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safe and in the air. In the wake of systemic police abuse that was brought to a head by
what we saw with George Floyd, people are out in the streets and they are demanding police reform. And it's an idea whose time has come. But apart from just entirely
disbanding the police, what can we possibly do? Well, as an officer of the court, I have some ideas. (dramatic music) Hey, legal eagles, it's
time to think like a lawyer, because it appears that the time has come or true police reform. - We cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change. - A broad coalition of people are working to change the way that police departments operate. Legislators are writing bills. State and local governments, as well as the federal government seem to have heard those cries and appear to be amenable for something that was completely off the table just a few short months ago. But that raises the question, if we're going to change
the way the police operate, what exactly are we going to do? The good and bad news is that a lot of the reforms that
people are calling for are very easy to implement. It only take the political will to do so. And changing the way the police operate can be a very, very difficult task in a political economy. And traditionally speaking,
politicians love the police. It's hard to lose an election battle if you are on the side
of the police department. - We have to respect our police, we have to take care of our police. They're protecting us. - And being tough on crime. Which is one of the reasons why it's been so difficult to
usher in police reform. But perhaps the time is now. There seems to be a
broad coalition growing and calling for real concrete steps. And the good news is there's tons of low hanging fruit for police reform that will lead to more just outcomes for almost everyone,
and more just policing. But before we dive into
some of these reforms, some of which I think
are complete no-brainers, let's talk for a second about the problems with maximalism and trade-offs. Because in this debate
people want different things. Some people want safety, low crime. Others want human dignity and justice. Tax payers want low cost and low taxes. Some people want higher enforcement of crimes and punishment rates. Police officers often want job safety, and other individuals want privacy. And a lot of these different things are at odds with each other. And we have to recognize that, when you turn one of these dials, the other dials move. So, it's possible that
some of these reforms might cost more tax money. Some of these reforms might result in fewer crimes being punished when the crime actually occurs. Some of these reforms might cause police officers to be
less safe in their jobs. And these are all trade-offs. I'm not here to choose which one is more important than the other. But all of these dials move in
conjunction with each other, and there are going to be trade-offs with some of these particular reforms. I happen to personally believe that we should move the dial in terms of justice and fairness with
respect to individual citizens. And if that means some higher costs, well, that might be a
trade-off that's worth while. But it would be very silly to claim that all of these reforms are
going to be a free lunch. There's no such thing as a free lunch. But let's talk about some of the reforms that are in the air. I'm not here to advocate for any particular one of these, but I think a lot of
these potential reforms have the potential to
really be a game-changer when it comes to justice and fairness throughout America when
it comes to the police. So, in no particular order, here are some ideas that really could make a huge difference when it comes to fairness and the police. First, body cameras. A lot of jurisdictions
don't have body cameras. Luckily there are a
lot of federal programs that help provide funding to local municipal police departments so that they can provide body cameras when it wouldn't otherwise
be in the budget. But the technology exists for body cameras on police officers to record basically continuously while that
police officer is patrolling. And it seems crazy that the police officer would have the control to be able to turn off and on the body camera at whim. And we've seen instances where police officers have actually
planted drugs on suspects and then turn their body
camera on minutes later. And the only reason we know that is that the police officer didn't know that the body camera had
a prerecord functionality. But let's do away with all of that and just have body
cameras on all the time. And there could be penalties
for police officers that intentionally block or turn off their body cameras
during important events. And this is one reform that I think most police officers
should be in favor of. Because, while the cultural zeitgeist is full of horrific accounts
of police misconduct, especially in the wake
of peaceful protests, it'd be silly to think that all of the complaints against the
police are meritorious. In fact, probably, the
majority of the complaints that are made against the
police are not meritorious and are probably made by criminals who are not happy with the fact that they were arrested. So, having footage of interactions with potential suspects where the police can clearly show that they
engaged in no misconduct inures to the benefits
of the police as well. And next is the issue of public access to information regarding
police misconduct. Now, we've already acknowledged that some police misconduct or allegations of police misconduct is
completely fabricated. But also, some of that information is absolute not fabricated, and we have to admit that the
police engage in misconduct. And it's important that because
police are public servants that not just convictions
regarding police misconduct, but also even allegations
of police misconduct be made available to both the cities and the people who those cities serve. And the statistics tend
to bear this out as well. Only a small number of police officers are responsible for the vast majority of allegations and convictions
of police misconduct. So, it's very important to have access to that data, that information to know who those
potential bad apples are. - You always have a bad
apple no matter where you go. You have bad apples, and there
are not too many of them. And I can tell you, there are not too many of them in the police department. - And by the way, the
metaphor of the bad apples that's being thrown around a lot, especially by police officers
and police departments claiming that it's only
a couple of bad apples. Well, remember, that analogy is that a handful of bad apples will spoil the entire barrel of of apples. So, when you have a
potential systemic issue, the fact that you're pointing to a couple of bad apples doesn't actually support your argument
that it's individuals and not the system itself. Because those couple of bad actors, those bad apples can have
a corrupting influence on the rest of the entire department. So, be careful what metaphors you use and in what particular context. It's important to know
what those words mean. But even if we were to take the idea that these are isolated individuals that don't have a larger systemic issue, one of the more meta things
that police departments I think should do is inculcate this culture of weeding out the bad apples from the rest of the department. Certainly, there are
going to be individuals who are worse than other individuals, and they might have a
corrupting influence. And the stats bear out that they might be responsible for more of the
misconduct than other people. So, if you are a good police officer who is not engaging in misconduct, you should want to get
those other people out. But what we've seen is that this blue wall or this blue line prevents
getting out the bad actors. So, I would like to see, and I don't know how one would accomplish this per se, but police departments
should have a culture of weeding out the bad apples, because they shouldn't be there. One way you might do that is by having a whistle blower system that tends to exist on the federal level. Though that's being eroded day-by-day. Still, the idea of whistle blowers or providing rewards to individuals who are willing to buck the trend of the rest of the department to be able to report and get rid of bad actors where they exist. I think that that is a
very meritorious system, a good philosophy, and I don't know how one would do that, but it's something that police departments should aspire to. Though, on the other side,
if that is the carrot in terms of getting people
to report bad behavior, the stick portion of that
would be a duty to report, such that if you witness
bad conduct taking place, and this does exist in
some police departments, then the individual officers have a duty to report that
bad conduct up the chain or to investigative affairs. But you could take a two-pronged approach. You can reward whistle
blowers who come forward, and you can also create a duty to report such that individual officers are liable when they fail to report
egregious conduct. But when you're talking about the culture of the police department, it's impossible to overlook
the elephant in the room, and that's police unions. This is probably one potential avenue that's going to be the most divisive, even amongst people that want
to reform police departments. But there is no argument
that police unions have a huge amount of power. And partly, it's by design. Police unions are designed so that they create
collective bargaining power so that they can help police officers get more favorable working conditions and more favorable terms
under which they work. The downside to that is that the police union has as a client its police officers. - I will defend those that stand here. I will defend my family. I will defend our citizens, both here and who are now in phase
one going back to work. - And often, what's in the best interest of the community is not
in the best interest of the police officers themselves or the police union at large. And part of the issue here is that some of the things that the police unions often negotiate over
are not just things like salary, or hours, or retirement benefits, but things like what happens when individual police officers
are accused of misconduct. Often, you'll see in the
collective bargaining agreements, that the police officers, if they are accused of
egregious misconduct, have a certain cooling off period, where it might be 48 or 72 hours before other police officers are even allowed to
interview the police officers accused of misconduct of
what actually happened. And what we have seen is that during that amount of time, think about what they're going to say to the people who are investigating. They think about getting
their stories straight. They think about what
particular chain of events would be most benefitial to themselves. And it will not surprise you that if you are a normal citizen who is accused of criminal misconduct, you don't get the same kind of protections that the police do
because of the contracts that are written into the
collective bargaining agreements between the police union
and the police departments. And I've heard stories of police unions giving individual officers, more or less, a script to recite when
they are accused of unlawful use of force. So, they can get their story to line up with the thing that is
the best legal defense. - And the only thing
actually left was my firearm. This has to work, otherwise
I'm going to be dead. He's gonna get this gun away from me. Something gonna happen,
and I'm gonna be dead. - And these are just a
handful for examples how, in many ways, police officers
get special treatment when they are accused of
misconduct on their own. And that's not to say that police unions don't provide real benefits. But if people are really serious about creating a more just and fair system for everyone, not just police officers, certainly people are gonna have to take a serious look at the
power the police unions have in this country. And because of the power the police unions have in this country, it's often been incredibly difficult to get police reforms because,
as a political entity, they tend to fight any
kind of change at all. - Beginning today, as chief, I am immediately withdrawing from the contract negotiations with the Minneapolis Police Federation. I plan to bring in
subject matter experience and advisors to conduct a thorough review of how the contract can be restructured to provide greater community transparency and more flexibility for true reform. - So, if we were going to
use a general principle here, we might say that perhaps there can be a rule that says police officers can't get any special treatment above and beyond what
any other normal citizen would get when accused
of criminal misconduct. And when it comes to police oversight, perhaps we should rethink the idea that the police are able
to police themselves. Where instead of the police
overseeing themselves, there is a board of civilians, or at least non police officers, who are able to look at
the potential misconduct and make a judgment over it. And perhaps, even better than just a civilian oversight board is a civilian oversight board with the ability to make
high-stakes decisions that, if they do find misconduct
they are able to levee penalties against
the police officers or potentially even fire them. Now, obviously, this is something that police unions want to fight against, because they don't want
some other third party having sway over
individual police officers, but it's something that other
police departments have done and can make sure that,
when there is misconduct, that the bad actors or punished for it. And on that score, perhaps and obvious one is really consequences for bad conduct. When there is a conviction
for police misconduct there need to be real stakes so that individuals are punished for engaging in that kind of misconduct. In one way that is sort of in the cultural zeitgeist these days is ending or limiting what's
called qualified immunity. Now, this is a topic for another day. I'm going to do another set of videos regarding what's called
a section 1983 claim under federal law,
which is limited by this immunity that police
officers often received called qualified immunity, which is an impediment
to some federal lawsuits being served against
individual police officers and individual police departments. But, suffice to say, there
are bills before congress that would abrogate this immunity, this qualified immunity for the police officers and police departments. Which might provide an incentive to not engage in misconduct or at least try and curtail it, because if there are all these lawsuits, then the police departments
don't want to get defunded. So, I will cover that in
depth in future videos, because it's a very,
very complicated subject. And in terms of the real nuts and bolts, there is a movement on social
media called 8 Can't Wait, for eight particular tactics that a particular group thinks would make a big difference in terms of making police departments less violent. These eight particular tactics include: banning choke holds outright, which many police departments have done, although Minneapolis is a
notable exception to that; requiring deescalation before moving forward with violent force; requiring a warning before shooting; exhausting all of their
means before shooting; creating a duty to intervene so that when police officers
see criminal misconduct or can help an individual, they intervene in that situation; banning shooting at moving vehicles, requiring a use of force
continuum before escalating; and requiring comprehensive
reporting of use of force. I'd recommend taking a deeper dive into the stats that this movement has offered about the efficacy. But there's definitely some potential in some of these reforms to create a less violent police department. Now, in a prior video, I mentioned that saying police officers are soldiers in a war for America makes them
sort of feel like soldiers. And when that happens the police acts more like soldiers than actual police. But one of the other reasons why police officers engage
in additional military or violent tactics is that they are clad in all kinds of
surplus military equipment. Now, one of the reasons that we've seen that over the last few years is that there is a federal law that allows the federal government to give police departments surplus military equipment at cost or at no cost, so long as they use that
equipment within one year. So, I probably don't need to tell you that this creates all kinds
of backwards incentives. Number one, police departments are going to want to do what they can to get free military equipment. And number two, the law
as currently written incentivizes them to actually use it too on a use it or lose it basis. And I'll be the first to admit that driving around in a
repurposed Humvee or MRAP looks like a whole lot of fun. But the last thing that we want to do is to make police feel like they're soldiers on the front lines of America. That's not how you get
just outcomes for citizens. It's no wonder that
police wearing riot gear being transported around in troop carriers feel like soldiers. And that leads to escalation, and we've seen that with
peaceful protesters. And that seems like the very
last thing that we want. And another potential way to limit the number of violent encounters that happened with police, in sort of outside the box thinking is perhaps we need to send
non-police sometimes. In America, pretty much everyone knows how to dial the police, 911. But often, the police might not be the right people, the
right public servants to send to any given situation. Perhaps we need to rethink
when we deploy the police. So, for example, say that someone is having an issue with someone who has a mental health issue. Instead of sending the police, which is basically the default in America, perhaps we can send a
non-police health worker, or a social worker. That if things escalate,
if things are likely to get potentially violent, or if there is a violent
crime potentially perpetrated, then at that point the
police can be called. But perhaps the first person who is called is not a police officer. But that does remind me of something that I've seen in
particular in Washington DC, which is that when police
officers are called, I think everyone would
agree those officers need to be clearly identified. Recently we've seen all kinds of unidentified military and police officers roaming the streets of Washington DC with no clear identification. And I think a very, very good thing that pretty much everyone
has a video camera in their pocket and they're able to document police misconduct
when it happens, and we've certainly seen hundreds if not thousands of examples
of that during the protests. Obviously, some force
was probably justified during riots and looting. But, by and large, the
protests have been peaceful. So, when you have police using force, using rubber bullets, using tear gas, we need to know who these individuals are. Let alone times when they're using force, deadly or not, to subdue
potential suspects. And in terms of protests,
we might consider banning the use of rubber
bullets and tear gas in general. It's not clear that the police
have the rules available to use that kind of equipment responsibly. Now, obviously, there are times when there are going to be protests and riots that are much more violent than what we've seen as of late. But perhaps, as a general rule, or with a very specific
escalation of force, we might put rules in place that prevent them from using those
tools in these circumstances. And of course, it's
important to acknowledge that police have a dangerous job. But sometimes that danger is overblown. If I can digress for a moment, currently the stats show that the police officer is the 14th most dangerous job in the United States. Somewhere between taxi drivers
and construction workers. So, sure, being a police officer might be considered a dangerous job, but there are many, many other jobs that are actually much more dangerous than being a police officer. And obviously, these individuals receive none of the kinds of protections when people accuse them of misconduct. And one of the more meta things that definitely strikes close to home is that we have a lot
of laws in this country. And theoretically, every single law that's on the books could result in someone with a gun
trying to enforce it. And we've seen relatively
minor infractions leading to a suspect being killed. Whether it's kiting checks, or passing a bad bill, or trying to sell cigarettes without the
correct certification. Those are all examples of people who were accused of minor, minor crimes that because the police were called, and admittedly, they
had breached those laws, they were detained using violent force and individuals died as a result of those. So, perhaps we need to rethink some of the laws that are on the books, or at the very least, authorization of using physical or violent force to detain people who are
accused of very minor crimes. Now, some people might not like that because it might lead to
laws being not enforced. But I think as a society
we need to ask ourselves what kind of laws justify the potential for someone dying as a
result of breaching that law. And since we're on the topic of police enforcing minor,
sometimes misdemeanor laws, perhaps we might consider dissociating the revenue that comes from those penalties from police departments. Because often the police departments directly benefit from that revenue. It's hard to not think of Ferguson where there was an entire police culture of trying to get as much money from penalties as possible. Things like speeding tickets or penalties from misdemeanors. All of that revenue,
when it was generated, often from very low income communities, went directly to the police department. So, it created this terrible incentive of being very, very particular about enforcing everything and getting as much money as possible
from the community. So, if the police department didn't benefit from that revenue, it might create an incentive not necessarily to enforce some of these very low level infractions. And speaking of the community, we might want more community
involvement from police. Some of the police departments that have done a generally very good job have been proactive about trying to make sure that not only the
high level police officers, but even mid and low level police officers are involved in the community. People often talk about requiring police to live in the areas that
they actively police. But that's probably more of a proxy for just knowing the community itself, knowing who is there,
getting to know those people. And instead of all police interactions being only when things have gone wrong, showing that the police presence is there to help the community, to listen to the community, ahead of time, and really having that
institutional knowledge instead of waiting for things to go bad and only having police interactions being at the point of a gun. Though one of the issues here is that often police departments are just a patchwork quilt throughout
the entire United States with no overarching guidelines
and no data sharing. And often the police don't have the budget to do those sort of things. So, it might be important for the federal government to take an oversight role here. Perhaps there can be a central federal oversight or data clearinghouse center where the federal government provides the funds and the manpower to gather all of the relevant statistics and to provide some oversight to all of the different states and individual police
departments throughout. And, on a more coercive tact, perhaps the federal government through the Department of Justice needs to get more involved in terms of investigating
individual police departments in states that have a systemic issue. Effectively over the last few years the department has stopped investigating individual police departments. I can't remember the time
the Department of Justice issued a consent decree against individual police departments to help enforce rights. And that's a worrying trend, because that's one of the oversight roles of the Department of Justice. And while the federal government should probably have some oversight role over state and local police departments, we don't want the police having too much oversight over you. So, if you're using the
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we should reform the police? Or should we leave the police
just the way that they are? Leave your objections in the comments and check out this playlist over here with all of my other analysis about legal issues raised in the news today, and just click on this playlist and I'll see you in court.
