Changing Cop Culture with Neil Gross

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

NBCNews

News, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would’ve addressed racial profiling and use of deadly force, among other things. But the bill, which was crafted in 2020, still hasn’t passed and it’s unclear if it ever will. Progress has often been stymied by conflicting ideas, on all sides of the political spectrum, about the role of police in maintaining law and order. So, what can be done to fix so many of the problems plaguing the profession? Our guest this week points out that when he became a police officer, he had “idealistic intentions, but right away was confronted with a really different set of norms and values.” Neil Gross is a former cop turned sociology professor and is the author of “Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture.” The book tells story how leaders in three police departments sought to change aggressive police culture and how their efforts could be in instructive for broader reform. Gross joins WITHpod to discuss his experience as a former cop, the us vs. them mentality in some police circles, the need for more officer accountability and more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Certainly, there are well-known examples of police who don't go into it for the right reasons,
0:04.7	but I think my experience has been, and certainly the data back this up, that most young
0:09.4	police officers go in for good intentions.
0:12.4	They want to fight crime.
0:13.9	They want to make their communities safer.
0:15.3	They want to be heroes.
0:16.3	I think it's a pretty common trajectory that over the first few years of their careers,
0:20.8	they become cynical.
0:22.2	That idealism begins to fade as they're faced with the reality of what they can and can
0:25.9	accomplish on the street.
0:26.9	But going in, that's a very common idea.
0:29.1	And I will say going in, I was really surprised, in a sense, to figure out what the culture
0:33.9	of policing looked like.
0:36.1	Hello and welcome to Wise is Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:49.4	You may have been following this fight over the DC crime bill, which was passed by the
0:53.7	DCC Council over the mayor's veto, changing some of the criminal code.
0:58.7	It was a very outdated criminal code.
1:01.0	Critics say that it would reduce crimes for carjacking, therefore incentivizing for
1:06.9	their carjacking and violence in the district.
1:09.2	Defenders of it say that it's actually just sort of rationalizing an outdated code and
1:13.0	that it would still have very harsh penalties for carjacking.
1:15.2	And also that the five years after, however, the max, the new max, aren't the thing that
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