. You know, if it's the county, you still have pretty good control over that because it's your county, you can, depending on how your county is run, uh, there could be a lot of control at your county, and you definitely have direct representation at the county level that you can go engage in a similar way to your town.

If it's a state, that's a little bit different, because, you know, those, those are budgets that are made on a yearly basis, it's a governor and, you know, statewide lawmakers who are engaging in that practice, there's a ton that's totally different game of politics, um, that, that, depending where you are, can be very tough to understand and crack, and, like, as you know, as someone who works at New Jersey state political level, uh, explaining how the state

0:49:19 Brandon: Budget works and how, you know, the different, um, incentives for different representatives and why they have those incentives and all this stuff, it's like, it's like explaining Game of Thrones, right, like, it, says a totally different thing uh and then

0:49:30 Thomas: Same amount of old bearded white guys, I bet, too. You

0:49:34 Brandon: Yeah, not, not too far off, um, and then you have federal, right, and federal is just, that's that big bear where you got to decide who you're gonna, you know, support, what, the who's gonna have, give you the best chance to at least listen to your concerns about how the federal budget is formed, right, and I think that's a whole other conversation that could last for 25 million, million hours about how we do political representation in this country, um, but, like, you know, federal, there does seem to be a lot of money flowing from the federal government to local police departments, and I think engaging your senator, like, your federal senators and congressional representatives on that fact, uh, would be worthwhile.

With regards to indirect stuff, so not directly police departments and not directly law enforcement, um, you know, my, my organization, New Jersey Policy Perspective, we put out a statement on, oh my God, time is irrelevant right now, uh, June 2nd, uh, seems like a couple days ago, it was not, um, sort of listing out, uh, I think we had seven or eight bullet points in there of policies that we thought would have an impact of dismantling white supremacy and reducing poverty, right, which can indirectly reduce these instances, and so, um, njpp.org is our website, you can find it on there, but the, the policies we mentioned were closing youth prisons, that, which, which, for you know, by and large, if not 100, disproportionately jail children of color, uh, you know,

0:51:05 Brandon: Creating and enabling civilian police review boards, like we discussed earlier on, uh, ending the prohibition of cannabis and legalizing, uh, cannabis, and, um, ending the militarized war on drugs, and so making investments to make up for those, those, those crimes and those harms, expanding access to quality health care, especially for children, uh, and and for, uh, trans, trans adults, uh, or trans people, rather, um, critical caveat there, doing that regardless of immigration status, because there's a ton of undocumented immigrants and mixed status families, you don't have access to equality health care because of that status, and it creates a big problem, especially for a place like New Jersey. Um, also, we mentioned, uh, just, just general reforms in democracy and voting to make sure systems are more accountable to voters.

0:51:53 Brandon: One that gets overlooked often is eliminating exclusionary zoning ordinances. And so ways in which communities will have zoning prohibitions or zoning laws that prevent black people from moving into town and basically effectuating redlining and fueling racist residential and educational segregation. I can't tell you the number of places in New Jersey where they are quote-unquote liberal or progressive, and they'll have a hate-has-no-home-here sign, and then right next to it on the lawn is a don't-you-dare-build-any-affordable-housing-in-my-community sign, or something to that effect. And those are just very, those are two ideas in conflict with each other. So really doing a better job of encouraging integration, immigration is going to be critical to improving economic outcomes for communities of color and black, black Americans.

And then finally, my, the thing that I will always harp on and will probably be written on my tombstone, is just equitable and fair and progressive state and local budgets, right, and, like, viewing the budget as a moral document, requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share, fully funding crucial investments and building blocks of a healthy economy, you know, education, reliable and accessible transportation, safe and affordable places to live, like, those are things that everybody needs, and they have all been underfunded for a very, very long time across this country. And if we were to actually tackle that and stop playing the stupid game when it comes

0:53:26 Brandon: To tax policy, um, we would, we would be a whole lot better off. And so that, those are indirect, but they do, that's sort of the long game, right, here, here, that's, that's the things that are going, going to change communities, change the conditions in which people are raising their kids and raising their families and and having their formative experiences, and change really the opportunities that are available to them. And making sure that we have a more equitable society, if we, if we have that in the long game, we're going to reduce the ability for folks to use poverty and to criminalize poverty as an excuse for the over policing of communities and the militarization of police, police

0:54:09 Thomas: Gave us a lot to do there and to think about. I appreciate that answer for sure. It's a giant problem. Before we run out of time, I did, I had meant to just quickly ask you, uh, what you thought about Eight Can't Wait, because I had thrown that out there and I got a little pushback, um, because some people said there might have been some problems with the studies, or, you know, this doesn't go far enough, and I had kind of seen it advertised as, look, this isn't the end game, but this is just like a no-brainer thing we can do. What was your take on Eight Can't Wait?

0:54:36 Brandon: Yeah, it was pretty similar. Um, the uh, the individual who, I guess, is part of that campaign did an interview with Trevor Noah on Daily Show with a bunch of other folks who were involved in defunding the police movements. Um, and even they said, you know, hey, if if the moment is moving past us, like if the Overton window is shifting past Eight Can't Wait, great, good, right? Like, we we we're not trying to hold that up, we're going to move with that. Um, this was meant to just, you know, say here are some concrete, super low hanging fruit, so low that you got to get up off the ground stuff that you can do right now. But this is by no means meant to be a be all end all. I do think maybe some of the criticism comes from they might be overselling the benefit of these policies because a lot of people are saying, hey, you know, a lot of these major cities already have six or seven of these. And, you know, there's still major problems.

0:55:29 Thomas: One of the pushbacks That I was kind of annoyed by was like, hey, look, LA has this and they don't follow their own thing. I'm like, okay, well then you still have the policy so that you can punish someone who doesn't follow it. Like, it's hard to say that it's the fault of the policy if they break it. Like, we should make them stick to it.

0:55:44 Brandon: So that's a, I could, however, you could add me on for a whole another episode about implementation, right? There's just so, there's so much um back padding that goes on when you get to the the signing ceremony, you get to sign the bill and everybody gets their little pen and everybody's happy and everybody goes away, and nobody, or at least very few people, stick around to make sure that implementation happens in the way that we envisioned it, in the the way that we need it. And so that's a great point too, because yeah, okay, a lot of places might have these things already, but how they've been implemented, how they been enforced, how they been followed up, if the answer is not at all, well that's not a policy problem, that's like a political and sort of accountability problem that that exists because

0:55:47 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:56:30 Thomas: Fair enough. Um, yeah, talk about low-hanging fruit, some of the policies are stuff that, like, so much that happens as I learn more about this country is like, wait, that's still a thing, you know, like banning chokeholds, that should be, that should already be done. You know, sort of like confederate monuments, why would there be why in the world would there still be that, just get rid of all of that. It's it's amazing how many things in this country are like, wait, that's still here, are you kidding me?

0:56:42 Jamie: Already be Why would there be no

0:56:56 Brandon: Because I would totally forget that the KKK was a thing if there was no monuments. Obviously. Obviously.

0:56:59 Thomas: Yeah. Uh, Jamie, did you, did you want to throw in any last-minute questions, or what do you think? Yeah.

0:57:05 Jamie: I I know we've got a hard stop, and and this has been really excellent and informative, and I just want to say thank you, Brandon, for squeezing us into all the other stuff that you have going on. I really appreciate it.

0:57:17 Brandon: No, no. Thank you. I appreciate you all giving me the opportunity. Really enjoyed talking with you. Please, if I can do it again, let me know. But it's nice to meet both you and Jamie and I have been engaging on Twitter for a long time. So it's nice to actually talk in person in quote-unquote person, I guess. Yes.

0:57:34 Jamie: Thanks.

0:57:35 Thomas: As much in person as there is these days. Uh, Yeah, I want to echo that, thanks so much, and I want give you a chance if if want to direct people to anything, where would you want people to learn more about you?

0:57:37 Brandon: Absolutely.

0:57:46 Brandon: Yeah. On Twitter at NJ Policy. Same on Facebook at Nj Policy. Njpp.org is our website. Right now, we usually have a conference every year called the Progress Conference that we had to cancel because public health is important. But we're doing a virtual speaker series right now and having a bunch of webinars on that. So please keep an eye out for that.

0:58:10 Brandon: We are part of a mighty coalition called For the Many New Jersey, which is seeking to secure a more equitable budget in New Jersey that has fair tax policies. So requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share. But honestly, the moment that we are in has really caused us to be more bold in what we're looking to see implemented. And so we are calling for a completely anti-racist budget in New Jersey, right? If the budget is going to be a moral document, it should be an anti-racist document as well, both in process and implementation. And so please follow us on ForTheManyNJ. It's on Twitter. And then you can find us on our website is peoplesbudgetnj.org. That's a lot of information, but I really appreciate the chance to be here with you.

0:58:58 Thomas: Thanks so much for joining us.

0:58:59 Jamie: So much, Brandon.

0:59:01 Brandon: Thanks. Take care.

0:59:10 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.