August 20, 2024 • 23 mins
Matthew Solomon, director of Reimagining Safety, returns to Woke AF Daily to discuss the latest developments in American policing - in particular, police budgets continuing to go up while it continues to be proven that cops don't actually prevent or even fight crime.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to WOKF
Daily filmmaker and activist Matthew Solomon, who we spoke to
last year about your documentary, Matthew Reimagining Safety all around
kind of policing and police reform. Give our audience a
(00:33):
refresher around the importance and significance of your documentary, which
was just recently being shown at a film festival in
New Jersey. Because while we have just acknowledged the recent
anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, what we know
is that unfortunately, at least in my opinion and I'd
(00:55):
like yours, that not a lot has changed. Police killings
continue you to be at an all time high. So
please talk to us about your film and why it's
particularly significant still in this moment that we're in.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Sure. Yeah, thank you, Danielle, and thank you for having
me back on. I'm glad to be back so Reimagining
Safety I have been you know, I'm a filmmaker. I
also work in conflict resolution, and prior to the pandemic
in twenty twenty, I was traveling and doing a lot
of facilitation for a conflict resolution and when the pandemic
(01:36):
started and we couldn't go anywhere. I decided to go
back to school, and so I wanted to a master's
program in public administration, hoping to be able to use
my privilege and access as a white male to be
able to help support social change. And this is you know,
COVID the murder of George Floyd, as you mentioned after
you know, at that point almost a decade of Black
(01:58):
Lives Matter and that movement, after treyvon Martin was murdered.
It's also we just passed the tenure anniversary of Mike
Brown being murdered. And so you know, I grew up
in Los Angeles and I was in college at USC
when the LA riots happened. So you know, I've had
decades where you know, it's like, wow, we're still doing this.
(02:20):
It's not getting better, it's getting worse. And you know,
even last year was the deadliest year for police murdering people.
Over thirteen hundred people were killed by police in twenty
twenty three, and so you know, all of this has
continued to happen despite calls for like, quote reform and
that sort of thing. And so you know, I'm in
(02:41):
my master's program and I'm applying all of the coursework
around sustainability and community and transformative leadership and funding and
all of those things to the issues with policing and incarceration,
and I got really interested in, well, what are the alternatives? Right?
(03:01):
And that took me into you know, Angela Davis and
Mariamcaba and all of that. And so when it came
time to do my final thesis, one of my academic
advisors knew I was a filmmaker and was like, we
know you know how to write a paper, but we
know you're a filmmaker, and why don't you do something
creative and do a documentary? And I and I leughed
because I was like, that's a lot of work, right,
(03:23):
you know, yeah, I write a paper in like a day.
But you know, but she dared me, and you know,
I tend to accept dares. And so because it was academic,
I wanted a variety of perspectives. So it wasn't just activists, right.
So it's the District Attorney of La County is in
(03:43):
the film. There's usc law professors, so there's several sociologists,
mental health professionals, a former LAPD detective, a cop watcher,
you know who like film's police all the time, and
so the result was a very well rounded representative picture
of these are the harms caused by police and prisons.
(04:06):
This is why it persists. And you know, a lot
of it is we're socialized into thinking that they are
the solutions for our problems, despite the fact that we
have data upon data that proves otherwise that you know,
police don't keep us safe, prisons don't keep us safe.
And then here are the alternatives, you know, most of
which are already working. When people, when communities have resources,
(04:29):
crime naturally comes down. When we have people who show
up to mental health calls that aren't armed and uniformed,
people don't get killed, you know, when people get the
services they need. And so I finished the film in
twenty twenty two. In August September did a small screening
for friends and family and for members of the USC
(04:51):
Criminology Department, and across the board people were like, people
need to see this. This is really really good. It's
really thorough, it's an educational and so, you know, I
followed what they did with the movie Thirteenth was I
started reaching out to different communities across the US to
do community screenings where we would show the film and
(05:11):
then have a panel of local leaders and organizers and
so the community members when you know, because they get
to the point where it's like Okay, well what do
we do, It's like, well, here's the folks. And so
this last Saturday was the sixty first screening of Reimagining
Safety amazing and the festival was the Newark Reimagining Safety Festival,
(05:34):
which organizers there created a festival around the film. So
there was the film, the panel, there was art and
music exhibitions and art and music is a big part
of abolition and community and that sort of thing. And
then we had info tables from local organizations that are
out doing the work. And so yeah, we've had the
(05:55):
sixty one screenings. The film is streaming on Amazon, YouTube, Google,
Plan to me, and we have a bunch more coming up.
We'll be in Dallas on August thirtieth as part of
their end of Black August, all the things that they've
been doing for Black August, so on August thirtieth, and
I'll be in Detroit with General Strike US and the
(06:15):
Black Panther Party of Detroit in September. So that's what's
going on with that.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I commend you. I congratulate you on the work on
how you've been getting out the word and really engaging
with community around your film, because I do think that
it's extraordinarily important. And I want to tap into something
that you said which I feel like is consistently lost
when we are talking about policing, right that I live
(06:42):
in Brooklyn in New York, and I will tell you
that in the quote unquote highly resourced areas and neighborhoods
of Brooklyn. Do you know what, I never see cops? Right,
I never see cops. I see clean sidewalks, I see
community resources, I see you know, shopping and schools and
(07:06):
all of these things. I never see cops. In the
lower resourced areas of Brooklyn. There are cops on every corner.
There are those big, you know lights that are shown
over the subway system. And what you said is just
like what we know is that crime goes down and
safety goes up when those communities are resourced and not
(07:30):
resourced with police officers. And so why is it, Matthew,
that we still live in a place even given all
of the data that tells us that what communities that
are plagued with crime need are resources for that community.
Why is that something that is missed and we still
(07:51):
continue to see, particularly in New York City, where we
have a mayor who's a former cop that is giving
hundreds of millions of dollars to the police depart wall
cutting libraries. I mean, he just gave money back to
the library so that they can open again on Sundays.
But the logic with them is like, oh, no, we
just need more cops and that equal safety, when the
(08:12):
data tells us the opposite.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, on the one hand, you know, it's sort of fascinating.
On the other hand, it's incredibly frustrating and angering because
the answer, well, there's a couple answers to that. First
of all, we're bombarded with copaganda a large part, like
half of the fictional shows. This has talked about in
the documentary Doctor l. Jones from Halifax Nova, Scotch. She
(08:37):
talks about fifty percent of our fictional programming is cop based,
like crime shows, law shows, things like that. Thirty percent
of what we consume overall is cop based. So like
watching the show Cops or like all the variations of
that law, law and order. I mean, I grew up
watching Chips and you know in SWAT, so we're bombarded
(09:01):
with there's a bad guy around every corner, evil is
out there, and the only thing that can protect us
are the cops. And in those shows, a lot of
times it's the cops who don't follow the law of themselves, right,
so they have free reign to break the roles because
they have to because the evil people are so evil.
So there's that part that we were bombarded with even
(09:24):
and even our news media, right. And actually, I really
I have to say I listened to there was an
episode of Yours I heard a few days got I
don't remember, I don't know when you recorded it, but
you were talking about how the news media by and
large is complicit in pushing these false narratives and everything.
I was just like, yes, yes, yes, because I've seen
(09:44):
it where like Cops City in Atlanta that's being built,
and last year there were arrests made, there was a
festival happening with forest protectors, and even on you know MSNBC,
which is supposed to be quote the left, progress or whatever,
you know, Jose Bolart when he was reading the thing
(10:05):
about there being a festival, scoffed at it as if
it were people breaking the law that were arrested, but
they know they were actually having a festival. And I
mean I could go on and on, you know, especially
in the wake of the campus protests protesting genocide and
how that's being portrayed. So the news media, local and
(10:28):
national plays a big part in pushing the police narratives
and not really checking them on it. There's also, you know,
and this has been you know, as somebody who's really
believed in people and believes in the good in people,
and that if we can appeal to people's compassion and empathy,
that we can make big changes. Another unfortunate reality is
(10:53):
the communities you're talking about, as you know, are mostly
black and brown communities, and so they're not seeing as
members of the community. And if it's like, well, the
cops are there, but at least I feel safe over
here in my mansion in Beverly Hills, which by the way,
has it like a perimeter, you know, of cops and
drones and all of that. And there's a multimillion dollar
(11:15):
lawsuit with was it eleven hundred black people were pulled
over by the police in the last two years and
only two convictions, you know, so there's a multimillion dollar
lawsuit there happening. So it's the media, it's how we've
been socialized, and it's the othering and the dehumanization as well.
(11:35):
Like I think all of that, and you know, police
unions and the people that benefit from I mean, it's
like budgets, right, police budgets. Despite all the rhetoric about
defund the police, police budgets have continued to increase. Crime
goes up and down regardless of that. And there was
just a report in the state of California where they
(11:57):
audited police response and actually police are doing less work
than they ever have according to that report, but.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
They have more money.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They have more money.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, so I went into the wrong field.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Ye. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
One of the things that I also want to talk
to you about and this just you know, you want
to talk about propaganda, copaganda. Donald Trump's campaign this week
released a photo and it was an image of two
neighborhoods and one it said, this is what your neighborhood
will look like under Trump and it's this pristine, you know,
(12:36):
quintessential suburb. And this is what your neighborhood will look
like under Kamala and walls. And it was a picture
of I am certainly taken out of context, but a
bunch of black refugees and saying that if you welcome
in the third world, you become the third world. And
there is this, I mean, the insidious nature of racism
(13:00):
that is present there, but then this idea that to
have a country that welcomes in asylum seekers, that then
you're welcoming in crime. I want to get your thoughts
on the way in which MAGA and trump Ism has
weaponized law and order quote unquote, and what their plan
(13:22):
is in Project twenty twenty five, which I've talked about
at nauseum on this show, what their plan is for
police quote unquote reform. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, I had to laugh for a second because, right,
the law and Order party and then you know, mister,
you know, thirty four convictions on everything else, and yeah,
and like I heard, you know, there was somebody the
other day who was talking about, oh, the millions of
immigrants who were flooding into New York, right, But they're
(13:51):
flooding into New flooding in quotes into New York because
the the racist governors in Florida and Texas are putting
people on buses, you know, and shipping them and you know,
for a nation of immigrants, it's very clear which immigrants
are being singled out as quote criminal, right, which feeds
(14:12):
into the communities and what we're just talking about. And
again when you look at at the data, the immigrants
coming in are the least likely to be committic, like
they commit they don't commit crime. You know, they're not
the criminals that are being portrayed, right. And then you
know they use that same like they bring up Chicago
(14:34):
all the time. In Chicago's not even in the top ten,
you know, most criminal cities. And so yeah, it's all
the narrative. It's the other, right, the demonizing of the other,
the fear of the other. Those people are the ones
that are putting us at risk. And yeah, it's just
all that that racist narrative that this country has been
(14:58):
you know, subjected to for how many hundreds of years?
Right at this point, do.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You think that we will get to a place where
we have policing that actually works, Like in my mind,
and I truly don't mean to denigrate officers like as
a whole, but policing was never really set up to
(15:23):
stop crime. They don't stop crime. It wasn't set up
in a way that police are seen as community actors,
right like, as part of the community again with the
other ring. And so you know, when we talk about
police reform, what in your mind would reform look like?
(15:44):
And do you foresee this ever actually coming to pass?
Right Like after the murder of George Floyd, which we
all witnessed in the middle of the pandemic, because everyone
was at home, well those that were privileged, in order
to be home and work remote work, they put together
quote unquote bipartisan legislation, the George Floyd Policing Act, and
(16:07):
after eight months it fell apart. So do you foresee
a time and a space where we actually get the
kind of police reform we need?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
No, And I'll tell you why. In my conflict resolution work,
I often say that you can tell what an organization
is committed to by the results they are producing. So
we've been and actually Jody Armor talks about this in
the film, and there's a section in the film where
he chronicles the reforms in quotes of the last ten
(16:39):
or fifteen years, right, body cameras, anti bias training, de
escalation training, all of that, and by the way, on
the average in police academies across the country. They spend
sixty hours on firearms training, sixty hours on fighting and
hand to hand submission holds and that sort of thing,
(16:59):
and only eight hours on de escalation, which usually is
wrapped into at the very end of the academy they
do role playing exercises. Right. So, policing, as Alex Batali
in the film says, is police are violence workers. They're
there to suppress protests, they're there to inflict violence. They're
(17:20):
there to uphold the interests of the state and the wealthy,
and like, people get uncomfortable hearing that, But when you
look at it, like it couldn't be more clear. With
the campus protests and encampments right back in May and June, right,
college kids, And I've been to the encampments, right, and
all the narratives.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Unarmed, unarmed on college.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Kids hanging out eating pizza with banners saying stop the genocide, right,
stop killing people. And what happens when the powers of
best say it's time to clear them out. The cops
in their riot gear with their pepper spray and their
rubber bullets that are supposed to be less than lethal,
but people get messed up with those rubber bullets, come
(18:03):
in and clear them out. And then you have the
pro Israel protesters who were given free reign and not stopped,
who especially like a UCLA, were inflicting violence and the
cops are nowhere to be found. And then once they
pull back, the cops come in and you know, wipe
out the protesters. So in the four years since George
Floyd was murdered, and by the way, Minneapolis had all
(18:26):
of the reforms leading up to George Floyd, in the
four years since then, we've had more police killings, which
have increased each year, police killing people, Budgets have increased,
and sixty nine cops cities have been built or are
in the process of being built across the country and
people are like, oh, but those are training facilities. It's like,
(18:47):
all right, post twenty twenty, what are they training for
to suppress protests? And you know, people standing up for
their rights and to end genocide and to have their
needs met, bodily autonomy like all of that. And so
policing as an institution like we talk about, and this
goes into the other ring part which I was thinking
(19:09):
about earlier, Like we talked about police were born out
of slave catchers.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
There were the slave patrols, yep. And it's easy to
be like, oh, well, those were slaves and whatever. But
in the north police were suppressing protests, suppressing the labor
movement and union busting, union busting, suppressing labor unions. And
then in the west, out here in the West, they
were vigilantes to keep those folks in quotes off of
(19:36):
in quotes our land. Right. So the whole institution is
rooted in that. And then you take their training in
the academy, which is overwhelmingly focused on violence and command
and control of populations, and then they get out on
the street and the way that they prove themselves to
their fellow officers is getting in fights, making arrest, writing tickets.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
There are no metri for how safe is a community?
What did you do today to keep people safe?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Right? And just to that point, what we learned during
Ferguson in particular, were the ways in which they had
set quotas in that city. In order to arrest a certainty,
you needed to arrest a certain a number of people,
You needed to ticket a certain number of people. So
the incentive is not in the suppression of crime, it
(20:24):
is in how many people can you catch? Yes, right,
So that mentality is reinforced by the quota systems that
are set up in these places.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
And there's I don't remember if you interviewed him or not.
There's a book called An Inconvenient Cop, which is a
former black NYPD officer who talks about those quotas and
he literally joined the force because he was, like you
wanted to find out why he had the experience as
a black man, you know, in relation to NYPD. So
(20:54):
all of that is out there, and so policing I've
been saying it's not for the people and will never
be for the people. What we can do and what
is being done, and it just needs more awareness and
support and funding and all of that. Are the community
response teams, you know, violence prevention workers, which are being
utilized in Newark for example, right, they took five percent
(21:18):
of the Newark police budget put it into the Office
of Violence Prevention, and they have all of these street
teams like One Hood, Equal Justice. There's there's some other organizations,
and those are the teams that respond to mental health
calls and people needing wellness checks and things like that.
And crime is it an all time low? Like a
sixty year low in the city of Newark. And that's
(21:42):
just you know, with the small budget. And there are
teams like when I was doing the film, everybody was
really focused on the Cahoots program in Eugene, Oregon, and
the Star program in Denver, Colorado, and those are like
the ogs that everybody refers to. And having done these
sixty one screenings across the country and been in Sacramento,
(22:03):
in San Antonio and Atlanta and Newark and you know
all these other places, there are these violence prevention workers
community responders, yeah, that are working. Is just they're not funded.
A lot of them are volunteer. Some of them are
connected to the police in some way because the police
department wants to oversee. But when these groups go out,
(22:25):
people aren't getting killed and not getting arrested either, and
they're not calling for backup, you know, which increases the
likelihood of violence.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Matthew, we will leave it there today, but I just
want to again thank you for the work, thank you
for your film, and please just remind people where it
is streaming now so that they can take a look.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, thank you. So. Reimagining safetymovie dot Com is the
website and it's streaming on Amazon to Be, YouTube and
Google Play.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
That is it for me today. Hey dear friends on
Woke af As always, Power to the people and to
all the people power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.
H
Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to WOKF
Daily filmmaker and activist Matthew Solomon, who we spoke to
last year about your documentary, Matthew Reimagining Safety all around
kind of policing and police reform. Give our audience a
(00:33):
refresher around the importance and significance of your documentary, which
was just recently being shown at a film festival in
New Jersey. Because while we have just acknowledged the recent
anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, what we know
is that unfortunately, at least in my opinion and I'd
(00:55):
like yours, that not a lot has changed. Police killings
continue you to be at an all time high. So
please talk to us about your film and why it's
particularly significant still in this moment that we're in.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Sure. Yeah, thank you, Danielle, and thank you for having
me back on. I'm glad to be back so Reimagining
Safety I have been you know, I'm a filmmaker. I
also work in conflict resolution, and prior to the pandemic
in twenty twenty, I was traveling and doing a lot
of facilitation for a conflict resolution and when the pandemic
(01:36):
started and we couldn't go anywhere. I decided to go
back to school, and so I wanted to a master's
program in public administration, hoping to be able to use
my privilege and access as a white male to be
able to help support social change. And this is you know,
COVID the murder of George Floyd, as you mentioned after
you know, at that point almost a decade of Black
(01:58):
Lives Matter and that movement, after treyvon Martin was murdered.
It's also we just passed the tenure anniversary of Mike
Brown being murdered. And so you know, I grew up
in Los Angeles and I was in college at USC
when the LA riots happened. So you know, I've had
decades where you know, it's like, wow, we're still doing this.
(02:20):
It's not getting better, it's getting worse. And you know,
even last year was the deadliest year for police murdering people.
Over thirteen hundred people were killed by police in twenty
twenty three, and so you know, all of this has
continued to happen despite calls for like, quote reform and
that sort of thing. And so you know, I'm in
(02:41):
my master's program and I'm applying all of the coursework
around sustainability and community and transformative leadership and funding and
all of those things to the issues with policing and incarceration,
and I got really interested in, well, what are the alternatives? Right?
(03:01):
And that took me into you know, Angela Davis and
Mariamcaba and all of that. And so when it came
time to do my final thesis, one of my academic
advisors knew I was a filmmaker and was like, we
know you know how to write a paper, but we
know you're a filmmaker, and why don't you do something
creative and do a documentary? And I and I leughed
because I was like, that's a lot of work, right,
(03:23):
you know, yeah, I write a paper in like a day.
But you know, but she dared me, and you know,
I tend to accept dares. And so because it was academic,
I wanted a variety of perspectives. So it wasn't just activists, right.
So it's the District Attorney of La County is in
(03:43):
the film. There's usc law professors, so there's several sociologists,
mental health professionals, a former LAPD detective, a cop watcher,
you know who like film's police all the time, and
so the result was a very well rounded representative picture
of these are the harms caused by police and prisons.
(04:06):
This is why it persists. And you know, a lot
of it is we're socialized into thinking that they are
the solutions for our problems, despite the fact that we
have data upon data that proves otherwise that you know,
police don't keep us safe, prisons don't keep us safe.
And then here are the alternatives, you know, most of
which are already working. When people, when communities have resources,
(04:29):
crime naturally comes down. When we have people who show
up to mental health calls that aren't armed and uniformed,
people don't get killed, you know, when people get the
services they need. And so I finished the film in
twenty twenty two. In August September did a small screening
for friends and family and for members of the USC
(04:51):
Criminology Department, and across the board people were like, people
need to see this. This is really really good. It's
really thorough, it's an educational and so, you know, I
followed what they did with the movie Thirteenth was I
started reaching out to different communities across the US to
do community screenings where we would show the film and
(05:11):
then have a panel of local leaders and organizers and
so the community members when you know, because they get
to the point where it's like Okay, well what do
we do, It's like, well, here's the folks. And so
this last Saturday was the sixty first screening of Reimagining
Safety amazing and the festival was the Newark Reimagining Safety Festival,
(05:34):
which organizers there created a festival around the film. So
there was the film, the panel, there was art and
music exhibitions and art and music is a big part
of abolition and community and that sort of thing. And
then we had info tables from local organizations that are
out doing the work. And so yeah, we've had the
(05:55):
sixty one screenings. The film is streaming on Amazon, YouTube, Google,
Plan to me, and we have a bunch more coming up.
We'll be in Dallas on August thirtieth as part of
their end of Black August, all the things that they've
been doing for Black August, so on August thirtieth, and
I'll be in Detroit with General Strike US and the
(06:15):
Black Panther Party of Detroit in September. So that's what's
going on with that.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I commend you. I congratulate you on the work on
how you've been getting out the word and really engaging
with community around your film, because I do think that
it's extraordinarily important. And I want to tap into something
that you said which I feel like is consistently lost
when we are talking about policing, right that I live
(06:42):
in Brooklyn in New York, and I will tell you
that in the quote unquote highly resourced areas and neighborhoods
of Brooklyn. Do you know what, I never see cops? Right,
I never see cops. I see clean sidewalks, I see
community resources, I see you know, shopping and schools and
(07:06):
all of these things. I never see cops. In the
lower resourced areas of Brooklyn. There are cops on every corner.
There are those big, you know lights that are shown
over the subway system. And what you said is just
like what we know is that crime goes down and
safety goes up when those communities are resourced and not
(07:30):
resourced with police officers. And so why is it, Matthew,
that we still live in a place even given all
of the data that tells us that what communities that
are plagued with crime need are resources for that community.
Why is that something that is missed and we still
(07:51):
continue to see, particularly in New York City, where we
have a mayor who's a former cop that is giving
hundreds of millions of dollars to the police depart wall
cutting libraries. I mean, he just gave money back to
the library so that they can open again on Sundays.
But the logic with them is like, oh, no, we
just need more cops and that equal safety, when the
(08:12):
data tells us the opposite.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, on the one hand, you know, it's sort of fascinating.
On the other hand, it's incredibly frustrating and angering because
the answer, well, there's a couple answers to that. First
of all, we're bombarded with copaganda a large part, like
half of the fictional shows. This has talked about in
the documentary Doctor l. Jones from Halifax Nova, Scotch. She
(08:37):
talks about fifty percent of our fictional programming is cop based,
like crime shows, law shows, things like that. Thirty percent
of what we consume overall is cop based. So like
watching the show Cops or like all the variations of
that law, law and order. I mean, I grew up
watching Chips and you know in SWAT, so we're bombarded
(09:01):
with there's a bad guy around every corner, evil is
out there, and the only thing that can protect us
are the cops. And in those shows, a lot of
times it's the cops who don't follow the law of themselves, right,
so they have free reign to break the roles because
they have to because the evil people are so evil.
So there's that part that we were bombarded with even
(09:24):
and even our news media, right. And actually, I really
I have to say I listened to there was an
episode of Yours I heard a few days got I
don't remember, I don't know when you recorded it, but
you were talking about how the news media by and
large is complicit in pushing these false narratives and everything.
I was just like, yes, yes, yes, because I've seen
(09:44):
it where like Cops City in Atlanta that's being built,
and last year there were arrests made, there was a
festival happening with forest protectors, and even on you know MSNBC,
which is supposed to be quote the left, progress or whatever,
you know, Jose Bolart when he was reading the thing
(10:05):
about there being a festival, scoffed at it as if
it were people breaking the law that were arrested, but
they know they were actually having a festival. And I
mean I could go on and on, you know, especially
in the wake of the campus protests protesting genocide and
how that's being portrayed. So the news media, local and
(10:28):
national plays a big part in pushing the police narratives
and not really checking them on it. There's also, you know,
and this has been you know, as somebody who's really
believed in people and believes in the good in people,
and that if we can appeal to people's compassion and empathy,
that we can make big changes. Another unfortunate reality is
(10:53):
the communities you're talking about, as you know, are mostly
black and brown communities, and so they're not seeing as
members of the community. And if it's like, well, the
cops are there, but at least I feel safe over
here in my mansion in Beverly Hills, which by the way,
has it like a perimeter, you know, of cops and
drones and all of that. And there's a multimillion dollar
(11:15):
lawsuit with was it eleven hundred black people were pulled
over by the police in the last two years and
only two convictions, you know, so there's a multimillion dollar
lawsuit there happening. So it's the media, it's how we've
been socialized, and it's the othering and the dehumanization as well.
(11:35):
Like I think all of that, and you know, police
unions and the people that benefit from I mean, it's
like budgets, right, police budgets. Despite all the rhetoric about
defund the police, police budgets have continued to increase. Crime
goes up and down regardless of that. And there was
just a report in the state of California where they
(11:57):
audited police response and actually police are doing less work
than they ever have according to that report, but.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
They have more money.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They have more money.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, so I went into the wrong field.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Ye. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
One of the things that I also want to talk
to you about and this just you know, you want
to talk about propaganda, copaganda. Donald Trump's campaign this week
released a photo and it was an image of two
neighborhoods and one it said, this is what your neighborhood
will look like under Trump and it's this pristine, you know,
(12:36):
quintessential suburb. And this is what your neighborhood will look
like under Kamala and walls. And it was a picture
of I am certainly taken out of context, but a
bunch of black refugees and saying that if you welcome
in the third world, you become the third world. And
there is this, I mean, the insidious nature of racism
(13:00):
that is present there, but then this idea that to
have a country that welcomes in asylum seekers, that then
you're welcoming in crime. I want to get your thoughts
on the way in which MAGA and trump Ism has
weaponized law and order quote unquote, and what their plan
(13:22):
is in Project twenty twenty five, which I've talked about
at nauseum on this show, what their plan is for
police quote unquote reform. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, I had to laugh for a second because, right,
the law and Order party and then you know, mister,
you know, thirty four convictions on everything else, and yeah,
and like I heard, you know, there was somebody the
other day who was talking about, oh, the millions of
immigrants who were flooding into New York, right, But they're
(13:51):
flooding into New flooding in quotes into New York because
the the racist governors in Florida and Texas are putting
people on buses, you know, and shipping them and you know,
for a nation of immigrants, it's very clear which immigrants
are being singled out as quote criminal, right, which feeds
(14:12):
into the communities and what we're just talking about. And
again when you look at at the data, the immigrants
coming in are the least likely to be committic, like
they commit they don't commit crime. You know, they're not
the criminals that are being portrayed, right. And then you
know they use that same like they bring up Chicago
(14:34):
all the time. In Chicago's not even in the top ten,
you know, most criminal cities. And so yeah, it's all
the narrative. It's the other, right, the demonizing of the other,
the fear of the other. Those people are the ones
that are putting us at risk. And yeah, it's just
all that that racist narrative that this country has been
(14:58):
you know, subjected to for how many hundreds of years?
Right at this point, do.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You think that we will get to a place where
we have policing that actually works, Like in my mind,
and I truly don't mean to denigrate officers like as
a whole, but policing was never really set up to
(15:23):
stop crime. They don't stop crime. It wasn't set up
in a way that police are seen as community actors,
right like, as part of the community again with the
other ring. And so you know, when we talk about
police reform, what in your mind would reform look like?
(15:44):
And do you foresee this ever actually coming to pass?
Right Like after the murder of George Floyd, which we
all witnessed in the middle of the pandemic, because everyone
was at home, well those that were privileged, in order
to be home and work remote work, they put together
quote unquote bipartisan legislation, the George Floyd Policing Act, and
(16:07):
after eight months it fell apart. So do you foresee
a time and a space where we actually get the
kind of police reform we need?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
No, And I'll tell you why. In my conflict resolution work,
I often say that you can tell what an organization
is committed to by the results they are producing. So
we've been and actually Jody Armor talks about this in
the film, and there's a section in the film where
he chronicles the reforms in quotes of the last ten
(16:39):
or fifteen years, right, body cameras, anti bias training, de
escalation training, all of that, and by the way, on
the average in police academies across the country. They spend
sixty hours on firearms training, sixty hours on fighting and
hand to hand submission holds and that sort of thing,
(16:59):
and only eight hours on de escalation, which usually is
wrapped into at the very end of the academy they
do role playing exercises. Right. So, policing, as Alex Batali
in the film says, is police are violence workers. They're
there to suppress protests, they're there to inflict violence. They're
(17:20):
there to uphold the interests of the state and the wealthy,
and like, people get uncomfortable hearing that, But when you
look at it, like it couldn't be more clear. With
the campus protests and encampments right back in May and June, right,
college kids, And I've been to the encampments, right, and
all the narratives.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Unarmed, unarmed on college.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Kids hanging out eating pizza with banners saying stop the genocide, right,
stop killing people. And what happens when the powers of
best say it's time to clear them out. The cops
in their riot gear with their pepper spray and their
rubber bullets that are supposed to be less than lethal,
but people get messed up with those rubber bullets, come
(18:03):
in and clear them out. And then you have the
pro Israel protesters who were given free reign and not stopped,
who especially like a UCLA, were inflicting violence and the
cops are nowhere to be found. And then once they
pull back, the cops come in and you know, wipe
out the protesters. So in the four years since George
Floyd was murdered, and by the way, Minneapolis had all
(18:26):
of the reforms leading up to George Floyd, in the
four years since then, we've had more police killings, which
have increased each year, police killing people, Budgets have increased,
and sixty nine cops cities have been built or are
in the process of being built across the country and
people are like, oh, but those are training facilities. It's like,
(18:47):
all right, post twenty twenty, what are they training for
to suppress protests? And you know, people standing up for
their rights and to end genocide and to have their
needs met, bodily autonomy like all of that. And so
policing as an institution like we talk about, and this
goes into the other ring part which I was thinking
(19:09):
about earlier, Like we talked about police were born out
of slave catchers.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
There were the slave patrols, yep. And it's easy to
be like, oh, well, those were slaves and whatever. But
in the north police were suppressing protests, suppressing the labor
movement and union busting, union busting, suppressing labor unions. And
then in the west, out here in the West, they
were vigilantes to keep those folks in quotes off of
(19:36):
in quotes our land. Right. So the whole institution is
rooted in that. And then you take their training in
the academy, which is overwhelmingly focused on violence and command
and control of populations, and then they get out on
the street and the way that they prove themselves to
their fellow officers is getting in fights, making arrest, writing tickets.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
There are no metri for how safe is a community?
What did you do today to keep people safe?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Right? And just to that point, what we learned during
Ferguson in particular, were the ways in which they had
set quotas in that city. In order to arrest a certainty,
you needed to arrest a certain a number of people,
You needed to ticket a certain number of people. So
the incentive is not in the suppression of crime, it
(20:24):
is in how many people can you catch? Yes, right,
So that mentality is reinforced by the quota systems that
are set up in these places.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
And there's I don't remember if you interviewed him or not.
There's a book called An Inconvenient Cop, which is a
former black NYPD officer who talks about those quotas and
he literally joined the force because he was, like you
wanted to find out why he had the experience as
a black man, you know, in relation to NYPD. So
(20:54):
all of that is out there, and so policing I've
been saying it's not for the people and will never
be for the people. What we can do and what
is being done, and it just needs more awareness and
support and funding and all of that. Are the community
response teams, you know, violence prevention workers, which are being
utilized in Newark for example, right, they took five percent
(21:18):
of the Newark police budget put it into the Office
of Violence Prevention, and they have all of these street
teams like One Hood, Equal Justice. There's there's some other organizations,
and those are the teams that respond to mental health
calls and people needing wellness checks and things like that.
And crime is it an all time low? Like a
sixty year low in the city of Newark. And that's
(21:42):
just you know, with the small budget. And there are
teams like when I was doing the film, everybody was
really focused on the Cahoots program in Eugene, Oregon, and
the Star program in Denver, Colorado, and those are like
the ogs that everybody refers to. And having done these
sixty one screenings across the country and been in Sacramento,
(22:03):
in San Antonio and Atlanta and Newark and you know
all these other places, there are these violence prevention workers
community responders, yeah, that are working. Is just they're not funded.
A lot of them are volunteer. Some of them are
connected to the police in some way because the police
department wants to oversee. But when these groups go out,
(22:25):
people aren't getting killed and not getting arrested either, and
they're not calling for backup, you know, which increases the
likelihood of violence.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Matthew, we will leave it there today, but I just
want to again thank you for the work, thank you
for your film, and please just remind people where it
is streaming now so that they can take a look.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, thank you. So. Reimagining safetymovie dot Com is the
website and it's streaming on Amazon to Be, YouTube and
Google Play.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
That is it for me today. Hey dear friends on
Woke af As always, Power to the people and to
all the people power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.
H
Host
Danielle Moodie
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