A Conversation with the Police - Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man Ep. 9

[Music] good we good oh man what's happening all is good oh good gentlemen gentlemen gentlemen [Music] welcome to another episode of uncomfortable conversations with a black man so much of the dissension in our world so much of the dissension in america is based around the interaction between police officers white police officers and black people whether george floyd brianna taylor jacob blake jonathan price and so so many more so i a black man am eager yet anxious to be joined by the petaluma police department for the first time with the live audience of lieutenants officers and administration now out of an abundance of caution we have all been covet tested within the past 48 hours i know so many of you are wondering emmanuel why petaluma there isn't a notorious black violence with police white police officers and to that i simply submit we weren't talking about kenosha until after jacob blake was shot we weren't talking about wolf city texas until after jonathan price lost his life to a man in uniform i fervently believe that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure so that's why i'm here joining me on stage is uh ryan mcgreevy brendan mcgovern garrett glaviano and john antonio gentlemen how are you great thanks for having us of course of course now let's get uncomfortable ryan when was the last time you had black people over at your house for dinner well before kovid i'll tell you that um i don't know i can't i couldn't tell you yeah yeah uh and i'd ask you the same question well like when was the last time you sat down just to have a conversation uh with a group of black people garrett i can be honest with you i don't know that i've ever had a conversation with a group of black people yeah i would say that proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear and i think one of the issues in our society is there's not enough proximity between people who don't look like each other and because there's not enough proximity there's a lack of care or lack of empathy and there is a heightened amount of fear when you see the things occurring in our worlds like what happened with george floyd a black man losing his life to these white police officers when you first saw that video what went through your mind i mean i felt sick it's difficult to have to show up and know that we get paid to do this and then having to see what people see on tv and they don't necessarily see uh see the person they just see the uniform and they associate that with us so every time i see something like that i know that i'm about to get bombarded by phone calls and text messages about why did this happen what's going on ryan let me go to you is there enough accountability in the police force when mistakes happen are they held responsible that's tough to answer from a national standpoint i mean if you look at george floyd incident that officer was terminated arrested charged like immediately which i think is appropriate right so in that regard obviously it's a tragic incident and you hope that that doesn't happen i would say just generally speaking yeah there probably is some issues with officer accountability throughout the country what does justice look like to you in these situations i think justice looks like decisive and equal punishment the issue at hand i feel like is that the the punishment for officers doesn't necessarily match the crime if you are caught in in a doctor's office and there's malpractice and someone dies don't be disbarred there's not like oh well i gotta i need to know this i need to know that it doesn't matter it doesn't fit whereas instantly especially right now when we see so many things going on with excessive force over black people we're instantly like oh look at his criminal history well he didn't graduate from college well he lied back in seventh grade it instantly goes to character defamation let's see if we can protect the people in the badge so justice for me just looks like a punishment that fits the crime because there's always that phrase who's going to police the police and right now the answer has been no one brendan when you see a life or death situation occurred a death situation occurred on the job how hard is that to recover from whether it's just your knowledge of someone who may have been involved or if you've personally been involved how hard is that to recover from emotionally psychologically it is incredibly difficult to recover from um even from that standpoint being i've been doing this for 13 years i've been in situations not obviously identical to that but similar uh that's never ever going to leave their mind it's going to change the outcome of everything they do from this point on i mean there are situations where we'll arrest people and they'll die later and you still that's your it's your attachment you you brought them to this point and from my own personal incidents i don't it's changed me uh for the duration of my life i don't ever see it going back john you retired from the police force do you think that you can ever become desensitized to death wearing a badge i've thought about this and i think you can you feel like you're in control when you're a police officer but then you don't have control that's when it really affects you and obviously kids before i had kids i don't think i would have been affected as bad but uh no i mean we're human we don't change and get in our locker at night and sleep there and then jump out you know a lot of people think that you know so um brendan would you say that there is a difference especially in a city like petaluma which is less than one percent black in how you or those you know approach a situation when it is a black suspect versus a white suspect yes again we deal with white suspects frequently we deal with black suspects frequently as well but when i show up and i do hear say black male adult a part of me knows that the public's perception of what is about to take place is going to be much different than if if he got described you know saying stealing a beer from a 7-eleven as opposed to you stealing a beer from a 7-eleven i already know that twice as many eyes are going to be on me when i contact you as opposed to him so does that change how you treat the situation because you know that it is a more delicate situation yes i have you know the rules that i go by my morals my ethics it's not going to change the way that i necessarily talk to you or order you around i might choose my words differently i might choose the way that i handle myself or approach you differently because i don't want to seem like the you know the the giant white officer trying to you know force myself upon the blackmail suspect that the public wants to see because we film ourselves obviously but i know that someone's going to be filming the interaction so i'm going to be choosing the way i react differently brendan let me ask you how do you deal with the pressure of knowing you have to be perfect they want us to be perfect i don't necessarily see that we can show up and be perfect we get that domestic violence call we know that there's a man and a woman and then we show up and you know the woman's not wearing clothes and the man is you know holding a baseball bat we have to make too many decisions for me to be able to say that everything we do will be the perfect way that we do it john you coach high school football now yes but now that you don't have to don the uniform on a daily basis do you feel a weight lifted off your life 100 when i finally was done i was so like relieved i actually started sleeping again um started going to the gym again i mean i'm so glad to be out of it and i feel bad because i feel like i should still be there with the with your teammates you know and it's like going down getting injured in a game and and not being able to help your teammates but um i'm happy about about being out of it yeah nick if i may ask you from the audience you are a traffic officer is there anything that you would want to communicate or feel the need to communicate based off the fact that racial tension does in fact exist currently in america we do things systematically we do things the same way every time because it's repeatable and we can testify to it so to answer your question no we we don't approach that differently or at least the people that i supervise do not approach that differently but maybe we should i've dealt with situations i'm sure others in the room can can speak to this as well as we show up on scene with a person of color and we're immediately hit with you're only stopping me because i'm ex right um and it becomes a barrier to communication because we may be there for you know a legitimate purpose how do we disarm that how do we get around that it's a really good question um when you step onto the scene as as a black man obviously i'm just gonna be upset that i'm being stopped in the first place but i think it's just a matter of maintaining the composure maintaining the calm and continuing to assert exactly why it is that you are there if we could do a better job of disarming then we wouldn't have to worry about discharging and i think that's where we lack there's a communication barrier and i always say that's why i'm so eager to talk to y'all from petaluma if you don't grow up around something then you're not really going to know how to communicate with that thing and it's not the same communicating with a white cultured person versus a black cultured person is different i would submit that ninety percent of black people in the last five months have gone through a tragic experience we all have in witnessing the murder of george floyd but it is different for black people because they can literally see themselves as that person you can't fix a problem you don't know exist i'm letting you know it exists so now let's just all work to fix it i have a question do police officers make you nervous yes now what if it was a black police officer nah it's different so black people often navigate white spaces as a foreigner as i sit in this room i'm one of three black people in here you sit in this room and you're one of 35 white people in here it's natural for you yeah you're home whenever i walk into a room a restaurant church anywhere i'm looking for black people just in case something pops off it's like okay we're here me and you like we're together because so many black people in life have probably gone through some sort of struggle there's an instant connection that makes you relax a little bit a little bit more or yeah he's still dealing with a cop so you're nervous naturally but it's it's if i can now be honest i see he's black before i see he's a cop right i see you all are cops first nick i'll go back to you how do you feel when you hear the phrase black lives matter black lives do matter we need to pay attention to some of the injustices that have happened over you know the last hundred years and beyond where black lives matter becomes confusing is when it becomes very divisive right now in the midst of a political election there's questions on whether black lives matter is a social movement or is it a campaign and i think when we pass the november elections i think we need to focus on continuing it as a movement so we can create a successful outcome because if it ends on the election then it was just a campaign you have something i know yeah i mean uh so the blue lives matter flag right the blue line either on a flag or just black blue black um has taken on kind of a life of its own politically currently it's obviously flying on on one side of the political boundary as opposed to the other so when you see that what do you see i feel frustrated because i feel as though the agenda is being moved here's what i mean by that to say any life matters is to assert that we thought that life didn't matter so to say that blue lives matter were to then assert that historically we've acted as though cops lives don't matter whereas black lives matter historically we have literally acted as though black lives don't matter all men are created equal 17 late 1700s we don that phrase they weren't talking about black men weren't talking about black women weren't talking about women but we said all men are created equal so now it's like wait a second just in case they're not talking about us this time let's make sure we specify that black lives matter ryan earlier you mentioned preparation and you talked about funding and you talked about preparing as a unit to step onto the scene what do you feel when you hear the phrase defund the police uh i think it means different things to different people people who feel that who want to literally take some of the responsibility we have as police officers and move it to somebody else i'll be first in line to sign up for that like go ahead that's great that's a great idea so we get a lot of calls with people who have mental health crisis who's going to go to those calls if you have somebody that is able and willing to go to them that's great the problem is it's not black and white where it's like oh these are just mental health calls if you have a mental health call with somebody and they have a knife we the social worker is not going to go once we make the scene safe then we call them and say hey uh i got you know so-and-so down here can you come down here and talk to them and um and kind of work through their their issues but defund the police doesn't upset you when you hear it abolish the police upsets me but defunding us i mean if other people can handle some of these calls then that's fine and again if you're telling me there's a way we could somebody else can handle some of this stuff i'm all for it that's interesting i hadn't heard it like that before manuel for a long time i didn't know how to process it i didn't know how to take it when i hear the defunding i feel like some of our communities are abandoning us prior to may 2020 and george floyd uh we're in the midst of a pandemic we were doing the best we can for our community people were showing up the station bringing us treats we were heroes after that they want to defund us it hurts why does it hurt because i feel like for for 15 years we've made and i can speak to you know all my partners in the room we've made a lot of sacrifices to be a part of the community to try to help people and it felt like people were turning their backs on us we're not perfect but i don't think we're at a point where we can just abandon what we've built we want to be a part of the solution we want we understand that relationships are important and inherently it's about trust nick can you speak to that because you are actively in the field how it makes you feel knowing you're sacrificing every day in the field but then you might come home and see on the news or see on social media that defund the police is being chanted around the world how does that make you feel so my initial response was visceral and it made me upset moving forward looking into what actually defunding the police is defunding the police is not abolishing the police or getting rid of the police it's restructuring policing in america two weeks ago i was doing traffic control for a women's rally protest in march in the city of petaluma many of the occupants of the rally had signs defund the police the interesting thing with our community is while they're holding signs chanting defund the police they're walking over and saying thank you for your services and thank you for being out here that's kind of a paradigm shift and threw me for a loop when somebody is coming and thanking me while they're holding a sign that i'm supposed to be offended by again it comes down to communication and dialogue and creating that opportunity but it's not a scary term anymore now on a more broad scale if you could communicate a more public message to black children who live in fear of the police what would you brandon mcgovern say that's incredibly difficult for me to say because all all communities are different but from a umbrella standpoint um we're here for you right look at it look we we look at us like a teacher look at us like a counselor like we want to be the person that you you call the person that we show up you run to us it's like we're not there to be mean we're there because we're here to help and uh i want all of the kids to know i mean it's a black kids in particular pertaining to this is like we're we're there we're here to help you and i'm i'm sorry that this is currently what you see us as you think we'll ever get to that point where black children look to cops is helpers as opposed to as is the enemy in my lifetime no it has come in waves and it has disappeared and now it's back right it hides and it only takes a george floyd or something else to to bring it back i don't know how we can get rid of it how do we abolish racism how do we abolish you know violent police tendencies it's i i don't know garrett you seem like more of an optimist how would you answer that question do you think we can ever get rid of the notion that black children are growing up in america viewing police officers as threats and as the enemy i do you know and i am an optimist we're completely bombarded in the media with some of these these incidents that are happening are terrible but that's not the overwhelming majority of the police contacts that we have throughout the community for example last year we had 60 000 calls for service 2000 arrests and only 48 of them resulted in a use of force so what the reality is is that we're having a lot of positive interactions with people every day it's just how do we portray that how do we get it out there to let people know that that is in fact the case there is going to be unfortunate incidents i don't think we're going to get away from that it's just how we deal with those when they come up that's good i think people underestimate the fact of just because you all are in uniform does not mean that y'all are not human yes y'all are held to a higher standard because you all are the front-facing aspects of the government but you all are not exempt you brought up a question earlier about the blackhead running up to the white police officer right i want to be the person that somebody comes running up to high fives looks forward to guidance and so forth how does a white officer in america make that bridge that gap so that a black juvenile will look to them as a role model as a person that is positive in the community that's a really good question i think first you do it on an individual level that has to permeate society there's a reason whenever you see a cop playing a sport with somebody in the neighborhood the video goes viral because it's like a far-fetched idea bad news sales way better than good news we don't do a good enough job collectively as a country as letting the good news resonate so you do it on an individual level until it be begins to become a societal thing because all it takes is one george floyd situation to undermine the entire situation john what would you say this dialogue has done for you i think it's opened up a different perspective of maybe what certain people might feel or the way they look at police officers really i think that they will see that we're human but i also think that it's opened our eyes to say hey look um there is this major problem in this country i think back about colin kaepernick taking a knee and how when that started i was i was pissed i was like are you kidding me right here like this felt like a shot to us and then as things progressed and you started seeing things in the country it wasn't until i just watched a movie it's called chicago seven i don't know if you've seen it that it clicked in my mind that that's not a shot at me that's a shot at the system brennan what would you say the conversation is done for you the dialogue i wish we could have this conversation with anybody who wants to and i hope that obviously in this venue that people see it and they realize that hey if they want to come talk to us they can we can't be part of the solution if we're part of the problem so you bringing us on here has at least you know opened the door garrett how would you say it's uh if it all opened your eyes yeah i think gaining some situational awareness and when you talk about how we're perceived by black people when we show up on scene having an understanding of the difference there is very important can can lead us to removing some barriers to communication which ultimately we want to have gentlemen all i have to say is thank you thank you all for your service thank you for the dialogue thank you for the conversation thank you all men and women alike for for listening i think that this is what we need more of and thank you all for tuning in to another episode of uncomfortable conversations with the black man if we are going to achieve racial reconciliation in our world it starts with our police officers it starts with our black men and women it starts with white people black people having conversations and coming together for the betterment of the world around us we'll see you next time

Channel: Emmanuel Acho

Views: 2,648,965

Rating: 4.859292 out of 5

Keywords: emmanuel acho, uncomfortable conversation, uncomfortable conversations, race, racism, acho uncomfortable convo, uncomfortable conversation with a black man, uncomfortable conversations with a black man, acho, defund the police, black lives matter, police accountability, breonna taylor, george floyd, police killings, petaluma police department, petaluma, conversation with police, conversation with cops, Daunte Wright, Jacob Blake, Minnesota protests, Minnesota shooting

Id: pM-HpZQWKT4

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/CriticoolHit]

The problem is it's a bunch of hand picked officers sitting in a staged environment having a carefully curated conversation on camera...

Meanwhile the quick fist-to-face interviews on the street are far more candid and far more genuine and far more prevalent.

This felt like pure copoganda to me and wish I could share OPs increased optimism.

[u/killdozer1312]

None of the officer's responses were challenged in any way so no real conversation was had. I had an issue with every single response an officer made in this. Some of them even gave blatant misinformation. It's a cool idea but unless you are going to actually challenge their views then you accomplish almost nothing.

[u/Kujo17]

I saw a short clip of tjisposted in a thead on the r/BlackLivesMatter subreddit and have to admit, ashamedly, I'm not familiar at all with the series- but Instantly wanted to see more. Its part of a full episode that actually seems to get through some really crucial points relevant to our countey at the moment . Whether those points stuck after these officers left the filming...well... I have my doubts lol but the episode as a whole had some surprisingly candid discussion and also got some surprising reactions from some officers. While I personally am still s proponent of defunding ad a means of abolition as a whole- I think facilitating more situations like this could go s long way in bridging the gap in the Interim since clearly neither are going to happen over night...or any time soon.

Regardless I found the whole episode really thought provoking and surprisingly came away slightly more optimistic....slightly lol...about the future as a result. Wanted to share here in case anyone else found it equally so and was also unfamiliar. Now I have to go catch up on the previous nine episodes whole waiting on episode 10 to drop lol

Premiered Nov 1, 2020

Emmanuel Acho sits down with police officers from the Petaluma Police Department in Petaluma, CA. They discuss polarizing topics like defunding the police, Black Lives Matter, and accountability in the police force surrounding the tragic deaths of black civilians

[u/snekoplasty]

so I live right next to Petaluma and I can tell you, it's racist as fuck. this didn't change Petaluma kops for anything.