America in Black and Blue 2020: PBS NewsHour Weekend Special

♪♪ >> I'm Alison Stewart coming to you from the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture in Harlem, New York City, for a "PBS NewsHour Weekend" special "America in Black and Blue 2020."

>> "PBS NewsHour Weekend" is made possible by... >> Good evening.

Thank you for joining us.

It was not quite four years ago that we brought you a "NewsHour Weekend" special called "America in Black and Blue."

At the time the country was reeling from the death of an African-American man in Minneapolis, Philando Castille, whose killing by a police officer was caught by his girlfriend on video and a police dashboard camera.

[ Gunfire ] >> You just killed my boyfriend!

>> That was after another black man, Jamar Clark, was killed by the Minneapolis P.D.

Local and national protests ensued.

>> Everybody who knew Philando knew that he was a good man.

>> Hands up, don't shoot!

Hands up, don't shoot!

Hands up, don't shoot!

>> Now a Minneapolis police officer has been charged with murder for killing another African-American man, George Floyd.

Floyd's life was taken just miles from where Philando Castille's was.

A few weeks ago, George Floyd's killing felt like a tragic repeat of history.

But America and the world seems to have said enough.

There's a growing consensus or at least a hope that this time it's different.

I'm joined now by a Minnesotan who's been working on issues of race and policing for years.

In fact, she was featured in our "America in Black and Blue" special back in 2016, speaking out against the overenforcement of very minor crimes such as aggressive panhandling.

>> It does not actually benefit public safety to have such petty low-level offenses on the books.

And it's a huge waste of taxpayer dollars and resources.

>> Nekima Levy Armstrong is a lawyer, a professor, an ordained minister, the former head of the Minneapolis NAACP, and a former candidate for mayor of that city.

She's also a veteran of many Black Lives Matter protests.

What feels different to you this time, if anything?

>> Well, one of the things that feels different is the level of awareness in the Twin Cities and around the nation and even around the world.

We already see departments that are now eliminating the use of chokeholds, that are pushing forward in terms of reforms.

It has never happened this rapidly before.

But the changes are not happening in a vacuum.

And they are the result of the power of the people, continuing to take to the streets and advocate for justice.

>> The Minneapolis City Council says it wants to disband the current police department.

What would you like to see in its place?

>> A different system.

And that should be a system that includes having mental health responders to 911 calls instead of law enforcement.

That should be a system that includes social services and other resources that our community needs and not continuing to spend so much of our budget on law enforcement.

So I would like to see that, but I would also like to see a collaborative process and not, you know, a handful of people speaking on behalf of all of Minneapolis when they haven't done the boots on the ground work to engage us as a community.

>> Where do you stand on reform?

There are some people that say take the small wins now, make the changes you can make in the moment, that that's worthwhile, instead of waiting for how long it might take to defund the police or abolish police.

>> Absolutely.

These changes could take one to two years, assuming that there's enough political will for something like defunding the police or dismantling the police to take place.

In the meantime, we can't wait for those things to happen to be able to institute reforms that are easy for local departments to do.

So, for example, we know that there are killer cops on our police force.

We know there are cops with a history of excessive force.

Those cops should be removed from the force immediately.

Those cops have been a liability for the city.

They've been a liability for residents who live here.

They have made us feel unsafe, and they have traditionally been protected by the city of Minneapolis.

So we want to see new standards in place for police officers who are currently on the force.

We want to see a removal of militarized weapons and a ban of the use of chemical weapons against civilians who are out there protesting.

We've been shot with tear gas and rubber bullets since the protesting began in the wake of George Floyd's death, and that was an excessive police response when the root of us going out there and protesting is police violence.

And we want to see radical shifts begin to happen immediately.

>> Nekima, what's your response to the governor of Minnesota saying he endorses sweeping police reforms?

>> I would say it's about time that the governor is stepping up to the plate.

What we have proposed is a completely independent body to investigate deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers, the establishment of an office that includes independent special prosecutors, that includes civilian oversight, that includes credible investigative teams who will rigorously investigate these types of issues, and will report back to the public on their findings.

>> Nekima Levy Armstrong, thank you for joining us.

>> Thank you for having me.

[ Crowd chanting "Black lives matter" ] The protest movement has been massive, taking place not only across America, but across Europe and Africa, South America, Australia, and other parts of the Pacific.

>> We want change!

We want change!

Enough is enough!

Enough is enough!

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

Hands up, don't shoot!

What do we want?

Justice!

When do we want it?

Now!

What do we want?

Justice!

When do we want it?

Now!

>> And by some measures, it has been successful.

California legislators have proposed a measure to ban the use of chokeholds by police.

On Friday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed a series of bills banning chokeholds and repealing a law that kept police personnel records, including disciplinary measures, secret.

And Minneapolis is attempting to move funds away from the police department and dramatically redesign the city's police force.

The protesters are asking for far more, not simply reform, but wholesale change to police practices and the end of systemic racism in America.

What are the prospects of that?

I asked that question of author and cultural critic Roxanne Gay, who wrote earlier this month in The New York Times... Roxanne, thanks for being with us.

So what do you think it is about the call for equity and equality this time that is different?

A lot of people are saying it's different.

>> Yes.

Actually I just wrote a piece trying to think through what is happening in this moment.

And I don't know.

I really can't say because the previous murders of black people by police officers were equally as brutal.

And so I don't know why this one pushed people over the edge, but I think it's the timing.

We don't have the distraction of sports.

We don't have the distraction of movies.

We don't have work.

So we have a lot of time to sit and contemplate the world.

>> I think often the Chris Cooper video is left out of this conversation.

The video of the birder in Central Park that happened hours before George Floyd's video, his death, his murder, because I think it really crystallized for people how it can happen.

>> Sir, I'm asking you to stop.

>> Please don't come close to me.

>> Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording me.

>> Please don't come close to me.

>> Please shut your phone off.

>> Please don't come close to me.

>> I'm calling the cops.

>> Please call the cops.

Please call the cops.

>> I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life.

>> Please tell them whatever you like.

>> There is an African-American man.

I am in Central Park.

He is recording me and threatening myself and my dog.

>> You know, I think that video was haunting because we understood how weaponized police have become and how willing white women are to weaponize the police when they are mildly inconvenienced.

And to know that that phone call that she made was potentially lethal also illuminates just how extensive this problem is.

Like, every black person immediately knew what was at stake with that phone call.

>> You held a Q&A, New York Times Q&A recently where people were asking you all kinds of questions for about an hour and a half.

What's on people's minds as they're trying to process this?

>> The main question on people's minds is, how do we make sure that this moment is more than a moment?

How do we make sure that this is the last time that we wonder, is this going to be what it takes?

How do we sustain the energy?

And unfortunately, people fatigue very easily when it comes to doing the right thing because we're already starting to see white people who are saying that, you know, it's been a lot to have to think about racism for three weeks.

And they're ready for the conversation to move on.

But the conversation is just beginning.

>> One of the things that people have been heartened by is the outpouring of support from members of the white community and people acknowledging their privilege or recognizing it for the first time in some cases.

But there's this issue around performative anti-racism.

Congressmen wearing kente cloths.

Should we call it out or should we just applaud people for even trying?

>> I think it's a step in the right direction, however, a lot of the people who are performing anti-racism have not cleaned up their houses first.

And so I think we should call those people out.

When your company puts out a really highly crafted anti-racism message and you make a $100 million donation to anti-racist efforts, that's well and good.

But when you don't have a single black executive in the C suite, and you don't have many black board members and your black employees are miserable?

Then that statement truly is a performance and you're doing it because you recognize that your brand integrity will best be supported by making this statement.

And right now we're seeing a lot of corporations fall in line.

They have not said a single word about black lives mattering this entire time.

And so they realize this is the moment where they have to at least acknowledge that black lives matter.

>> Sometimes the media gets in a certain groove or certain narrative and will not shift out of it.

What is a narrative that you think needs to be abandoned and what is a narrative you think needs to be explored?

>> The key narrative I think that needs to be abandoned is this obsession with protests and protests versus riots.

We see a lot of work being put on the word "peaceful" for some of the protests that are happening, as if -- if we just march calmly and quietly, like good black people, that racism will suddenly end.

Looting is wrong.

We all know it.

But it's such a fraction of what's actually going on, but it's getting a disproportionate amount of media coverage, and so I would love to see that change.

>> Roxanne Gay, thank you so much for spending time with us.

>> Absolutely, thank you, Alison.

>> In our 2016 special, we brought you a story from Newark, New Jersey, a city with policing problems so dire that it was and still is under a federal consent decree.

It was reported by New Jersey public television's Michael Hill, who grew up in Newark.

>> No justice, no peace!

No justice, no peace!

>> A protest in Newark against police brutality is nothing new.

49 years ago this week, New Jersey's most populated city burned in rebellion.

Martial law was imposed and indelibly stained the city and those who lived through it, as I did in New York's North Ward as an 8-year-old boy.

I remember during that time my mother repeatedly warning us not to look out the window for fear of being shot, but I managed to sneak a peek or two from the second floor window.

And by looking out, I could see military vehicles and troops with big guns rolling down Fourth Street.

Barbara King remembers the fear she had during the riots.

She says little has changed.

>> We're still dying.

But thank God people are still struggling.

>> Four years later, people are still struggling as Michael Hill reports.

>> In 2014, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation revealed a pattern of Newark police division officers engaging in constitutional violations, and it deemed the Internal Affairs unit unable to hold them accountable.

The NPD has been under federal supervision since 2016.

Today the NPD is in the midst of a reform effort that can boast some success.

So it was surprising to some in May of this year when this video was posted to Facebook.

>> Put your [bleep] hands behind your back.

>> Now more cops coming.

Oh!

>> Stop doing that!

>> In the video a man comes face to face with officers.

A friend pulls him away.

Officers follow.

One pushes the man.

The man shouts profanities as he and the officers come face to face again.

No de-escalation as the new police training encourages.

Watch this.

[ Indistinct shouting ] >> [Bleep] Straight up.

>> Oh!

>> The police union president blamed the man for escalating the confrontation and he defends the punch.

>> There's nothing in any use of force continuum, anybody's department policy on use of force that says you can't punch a person in a certain place.

>> Amol Sinha, executive director of the state ACLU, says the officer crossed the line.

>> People have a constitutional right to curse at police, and the solution there shouldn't be to use force against them.

>> The Essex County prosecutor is investigating the encounter.

Meanwhile, accountability advocates such as Larry Hamm say they're glad incidents like this one aren't so common anymore.

>> We still have some police brutality cases, but nowhere at the level it was before the Justice Department came in.

>> The mayor of Newark is Ras Baraka.

He's the son of noted writer and civil rights advocate Amiri Baraka.

In 2014, before he was elected, Ras Baraka was himself a protester, demanding better policing.

Now he's a big part of that effort.

>> We have come a long way, fighting those things in our city.

>> Newark residents say they notice a change.

This is 26-year-old Chiron Sillems.

>> Police, you got to respect them right now.

>> Sillems says interactions with police are better.

He credits city leadership.

>> Our mayor, we got to respect Ras Baraka.

He's making a big difference right now.

>> Former New Jersey attorney general Peter Harvey leads the federal courts team monitoring the overhaul of the division, from use of force training to use of body cameras.

>> This department today is miles ahead of where it was when we began this consent decree process.

Frankly, it's miles ahead of where it was when the Department of Justice released its report.

>> Police say citizen complaints and civil judgment payouts have plummeted.

They post complaint descriptions and disciplinary actions online.

Now, officers and supervisors file excessive force complaints against other officers, something almost unheard of in most police departments.

>> Today, unlike then, we have a number of complaints that are initiated by the department, by the department itself.

And then officers are disciplined today for those types of complaints, which was not happening at all back then.

>> What's happening in Newark exemplifies how the force changed, says the independent federal monitor Peter Harvey.

>> It is very difficult, given the strength of many police unions, to muster that kind of political will among city councils and a mayor.

It's very difficult.

But a consent decree, a court order, can require it.

>> The consent decree mandates civilian oversight of the Newark police division.

The city came up with a civilian complaint review board, but in four years it has not heard a single case because the local police union is challenging it in court.

And the case has gone all the way to the state's Supreme Court.

Among the union's claims in its virtual state Supreme Court hearing, Newark illegally gave the board subpoena powers.

>> I'd submit the ordinance as written is quite simply unlawful and unenforceable.

>> The state Supreme Court is expected to rule any day.

Mayor Baraka hopes George Floyd's killing and coast-to-coast calls for change will influence the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision.

At this rally he urged protesters to send the court the George Floyd video.

>> Send the video of Floyd on his stomach, saying, "I can't breathe, they're gonna kill me."

Send that video, and hopefully they have a conscience to vote for a civilian complaint review board because the police can't police themselves!

>> In the summer of 1967, Newark residents rebelled against the racism, the poverty, the unaccountable policing they had experienced for years.

It began when two white police officers beat up cabbie John Smith and took him to the 17th Avenue precinct.

Witnesses say police in riot gear charged a peaceful demonstration outside, pushing reform and accountability demanding residents and protesters over the edge.

Five days of rioting followed years of cries for accountable policing.

The rebellion ravaged retail and residential neighborhoods.

This is Springfield Avenue today in the Central Ward.

This three-story house is the only structure on this block at 16th Street and Springfield Avenue here in Newark.

It and the abandoned field around it serve as symbols of just how challenging it is to attract investment to rebuild in a place like Newark, a place that burned 53 years ago in the '67 rebellion.

There are many more like this.

And because of those facts, for the generation that lived through that period, this is a stark reminder.

>> When the rebellion exploded, my family, we literally watched things happen from my second floor porch.

>> Larry Hamm took us to another neighborhood, back to his old neighborhood, with just one building left on the block.

The dry cleaners where his mother had worked is now a church.

Hamm began organizing protests at 17.

As the chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, he organized this year's May 30th protest while other cities were burning.

His march placed the mayor behind the lead banner and delivered a message to the world.

>> I don't think people want to see Newark burned down again.

That's pretty clear to me when I talk to people.

You know, that's why we're so glad when we had that demonstration, according to The New York Times of 12,000 people on May 30th.

It turned out without incident, without vandalism, without violence.

And the narrative the next day was exactly what we wanted.

Thousands gathered to demand justice for George Floyd.

>> Statistics show 25% of the calls to Newark police are non-police-related.

So in answering one national protest demand, Newark plans to shift 5% or more than $11 million from the public safety budget to bolster community programs such as this one, training police and others in the community about trauma-informed responses to violence.

>> I see a real gap in understanding the use of trauma as a frame of analysis for getting past this us versus them with police and community.

I think that by understanding trauma on both sides, transformation is possible.

>> The reappropriation would build on the police department hiring three social workers in 2016 and expand the city partnering with organizations like the Newark Community Street team.

It does conflict resolution and much more, such as holding public safety roundtables.

>> It's essentially about holding law enforcement, elected officials, those who get funding to provide services in our community, accountable.

We're about putting the "public" back into public safety.

>> The Street Team is a member of the Peace Initiative that the mayor deployed in the recent Justice for George Floyd march.

The Baraka administration insisted police keep a low profile, no battle line of officers in riot gear, no repeat of '67.

Time may answer the question for Newark and the nation, is this a moment or a movement?

>> Federal consent decrees like the one in place in Newark came into being following the beating of Rodney King at the hands of Los Angeles police officers.

It was a progressive part of the 1994 crime bill, but consent decrees and federal investigations into policing practices have been severely curtailed by the Trump administration.

But what about local police departments themselves?

What can they do to make a difference?

A new documentary called "Women in Blue," which will run on the PBS series "Independent Lens" later this year offers a clue.

More people of color and women on the force, people like the Minneapolis P.D.

sergeant Alice White.

>> I got assigned to become a sergeant in the 4th Precinct for a department that has a total of six black female officers.

It's important for the black community to see women who look like me in this role.

I honestly hope that seeing me helps them feel like whatever's going to happen is legitimate because they trust me.

It's the first time I put this shirt on with the stripes, and it looks different.

[ Chuckles ] The 4th Precinct is an amazing place.

It's gotten a bad rap, I think, because it has the highest percentage of violent crime in the city.

Lots of domestics.

Lots of shootings.

But there's still a lot of community in the 4th Precinct.

And that's North Point, a community health center.

I grew up riding my bike up and down Plymouth.

This is Plymouth Avenue.

And when I grew up, we called it "the ave." This is the 1600 block of Plymouth.

And this is the block that the Jamar Clark shooting occurred.

To me, that shooting was just as big as the Rodney King beating.

Like, Minneapolis was just one shooting away from a riot.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Police radio chatter ] Dude.

>> 405 traffic.

[ Siren chirps ] [ Police radio chatter ] >> Hi.

>> Hi.

>> Do you know why I'm stopping you?

>> No.

>> You can calm down.

I see you're shaking.

Just relax.

Relax, it's all good.

You should have waited, let that car go straight, and then you made your left-hand turn.

That's what alerted me to you, okay?

>> Okay.

>> Alright.

Do you have a valid driver's license?

>> I don't.

>> Okay.

>> But I was just dropping a friend off, and I was like, "Okay, fine."

>> So that's why you're nervous.

>> Yes.

>> Okay.

So I'm not going to take you to jail for not having a valid driver's license.

That's for sure, okay?

Do you have any warrants or anything?

>> I don't have any warrants.

>> Anything in the vehicle that I should be concerned about?

Okay, alright.

I'll be right back with you, okay?

Alright.

I'm not going to give you a ticket for the driving after suspension.

I can't allow you to drive this vehicle, though, so you're going to have to have someone come pick it up.

I'm not going to tow it either, okay?

Have a better day.

>> Yep.

>> Alright.

When I walked up to that guy, he was obviously shaking.

I know that fear.

Your heart starts racing.

Even as a police sergeant, I still know what it's like to feel nervous when the police get behind me.

I just tell people don't be nervous.

I don't want to add to the trauma.

>> I spoke about that film excerpt and more with a former police officer who rose to become the chief of police in Orlando, Florida, and now serves that state in Congress, Representative Val Demings.

Representative Demings, what in that excerpt speaks to you?

>> I don't know the sergeant, I never met her, but believe me, as I watched her, from putting on her uniform and looking at the shoes that she wears on her days off versus what she wears as a uniform, I have never met her, but I know her.

And I know just the tremendous amount of pressure, if you will.

The pressure to really be the person who does exactly what she did on the street.

I think women are just so good at understanding that you cannot arrest your way out of every situation.

She could have made that arrest because driving without a valid driver's license is an arrestable offense.

But why would you do that?

And her ability to talk to him, her ability to just calm him down initially I think was so important and is so important.

She treated him like I think she would treat her own son or another member of her family.

And it starts with how you communicate with people.

>> How do you change cultures in police departments?

>> It goes back to who you hire.

And, you know, so I think we have to do a better job of recruiting because many people who look like me, their fathers weren't police officers.

Their mothers weren't police officers.

They have no direct contact with law enforcement officers.

Or if they do, there's not been a positive experience.

So departments should reflect the community in which they serve, and then that diversity should be reflected at all rank levels, which means you have to have men and women in the agency who are the decision makers who come from black communities.

And then we have to do -- we have to look at training.

De-escalation training, as you just saw the Minneapolis sergeant so skillfully engage in.

And then we have to look at those who are training other officers.

You have to have a zero-tolerance policy, that racism or sexism or any other "ism" will not be tolerated.

And it can't just be called out from the top.

You know, it's great if the chief has a policy that says, "Look, it's not welcomed here."

When the rank and file hears it or sees it, they have to call it out as well.

I remember when we instituted human diversity training.

I was a detective sergeant at the time, and I told my squad that we were all going to go through it, and I remember some of the white male officers saying, well, they didn't have a problem, that they didn't have to go through the training.

And I said, "Well, let me just ask you to think about this.

I hear what you're saying, but let's think about you're out at lunch with some of your white colleagues, and the N-word comes up at the table."

I said, "Until you get to a point where you call it out yourself, I think you and the rest of us can benefit from the human diversity training."

So it has to be a standard in the rank and file and all the way up to the top of the agency.

>> Many of the activists say the police unions are an impediment to all these things that you've talked about and a lot of the reformers have talked about.

What is the role of a police union at this point?

>> You know, police unions, if we liken them to a -- an attorney, you're there to represent the officers.

You are not there to condone or even send the appearance that you are condoning bad behavior.

I know that the union president in Minneapolis likened the Black Lives Matter movement to terrorists.

That's just totally unacceptable.

That's a part of the problem and not the solution.

And there are many unions that do their jobs better than others, but in order for us to get to the place where we need to be, and that's to assist good police officers and get rid of the bad ones, then we've got to have unions that understand their role in helping us to do that.

>> People are making a point of how they want this country to change.

How do we get policymakers to do something?

>> What I think we realize with this particular incident is that racism is stubborn.

It has been the ghost in the room for 400 years.

But, Alison, I've also realized that the search for justice is also stubborn.

And I can imagine those who were engaged in the women's rights movement said, "How are we ever going to get Congress to move?"

Or those engaged in the civil rights movement, "How are we ever going to get our elected officials to move?"

Voting rights.

How are we going to get there?

But somehow we did.

There's always been in our history that turning point.

I really believe that this is one of those moments.

We've heard, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, not all of them -- we've heard colleagues say we need to change this, "I'm supportive of banning all neck restraints," or "I'm supportive of banning no-knock warrants."

Some have said in certain situations, but that's progress.

And what we have to do is take that spark and turn it into a raging fire that is in search for justice.

>> Representative Val Demings, thank you for being with us tonight.

>> Thank you.

>> The desire for change is rising.

You might even say to a fever pitch.

But acts of police violence have led us to similar moments in the past.

We might even have been on the verge of real change not that long ago.

That's according to lawyer and criminal justice reform activist Bryan Stevenson, best-selling author of the memoir "Just Mercy: A story of justice and redemption."

He recently spoke with my colleague Walter Isaacson on "Amanpour & Co." >> We have seen this kind of violence for decades.

And it's frustrating to me because five years ago, I was part of a task force that was convened by the White House, motivated by too many of these incidents of police violence, that attempted to create solutions, and we spent months going around the country.

We held hearings.

We had police chiefs and activists and academics and experts and community leaders all come together.

And we have 40 pages of recommendations that I believe would make it less likely that we would see the kind of violence that we see in that video.

>> What happened to those recommendations?

>> Well, they've been completely abandoned.

You know, the new administration came in, retreated from implementing any of those reforms, didn't create the financial incentives for communities to take up these recommendations.

And the infrastructure in the Justice Department largely disintegrated so that we don't have that kind of pressure, that kind of effort.

The Justice Department withdrew from lawsuits that have been made against cities that have engaged in problematic behavior, and the environment shifted in a way that didn't create and sustain the pressure that was created.

>> Tell me about some of those recommendations.

Give me a couple of them that you think we should be doing.

>> Sure.

Well, I mean, It's all about changing the culture of policing.

We have too many police officers in this country who are trained as soldiers.

We teach them how to shoot, we teach them how to fight, we teach them how to restrain people.

We don't teach them how to help people in a mental health crisis, how to interact with people who are psychotic.

We don't teach them how to de-escalate confrontations.

They don't know how to manage with the skill that they should manage complex situations when people of color and others have been provoked.

And because that orientation has reinforced a mind-set where police officers too often think of themselves as warriors, rather than guardians.

>> The barrier standing in the way of what Bryan Stevenson wishes to achieve are many.

Put another way -- there are a lot of good reasons why this time might not be different.

"NewsHour Weekend's" Christopher Booker has more.

>> It's disgusting.

It's disgusting!

>> There's a video making the rounds of New York police union leader Mike O'Meara responding to the criticism police have been hearing in recent weeks.

>> 375 million interactions with the public every year.

375 million interactions.

Overwhelmingly positive responses.

But I read in the papers all week, we all read in the papers, that in the black community, mothers are worried about their children getting home from school without being killed by a cop.

What world are we living in?

That doesn't happen.

>> Contrast that with a 2018 video clip that's also been making the rounds of comedian Chris Rock.

>> Here's the thing, here's the thing.

I know it's hard being a cop.

I know it's hard, I know it is, okay?

But some jobs can't have bad apples.

Okay?

Some jobs, everybody got to be good.

Like pilots.

[ Laughter and applause ] You know?

American Airlines can't be like, "You know, most of our pilots like to land."

[ Laughter ] "We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains."

>> With the power of a punchline, Rock lays bare just how incidents that might seem statistically insignificant can be good cause for making sweeping changes.

>> One of the police experts I talk to a lot loves to bring up the Tylenol scandal of the early 1980s.

>> Shaila Dewan is a reporter for The New York Times and has written extensively about the challenges of police reform in the United States.

She notes the corporate response when seven people died of poisoning in the notorious Tylenol tampering affair in the early 1980s.

>> Johnson & Johnson recalled hundreds of thousands of bottles of Tylenol, and they invented those annoying foil tamper-proof packaging things that we now have on every single bottle of medicine you ever buy.

So they didn't just say, "Oh, there were just a few bad bottles of Tylenol."

They had to reinvent the entire thing and regain the trust of consumers.

Why do we not see the same urgency in policing?

>> To start, Dewan says America could look at its lack of federal policing policy, its lack of national policing standards, and its lack of national training criteria and accreditation.

What the country does have is some 18,000 police departments, each operating independently.

>> Ferguson was our last moment of national reckoning.

One of the biggest things after Ferguson was just we need data.

We need to be able to know what this problem is.

And the two databases that were supposed to materialize, the database for deaths in custody, which would be George Floyd, hasn't happened yet.

And the database for police use of force, I understand, is about to have its first data release, but it's only covering 40% of the nation's police officers because it's voluntary.

>> How large of an influence are police unions when it comes to resisting reform?

>> Police unions have really emerged as, I think, the biggest roadblock to reform.

And that's because they have their fingerprint on all the obstacles.

So start with contractual protections for police officers.

Not only can officers appeal their discipline, they can appeal their terminations, and they're often reinstated, but they can also put in things like a "cooling-off period" after an incident occurs so that officers have a period of time before they have to speak to investigators.

One of the things that happens is that a chief comes in to change things and is blocked and opposed and can't get things done, so then that chief is caught between the union that's opposing the changes and the people that want the change that think the chief is not going quickly enough.

I mean, the country is littered with reformist police chiefs that are unemployed.

>> Last week the Minneapolis Chief of Police Medaria Arradondo announced the withdrawal from contract negotiations with the city's police federation.

The union boss had pledged to get the four officers involved in George Floyd's death their jobs back.

Officer Chauvin, the officer accused of killing George Floyd, who can be seen in the video with his knee on his neck, had at least 17 complaints on his record.

How is an officer like that still working on the street?

>> This is one of the ironies, right?

The Minneapolis police department was doing a lot of things right.

They had done implicit bias training.

They had done reconciliation.

They had done "procedural justice," which is all about how officers treat the public when they interact with them.

They had had the feds in to look at their disciplinary system and their early intervention system, which is where they're supposed to be able to identify officers who may become a problem before they become a problem.

They were doing all of these things that departments are supposed to be doing.

And yet you still see this.

And that tells you that changing policies is not enough.

You have to also change culture.

>> Absent a real concrete set of federal guidelines, do you think culture change is even possible?

>> Yes, but I think it's really hard to do.

And, you know, what you're seeing now is not helping because everyone's in their corners.

You know, the cops are being painted with a very broad brush.

Their opponents are being painted with a very broad brush.

And it's very hard to have a conversation then.

There's not just lack of trust on the public side.

Cops also don't trust the public to be able to understand what they face on a day-to-day basis.

And in that circumstance, culture change I think becomes much more difficult.

>> As protesters and activists call for a new kind of police force, one question is, what role will technology play?

And how will new systems avoid making the same old mistakes on race?

"NewsHour Weekend's" Hari Sreenivasan has more.

>> Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist at the MIT media lab.

She led a study that showed how facial recognition software from IBM, Microsoft, and Face++ were more accurate with white faces than with people that had darker skin.

>> So from the onset you might think a computer is just neutral.

So we have to think about facial recognition technologies and ask, how are they developed?

So, to teach a machine to see, the current way of doing it is to train the machine on a data set.

>> So that means that if I program the computer only to recognize white faces and the computer sees me, it might not know what to do with me?

>> Right.

So you have a greater risk of being misclassified, misidentified, if you're even detected at all.

>> Buolamwini even said as much to Congress last year about how bad the misclassification can be for people of color, citing bias in Amazon's facial recognition system.

>> We tested Amazon and also found that they had false -- They had error rates of over 30% for darker-skinned females.

As we were doing the analysis, we came across data sets that had, let's say, maybe 70% men and over 80% lighter-skinned individuals.

And so that's how a data-centric technology that you might assume is neutral because it's using algorithms, because it's using math, can become biased, right?

So, some people say garbage in, garbage out, bias inputs, bias outputs.

>> We're all now looking more closely at those biased outputs for the role they play in policing.

In 2016, the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology found that half of all American adults' faces are in a law enforcement database.

As this national conversation now includes reforming police departments and the practices that they have, one of the things that more and more police departments have access to is large volumes of video surveillance, right?

So they've got hours and hours of footage.

Where's the bad guy?

There he is, walking by, right?

So it seems like facial recognition is going to be pretty important for departments going forward over time.

>> So, I think we really have to take a pause when we say these systems will be helpful.

Helpful to who and what is the evidence that it actually works?

Across the pond in the U.K., where they have done tests of facial recognition technology, deployed purportedly to keep the public safe, there is a good intention.

What they found were false positive match rates of over 90%.

>> Last week IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft announced they would stop or put a hold on offering facial recognition technology to police departments.

Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, says his company won't lift that hold until there's federal regulation on facial recognition.

>> One of the things we've advocated and is now in the Washington state law is a rule that says if you're a company and you want to sell this technology to the government, for example, you must make it available for third-party testing.

Just think of the Consumer Reports and what it does for automobile safety.

We should have the similar ability for experts to test racial recognition technology and compare whether it's biased.

>> Smith says engineers at Microsoft have worked to include more diverse data sets and reduce bias in its facial recognition software after seeing Buolamwini's work.

But Smith is opposed to banning facial recognition outright.

>> We have seen this technology used to reunite families, to identify, say, someone who showed up in an emergency room who was suffering from mental health challenges who couldn't be identified but through facial recognition.

I think that's the kind of beneficial use that should be permitted.

>> Right now we're also in a climate where we have actively seen that there are drones patrolling over protests in the United States.

There are peaceful protesters who have been tear-gassed away from public squares.

So there is a significant concern people have that technologies like facial recognition will be used against them in their otherwise constitutional rights.

>> One of the great concerns that we've been raising since 2018 is the risk that facial recognition could be used to chill fundamental democratic freedoms like the ability to attend a peaceful and public protest.

We said in late 2018, we will not make our technology available for that purpose.

>> It's definitely a step in the right direction.

I want to point out that IBM has said they will not sell general-purpose facial recognition technology at all, which is a much further step than saying not selling to law enforcement.

A major question that I have for Microsoft and for Amazon is, who else are you selling to?

If we have to also question what kind of facial recognition technologies are being used not just in law enforcement, but throughout society?

Facebook has a patent that says, given all of this face data that they've collected over time, we can actually provide a service to retailers where when you walk in, we take an indication based on your face print to give them background information, or even come up with something like a trustworthiness score.

>> Trustworthiness is going to be the issue going forward, whether or not Americans can trust a technology or the companies or the police forces that use it.

>> Whatever the role technology may play in the future, policing will always involve human interaction.

"Amanpour & Co.'s" anchor Christiane Amanpour spoke with Art Acevedo, the chief of police in Houston, George Floyd's hometown, about why he believes it is important to sympathize with protesters but also defend his fellow officers.

>> Explain to us a little bit about the speech you made that went so viral.

>> Let's be real clear.

I want to make it real clear.

The vast majority of the police officers in this country, 100,000 of them, 18,000 police departments, do a phenomenal job.

They serve 25, 30, 35, 40 years, they never shoot anybody, they never hurt anybody.

They serve with honor, distinction, and courage.

But we still live in a country where we make too many excuses and tolerate mediocrity and tolerate police abuse.

There is no excusing a police officer putting his knee and keeping it on the neck of a man that's handcuffed, calling for mercy and calling for his mama.

There is no excuse for that, and there's no excuse for three officers sitting there and not intervening, as required, not just by policy, not just by law, but by our conscience, if we have one, and by the God that we're supposed to be following.

So we stand with the Floyd family.

We stand with our community, of all colors, all races, all creeds, and we are going to stand with them and march with them until they get justice because that's what they deserve and that's what's going to finally bring this kind of stuff not to an end, because the human condition isn't perfect and we will always have to deal between good and bad, but it will greatly reduce the potential for this stuff happening.

>> I'm joined now by the director of the Schomburg Center, poet and professor Kevin Young.

We're sitting in the Schomburg, where it's all about black history and black culture.

>> Yeah.

>> When you think about what's been happening with these protests and these calls for civil rights and equity and equality, what do you think?

>> Being in Harlem as we have for 95 years, we've seen a lot.

We've been through unrest before and uprisings before.

This one does feel different.

I think both having seen up close and endured the disparities for black and brown people around COVID-19.

And as you know, George Floyd survived having coronavirus, only to be killed by a police officer, in front of everyone, almost nonchalantly.

And so I think it gave special energy to this moment and galvanized folks in ways that we haven't always seen.

It's been a wide coalition of people in the street.

And I think people are risking life and limb, almost literally, the danger of proximity, in order to raise their voices against a greater danger.

>> How important do you think it was, the video was, in terms of sparking this moment?

>> We've been here before, whether it was Emmett Till and the photographs that his mother Mamie Till released to show just how bloodied and horribly disfigured he was in this lynching.

I've been thinking a lot about witnessing and how witnessing isn't just seeing something but also saying something later.

And that video, which I can't totally watch, really testifies and provides witness in ways that a lot of words that we used to say haven't quite convinced people of.

>> What do you think is important to preserve in this moment?

When I bring my kid back here in 25 years, what are we going to be looking at when we talk about the George Floyd exhibit?

>> Well, almost literally it will be memories and videos and placards and things like that of this moment.

We just the other day had a makeshift memorial that someone called for and set up at our fence outside.

So I think we're going to think about this mix of protests, of pandemic, of survival.

>> Kevin, you are a poet, and we asked you to pick a poem you think really speaks to this moment.

Would you read one for us?

>> Absolutely.

This is a poem from my book "Brown."

I have a triptych for Trayvon Martin, and this is the first poem in that triptych.

It's called "Not Guilty: A Frieze for Sandra Bland."

And as you remember, Sandra Bland died in police custody in suspicious circumstances.

"Not Guilty."

Because the night has no number, because the thunder doesn't mean rain, because maybe, because we must say your names and the list grows longer and more endless, I am writing this.

You are no gun nor holster, no finger aimed, thumb, a hammer cocked back all the way.

I refuse to bury you, to inter your name in earth or to burn you back to bone.

To what we all know, the soft song of your skull as an infant, the place God or your mother or same thing left untouched by hands.

That halo grown whole till they said you weren't, said that death could be your breath, could be a body or less.

And you grew more black and blue.

I refuse to watch.

I refuse.

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

I know you will rise and stay like the sea, the tide, all salt and shifting.

Don't ever leave.

>> Thank you, Kevin Young, and thanks to the Schomburg.

That's our report for tonight.

For everyone here at "NewsHour Weekend," I'm Alison Stewart.

Good night.

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