‘Who Replaces Me?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode contains strong language. As a police officer in his hometown of Flint, Mich., Scott Watson has worked to become a pillar of the community, believing his identity has placed him in a unique position to do his job. He has given out his cellphone number, driven students to prom and provided food and money to those who were hungry. After watching the video of the killing of George Floyd, his identity as a Black police officer became a source of self-consciousness instead of pride. Today, we speak to Mr. Watson about his career and the internal conflicts that have arisen from his role. Guest: Scott Watson, a Black police officer in Flint, Mich. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Many Black and Hispanic officers in New York City have found themselves caught between competing loyalties in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever looked at the state police graduating classes?
0:07.0	Okay, do me a favor.
0:10.0	Go back and look at their graduate classes.
0:13.0	See how many black people you see.
0:20.0	We need our police departments to mirror the communities that we are serving.
0:25.0	And we need those officers to come from within those communities.
0:31.0	That will make that will make the change.
0:34.0	That will when people start seeing we really truly care for our hearts,
0:40.0	people will see police in a different way.
0:48.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro.
0:51.0	This is a daily.
0:53.0	Of course it is disturbing the number of African Americans that are killed by police.
1:00.0	And you know this is raising a conversation and a number of questions about what are the issues that need to be tackled within police departments.
1:08.0	And one of the things that comes up has to do with hiring practices and diversity.
1:13.0	There's a growing consensus that to change American policing, police departments must look more like the communities they serve.
1:21.0	I think to many looking in from the outside, it's hard to understand how the police force could be majority white and the community majority African American.
1:33.0	How can there be such a disconnect or discrepancy between the two?
1:38.0	Today.
1:39.0	We're hiring.
1:41.0	We're hiring.
1:43.0	Get off that protest line and put an application in.
1:48.0	And we'll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you protest in about.
	...

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