#1356 The Many, Many Problems with Cops and Why Reform is Impossible
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2020
⏱️ 98 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 7/6/2020
Today we take a look at the problems with cops that aren't the obvious, racist problems. We're talking about the rules that help protect bad cops from accountability, the police unions that insist on those rules and the lack of state or national policies that would structurally disincentivize the hiring or continued employment of problem officers.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Race, Police, & The Pandemic - FRONTLINE - Air Date 6-2-20
Jelani Cobb describes how the relationship between black Americans and the police has become a “barometer” for race relations in the country and that explosive tensions are “overwhelmingly” in response to an issue of police use of force.
Ch. 2: The Man Who Teaches Our Cops To Kill Part 1 - Behind the Bastards - Air Date 6-1-20
Robert is joined by Jack O'Brien to discuss David Grossman, director of the Killology Research Group. More than a hundred police departments, and thousands of police officers, have taken Grossman’s courses over more than twenty years.
Ch. 3: Qualified Immunity and the myth of dangerous traffic stops - Pod Save the People - Air Date 5-26-20
DeRay, Brittany, Sam, and Clint discuss police accountability.
Ch. 4: The Man Who Teaches Our Cops To Kill Part 2 - Behind the Bastards - Air Date 6-1-20
Robert is joined by Jack O'Brien to discuss David Grossman, director of the Killology Research Group. More than a hundred police departments, and thousands of police officers, have taken Grossman’s courses over more than twenty years.
Ch. 5: Police Unions And Police Violence Part 1 - Planet Money - Air Date 6-5-20
We look at the data connecting police unions and police violence.
Ch. 6: Not Just Another Protest - It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders - Air Date 6-5-20
Sam also talks to BuzzFeed News reporter Melissa Segura on her recent reporting about police unions and what they mean for reform.
Ch. 7: Police Unions And Police Violence Part 2 - Planet Money - Air Date 6-5-20
We look at the data connecting police unions and police violence.
Ch. 8: What Science Says About Police (with John Rappaport) - Pod Save the People - Air Date 6-9-20
This week DeRay sits down with John Rappaport, a law professor and research scholar examining criminal procedures in the justice system. They discuss Rappaport's findings regarding police misconduct and the effects of police behavior on communities.
Ch. 9: American Police: 100 years of reform - Throughline - Air Date 6-4-20
Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. A truth many Americans are acknowledging since the murder of George Floyd, as protests have occurred in all fifty states calling for justice on his behalf.
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 10: Final comments on the pain and sadness of being lied to by your country
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award winning best of left podcast in which we shall learn |
| 0:07.4 | about the many, many problems with cops that aren't even explicitly about racism, whether |
| 0:13.0 | individual, structural or historical. |
| 0:15.2 | Now, today we are looking at problems like the rules that help protect bad cops from |
| 0:20.5 | accountability, the police unions that insist on those rules, and the total lack of state |
| 0:26.0 | or national policies that would structurally disincentivize the hiring or continued employment |
| 0:31.6 | of problem officers, plus more on the training that many officers go through that teaches |
| 0:37.5 | them to be constantly in fear for their lives and to kill without thinking. |
| 0:42.2 | Clips today come from frontline, behind the bastards, pod save America, planet money, |
| 0:48.8 | that's been a minute with Sam Sanders and Thurlain. |
| 0:58.6 | I was looking at the record of the Minneapolis Police Department and also this officer, |
| 1:03.6 | and of course their history really points to something should have been done earlier. |
| 1:09.0 | So, when you look at it through that prism, what was it play here? |
| 1:14.4 | How could that have continued to go on in that regard? |
| 1:17.4 | Yeah, I think that this takes us directly from what happened at the end of that film, |
| 1:23.9 | where we were in the country on the issue of policing in 2016 and where we were the following |
| 1:31.4 | year with a different administration. |
| 1:33.9 | And what we had essentially been looking at were consent decrees, which were the primary |
| 1:39.6 | mechanism that the Department of Justice was using to reform troubled police departments. |
| 1:47.4 | And they come out of the 1992 uprisings after Rodney King was beaten by the Los Angeles |
| 1:55.1 | police. |
| 1:57.1 | And what happened in the legislation two years later on the 94 crime bill was that the |
... |
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