(dramatic music) - Hello.

Thanks for joining us for Police Reimagined: One Year Later.

I'm Chris Norris, WHYY's managing editor for community and engagement.

Last June following the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, you allowed us into your home for a series of conversations focused on the future of public safety.

We contextualize the demand to defund the police and even explore the world without law enforcement.

Nearly a year later we revisit those conversations to see what's changed, what hasn't, and what demands are on the table now.

Joining me for this important conversation is council member Isaiah Thomas, Keir Bradford-Grey, former chief public defender for Philadelphia, Kris Henderson, executive director, the Amistad Law Project, Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionists Law Center, and Katia Perez, mass liberation organizer, Reclaim Philadelphia.

Welcome to you all and thanks for joining me.

I want to start with some things have changed over the last year.

For example, the cop responsible for George Floyd's murder has been tried, convicted, and jailed.

The Republican president who was in office at the time was given the boot by voters in a fair and a free election.

The city counsel formally banned police from using choke holds.

And the United States House of Representatives has passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

Was that enough?

Are we closer today to your vision of justice than we were this time last year.

I'd like to start with you Katia.

- Thank you.

It is amazing to see all the changes that have been able to take place because of all the advocacy of not just organizers but also, you know, elected officials.

Also folks who do work within the system, right?

Not just in Philadelphia, but around the country.

It has been amazing to see all the change.

It's only the beginning though.

You know, these are decades and decades and decades of basically the police acting as an occupying force in a lot of marginalized communities.

And what it gives me is hope to see what it is that we can further do in the future.

- I appreciate that.

Saleem, I'll jump to you.

Are you equally hopeful?

I mean, do you feel that we are now closer to this, to your idea of justice than we were this time last year?

- I feel that there has been progress made but I'm also reminded of that saying, the more things change, the more they say stay the same.

A lot of these changes are good, but one the unfortunate things about it is when I look at a lot of the changes that have gone on, whether it's legislative changes on the national level, on the city level, or even in some cases on the state level.

The problem is many of these changes we've tried before.

They have not checked police violence.

I would like to say I'm encouraged that Philadelphia banned the use of the choke hold but I would like to remind people that New York banned the use of the choke hold when Eric Garner was killed.

And Philadelphia over 30 years ago in the commission also recommended a lot of police reforms and changes that have come and gone.

So I would say that we're not closer to the vision of justice that I want to see, but I'm glad that we are having national conversations about holding police accountable.

And also conversations about how many of the reforms that have been pushed in the past have failed.

And it's opening up our imagination to coming up with new methods of reform.

And I don't want to say policing but securing our communities.

- Fair enough, council member, you know, you just heard what Saleem said about New York passing the choke hold and it happening anyway.

Where you are on this scale of hope over the last year?

And are we closer to this idea of justice than we were this time last year?

- Thank you for the question.

And thank you.

I agree with the, with both statements that were made.

I think that I am glad that we are seeing some steps in a conversation that people wouldn't necessarily entertain before.

But I do actually agree with Saleem that this hopefully is just the beginning and we need to go much further.

I am glad that we have seen some legislation passed.

I am glad that we have seen some action.

But I definitely think that most of the things that we've seen are things that, especially when you're talking about local and state level, I'm hoping that they're just beginner conversations.

I think most of the things that we've seen are examples of things that have happened in the past.

But also are things that do not put us in a position where we're seeing a level of accountability.

I think what we've seen the outcries that put us in a position to begin to spark this national conversation.

I think the one thing that we've seen across the board was the cry for accountability and a cry for justice.

And I think right now we're not seeing that.

And I also think that when we're looking at the institutional problems, we haven't really come up with the right remedy to address those issues as well, too.

So I'm glad that we've started the conversation.

I'm happy that the energy is out there but I feel like we do have a lot more work to do.

- Thank you for that.

Kris, I want to bring you into the conversation.

These are hard conversations that we're having.

I know that you're on the ground, having these conversations in communities.

How are you feeling about the year that was.

- Miriame Kaba says that hope is a discipline and that we have to practice it every day.

And so I do try to be hopeful.

I think that we are starting to have the important conversation, but there were tens of millions of people in the street across the country.

And the demand in the street was clear, to defund the police.

And that is something that hasn't been done in most places across the country.

Hasn't been done in Philadelphia.

And all of these changes have not actually prevented future people from being murdered by police.

And so I think we have a long way to go, but I'm hopeful that we're at least starting to have this conversation.

- Keir, I'm coming to you in just a second to bring you into the conversation.

But Kris, I'd like to follow up on that statement you just made.

You're right.

It's only about more than 20 American cities have dramatically reduced their police's budget.

Philadelphia isn't one of them.

What do you think the cause of that is?

Are we just not trying hard enough?

Are we not being as imaginative as we should be?

- I definitely don't think we're being as imaginative as we could be.

There are a lot of things that are being presented as possibilities, really in the city.

Things like expanding funding to mobile crisis units so that hopefully things like Walter Wallace's murder could be prevented in the future.

And what we're getting from the city is to talk about more funding to co-responders, which will result in police still showing up at those mental health crises.

I think the city could be a lot more imaginative about what is possible and that, you know, it's absolutely true that our communities, especially the ones that are hardest hit by violence need more resources.

But they don't need more cops.

- Hmm.

Thank you for that.

Keir I want to give you a chance to respond to everything that you've heard and also reflect on the year that was.

Are we closer to what you envisioned justice to be?

- So, first of all, I agree with everything that's been said so far and I'm not going to repeat that.

But what I want to do is, you know, I've always had to bring it back here, is remind us of what, how, what it took to get here.

We're in our second civil rights moment with policing.

And the second civil rights moment is something that doesn't come easily.

It comes because of years and decades of continued brutality and unchecked behavior.

So it should not take for us to get here, to the place where people are destroying things all across the country, to wake up and say we've got to do something.

And that's what gives me a little bit of pause.

You know, I'm always an optimistic person, but we've been seeing these things for decades.

And the fact that it takes this effort, a movement across not just the nation, the world, in order to get justice for something that just seems so obvious.

We shouldn't even have to have that type of baited response waiting for a verdict and a trial where we didn't know if we were the right thing was going to be delivered in something that was so evidently obvious and clear.

It really makes me a little hesitant to say that we're moving in the right direction.

I don't want to have to have protests and marches all across the nation in order to get incremental change.

And I do think that we need leadership that is bold and brave enough to make the, to ask the right questions and make the right decisions.

And we have to be honest about the work that remains to be done.

For far too long, our communities have been profiled, surveyed, police checked, brutalized.

And that was on center stage in the George Floyd case, where we were seeing validation of what communities were crying about for so long but no one believed them.

Or no one sought to do anything.

And so, you know, I think our Congress, our elected officials now, have to move to a place where they are looking at law enforcement agencies to attone for the destruction that they've done in our communities and shift policies that move resources away from those institutions that are continuously brutalizing and not bringing us any closer to public safety.

If the goal is public safety, the audit of public safety on police departments and what they're doing, how they're faring out, should be the standard.

And we have no accountability standard checklist to understand when police officers high-risk activities or initiatives are really bringing us close to public safety, or are they bringing us to this facade that we need them in order to, I don't know, feel comfortable.

- Yeah.

Keir, I want to follow up with you.

And then I want to bring Saleem and back to the council member.

But you used the word destruction.

Do you, some may say that that's a bit hyperbolic?

Why that word?

Do you feel that police have operated in a way intentionally to destroy?

Or has that just been, you know, the cost of doing business?

- So I don't think that should be the cost of doing business if you have a goal.

If people, if a hospital destroyed lives they wouldn't be in business, right?

There's accountability checks.

And Obama when he was looking at how to clean up the healthcare industry, he levied penalties on hospitals that had a high rate of readmissions.

And I say the criminal justice, or criminal legal system, has no such accountability standard.

When people come through continuously because of police presence in that neighborhood, it is never with the eye towards how can we make sure that we have less people come in this year than we did last year.

And so when I say destructive patterns, this system often makes people more desperate than it has, than they were before they interacted with it.

And it could never give back what it took from people.

And it never has to attone to do that.

And so when I say destruction path, whether someone sets out and say, I want to intentionally destroy this community, or the culture and environment allows me to do that based on the mandate that I have to just go out and figure out how to kind of make sure that we are, our presence is known and is felt, in any fashion, in any way, that has to show up.

I really do think that no one has checked and seen how much destruction have you caused in this community by coming in and policing in this fashion?

There's no understanding of that.

And I'll just leave with this, Chris.

I was watching something where a man was describing what it felt like to be stripped of his manhood by police and how angry and enraged that made him after time and time again, never being able to be viewed as a person, as a man and being belittled.

And so when you have that mentality, that I am devalued, I'm not a man, what is that impact on people?

And how does that manifest itself when people interact with situations where deescalation is not there.

It's that rage, that anger, that has been perpetuated by our government.

- I appreciate that.

Brother Saleem, I saw you nodding, when Kier was talking particularly about the fact that we are not at this moment where we're seeing some changes due to the altruism of officials.

That they are responding to, you know, a very historic uprising.

Do you share Keir's sentiments that, you know, you're a little bit hesitant to feel overly hopeful because of what it took just to get to this moment?

- Absolutely.

Listen.

It's really unfortunate that we have to light fire to the streets in order to have our concerns in our communities addressed.

But also have police even considered to be held accountable for harm that they are doing in our communities.

And I say considered.

Because they're certainly not being held accountable.

Look, at the end of the day, this isn't a republican or democratic question.

It's not even an imaginative question as an abolitionist.

This is a pure political question.

And there is not a political will on the part of many people in government to take on the police, to take on police unions, to hold police accountable, to defund police, right?

So when there's an absence of political will then you have to change that political system.

You have to change that political situation.

And I feel as though what Kris said earlier, when tens of millions of people across the country were taking to the streets last year, they were calling for a system change, when it comes to policing.

They were calling for a system change when it comes to accountability.

They were calling for a new vision of how harm in our communities is addressed.

And even the slogan defund police, may sound new to some people, but that is something that our communities have historically been talking about.

If you could go back to W. Du Bois, when he wrote his book about black people in Philadelphia, he talked about defunding police in that book.

And that was written in the early 1900s.

And it is a simple question.

It's a simple demand that the city, the state, invest more money in preventive measures in our community as opposed to punitive measures.

Because the question that you asked earlier, is destruction the consequence of doing business?

It is.

Because police operate on a war model in the United States.

That is a fact.

And when you operate on a war model, then that means the communities that you are supposed to be serving, are actually communities that you are suppressing.

And that's what police is in the United States.

When you have a hammer, or when your modus operandi is a hammer, you address every issue as a nail.

And what policing is doing is it's using harm to treat more harm.

Trauma to treat more trauma in our communities.

- Thank you for that.

Katia and Kris I'm coming to you guys in just a second.

Council member, I want to give you a chance to respond to that.

And to, in particularly to the idea that just doesn't exist, as Saleem said, the political will and the courage to take on the police and to take on the FOP.

And then also what Kris said and that we're not being imaginative enough.

I'd like to get you to respond to those two statements.

- I think Saleem, he's, I think Saleem is on point.

The political will essentially is not there, especially when we're talking about what we need to hold police accountable, for us in Philadelphia, that starts and ends with Act 111.

Last year we felt like we had some traction around the legislation.

Then some of the, what you talked about earlier, we've seen a shift in president, and now the biggest topic of discussion in Harrisburg is no longer policing, changing how communities of color are policed.

The appetite now is around election and election reform.

And that's unfortunate because this issue that we're talking about, we feel like is an issue that deals with people's civil rights.

It's a humanitarian issue.

So to put a frivolous election laws ahead of that which are laws that essentially were bi-partisan, it essentially makes no sense.

And so, yes, I do agree that the political appetite is not there.

But I also think that when we look at the position that we're in as it relates to changing police, changing how our communities are policed, and changing what that looks like and feels like, we also have to recognize that we have to take it one step at a time.

I know for us, we, again, we talked about Act 111 but we're also looking at who responds to 911 calls.

And I know somebody talked about that earlier.

And we're taking some steps adjust the proper response, as well as improving the actual system of answering 911 calls and how that deployment takes place.

We're also looking at motor vehicle codes and trying to figure out what can we do around traffic stops so we can limit some of the interactions that we all know that unfortunately lead to some things that are often heartbreaking.

And so when we're talking about the direction we're going in, I can tell you firsthand that there often is not a political appetite.

And I don't want to say, there's often not a political appetite to deal with this issue of policing, but I don't want to make it seem like there's not a political appetite to address the FOP.

I think that those are two different conversations.

I think when you look at people's perception of public safety, everybody's entitled to their opinion and how they perceive the relationship between police and public safety to impact their everyday life.

And I respect people's opinion, but at the same time, I think most folks recognize some of the issues that we have with the local FOP and the need to see some serious change as it relates to that relationship with the city of Philadelphia.

- Thank you for that.

I will circle back in a second to the political will.

I want to bring Katia back into this conversation.

Defund the police was a slogan last year that that really caught fire.

And in Philadelphia, there certainly was a healthy debate around that topic.

If we fast forward to today, Mayor Jim Kenney's budget proposal reflects that the funding for the police department will remain basically flat for the second year in a row.

And if you ask the Kenney administration, in fact they'll say that their proposed $727 million for the police department represents a 2.4% decrease in police funding when compared to the city's 2016 general operating budget.

Katia does that represent a small win for the movement?

- That's not a win at all.

With defund the police, I think what a lot of people need to recognize is that when we asked for that, that's not where the win is and that's it.

That's step one.

Defund the police because of generations of divestment from communities.

Defund the police because you have decades of the same policies that a lot of urban cities across the country have tried to over police the problems right in black and brown communities and poor communities.

And defund the police is only step one.

If you actually want to see long-term crime reduction, you know, long-term health in our communities, a community that thrives, we need longterm commitment to fund our communities.

Not over-policing.

When Mayor Kenney, you know, says basically that the budget for the police department was kept at a flat rate.

No.

You know, part of the extra funding was included in other departments that do work with the police.

That are basically the police department.

And out of that $720 million plus, right, budget for the police department, 95% of that is personnel costs.

So that's salaries, over time.

What is it?

Yeah, basically salaries, overtime and benefits.

And that's police in communities not reducing crime, right?

Because we do know that we are experiencing right now in Philadelphia a gun violence epidemic.

Crime isn't going down just because there are more police in the streets, right?

When we do talk to neighbors that are in some of the high crime areas in Philadelphia.

Yes.

If a cop is, you know, part that you're blocked, there might not be a shooting that night, right.

But that does not minimize the crime that's happening overall.

So just defunding the police is not enough.

We actually need to see long-term investment and, you know, violence prevention programs that there are organizations in the city doing this.

We do need to see longterm investment in harm reduction programs, right.

Our communities are starving.

You know, we have a lot of folks suffering from, you know, who are unhoused, where there are no job opportunities.

A lot of returning citizens that when it comes to either go to a job where you're being, in Philadelphia it's still 7.25 an hour, the minimum wage.

So being paid either $10 an hour, where the average apartment, two bedroom apartment's between 900 to like $1,100 in Philadelphia, right?

The poorest big city in the country.

If your decision is between working minimum wage and I know way too many people working more than two jobs minimum wage, or going into the underground sector, where you can make more, what do you think this decision is going to be when you need to survive?

And these are decades of divestment from the city and our communities.

But just like, even just flat lining the budget, that's not enough.

We need to invest in our community.

- Thank you for that.

Kris, I want to give you a chance to respond.

Do you agree that it's not a win at all.

- It's definitely not a win.

Part of the reason why it's not a win is because that $727 million number is not accounting for other money that's going to the police.

The managing director's office has money at this point to be going towards police training.

There are other parts of the budget where that money is actually going to end up in police hands.

And so, you know, already, we're looking at a number that's not the real number.

Additionally, the reason why it's not a win, is because we don't need to spend that much money on police.

And if we accept the $727 million number as like, the bottom, as low as we can possibly go, we are conceding that police work.

And that's not true.

Police do not prevent crime.

Police are not reducing the homicide rate.

They're not reducing, you know, they're not actually keeping our community safer.

And what would actually be possible if we, say cut the police budget in half?

What could we put, like what kinds of programs could we create around the city and our neighborhoods and our communities if we had $300 million to do that?

And like what we were seeing with, you know, the idea that, you know, if we kind of chip away at the police budget, if we add these like little, you know, if we add programs, even like a mobile crisis units, which I think would be helpful, like we're still not getting to the point where, where we're actually going to be able to keep our community safe and also give them what they need.

And like, part of the reason is because we're spending so much money on police.

Like Katia said, like the fact that over 90% of that budget is on personnel means that have a ton of cops who are not actually doing the job that many people think they're doing, which is to, which is for public safety.

- Kris, I want to follow up with you, And then Keir, I'm coming to you with this same question.

Philadelphia police Commissioner Daniel Outlaw in a recent interview with WHYY N.I.C.E partner, Saj Blackwell said.

- Over the last year, there have been a movement in regards to defunding the police.

You know, the cause for defunding the police.

How do you feel about that movement?

- Investment is important.

Here's why.

I think a lot of folks who are calling for deforming, if they take the time to sit down with people like myself, my colleagues just around the country, they'd be surprised to learn that there's a lot of agreement.

We are agree on a lot of the same areas.

We agree that the police shouldn't be handling a lot of the calls that we do.

- That's good.

- We agree that the police shouldn't be policing unsheltered.

We agree that when it comes to certain calls related to those in crisis, we shouldn't be there.

- Agreed.

- Certain calls, right?

There's so many things that when you call the police you've automatically criminalized a situation where there's no crime.

We don't want nothing to do with it, right?

Nothing.

There's people that go to school for these things.

This is what they do all day, every day.

Involve them.

Bolster their services.

Increase their funding.

Absolutely.

We agree there, wholeheartedly.

Now where we disagree.

- Okay.

- We disagree in in the areas where folks believe that the money should come from our budget.

Because when you take the money from us, what you're doing is laying off cops, because a large percentage of our budget are personnel costs.

So when you cut from our budget that means you're cutting people.

So a counter-argument to that is, well, would you agree, that if what you're talking about is successful, meaning that there are more social services available or clinicians available, then eventually you won't need as many cops on the street.

Maybe.

But first of all, it has to be a phased approach.

You don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

And when you look at all the polls and the surveys, communities, especially here, they want cops.

They want more cops.

So just because we're not focusing on these things doesn't mean that people don't want a visible presence in their neighborhoods.

What additional cops gives us is the ability to be proactive.

- Why is the commissioner wrong?

- I think that the commissioner is sort of operating from this point, from like this position, where cops are doing a number of sort of like crime fighting activities.

And you know, this idea that they could do more of those crime fighting activities if they weren't doing these other things.

When like really the bulk of what they're doing is these things like surveilling our neighborhoods, harassing people who are unhoused, stopping and frisking people.

Like these are actually things that are not.

- Confiscating motorbikes.

- Yeah, these are things that are not keeping us safe.

And so the idea that we like, oh, if they didn't have to do those things, then they would be able to do these other things.

It's just not pointed out by evidence.

Like they could actually do those like crime fighting things more if they wanted to now.

Like we don't need to, we don't need to like, spend more money on other things and keep their budget like as high as it.

Not valid.

It just doesn't make sense fiscally for the city.

- Keir, the Austin city council last year re-allocated about 21 million from the police department's budget, primarily by reducing overtime expenses and putting on hold new classes for the cadets.

They also had another $20 million from additional sources.

And the Austin police department didn't lay off any officers.

They also invested in for other forms of public safety, like family violence shelters, mental health emergency responders and even ambulances for COVID-19 responses.

Where do you fall on this line?

Is the commissioner mistaken when she says, we should defund the police, but not defund the budget.

- So I can't say she's mistaken, but I say she's not doing a complete audit of what they are doing.

Like Kris said, you know, there are things that police are doing and you have personnel to do things that are not advantageous to our goals of public safety.

Like one of the things that we looked at, when we were looking at police officer's car stops.

We looked at 309,000 stops in the city of Philadelphia that were conducted by police officers and looked at the rate of return on that investment.

And one of the things we were able to understand is the start of the stop and the end of the stop.

And we were able to calculate how much time those stops took in man hours, regular hours.

And if it was one police officer conducting all 309,000 stops, it would have taken someone 8.5 years to do those things.

But yet, and still, we're using a vast amount of police officers to conduct these minor traffic stops that only gave us a return on an investment of 0.17 in terms of getting anything illegal back.

0.17.

So not even 1% of the time, were they able to find things that actually gave us a sense of safety.

Because you've taken that, I dunno, bag of drugs.

Or you've taken that small pocket knife.

Or you've taken, you know, a gun that you may find sporadically out of that car.

So when you're starting to look at, like Kris said, what are they actually doing?

And making sure that as the executor, you know, of that institution, you need to make sure that what you're doing is actually productive and advance the goals.

One of the things I had to do is look at the defender budget.

We have over 500 people.

What are we doing?

Where were our gaps?

And where should we be shifting to in the moment, in the 21st century, where communities were saying there are huge gaps in this area and we need more from your organization.

Well, we stopped doing the unproductive and started doing more of the productive.

Now nothing's perfect, but you've gotta have to make those pivot calls when you're able to look at something and say, you know what, what we're doing is not matching the needs of the community.

And in fact, why am I wasting valuable taxpayer dollars, sending people out here, stopping people for tinted windows, stopping people for not failure to turn signals, that lasts about maybe a half hour, 45 minutes.

Where I've got shootings, where there's no one over there working with those communities, gathering and collecting forensic evidence so that we can analyze them and truly bring people to justice.

And so I do think that the issue is, not in her speech, but in her lack of action in terms of really looking and auditing that police department and figuring out where can they make better use of resources.

- Council member Thomas, I'm coming into you in a second on the topic of traffic stops and your traffic bill.

Keir, a quick up question.

I love that you frame this in terms of budgets and finances because I have found, at least in my opinion, that the conversation of defund the police is not anti-police.

It's pro fiscal responsibility.

It's pro thinking about return on investment.

What's the challenge?

Why is it such a challenge to get people to see that this is about looking at the return on investment?

What we're spending and what we're getting.

- Because we're talking about soundbite information, right?

We hear a narrative, a counter narrative to that.

Well, if we don't have police, then we won't have anyone to answer your calls when you are a victim of violence.

We won't have enough police officers to be out there on the streets.

And the question should be to anyone who is the administrator of that, the question should be, well, why?

Where can you identify waste?

Because that's what we do in every other facet of our society, right?

We identify where are we wasting things and where can we do better?

And it seems like policing is that one entity it's hard to break through, because they are used to being able to use fear to dissuade us from asking for better.

Like, you know, Trump had all of those commercials.

You know, if you've gotten sexually assaulted, someone will be with you in three to five days.

That is the huge use of fear-mongering that keeps us in this bubble.

And so afraid to move beyond what we know is not working, but we don't wanna, we don't want, we don't have the courage or the ability to say that we're going to do something different.

And that's not going to happen.

So I do think people need to be more internally educated and not listen to sound bites and little messaging that come from the opposition.

But they need to do their homework.

City council needs to have more of an audit process.

There are audits going on across the country in major metropolitan areas where police departments where they're involved in very high risk initiatives to see how it's fairing out.

And when people say we need to stop and frisk, remember we had stop and frisk at its highest point and we had crime at its highest point.

So let's look at the correlation of the two and figure out is this what's going to get us what we need.

- Thank you for that.

Council member, one of the demands that have also emerged from the defund the conversation is to remove police from the business of conducting traffic stops.

You have a bill that would seek to bar Philadelphia police from stopping drivers solely for committing minor violations, which traditionally has been how a lot of these fatal shootings begin.

Do you think that your bill fully meets the demand?

And what's the challenge of moving it forward?

- I don't think the bill fully meets the demand at all.

It doesn't even meet my list of demands and recommendations.

It's just one step in a direction.

And I think Keir Bradford-Grey illustrated perfectly why we need the legislation and from a fiscal perspective why it's responsible.

But for me, again, this is just one step in the direction.

And I think where we're stumbling, as it relates to hurdles, is number one, this idea of public perception.

You have a lot of people who believe that motor vehicle called stops is a way to keep neighborhoods safe when the data and the statistics tell us the exact opposite.

The next thing is, is that you have to have a compromise as it relates to the different parties that we have to work with in order to get this done.

So this is a dialogue and a working group with the mayor, with the public defender's office, as well as the city solicitor's office.

Because we have to make sure that we put ourselves in a position when we are hoping to pass this legislation that it's done in a way that can not be legally challenged by any parties.

That we know that there are a lot of parties who would have interest in legislation like this that might want to legally challenge it.

And so again, no, I don't think that this meets the demand.

I think that this is just one step in a direction.

And I think that this is a multifaceted problem that's created an institution that has oppressed people for a long time.

That's going to require a multifaceted solutions.

We talked about fiscal responsibility.

One of the things that we don't even touch often is the amount of money that the city spends in lawsuits.

While I do recognize that, in the position that I am, I have a working relationship with Commissioner Outlaw, but I do think that it's important that we have to be honest, and be honest about where we are as it relates to policing and staff.

And we know for a fact that we have a lot of police officers who are on the district attorney's no testify list.

We know for a fact that we've had nearly a dozen officers involved in negative activity, some of them illegal, this calendar year alone.

Including one that was recently reported to have cost the city nearly $270,000 a year and had been through multiple investigations, only in turn to have not had disciplinary action internally, but the FBI warranted some level of disciplinary action.

So it speaks to some of the contradictions that we have within the institution.

It speaks to some of the practices that exist that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

And it speaks to the work that we have to continue to do as it relates to this idea of changing how our communities are policed.

So I'm excited about the bill.

I'm optimistic that we will be able to get it done.

I'm very hopeful about that particular bill.

But I do recognize that's just one small step in a larger picture that we all know exists around this institution that has traditionally oppressed people of color.

- I appreciate that.

And just to clarify for our audience when talked about Act 111, that's a state labor law that really informs and guides the arbitration process, which is when a cop or anyone who's a kind of public servant gets fired, they have a way of remedying that by going to court.

And unfortunately many cops who get fired from the police department end up back because of that arbitration process.

And that Act 111 is kind of where that process is rooted.

Brother Saleem, I want to bring into the conversation, I want to move towards public safety, but also just want to do a quick follow-up to think about these lawsuits.

And one of the other changes we've seen this year is that we are also having this conversation about removing police immunity and how we think about lawsuits.

Can you tell our audience a bit about what that means?

What policing, removing police immunity and why that's a good thing.

- I mean police get away with, essentially with murder, and being held accountable when it comes to qualified immunity.

So I think that would be great if we can remove qualified immunity from protecting police officers who harm black brown people.

Or people in general.

I do want to jump over to Councilman Thomas' bill, because I really think that this is probably one of the more significant pieces of legislation in probably the last 30 or 40 years in Philadelphia when it comes to policing.

In addition to all of the statistics that Keir dropped about 1.7% of police stops.

Sorry, what was it Keir?

- 0.17 - Oh, sorry.

0.17.

So sorry.

So it's not even 1%.

So it's 0.17 of all police stops result in a firearm a recovery, right?

It doesn't make us safer.

But actually I don't know how many people know the name, James Alexander, someone who was killed in Logan last month in a traffic stop.

He was in a car that apparently ran a stop sign and was pulled over by police officers.

As a result of that stop, a shootout occurred and he was killed.

Now there's still questions about what actually happened that night.

But what is not in dispute is that 30 shots were fired.

He was killed.

An officer was shot in the foot and a gun was recovered.

And the name on the warrant that they thought was for him actually was for another person.

Isaiah Thomas' bill would have stopped something like that.

And that's what we want to stop.

We want to stop these harmful interactions with police.

And that may be the extreme example, but I can assure you, there are many others where people have been stopped by police have either been assaulted, have been arrested for something insignificant or minor, that then set off a chain reaction in their life.

Which either led them to probation, that led them to prison, that caused them to lose their jobs, lose their families and then cycle in and out of the criminal justice system.

So I think Isaiah Thomas's bill, is a bill that many progressive groups in Philadelphia should definitely get on board and support.

Because as a police abolitionist, I understand that police abolition comes in stages.

And any way that we could limit unnecessary interaction with the police results in less harm to members of our communities.

Because again, these police officers aren't pulling you over to inquire if your insurance is up to date, if you need help.

They are pulling you over to seek probable cause to look into your car, to find a weapon or to arrest you.

That's what it's about.

That's all those stops are.

And the police admit it.

It's just to justify a probable cause to go into your car, to go into your person, to seek grounds, to arrest and detain you.

And we all know that that leads to more interaction with the criminal justice system.

And unfortunately for black, brown, and also I would like to lift this up, disabled and mentally impaired people, it equates to harm.

So Isaiah Thomas' bill.

You know, I'm going to be out pushing for that heavily because that's something that I think that we need to win in Philadelphia as a first step to abolition.

- I appreciate it.

- And it's a long way, and don't get me wrong.

I'm not, it's a long way to abolition.

Right?

But it is a first step.

- Yeah, also.

- Chris, can I just clarify something, really quickly?

- Oh sure, go ahead.

- Saleem, when you said 0.17.

They didn't find 0.17 guns.

0.17 was the time that they found anything.

So that can be bags of marijuana.

That can be bags of whatever.

Anything in those 309,000 stops.

- And they're rewarded for this.

Any other agency that had a percentage like that would be punished right?

And also to your point earlier about the police budget.

Listen I believe that the police have demonstrated historically that based on their failure in our communities, the community should have a say in how that budget is looked.

The community should be the ones allocating the police budget for Philadelphia.

I don't think that's really an extreme demand.

I think that the community should have say in how the police budget is used, not the police commissioner.

They have shown that they can't get a grip on crime in our communities.

- I think you're right.

In fact, Katia, the John Jay School of, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice actually talks about this participatory budgeting process.

I mean, is that something that you would get behind as an organizer, a participatory budget process, where community voices is rooted and centered in this budgeting process?

- Absolutely.

It's what we're currently, some of the organizations in Philadelphia, we put forth a people's budget, right?

It's not just asking, Hey, we don't want any more money for the Philadelphia police department.

We've actually spoken to different groups in Philadelphia that are doing the on the ground work for violence prevention.

Right?

For gun violence prevention for harm reduction.

What exactly is it that community needs?

And we've identified, you know, that's why I mentioned before we need long-term investments.

What's worked in other communities, right.

And when it comes to reducing crime or reducing the rate of folks that are, you know, addicted to drugs.

It takes years.

It takes programming that's you know, it's long-term.

So we do have a budget that we've been meeting with different members of city council asking, Hey we need a hundred million for housing.

We need a hundred million for gun violence prevention that would, you know, would be going into funding libraries and rec centers.

Because another thing about what's happening with the gun violence epidemic in Philadelphia, is that a large portion of the victims are youth, but also a large portion of the people doing the shooting are also youth.

And that just goes to show you the years, right, decades of divestment that the city of Philadelphia has had with our youth.

Right?

So it definitely, we need a people's budget.

We need like all around the country making sure that when cities are in this, you know, are in the process of deciding their budget for the next fiscal year.

We need input from the people that are directly affected.

And they, when it comes to like, what kind of programming, what kind of investment the city does, it's what we're trying to push for.

We have a people's budget.

We have an action council that's working with community organizations along with activist organizations to work with city council to see, can we move the city to take more into consideration what the people need, not just what the mayor thinks that Philadelphians needs.

- Kris, I'm coming to you in just a second.

I want to, just a quick follow up with you Katia.

Some people may push back and say there is an opportunity for input on the budgeting process.

That city council has a hearing and you can set up, or I should say, sign up and testify.

And that's the input.

Is that?

I take it that's not enough in your opinion.

- During this budget season, there are three dates for public comments, for hearings, for two hours each.

That's not enough.

That's not enough.

That's not going to be our representative of like just basically the different needs that are in the city of Philadelphia.

And part of what we're doing with the people's budget is making sure we get folks to testify at those public hearings.

But six hours?

To those, you know, to get public comments in a city, right, the fifth largest city in the country, is not enough.

That's not enough public input.

- Isaiah just really quickly.

Do you agree?

I mean, you're on the council.

Is that enough?

And if not, what would be enough?

What would a participatory budgeting process look like?

One that you could get behind?

- Well part of the reason why we have that condensed schedule that was just communicated is because we delayed the budget process because we had to wait to see what came down from the federal government as it relates to the Cares Act.

And so traditionally you would see more time that will be allocated to public comment.

But also outside of that, a lot of council members do take the time to have individual meetings with organizations, with people, with stakeholders across the city, whether it's town halls or other formats To be able to have these conversations, to be able to discuss what priorities are, what department needs dollars and what level of advocacy that people have.

So with that being said, I try my best to be as inclusive as possible as it relates to my vote and the things that I advocate for.

But I'm always open to any structure or recommendation that will put us in a position to better touch people, listen to people and hear from people as we go through this budget process.

And I know that it could be one that'd be a very strenuous and very confusing not just for constituents, but for all parties involved, because it is a very complicated process.

We're talking about a budget that's averaged about $5 billion every single year.

So I'm open to the critique.

I would love to hear other recommendations and insight in what we can do to better improve the process as it relates to allowing the public to be involved.

- Thank you, Kris, how would you improve the process?

How would you create a participatory budgeting process that centered community voice and, you know, that that made people feel like they are actually controlling their budget?

- I think there's a lot of people across the country who have done a lot of work around participatory budgeting and then what that can look like in different places.

I think that if we got together a random group of Philadelphians and asked them how they thought the city should spend the billions of dollars that is the yearly budget for the city, I don't think most people would have police as the number one as the largest budget item.

I think that there would be a lot more investment into things like recreation centers, libraries, jobs programs, especially for young people.

And to these kinds of things that actually would make our communities stronger.

And that could actually reduce gun violence and street violence that we see around the city.

I think as far as like an actual structure, I think you know, I think there is like a lot, a lot to, there's like a lot out there as far as like what those structures could look like.

And I agree with Katia that three days of testimony is not nearly enough to really hear from people on what they think about this budget.

- I want to ask a quick follow-up to you, Kris, and then go to Saleem and Keir.

I want to talk about the gun violence crisis and what we're experiencing.

And when we were having this conversation last year, Philadelphia was experiencing record breaking homicides.

We ended the year at 499.

I believe as we're having this conversation, we're about 30 to 40% increase over last year, right?

It's looking that we may eclipse that 500 number.

And how do you convince people in neighborhoods that are besieged by gun violence and who want more police presence that defunding the police, or even abolishing them over time, isn't a dangerous proposition.

- I think when we're looking at what police actually do, even with things like gun violence and like the most serious harm that we have, homicide.

Homicide clearance rate is really low in the city.

And the only tool that the cops really have to prevent gun violence is surveillance, which is incredibly invasive and doesn't work very well.

I think when we're looking at how we can actually reduce gun violence, we have to look at different things.

Because police it's not what's actually going to get us there.

We need things like more violence interruption programs and also resources, especially for these young black boys who are primarily the people who are both the perpetrators and the victims of gun violence in the city.

- Saleem, same question to you.

What's the message to people in neighborhoods that are falling asleep to bullets and waking up to makeshift memorials.

How do you convince them that this conversation around defunding the police isn't reckless?

- I think that this is part of a longer conversation that we have been dealing with in our communities for decades.

And that is inter-communal violence.

And the fact of the matter is that communities that are trapped in structural poverty, structural discrimination, have higher rates of violence and harm than communities that are not.

And I understand that.

Listen my family members who are living out Southwest Philly kind of sometimes don't want to be hearing that.

Because this talks about a long process of changing things.

Right?

But what I can tell you is this.

Last month the police commissioner shifted a lot of police in the Southwest Philly around the recreation centers to deal with violence.

I could tell you that that increase in police in Southwest Philadelphia has not done anything to stem the violence in Southwest Philly.

And if anything, it's only increased the shootings and the amount of people who have been killed.

So shifting more police into the area is not going to solve the harm and violence that's happening in our community.

We're certainly going to need to get ahead of this by dealing with crime prevention measures, after school centers, more young mentors, but also here's another thing.

'Cause Kris mentioned something, that Philadelphia's homicide clearance is at less than 50%.

The police need to do their jobs because it's the police responsibility to solve homicides.

It's the prosecutor's job to prosecute them, right?

A prosecutor cannot prosecute homicides if the police are not solving them.

And that's what's happening in Philadelphia.

The police are not doing their job.

They have millions of dollars to investigation techniques.

They have detectives, but they are not doing their jobs and handling the homicide cases in Philadelphia.

So, but I'm also not going to put this entirely on the police because here's the thing.

At the end of the day, this is a larger structural conversation that we have to have within our communities that the police can not solve this.

That is a fact.

The police cannot solve this.

We are going to have to solve this, but also, there is going to have to be a commitment from city council, from those in power, to invest in our communities.

And also even within the business community.

Stop gentrifying our neighborhoods and shifting people from Grays Ferry into Southwest Philly, which is causing the wars out there.

Stop doing that.

Because see this is another under discussed topic about the violence in our neighborhood.

A lot of this is the result of gentrification.

Neighborhoods are being displaced from one part of the city and dropped into another part of the city, as is happening in Southwest Philadelphia.

And when you have poor people from one poor section of the city dropped into another poor section of the city they are going to be fighting for resources.

And that's what's happening unfortunately within our city now.

And I don't see any type of commitment to deal with the root causes of this.

All we want to deal with is the after effects of it.

When someone is gunned down in the street and whether it's the police coming to pick up the body.

Whether it's the FOP blaming that on the district attorney.

Or even community activists.

We have to do a better job of messaging within our community and letting them know that listen, the police, the prosecutor, they're not going to be able to solve this.

We need more resources invested into our communities.

And last thing I'll tell you is that I was in a community town hall about two months ago with a 70 year old lady who was beaten up at her door.

And I was talking to her about defunding police.

She told me initially, I don't support that.

But when I told her what defunding police meant, going out reaching the young people on our block with mentors, she supported that because she remembered in the sixties and seventies when community organizations were doing that with the gangs in Philadelphia, and it worked.

- Like the House of Umoja.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Who would have knewn that an hour flew by so fast.

We're out of time, but the conversation will continue.

We're just getting it started.

I want to thank all my panelists again.

Council member at large Isaiah Thomas, Keir Bradford-Gray, former chief public defender, Kris Henderson, executive director of the Amistad Law Project, brother Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionists Law Center and Katia Perez, Mass Liberation Organizer for Reclaim Philadelphia.

Thank you so much.

Your contributions to this conversation were invaluable.

- Thank you everybody.

It's great being on the panel.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Before we go, I'd like to share with you a snippet of a conversation I had with Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner, in the days following the Derek Chauvin trial.

- This case of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin amplified the defund police conversation.

It amplified the ways in which people can reimagine how police exists.

When you think about the future of public safety, when you think about re-imagining police, what does that look like to you?

- To me, it looks like a number of things.

I mean, for one thing, it looks like the increasing use of reliable forensics.

It looks like trying to restore the relationship between community and police, so more witnesses are willing to come forward.

It means reducing, over time, budgets for jails, prisons, for police, for probation, parole, even for the judiciary and DA's offices and investing that money into things that work better.

You know and we all know what those things are.

It's public school, it's treatment of different types, including for addiction and for mental illness.

It is, you know, finding ways to empower people to participate in the economy.

It's all of that.

It's what other countries have done very effectively for a very, very long time.

You know, I can think of a country right now where they have one ninth the level of homicide and they have one ninth the level of people in custody.

This is a country that has outlawed the death penalty.

Where every single person who is convicted is considered for parole after 15 years or earlier.

Every single person.

No matter what they have done.

Doesn't mean they'll get parole.

There are just other ways to do things that make us safer.

- Well I appreciate your time Mr. Krasner.

- Nice so see you.

It's always a pleasure.

- Yes, sir.

Thanks for watching Police Reimagined: One Year Later.

Email your comments and thoughts at talkback@whyy.org.

For WHYY, I'm Chris Norris.

Goodnight.