Welcome to another segment of the nonprofits where today we're going to discuss police misconduct. Now, I know the police must conduct is nothing new. However, there's been some research in the details regarding cases involving non lethal force and it's revealed some surprising and well, very disturbing information. Aaron, what do you have for us?
Yeah.
A three year investigation by the Associated Press, the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, programs at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University, and Frontline PBS have revealed that over a thousand people have died in encounters with police
that involve non lethal force. The report gives details on a bunch of different stories that show that there is still work to be done to better train our police officers, to increase and improve the data that gets released about police encounters, and work at removing the blue wall of silence that prevents police culture and prevents us from holding the police officers accountable when they use excessive inappropriate actions.
These articles are from the AP News by Jeff Martin on August sixteenth, twenty twenty four, and March twenty eighth, twenty twenty four.
Thanks Aaron and one thing I wanted to want to go straight into is do you think that wanting to be a police officer is something that sometimes attracts people who just really are a bad fit for the job.
So oh, I totally agree that you can look at all kinds of professions in the world and you can see the certain personality types are attracted to those kinds of professions. If you hang around a lot of engineers, you get to know what an engineer's like.
For the same thing. Doctors are kind of the same way.
There's just certain personalitypes that are charge to certain jobs, and police officer is definitely one of those. They can attract people that like to throw their weight around. It can attract people that like to be in power and in control, and when you have those personality traits, you can sometimes abuse that power and take advantage of people. So yeah, I definitely think policing is we have to be really careful who we allow into those that profession.
I completely agree.
I For me personally, I long have supported community policing rather than this adversarial nature of especially since the drug war has been something that's pretty much pervaded policing for the last forty years where we've seen the US versus them mentality of the police to be stronger and stronger, and oftentimes I think we hire people from the wrong segments of the population to try to get a more
effective service. Now switching over to you, aj, I noticed your article mentioned that one thousand, over a thousand deaths that researched and there was some very clear signs and negligence. Are the police typically being held accountable for these deaths? Are they being opened and straightforward with the victims' families.
Yeah, in this specific investigation, out of the one thousand deaths identified, we're being caused by police, you know that enforced by police, but only twenty eight were charged in less than two hundred in some kind of settlement. And the reason for this was because prosecuting officers seem a sort of politically sensitive, you know, like just don't want
to do that. And in the case of the person in the article, the twenty two year old Austin, he had a history of caesars and when the police came, they tased him and they placed him in his stomach, which is also known as the prone position, and this is what ultimately led to his death. He was placing that position for such a long period of time. But his family had been told that he died of a drug overdose, and this wasn't found until later on when
they did the investigation and they released video. So you know, just having a drug in your system at the time of death does not equal coalisation. Someone with a known medical condition, such as Caesar should not be placed in the prone position because these can affect things like intracranial pressure. In his case, that's what happened.
Yeah, I definitely think that training is at least part of the problem. Now, Damien. I know in the last decade there's been an increased focus regarding police here in the US. There's been moved to defund the police, while others are up in arms about how vital the police are. Where are you in this issue? Was NWA right with fuck the police? Or is it back to blue and we can't see anything wrong?
Are?
Is reality a little muddier.
And somewhere in between those positions?
What do you think?
Yeah, look, I think both sentiments have made correct points. I think back in the late eighties early nineties, when black people were essentially being targeted by police departments that were laws unto themselves. Yes, I think the NWA were right to say fuck the police. But then also, however, we know that we need a mechanism of inform laws in order to keep people safe and take the bad
guys off the streets. And so in that instance, yes, back the blue because you know, thankfully, the vast majority of police interactions ends with the perpetrator being taken away and people being safe. Unfortunately, there is a small minority
of interactions that go wrong. And yeah, unfortunately, even though it is a small minority, I would hate to have a child who has a non medical condition to be essentially killed by police officers who were acting as if a person resisting arrest is a threat without knowing that they have there in the middle of a legitimate medical episode. And I think for that is where we need more
training and accountability. Yeah, maybe even a bit more empathy as well, because as the panel's already made clear, that sometimes the policing is a profession that people with a power bent do go to. That's not to say that every policeman is power hungry is a power hungry gorilla, but eighty is also a known fact that the more power a position has, the more likely you are too, or attract people whose whose interests aren't always altruistic.
I agree, And you know, a lot of times on this show we talk about you know, religious people, religious pastors and priests, and we see people in that position of power as well abusing their power. And I really
think we're seeing something similar there. You know, if you're if you're if you're a person who likes to control people, you oftentimes gravitate towards a position that's going to give you that, just as we see people who are pedophiles who often put themselves in the positions And I'm not trying to say police are pedophiles by any stretch of the imagination, but we see people like that going to
places where kids are. It just makes sense. You go to where whatever you want or what's important to you, or whatever did you think is going to give you the biggest ability or greatest ability to do that.
Now we see we see in church, we see it in politics, we see it in business, we see in the military, we see in in lots of facets, we see we see in lots of fats of life and lots of different professions.
So the police, I know different in this aspect.
Absolutely, and Aaron, we'll discussed a little bit and you touched on it, Damien touched on it. Do you do you think that this often just boils down to a lack of adequate training, people not being ready to understand what's what they should do in these situations and and understand that you don't put as AJ mentioned prone people, people who have see a history of seizures in a pro position. Do you think this is oftentimes boils down to a lack of understanding and training.
I think that's part of it.
Unfortunately, I'm not I'm not very much of an of an expert on policing and what things that that can make you can do to improve them. According to this API article, that there's definitely things that police are doing in these situations that make the situation worse, that are escalating the situation, and we need to make sure that all police are trained to not do those things. Because anytime a life is lost on an accident because somebody did
something wrong accidentally, that's preventable. We need to really work hard on doing that undoing and preventing that from happening in the future.
I would agree, and AJ, did you find any common themes of what are common with these deaths, like something that happened frequently or what was the most dominant reason for people who ended up dead in police custody while they're being arrested.
Yeah, exactly as in the case of Aaron who had the seasars. The AP investigation found that the most common cause of death in police don't enforced cases was the use of the prone position. So it which is and then put the person on their stomach. It doesn't usually lead to that as long as it's used for a short period of time and without adding pressure to the
person's back. But unfortunately, one of the most common things for officers to do is to have one or more police officers on top of the suspect put in their knees in their back and so in this case with the prone position and the pressure is just that waiting to happen. The problem. The main issue here is that the prone position when you put someone when you put pressure on someone's stomach, it reduces the blood flow to
the lungs. This lowers osigenation and eventually it can cause cardiac carest But this is why when you watch these videos, which is horrifying, you can hear the suspects saying I can't breathe. That's the case like with fluid, which would hurt the story.
You know, many times, I'm totally with you there, and Damien, you had talked about recognizing that that middle ground, because it's easy to say one thing, fuck the police, It's easy to say back to blue. And as in most situations, reality is somewhere in the middle.
You know there there.
Does need to be some sort of regulation, enforcement protection. We have to have some organization whatever we want to call them, to do that. What do you think of some of the things that we could do to mitigate some of these extreme actions and make the police citizen interaction less hazardous for frankly, both parties.
Indeed, I'm actually fortunate in that in the Saints in Australia. I live in the state of Victoria in Australia, and we actually had a time of reckoning in the early nineties. During the during the nineteen eighties, the armed Robbery Squad was known to shoot first and ask questions later, and that was presuming that the suspects survived. What eventually happened was that the police, if you were cynical, you would say that they performed an execution on a particular suspect.
If you're a bit more charitable, you will say that it's an arrest that went wrong. Essentially, they shot in public and killed a well known armed robber. What then happened was that the family of this armed robber set up an ambush later that night where they set a stolen car on fire, and the two young constables that went out to investigate the current of the sole and car were ambushed and shot in the head and died
in the street, execution style. And it was only in the aftermath of all this that there was what was called a Royal commission, which is like the highest level
of inquiry that a government can form. Here, they had a Royal commission into police interactions with suspects and they found that, yeah, there were a number of police there was a culture of police that was essentially shoot first, handcuffed first, beat up first, and then ask questions assuming that the person was in a position to speak for themselves later on, and if the person couldn't speak for themselves, it was like, well, sorry, guys, the suspect just happened
to die when he was in our custody. Oh look, sorry, nothing more we can do. And it was from it was from that inquiry and from the testimony and from Blake breaking the blue wall of silence that you know, thankfully, people being shot and killed by police are very very infrequent now, very very infrequent.
Now, that is, you know, something that really hits on it that until there's a little level of honesty about what's going on, and that requires both the citizens, the police, well actually all three, and the government to step back and really examine. As I know that it's been mentioned on the panel already. I believe Aaron mentioned it about when things like this happen, what do we do? You know, where we go from here? And how do we change these things?
Now?
Aaron, you know.
We've talked about exposing police inadequacies and protecting police from false allegations. They both seem to be reasonable goals in my opinion. And now when it comes to police recording the interactions, do you think this has caused officers to behave differently because they're being reported and if so, in a good or a bad way?
I think recording police can only lead to good outcomes because of forces visibility it provides visibility. I think all police officers should be required to wear and have body cams on at all times, or at least.
When they're patrolling, when they're doing they're doing work.
If a police officer turns off his camera, which in some situations police have been known to do, uh, their actions should be immediately suspect. They should be held to account for that. If those body cam footages, I think that has really started to reveal the problem with policing, that policing isn't as fair and has balanced in some parts that we want. We like to believe it is right. In some places it is, but in other places it's not.
And up until we started to have ubiquitous cameras and phones, everybody's got a phone now, right, we always it was always a he said, she said type of a situation where the police officer says, no, no, this is what happened, and the victim says, no, no, this is what happened, and who are.
We going to trust?
But we have to trust the police because they're the police, right. I remember there was a police officer once where someone he wasn't aware he shot someone and proceeded to then stage the scene. So it made it look like he he he was being threatened, and we only know that because somebody was recording on their phone.
Well say I'm gonna I'm going to jump in it and say it also happens the other the other way as well, in that civilians will accuse the police of being heavy handed or of doing something. And what we want one of the things that you bequotous body cameras do is actually show us how danger policing actually is
as well as civilians. We don't like, we don't deal with, you know, the bad guys with guns, or the bad guys running drugs, or the bad guys you know who are on drugs who are going down the streets smashing things up and threatening people. And so you do have to have a little bit of respect for people who do willingly put themselves in that position to keep the
community safe. And this is what I said before, was that the like the vast majority of police I think do a great job, and the vast majority of police interactions and with the perpetrator, you know, being taken away and put in a safer place, both of themselves and for and for society.
Really good point. Thank you for making it. I totally agree.
It helps protect not only it helps protect everybody.
I was going to add to that that, Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of police officers do feel that their lives is, you know, are being threatened, and so they feel that they have to use that. Of course, it's not always the case, but it is a lot of It's in a lot of the situations, and I think with a lot of them it can be when the suspect has a mental health issue and the officer feels threadened and doesn't understand how to deal with that.
And I think that's why we have such a big push here in America for that the whole defund the police movement, And it's not necessarily to take away resources from the police, but rather to move them to things like having consulars for example, instead of responding to certain
calls that requires some type of mental health assessment. Rather than just throwing a police officer with a gun, just throw somebody in that has the knowledge on how to handle that person so that the situation doesn't escalate.
But why not just give the police that training in the first place? Well, why say defund the police? Because when you say defund the police, you are literally saying take away resources from the police, sorry and give it to.
I think it's still a wrong warning that they've used for that movement.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And one thing for me is I do think that there's a certain level of defunding me personally that is necessary because over the last forty years we've established a very militarized police force, primarily to deal with a drug war that will never win LEF.
So is it a case of defunding the polace or reorganizing the police?
Oh, without a doubt, it's a matter of reorganizing those funds. But there's so much money right now that is going into essentially militarizing our police and I.
Are you going to get Are you going to get a better police force by taking money away from them?
I think that we're going to get a better police force if we take away certain things. And those things are they're very expensive toys that we see that are militarization. Because the truth is is I do think that while yes, there's going to require funding for that training and far that education and more specialized people who are able to deal with certain things, because that's what we need. We need a more diverse police force. And that is going
to cost money. Honestly, I don't think it's going to cost what we're spending on arming the police so that they can go in with kicking indoor police.
What would you give the police to be able to do they jumped in.
Well, first, I would change what the police do. I think that until we legalize in prohibition, let me put it that way, until we in prohibition entirely, I don't think we're going to change the situation because we've created us versus them, and when we come down to it, yes, we're not going to have police forces with no money. But I do think that we need to spend that money on things that aren't with the goal of kicking
in people's doors with masks on and arresting them. I think that when you do that, you make police the enemy, and what you do is you create greater hostility. So while I'm not a defund the police, I do think that there are parts of our police forces that we do need to completely do away with. And I do think that this militarization, as I said that we do see with the police, we do need to defund that entirely or at least more tactful than maybe I should say redirect their money.
Because we know, we know that police do a dangerous job. What would what then would you replace it with? Because if you have, you know, a rapist at on the street, who would you send in to take care of that rapist?
Well, of course we're going to send in the police. But the bottom line is is that when we look at the I'm talking about the US, I'm not talking about your country, but here in the US, one of the major things that police a time is preoccupied with is nonviolent drug offenses. And so for that reason, we spend a lot of money and a lot of effort and a lot of education on how to catch people with drugs, and it's to me a colossal waste of time.
We need to say, what drug zoot to society?
You know, if you know, we're talking about really really minor, really minor charges like weed and things like that. It's just it's not like the drug dealers that are dealing with cocaine or major major problems. But I think that the defund the police movement is a very unfortunate name, and it gives the whole movement the wrong idea that we're trying to completely take away all resources from the police.
It's like in Fideld said, it's more of a restructuring and moving money from one place that doesn't truly need it, in the specific police departments, and moving into something else, like having counselors go and respond to mental health issues and having less charges on these very minor drug charges. And you know kind of like, yeah, reorganizing the police would be a better name rather than defund the police.
And let me say that I do believe and I understand that you you may have a different opinion on drug legalization, but you know, I look at Portugal and I look at different situations, and I believe in decriminalizing all drugs. I think that if we took the drugs off the streets and put them in Walmart and CBS and Walgreens, and we would have a much safer system because we wouldn't have police having to respond to those situations.
And yes, there is a problem with that too, but I think that right now what we're doing is we still have the problem, and we're not addressing drug addiction. We're addressing arresting people instead. And I just don't think that's an effective way to deal with a drug problem are a good way for our police force to act as well. Now, the last thing I want.
To come out real quick.
So the police are trained for life threatening situations, right, and so they have to make snap judgments really quickly on whether on whether their life is threatened, whether other people's lives are threatened. And you are not going to get write one hundred percent of the time, no matter how hard you try. So and we were asking police and now for whatever reason, they now respond to more situations where the where their life isn't being threatened. But
it seems like maybe it is. So do we need to have these conversations to figure out can we retrain police? Is it reasonable to retrain police to start evaluating whether situation's life threatened or not? Can they do that and still be safe? If not, maybe we need a different level of police officer that responds to different types of calls, that are trained appropriately. But I think these are really important conversations to have on how police, how we want
policing to work. Because a thousand people, one hundred people, ten people, any one of us can be one of these people that threw from the story that could end up dead. And we and that's that's ten one hundred a thousand people too many.
I agree.
And one last question I had for you Aj before we wrap this up is I know that the police, often in the case cases that I read, did not really seem open with the families about how their loved ones die. Now, do you think that as we're talking about cameras, a lot of these were wearing cameras, at what level of professionalism do we see in these recordings, you know?
And many of them, yes, there were professional interactions, but there were dozens of these videos that also showed officers mocking people as they were dying. They were laughing, or they were making comments like, oh, you're like a sweating little hog, or you're swimming like a little girl, or you're a lazy fuck. And many of these cases go beyond a lack of training and it's just simply a lack of empathy for another human being.
Yeah, I agree, And I think that that goes back again to we do put a lot on police, and I think that it's time that we take some of that off and redirect it.
Now.
I think that's part of the policy culture that police themselves have to take responsibility for in changing like that, makes comments like that that's inappropriate, and other police officers should be making sure that their co police officers aren't doing stuff like that because it just belies a lack of respect for other human beings and that should be unacceptable in any police force.
I agree, and I think that hit so on what Damien was talking about earlier, about what happened in his country, where finally they had to come into Jesus moment and change some of these things. And I think that that's really what we need here, is for us to have these conversations and sometimes we're going to disagree on them, but at the same time, this gives us an idea because we are an important part of it, because we're the ones being policed.