Police and Public Safety: Thaddeus Johnson
November 10th, 2022
“Reward police officers for the type of job we want them to do.”
Thaddeus Johnson is a former police officer, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. This broad-ranging conversation discusses law enforcement and empowering communities and citizens so we can all be safer.
Public safety falls under a much larger umbrella than just policing. Police officers need to be rewarded for community policing. There has been little accountability of police misconduct because of a lack of transparency. Many communities have been let down systemically, so governments need to restore them systemically, too. Citizens need to arm themselves with information and be engaged in their communities.
Follow Thaddeus on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/docthadjohnson
Follow Mila on Twitter:
Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/
Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!
http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&ver=standard
Sponsor
Thanks to Shopify for supporting the show! Go to shopify.com/hopeful for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today.
Want to support the show and get it early?
https://patreon.com/futurehindsight
Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Thaddeus Johnson
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
-
Thaddeus Johnson Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. For a free trial, go to Shopify.Com/hopeful.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:21] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
Officer: [00:00:37] You rolled your window up. What does that look like to me? Driver: [00:00:39] I mean, I was just rolling it up for my, for my safety.
Officer: [00:00:43] For your safety?
Driver: [00:00:43] Yeah. Nothing. I rolled up my window.
Officer: [00:00:46] Take off.
Driver: [00:00:47] That's my dad.
Officer: [00:00:48] Yeah.
Driver: [00:00:49] I rolled up, I rolled up my window.
Officer: [00:00:51] 320. Give me a unit code now.
Driver: [00:00:52] And he got mad because I rolled up my window. Officer: [00:00:55] Step right here.
Driver: [00:00:56] I rolled it up.
Officer: [00:00:57] Separate your feet. You're about to be arrested for blocking the roadway if you don't park and get out.
Driver: [00:01:04] I rolled.
Officer: [00:01:06] Park over there.
Driver: [00:01:07] He says I can't. It's my right.
Officer: [00:01:08] You are interfering with my job. You can go park over there.
Driver: [00:01:13] I rolled up my window. Like you said, it was my right to roll up my window.
Officer: [00:01:16] No, it's not.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:27] That's a clip from a video that went viral. It's police body cam footage from back in 2020 in Keller, North Texas. What you're hearing is the cops escalating a traffic stop for an alleged wide right turn into a young man arrested and cuffed; and his father, who pulled over to observe what was happening to his son, also being arrested, cuffed, wrestled to the ground and pepper sprayed. I think when I first spotted the video on Twitter a couple of months back, it was in a quote tweet from Rex Chapman and it was accompanied by the line, "There's no reforming this." And this is the crux of today's episode. Is there any reforming the police? After an election cycle in which public safety was yet again a central theme, tossed back and forth between crime is out of control and lock them up, versus ongoing efforts to reduce rates of incarceration and finding more justice in criminal justice, it feels like a good time to examine whether there is indeed any reforming the police and what it might look like.
I'm joined by Dr. Thaddeus Johnson. He's a former police officer, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:02:48] Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:51] So I thought we would start with talking about you, your journey from police officer to criminal justice professor. Tell me about why you started in law enforcement and why you moved into academia from there.
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:03:04] That's a great question. And, you know, my path to law enforcement was serendipitous. I come from a family where we don't have the best relationships or the best perspectives of police officers and law enforcement. I'm from Memphis, Tennessee, one of the civil rights what I call meccas. And a lot of flash points occurred in those areas. And so my parents were there, and my father was -- when you saw the pictures of people standing in black and white along the streets and the police officers with dogs and billy clubs -- that's my father were and many of his friends with those people in those pictures. And so those things are all passed on. And so that wasn't a route that I really wanted to take. And the truth be told, I need the job, right? I need to work. I'm a young man. I wasn't doing well in college. And, you know, I need to do something with my life. And I had the opportunity to join law enforcement. I was recruited. I moved up the ranks. I trained officers in deadly force, hand-to-hand combat, officer survival, criminal law report writing. And then one thing I noticed was that everybody I arrested looked just like me. In fact, the first arrest I made, the gentleman's address on his license was the street behind my grandma's house. Right. And so that kind of hits close to home and, you know, that wasn't the change that I wanted to affect or I felt like the change that I wanted to impact, I couldn't bring it on in that way. And then, you know, I got married and met my wife. She's an educator. She had done well in school, already educated person. And so we decided to go back to school together as a couple, as a family, because we both had certain social justice passions, things that we wanted to contribute to our communities, to our society, that in the positions that we were in didn't really allow us to have that that real change. We were part of a cogs and machines and it's hard to do work, but we were able to learn how to navigate these systems and public policy, how these things work on the ground. I always tell my students, "You have a law on the books and you have law in action." And for me, I understand both by having that experience and I completed school, my bachelor's degree, we came back to the States to complete my master's degree, and we decided to apply for doctoral programs together in Georgia State University, where we are faculty now. And this research has really kind of found me. I was looking at school-to- prison pipeline research with my wife, trying to understand how we prevent crime
through school intervention. I didn't want to think that with the police and but duty called, opportunities came, and even my research really took a turn like it was committed to this space when the George Floyd events happened. And there was a gap. There was a void. There weren't people that look like me with my background who understands the complexities of both sides that really were speaking to it. And so, yeah, we just kind of jumped in feet first. And here we are now focusing on reform and disparities and policy change.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:53] Well, it's great that you have the experience of both sides. I think that's what makes your perspective so valuable. But to echo Rex Chapman's response and the tweet to that video, is there any reforming the police? And what do you think of when police reform is being discussed?
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:06:14] The police can be reformed. We've made strides since the Jim Crow era. We made strides since the nineties. And in fact, at different levels of government, we've had police reform, justice reform, at different levels. Between 200 and 2016, there were like almost a thousand different reforms at state, local, and federal levels that impacted certain aspects of law enforcement. Also the other parts of the justice system. And so we've made strides, but it's a couple of things that we've forgotten about. Policing is a job. It's not this benevolent thing, that people are angels, and they're going out there and for the goodness of their heart. They're not volunteering for it. They have families, they have car notes, they have House notes. And so we have to understand that most police officers are policy compliant. And when we see officers misbehave, it's not the officer per se. It's the culture that the leadership and the policy allows to happen. And so one big policy issue that I think needs to happen or changing needs to occur if we want to really reform the police is we have to reward police officers for the type of job we want them to do. For instance, about 10 or 15% of police in this crime fighting where we make arrests, where we're in foot chase chases, in these types of pursuits. That's a small part. 85% of the job is building relationships, getting to know the people in your community on your beat. But officers are not rewarded for that. I'll share a simple story with you. I remember one time I changed a tire, and to me, that's community policing. It was a lady who had been my mom's age, my grandma, and it was pouring raining outside, a busy street at rush hour, and she had a flat tire. I get out my car, blue lights on. I changed the tire. I spent almost an hour on the car with her. She was frantic, calmed her down. And, you know, police officers, we have to account
for every second we spend. So you have to turn a daily activity log for each shift you're on. And my lieutenant said, saw that I spent an hour out on this call. And he said, What the hell are you doing? Changing tires? And I was like, No, no, no, this is, she was so happy. This is this is what policing is about. You know, I grew up watching, you know, Mayberry and Andy Griffith and these things, and I'm thinking about the community. And he was like, We don't pay you to change tires. We pay you to lock people, bus up, and to write tickets. And kind of that was a turning point for me, was like, hmm, if I could be rewarded for the job I was really doing, that really had an impact on crime because we know that we can impact crime much more broadly and deeply with options outside of arrest and traditional enforcement and that the police are part of. I knew then that that couldn't be the case. I knew the community that I came from, we didn't trust officers. We we didn't feel like they had our backs. We didn't feel like they could support us. And I wasn't being rewarded for the type of job that I found to be important. And so if we don't reward officers for those types of things, maybe women will never join the force. Maybe we'll always have disproportionalities in white men in the force versus with the rest of our society looks like, because we're not providing opportunities for people to be leaders to have advanced training if they want to be community-centered. That's why community policing hasn't really taken off, because how we reward people doesn't fit it.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:18] Mm hmm. It doesn't get rewarded. So I'm thinking about what you were just saying about actually having an impact on crime. So much of our discourse around public safety is driven by perceptions. People feel like it's getting worse, like they feel it, right. Although the data may not necessarily bear that out. But then isn't that the tricky thing, right? That safety is a fact, but it's also a feeling?
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:09:42] Yeah. And I always tell people that always the fear of crime is going to outpace the actual crime rates. Now, that's not to discount victims, the families, not at all, but it's not the actual crime levels in reality that impacts how people behave. It's the fear of crime. And so if people are afraid of crime, whether that's the truth or not, they won't go to the store. When the sun goes down, they won't go visit certain businesses. Certain neighborhoods would never be able to be revitalized or have these shocks of growth from economics or people bringing in to buy services or to be part of invest in those communities. Without those things that really impacts how how if businesses come into town. If businesses perceive that the crime levels are high. They're not going to come into town. They're not going to open up businesses in certain
neighborhoods where we need that economic or spark plug. These things are more than just a personal aspect. How people fear crime impacts how we as a society move. Social cohesion. You won't know your neighbors. You're afraid of your neighbor. If you see a crime, you won't report it. Or somebody needs help, you just turn your back. And so it causes the social contract to change. And so optics are so important and not just as important as substance, but it's very important.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:58] Right. So I think you gave us a really good hint about what effective community policing might look like with that story about taking the time to change a tire. But what kind of policing aside from something like this? Actually contributes to a community safety.
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:11:17] And that's a great question. And so when I mentioned reward structures earlier, the addition to that is if we don't reward officers for the jobs that are really doing and we only evaluate them based on arrest and traffic stops and these custodial experiences, you almost compel officers to treat citizens as commodities and not as actual co producers or to solutions to crime. And so we also know that police are disproportionately distributed, unevenly distributed across communities. So just because you're going to have more police in Black and brown and communities of color and underserved communities. And so you're going to have disproportionate context of roop. That's something that's structural. And so you have these structural aspects as well. But if police know that and they know that most use of force and citizen resistance happens during arrest, well, many of the arrests and things that officers are doing, don't really have any public safety value or marginal value. So research shows that police officers can can do business checks and and help businesses be secure. It has impacts on their business center and also on the surrounding communities. We know that many times the robberies that we all fear, particularly the robberies between strangers, usually occurs in places of leisure. Well, those are the commercial districts. You can make those places safer. You reduce the amount of robberies or the opportunity for it. Right. There are also shows that besides arrests, you can really impact things like violent crimes. So, for instance, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, they focus on traffic safety, reckless driving, running red lights, high rates of speed, and not more economic crimes, things like a broken tail light or tags expired. Right. What they found was when they focused on the real traffic crimes, use of force went down, assaults against officers went down. The homicide rates didn't change. They were the same before and after, but
crime rates went down as well and racial disparities and arrests went down. And several other cities have started understanding that we can't arrest our way out of this issue. But we also have to understand that many of these issues are much larger than the police if we want community safety. But the police are part of that plan. So I think those are some examples of things that we can think of and and do to impact policing on a boost on the ground level.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:32] Right. Well, that's a great example, except that I think largely we continue to reward traffic stops and arrests. Right. So why do we do that? You just said that we cannot arrest our way out of this. So why do we seem to be doubling down, actually, in many ways on a racist, expensive and ineffectual carceral state?
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:13:56] Public safety has been hijacked. Politically, it's been racialized, and it just didn't start. This is kind of always been the case. You want to give the appearance if you're tough on crime. And also, this is the thing. States reward local governments for these crime clearances, these arrest rates, and manage the traffic stops to bring in revenue as well, too. So, you know, that's part of they state governments and funding sources almost force departments to hunt. That's really what it is. It's not about public safety for the most part. It's about hunting. We can be for real. And we and we keep doubling down on these things because it gives the appearance that we're doing something where what we really need to do is take a two-pronged approach. We have to hold people accountable. But you also have to provide structural supports when people are incarcerated and they are released oftentimes with nothing but the clothes on their back. They're going back to the communities that had conditions that really led them to the lifestyle or trajectory of their threat or under police attention. Also, we talk about reintegration, but it's hard to reintegrate people in society who's been incarcerated when they were socially excluded from, in the first place. And so I will say this, America and the states have really been taking violent crime seriously. Not just now. Since the 2000s. We've always taken this seriously. Offenders, violent offenders, they're serving longer periods in prison than ever before. Right now, roughly about two thirds of America's state prisoners are there for violent offenses. But we still saw what we saw in 2020. And right now to this day. Because we haven't made the two pronged approach where we make investments in communities, Many of these communities we've let down systemically. So governments need to restore them systemically. I'll give you one example. In Atlanta, there was this neighborhood called Eastlake, and they
used to call it a little war zone. And this is not politically correct, but this is doing the Vietnam War area. They called it little Vietnam. Officers were afraid to go in there. You had food deserts. The schools were horrible of the housing was in abject conditions. There are no grocery stores. And so what they did is they came in, developers, nonprofits. The federal government provided funding and they built affordable housing. They have grocery stores there. They have a golf course. They're in charter schools so much that the PGA tournament has a major golf match there, every year. And so these are some things that we can do. And crime rates are, have gone down. Now, there are some other issues with it that we can talk about, where the community got smarter, more educated and whiter. Almost overnight. It starts talking about do we make investments in community or the people, or both. You know, you have to start somewhere. And so they took a two pronged approach and the police were involved. But you don't hear about it in the news. You don't hear much written about it or see much written about it. But these are the types of things that can really restore communities and improve public safety, not just for tomorrow or three years from now, but so that our grandchildren are not having this same conversation.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:54] Mm hmm. Well, it's a very powerful story, except you also said basically it became whiter. So it's, it's kind of like a double edged sword, right? You invest in the community, meaning in the housing and the businesses and the grocery stores. But then it also pushes out some people who were there for a long time potentially, or for sure, definitely, because you just said that the population changed. I have a question about accountability of police. I think... Well, it seems that the police are rarely held accountable, whether that's thanks to their union or to qualified immunity. So what would you like police accountability to look like?
Officer: [00:17:33] I think there needs to be some transparency and I think police officers deserve due process. Procedural justice works both ways. And so, for instance, in Atlanta, when their officers were in trouble for misconduct or the officers are involved in Rayshard Brooks' case, the officers were immediately terminated. What about the morale of the officers who need to serve the community? Due process has to work both ways. It's not just for citizens, it's for police as well. So I wanted to see a due process that's transparent. And I think we should hold officers accountable. And we talk about qualified immunity and absolute immunity. Those are just civil remedies. I think if officers break the law, they should be held accountable like anyone else. I do think that
unions have played a part, but the unions are really only doing their job because they're a labor interest group that's supposed to protect these officers. But I talked to many union heads nationally, and many of them are for reform. So they often get a bad rap nationally, even though you have some bad players. But we just need to have a conversation to really understand what's going on. I think it's just a system to where there has been no accountability. There has been a system where there has been no transparency. Things have changed. This is not 20 years ago. We have smartphones. We have the Internet. We're more aware socially than probably we've ever been before. And so I think many times, even if officers are being held accountable, even in places like Chicago. They're some there's been racial disparities in even how officers are disciplined in the severity and the frequency. And so it's not just that the racial disparities that we see on the outside. These things seep in to the inside because it's only a microcosm of our greater society. And so many times people ask me, well, can we remove these isms and all of these things from policing? I'll say, Can we remove it from America? And so that's the backdrop in which we're working in. Officers definitely not being held accountable criminally like they should. Some officers should be decertified. You have a thing called gypsy officers where they're about to get in trouble at a small agency and they just go and laterally transfer somewhere else. There is no central registry that keeps up with officers who move from department to department. I mean, even we have issues with departments reporting data. And so not just officer accountability, but departmental accountability, because that's our data. We pay taxes for it. We shouldn't have to beg for it or search through the corners of the Internet for these data. And so I think that we need to have some strong conversations. We need to also hold our leaders accountable. And I appreciate opportunities like this to talk to citizens who may not be privy to the things that us insiders have, but they can really understand the power that they have and they can reimagine the type of police department that they really want, the public safety that they want. But without that transparency, you can't have accountability, if you don't have transparency. And so I think that's the first step. But yeah, so many police misconduct complaints go unfounded, not because police departments are hiding their things, but citizens just don't have faith. They're not going to follow up with interviews. It's like, oh, they're not going to do anything. And so, you know, it's like an abusive relationship where like, you know, you're asking the victim, Oh, you got to come down, you've got to do this, you have to do that. But if you really want justice to be extracted, we have to make those steps, even though they may be painful. And so I would say the police departments
have a role. But citizens, we also have a role as well to not only hold the citizens themselves accountable, but the departments are accountable and following through to make sure that account bears out. So.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:47] Yeah, well, you know, I'm a huge fan of everything you said just now, because here on Future Hindsight, we definitely believe that citizens are very powerful and that we have a role to play in making our world, the world that we want to live in. We're going to pause for a few words from our sponsors. But when we come back, Thad Johnson with real life examples of smart, effective police reform in action and how it can transform communities. But first, we want to tell you about another podcast you love. Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. Talk Easy is a different kind of weekly interview show. Every Sunday, Sam invites an activist, artist, or writer to come to the table and speak from the heart in ways you probably haven't heard from them before. Talk Easy has released over 250 conversations with people shaping our culture today. Some of our favorites include Stacey Abrams, Ocean Vuong, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Anita Hill, Jenny Slate, and Questlove. And be sure to check out their recent episode with Congresswoman Cori Bush and her focus on legislation around mental health, police reform, and affordable housing. Driven by an inquisitiveness about who we are and who we become, Talk Easy is a place where people sound like people. Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, available wherever you get your podcasts. Can we talk about notifications for a second? Who actually leaves those sounds on anymore? Well, besides that kind, that's another sale on Shopify. The all in one commerce platform to start, grow and run your business with Shopify. You'll create an online store in your vibe, discover new customers, and grow the following that keeps them coming back. Whether your thing is vintage tees or recipes for ghee, start selling with Shopify and join the platform simplifying commerce for millions of your favorite businesses worldwide. Shopify has all the sales channels sorted, so your business keeps growing from an in-person POS system to an all in one commerce platform, even across social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. And thanks to 24/7 support and free libraries full of educational content, Shopify has got you every step of the way. It's how every minute new sellers around the world make their first sale with Shopify. And you will, too. When you're ready to launch your thing into the spotlight, do it with Shopify, the Commerce platform backing millions of businesses down the street and around the globe. This is possibility Powered by Shopify. Shopify makes it simple to sell to anyone from anywhere, so you can put yourself and your ideas out
there. Whether your thing is making e-books or earrings, Shopify makes your success possible. Making your idea real opens endless possibilities. I love how Shopify makes it easy for anyone to successfully run your own business. It's never been easier to start and grow a business, thanks to Shopify. Go on, try Shopify for free and start selling anywhere. Sign up for a free trial at shopify.com/hopeful. Go to Shopify.com/hopeful to start selling online today. Shopify.com/hopeful. And now let's return to my conversation with Thad Johnson.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:23] So as you've been pointing out to us, there have been police and public safety reforms in recent years and that there have been some very successful ones. Tell us about some of the highlights that you would like to share with the listeners and what we can learn from them.
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:24:36] So it's a couple of things I want to share with the listener. First. A lot of the injustices or disparities that we've seen in our justice system, they've been narrowing and improving. For instance, in imprisonment. The racial disparity in state imprisonment dropped from over 8 to 1 to, now it's about 5 to 1. Still a disparity, but there are some improvement. Drug imprisonment. Black people were 15 times more likely to be arrested than white people in 2000. Today, that's just under 5 to 1. Still there. But improvements are being held. We also see that in state prisons, white people, more so than Black people, are more likely to have their parole revoked or violate a parole terms and be returned to prison for that. So there have been some improvements across the board where we're more equitable justice. But only half of what I just told you all really has to do what the justice system did. The other half is just differences in population growth in how we calculate things. But despite that, there's been been improvements. Places like I believe it's Newark or Camden. I may be wrong, but they both had a lot of reform there in one year, I believe it's the Camden police department that didn't fire a single shot in 2021. Now. They made more stops of their citizens. So I have to tell you both sides of it. They made more stops of their citizens. The crime levels didn't really drop, but they took a trauma informed approach to policing and talk to the citizens where citizens can talk about their trauma. But officers are human beings, too. And I think we also did talk about officer wellness for real. Like, if you're not well, how can you keep communities safe? If an officer is beat up in the scruff, in a fight, you lick your wounds and you go back out there. If you're involved in the shooting. Oh, it's justifiable legally? "Okay, here's your gun. You go back out there."
Where's the counseling? Officers working 50, 60 hours a week, working part time jobs. The departments are short. How can we expect them to make the the best decisions? And so we have to really look at officers as people as well. And some places have done that, like I mentioned in New Jersey. New Jersey is also... The governor made it illegal and prohibited officers evaluations to contain any information about the counts for stops, searches, and those additional measures that we talked about. You also saw places like Cincinnati, who... This just talks about the political will, how that is strong. Cincinnati, because of a consent decree, they took it seriously and they had this court backed partnership between community members, police departments, social services. And what we saw was they took a different approach. They became more transparent. Officers are being held accountable, or at least you were understanding why they weren't being held accountable. Had media campaigns. All these things they had was part of it, and racial disparities dropped, crime dropped, and less officers were assaulted. And this happened from like the early 2000s to about 2017 and the political world changed and they stopped abiding by these guidelines and principles. And you know what happened? We're starting to see the things that were in place before they took this partnership. You also have places and I'll just name a few more. In Dallas, Texas, where they partner police officers in plainclothes with the social service and mental health providers to answer those calls where we probably don't really need an enforcement outcome. We need to train professionals, but we have to keep these service providers safe because those jobs are not as safe as people think they are. You hear the stories of service providers, social workers being stabbed and killed, being assaulted. And so we have to protect our service providers. You saw a lot of more mental health and drug referrals, increase arrests, decrease those instances, became safer with the Dallas Stars program, but the funding is working. Why don't you fund it? Yeah. And then a couple other places like San Francisco. You know, we don't talk about our undocumented immigrants who, they deserve protection. Doesn't matter what you feel about it. They're human beings. Our sex industry workers, if they're assaulted and victimized, they need to feel safe to come to the police and not feel they're going to be judged or arrested. And so places like San Francisco, places in Texas, other places like San Diego. They have done these things so that where undocumented immigrants and also sex industry workers, they can feel safe. The homeless population. There's so much victimization that goes on in there. So much mental health issues. So much abuse and trauma. Some places like even Atlanta, they partner with the police department and it's the pilot program. And what they do is businesses call for someone who's maybe,
you know, begging for change or something. Right. We all know when we go in the stores, what they did was they call them, they have their own number, and they'll come and try to provide services for these individuals and find that non-enforcement outlet. And so it's not just a police issue. What we're seeing, what I'm talking about is cities have come together. All the experts and service providers have understood that the justice system's job is to punish and blame people, and we do it damn good. That's our job. Everything else we need help with. And we have to understand that. And the cities that start getting it right or have been getting it right, those are the ones who have understood that public safety falls within a much larger umbrella than just policing.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:33] Oh, yeah. I like the way you put that. I mean, I think you giving this holistic picture about the complexity of public safety; that policing is one part, as opposed to public safety's part of policing. It's that policing is part of public safety and that we're all human and we all deserve to be safe. I think that's such a great reminder. So since you spoke about the police as human beings and we just watched this clip together, when you see or hear police behaving like in that clip we played up top, what's your reaction? Because you are a former police officer. What are you thinking when you watch a video like that?
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:30:14] My blood was boiling and I wasn't sure if I could, you know, gain my composure in time. But I think I think this rawness is good. So the first thing I always ask, I think about, is when I saw, for instance, Derek Chauvin, when he was kneeling over George Floyd, I didn't see this evil man. What I saw was a city department, the leadership that let down both George Floyd and Derek Chauvin because he should never be in a leadership position in the first place. He should have gotten counseling. He's already had a history of it. And so the one thing is that you can't make officers simply the scapegoat because this behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum. The leadership, the policy, the culture. Remember, officers usually behave according to the culture. Culture is permitted. Culture doesn't enforce itself. Leadership permits culture. So we have to hold the leaders accountable and not just simply focus on the officers. But also as a Black man, the one thing that the the gentleman who was being pulled over said was, I was afraid. And I tell you right now, I've been driving home at night in my uniform and I had to go a badge. I far outrank anybody on the street. And my heart's racing because I know these are good people. I train many of them, but it's just that that's there. And we have to recognize that it's real. And fear will make you flee.
There's a flight fight or freeze. And oftentimes in policing, how we're trained that can get individuals seriously hurt or killed. I think the officers were hyper aggressive. I think the officer should have done a better job of explaining to the gentleman what was going on. Apparently, there was no cultural sensitivity training. It wasn't prioritized because they would understand that certain communities who are nonwhite, we don't feel the same way about police, not that we disrespect them or think they're not needed because, and that's another thing. We think that these communities don't want to be policed. But if you look at national reports and surveys, most of these communities who are suffering with crime, Black and brown communities, they either want the same amount of police or more. When they had to defund the police movement and had the vote in Minneapolis, which was the major hub of of of the emerging civil rights movement, what we saw was that two thirds of Black voters said, "Oh, hell no, you took everything else. You're not going to take security from us." And so I think, you know, we need to understand that these communities want to be protected. These officers apparently were comfortable doing this. These officers also did not know the law. I would save some of my more colorful comments, because I like to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this officer has a bad day, kind of a bad call. Maybe they had something traumatizing happen. Maybe they're short fuse because because he seemed very worried about safety or quote unquote, safety. And maybe he's paranoid because he doesn't trust the citizens themselves. And so we have to try to give both sides of it. But to arrest the father now, to put this man in cuffs and not just talk to him, you treating him like a criminal when he is just afraid. The officers don't know that. And we don't know the backdrop. We only saw the clip that we saw. But also the father comes and the father is talking to his son. Maybe the officers can talk to dad and say, "Hey, this is what's going on and he's going to be okay. But this is just what we thought." Didn't take time to do that. The truth be told, you know, who citizens are? They pay taxes. They really support our salaries. And so we need to treat them as such and not like enemies. But you know how we train officers? I thought I was going to be fighting and shooting every day. I thought I was preparing for the fight or for an enemy. And it's not like that. And so these officers are triggered maybe differently. All these events have been going on. Officers are being assaulted. Seems more regular, covered in the news. Officers being killed. Officers are afraid, too. So you see this fear is on both sides. And then you don't have that cultural sensitivity or understanding. These type of things happen. I don't want to say I wouldn't want these officers pulling me over on the streets, but they didn't treat them with
respect. They made what I want to call an illegal arrest. And to me, something like that is grounds for termination.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:13] Yes, Yes, I hear that. In fact, I know there were repercussions. The former Keller, Texas, police officer who was in that traffic stop pleaded guilty in October to official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor.
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:34:27] This sounds right. I mean, you know, I mentioned the illegal arrest on my end, but also there was excessive force. He was already on the ground. He wasn't resisting. And there are different ways. And you don't really use pepper spray or O.C. Spray. That's a weapon. It's not a firearm. It's a weapon. You can use pressure point control tactics. You can you can do joint manipulation. You can do certain things where you can actually control persons and minimize injury without using a weapon on them. It didn't call for a weapon at all. And so besides excessive force, I would say it's assault and also an illegal arrest. And so as long as they're not wearing a uniform, that works for me.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:06] So I want to take a slight detour here. Well, maybe it's a detour, maybe it's not. But to talk about symbolism and politics, what does it mean when the Blue Lives Matter flag becomes a symbol for white supremacists and is flown by insurgents on January 6th? I suppose I'm really asking an old question here with some new symbols. When law and order becomes the banner of the right and progressives are painted as, quote, soft on crime and who doesn't want to be safe -- like you just mentioned that, right? We talked about this at length. Everybody wants to be safe, including police officers. So I suppose fundamentally I'm asking how do we get off this axis to achieve compassionate common sense reform for safer communities?
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:35:52] I will say it will be hard because it's this racist, sexist, patriarchal, capitalistic backdrop that creates a brew that's often toxic and allows people to take advantage of it; allows people to play on these fears. Because when I see the war on drugs or the war on crime, we know what they're talking about. That's rhetoric for war on less fair-skinned people, Black and brown communities and non-white communities. That's what it means. That's where police resources are allocated on. That's why we saw the drug war, even though there's no research or evidence that black people or minorities use drugs at a different rate than their white counterparts. So
you have that ism there and that makes it really difficult. But it doesn't mean that we're hopeless. And the problem is oftentimes politics and policing are so interconnected and that oftentimes people may be angry with the government. And they're angry with police because they're the face of the government. They're the enforcement or oppressive arm historically of the government and vice versa. And so it's really difficult from when your president is playing to these antiquated and toxic values and emotions and playing on people's fears. And fear is very powerful. And you have to also understand that. Culturally, as a black man, I have to understand what this white man who lives in the Midwest, who may be poor, may be struggling, family business is going out, what have you. Foreclosure. It's like they have affirmative action. They helping them out. Maybe there's really no structure in historically what goes on. I can see why he would be pissed off.
Officer: [00:37:33] And you have somebody in parties who play on that. I don't really blame the individual. Again, I point to the leadership, but we elect our officials and so should we be mad at them or should we be pissed at ourselves? And that's a question we have to ask because there is no neutral ground in this fight. It's a fight. We're fighting for our future. I shouldn't be dealing with the same things that my great grandparents dealt with. And definitely our grandchildren shouldn't be dealing with this. But. At the backdrop. Is there racism which creates equity gaps at the backdrop? Women still get paid less than men. How This doesn't create tensions. How can people not be angry and on edge and fearful and individualistic? They play us against each other all the time, but we have to make sure that we are the ones who are electing the people that really know our values or reflect our values. How many times have we looked at the prosecutors or the district attorneys on our ballots in our county and local elections? Do we really know their backgrounds or do we just vote? Because, you know, my mama voted Democrat, I'm going to vote Democratic or I recognize this name because it's an incumbent. I'm okay. So I guess I'll just go ahead and vote or people don't vote at all and they're just been totally disenfranchised and removed from the process. You know, those are some things that we have to address because. Government officials just don't pop into office. And I think I should leave it at that.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:56] Yes. They don't just pop into the office. It is for sure incumbent upon us to be good citizens and vote and make sure we vote the good people, the people who represent us and our values in and vote the quote unquote, bad people who
don't represent our values out. So speaking of which, what are two things everyday people can do to press for sensible police reform and also maybe things they shouldn't do?
Officer: [00:39:23] Hmm. So it's one thing is, is it's hard to remove the emotion from it. Hard to remove the politics from it. And it's hard to tell people to educate themselves. It's difficult, first of all, because how many people have access to academic journals that they talk about the best evidence based practices? How many police departments have access to these journals and scientific journals that have these best practices that we do in academe? And so I think one thing and I answer your question, I think academia can get away from behind their ivory desk and their ivory walls and go into these communities, go work with these practitioners who are dying to this information. So what people don't really realize, many people in these in these positions and in the public sector, they want to affect change. They want to do better. But it's difficult because they're not empowered. And so one things that we need citizens to do is to arm themselves with information, to be a more educated citizen, be a more educated consumer. But that's asking a whole lot about what you can do as a citizen. You can come together and hold community meetings. You can have community representatives. You don't have to wait for someone to empower you. We have all the empowerment that we need. Just need somebody to start that match. Somebody needs to start that match. You know, my wife always says when you ask people who wants change, they raise their hand. Who wants to be the change? Hmm. Who wants to work for change. And so we can't be complacent as a society. And it sounds like rhetoric. It sounds like, you know, oh, you know, the cow jumped over the moon.
Officer: [00:40:59] I know it sounds an oh, vote, vote, vote is too slow. But we didn't get into this issue overnight. And so we're not going to change overnight. So what can citizens do? Educate themselves and write a list right up to top five lists of what you want as a citizen. And when you're voting and election season comes, you find the candidate that matches your values the most. Forget party lines. You vote along that. It doesn't sound like a whole bunch, but you can. I mean, as citizens, we want safe communities. We can make sure that our communities are cleaner if we see trash, if you can pick it up off the ground, we can make sure we look out for our neighbors. We can make sure that we do our own well in this checks. So it's things that we as citizens can do. But I know we've been so traumatized and we're so tired, particularly from this
last election period and the one before with the covert and the hate crimes. It's tiring and I know that. But we can't come complacent and we can't give up. And so educate yourselves, hold your leaders accountable, or you run for office. You want policing to be better. Put the application in. I mean, I know these things sound bad, but, you know, it's those things really, really matter. And what shouldn't you do? Be silent. Shouldn't you do to sit back and take it? What shouldn't you do? My vote doesn't count. My voice doesn't count. Because if you have 200 million people saying that my voice doesn't count, then people who don't really represent us will make decisions for us 100%.
Mila Atmos: [00:42:32] All very good advice. Thank you for really telling us what we really shouldn't be doing, because I think sometimes we don't talk about that. But it's really important to understand. Yes, you shouldn't just take it for sure. So it's really good that you pointed out to us what we shouldn't be doing. And I wanted to ask you a question about when to call the cops because there's so much messaging now to never call the police because the system is so broken and so dangerous for so many. And we've seen so many videos. It's like this endless barrage, right? Like, oh, my God, it all went sideways. So for you personally, when would you call the police?
Officer: [00:43:13] Well, the first thing I would try to tell people is that most police officers are hardworking individuals who really want to do the best. Even times we see cases of misconduct, it usually comes from a place of public service motivation to where they may become a little bit overzealous. And so we have to understand at this core, the numbers of knucklehead officers out there are small. The problem is that generally the most productive and they generate the most complaints and they impact our perception. Many of the good officers out there are just they feel just as empowered, if that's the word as many of you all do. And so call the police when you're fearful. If it's not an emergency, of course, don't call 911, but call the police dispatch, if you have a question. I think that should I should I not call the non-emergency dispatch if that's the case? Right. Even if you call 911. I'm not advocating just frivolous calls, but it's better safe than sorry. You shouldn't make that judgment call. That's what officers are here for. And my injured dispatchers understand they're smart people, but we don't talk about them enough. They understand that what officers to send for certain calls, they understand the personnel, they have contacts with many other if as an EMT or other service providers, it was a referral that you needed this best can really help you. And if you don't need police, they can help provide you with the services that you need. So these people
are paid to do this job and most of them enjoy doing their job. And so call them if there's a question about it, call them if it's not emergency in life or death, maybe that 911.
Officer: [00:44:47] But if you can't think clearly in that moment that the police department figured it out, I even tell you know, tell my students when they talk about, you know, this is a different line. If an officer asked me to search my vehicle, should I say yes or no? Look, it's his job to figure it out. It's your job as a citizen to make sure that your rights are advocated for and protected. And so so it's important that we know that these individuals don't mind doing the job. They get paid to do a job, and they didn't enter the work force in this particular profession because it pays riches untold. Most people come in because they want to help. Most people come in because they want to make a difference. It's just that frustration that comes along that may impact that. You know, as an officer, it will make my day sometimes to to make sure that I could help a citizen. If I can help resolve something, it will make my day. Sometimes when the citizen just said, hey, you know, you're doing a great job. And so relationship is relationship. You know, you call and you use that information. But so often people are afraid to call. They don't trust the police. They don't have confidence in the police. And oftentimes, you know, because of the lack of training, we may not be the most tactful when we're talking to our citizens. And we forget that, you know, police officers just have a badge and they have one additional power that citizens don't have. And beyond that, there are resources. And so use them, call them, use them, call them. Let them decide whether it's a call that's worthy or not.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:10] Oh, good advice. Well, last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:46:18] What makes me hopeful is that a lot of work is going on. We just came back from a Council on Criminal Justice summit last week where we had 200 of the nation's top lawmakers, criminal justice experts from different sides of the political spectrum. And we all were able to agree on many things. And the things that we couldn't agree on, we found that they were marginal, that they really didn't matter. So there's people working across the aisles. One of the most reform minded governors in the last couple of decades was Nathan Deal in Georgia, who was a big advocate of criminal justice reform. But because he's Republican, many may not think that. And so you have a lot of good people on both sides of the aisle. That makes me
hopeful. It also makes me hopeful that there are improvements happening. It makes me hopeful that many police departments really want to provide the best service. We have to hold our city leaders accountable to resource them with what they need to do and listen to them. But I'm so, so hopeful. We've seen evidence racial disparities are narrowing. We made that can explain why. But a spirit of reform is going on. Our citizens are much more socially conscious. Our citizens are understanding that they have a role in this and they are feeling less empowered. So my students, the heart that they have for service, how they want to make a change, how they want to impact, how they understanding the structural aspects. And I think also with George Floyd, for me, the dirty little secret is that racism is real. And I think, you know, with us really acknowledging that for me, all of those things make me hopeful.
Mila Atmos: [00:47:52] Thank you. Those are indeed hopeful things. Thank you so much for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on.
Thaddeus Johnson: [00:48:00] It was my honor. Thank you so much.
Mila Atmos: [00:48:02] Dr. Thaddeus Johnson is a former police officer, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.
Next time on Future Hindsight, we'll be joined by Rebecca Cokley. She's a disability rights advocate and the first US disability rights program officer for the Ford Foundation. From 2009 to 2013, she served as an appointee in President Barack Obama's White House.
Rebecca Cokley: [00:48:37] And I think many times non-disabled people feel that they're the expert. And so the number of times that I've had someone tell me, "Oh, you're not disabled, Rebecca," or "I don't think of you, I hardly think of you as disabled. You're just little." And I'm like, "I don't need you to tell me what I am and what I'm not. And frankly, that's really messed up. And I need you to back, like, back away from the little person."
Mila Atmos: [00:48:56] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
Have you checked us out on Instagram yet? We've got a bunch more tips to help you build your Civic action toolkit. Follow us on Instagram @FutureHindsightPod to get special updates, episode clips, and everything in between.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:49:27] This podcast is part of the democracy group.