Via America’s Lawyer: Mike Papantonio then talks to former Baltimore police sergeant, Michael Wood Jr., about police reform in Baltimore and whether consent decrees address the root of police brutality.
Transcript of the above video:
Papantonio:
It’s been two yeas since 25 year old Baltimore resident Freddy Gray died due to injuries that he sustained in the back of a police van. Gray’s death prompted a Civil Rights investigation by the justice department in 2015, and earlier this year Baltimore and the DOJ signed an agreement obligating the city to commit to major police reforms. Attorney general Jeff Sessions had said that, “The deal will make Baltimore a less safe city.” He actually said that, and he asked a federal judge to delay its implementation.
Despite the objections from Sessions, US district judge James Ritter approved the deal, setting up yet another disagreement between the DOJ and the district court system. Joining me now to talk about this deal is Michael Wood Jr, a former Baltimore police sergeant, and police reform activist. Michael, do you think the proposals laid out in this agreement can solve some of the Baltimore police departments more discriminatory practices?
Wood:
No, I mean there’s no chance of that happening. These consent decrees have been occurring for a very long long time. There’s well over 20 of them done. These are cities from Oakland, to New Orleans, to Baltimore, to Chicago. These things actually don’t have any measurements of effectiveness in any of the cities they’ve ever been in. To assume that they would make any difference in Baltimore, would probably be really naïve.
Papantonio:
Well this agreement mainly focused on presenting the Baltimore police department from unconstitutional stops and searches, ignoring sexual assault reports, or violating free speech and protest rights, and using excessive force against young people. That’s kind of the capsule of what it said. Of these issues, what do you think is creating the greatest friction between the department, and communities that it’s supposed to police? What’s the biggest problem here?
Wood:
Well there is no biggest problem, it’s all because it all comes together. The reason why these consent decrees don’t do anything is because there’s no enforcement or changing of the mechanism of incentives for the officers. All you’re doing is talking about it, you’re not actually doing anything to change it. The biggest problem that we would have in my analysis, is that we are trying to choose which person will police us instead of standing up as a country and a society, determining how we will be policed. It should not be up to Jeff Sessions to determine how Baltimore police department operates. It should be up to the residents of Baltimore.
Jeff Sessions doesn’t know anything about policing, never has, and never will cause he doesn’t take the time to even know the basics of it. Everything in that DOJ decree, consent degree agreement that would be an improvement, they’re not measured as something that would actually reduce crime going forward. The biggest correlate we have to violent crime reduction in the entire world is lead poisoning abatement, and economic situations. It doesn’t address any of the actual causation’s of crime.
It instead puts band aids, and try to make the fascism less look pretty. There’s no right way to say this, but understand that when Obama and Eric Holder were running the show, what happens is nothing different than what we’re doing now. It just doesn’t look as pretty.
Papantonio:
Michael, let me ask ya. You follow the stories of there in Baltimore. You have to conclude that there are some cultural issues. It’s almost like this violence, this way that we’re supposed to police has become part of that Baltimore culture. Now I don’t know if it’s any worse throughout the country, but we certainly, you can’t land on these issues and say, “That’s not a problem in Baltimore.” What makes that a special situation? [crosstalk 00:03:42]
Wood:
There is no …
Papantonio:
There’s something else going on here.
Wood:
There isn’t, that’s totally fabricated. Everywhere in the entire country runs this way. It has nothing to do with Baltimore, this has to do with American culture, and our desire to see violence as the answer to everything. Understand that everything a police does, you are being policed. It is a violent action to tell and control the populous, and whoever called them, what they will do. There is no way to police without violence. When you bring in violence, then that’s not the answer, and it never will be, and it never has been.
We have achieved crime reduction. Not because of policing, rather despite policing. Everything that’s in there, and I know it sounds against conventional wisdom, but you don’t have anything in these consent decrees or these cultures, or anything to directly or even indirectly tie to crime reduction or crime increasing. These things are purely economic status, marginalization, ability to achieve. That’s what police departments should be working on, that’s what consent decrees would address if they mattered. They would give the people to the … The power to the people, so that a representative of the community, a representative sample of that community, can dictate what their police are doing going in.
If you don’t want your cops brutalizing your citizens, well you can’t send them on a drug war where they’re directly incentivized to brutalize citizens. It’s about changing the entire dynamic. You can’t sit here and band-aid this ugly soup of policing that we have. You have to change the barrel. Rotten apples are out the window, it doesn’t matter.
Papantonio:
Let me ask you, in 1959 when deputy general William Rodgers, he wrote a memo. He outlined the same argument that we’ve heard from Jeff Sessions. The arguments been made for 20 years, that the federal government could not get involved in local police brutality or murder cases. This wasn’t changed until 1971 when a police officer was acquitted for shooting a black man named Cornell Russ I think was his name, shot him point blank in the head. Do you think we could be heading back towards this system of no oversight? Isn’t that kind of what we hear Jeff Sessions saying here? That we don’t need a …
Wood:
That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
Papantonio:
Oversight, the system will take care of itself if we leave it alone.
Wood:
There isn’t oversight. Right now, the situation hasn’t changed from when you said it, when you had that incident of somebody being killed, and the police didn’t get accountability. Nothing has really changed from then. It goes back to our ideas of what policing is. If policing, policing doesn’t work. Using violence doesn’t work, sending the death penalty, increasing punishments. They don’t work, punishment does not prevent things. If punishment doesn’t prevent a murderer from killing somebody, punishment also doesn’t prevent a cop from being policed, or for being corrupt.
Theses ideas that we have in our mind about what can control policing are completely wrong.
Papantonio:
Okay, so if I hear what you’re saying, you’re almost making the argument that no matter how high violence on the street rises, that we can’t meet that with a similar kind of attitude. I think there’d be a lot of people across the country that would disagree with you, if they’re living in a neighborhood where gang bangers have taken control of the streets. They probably would argue with you about that.
Wood:
I’ve never been in a neighborhood.
Papantonio:
I’ve heard your take on it …
Wood:
Have you been in a neighborhood where gang bangers were running the streets?
Papantonio:
Well no I haven’t, but I sure read about it a lot. Michael, my point is this. I’ve heard your discussion on it. I agree with you in your discussion, but the point being is there are people out there everyday that have to live with violence right around the corner. Let’s do this interview again because I feel like there’s a lot more that we need to talk about, a lot more that you want to talk about. What is the solution, that could be the second part to this interview. You’ve said the problem that we perceive is not really the problem, so the real question comes down to, “What is the solution?” Thank you for joining.
