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The PoliticsGirl Podcast

Police: Heroes or Villains? A Conversation with Michael Sierra-Arévalo

The PoliticsGirl Podcast

MeidasTouch Network, Leigh McGowan

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.93.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Author, professor and sociologist Michael Sierra-Arévalo talks to us about his detailed look into American policing with his new book The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death and the Soul of Policing. According to Arévalo, the story of policing isn’t the story of a few bad apples, but of an institutional structure and system that is essentially not working. The violence we see from our officers is the logical consequence of an institutional culture that privileges officers' survival over public safety. Policing and violence simply go hand in hand, and according to Michael, who’s seen much of it up close and personal, we’re not going to be able to train ourselves out of the problem. So what do we do? As always, if you find worth in what we do, please consider SUBSCRIBING to PoliticsGirl Premium. You’ll get this podcast ad free, along with a bunch of other perks, like the rants directly to your inbox and the knowledge that you’re making this kind of highly researched, factual information possible. If that interests you, please go to https://www.politicsgirl.com/premium and subscribe today!! Thank you so much! xoPG GUEST SOCIALS: Linktree: https://lnk.bio/michaelsierraa Twitter: @michaelsierraa As always, please RATE and SUBSCRIBE so we can grow the show, open the dialogue, and inspire change moving forward! All show links here!: https://linktr.ee/politicsgirl This episode is sponsored by… http://moshlife.com/politicsgirl http://TryMiracle.com/PoliticsGirl http://oneskin.co Code: politicsgirl

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Do we put our finances and efforts into retraining or do we do something else about it?

0:06.8

Because ultimately if you believe that violence is the logical consequence of an institutional

0:12.4

culture that privileges officers

0:14.4

survival over public safety, what can the public be doing about that? Like how do we

0:21.2

watch these people that are supposed to be watching us?

0:24.2

What should we be doing to say actually I think we should be doing this? Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host Lee McGowan.

0:42.0

Let's get into it.

0:43.0

Sometimes I like to take a step back from politics to think about some of the other issues that face our country.

0:48.0

And the other day, six police cars came screeching to a halt outside my home,

0:52.0

and then all of the officers poured out of their vehicles and went down the street.

0:55.5

I have no idea what the problem was.

0:57.5

They drove in really fast and then they got out of their car but they weren't running.

1:00.5

And then they parked in the middle of the street,

1:03.0

so no cars could drive on either side

1:05.0

and no one could get out of their driveways.

1:06.4

And maybe that was for our safety,

1:08.2

or maybe the neighborhood residents didn't even occur to them at all.

1:11.3

But I will tell you, I wasn't going to go outside while they were there.

1:14.7

Because I grew up trusting the police. I grew up in Canada, I grew up with this skin color, and now I find I don't particularly trust the police.

1:24.0

At the very least they make me nervous.

1:26.0

I think most of us can agree that there are some major structural problems

1:30.0

with American police and policing.

...

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