The New Yorker Radio Hour - Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Violence in Chicago, and William Finnegan on the Power of Police Unions

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Before she became the mayor of Chicago, last year, Lori Lightfoot spent nearly a decade working on police reform. Now Lightfoot is facing civil unrest over police brutality and criticism by the President for the homicide and shooting rates in her city. David Remnick spoke with Mayor Lightfoot about the state of the city, policing, and President Trump’s recent decision to send two hundred federal agents to help “drive down violent crime.” Plus, The New Yorker’s William Finnegan reports on what the repeal of an arcane law reveals about the conflict among police, protesters, and politicians. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Until becoming mayor of Chicago last year, Lori Lightfoot had never held elected office, but she'd served as a prosecutor and spent nearly a decade working on police reform. Now she's contending with civil unrest over police violence, and at the same time, the president of the United States is constantly attacking her for the city's homicide. and gun violence rates. Last week, Donald Trump announced that he's sending to Chicago 200 federal agents.

You have the hardest job in America, maybe. They used to say that about New York City. Being a big city mayor is tough no matter where you sit. I can't imagine. So let's begin. President Trump recently announced that he was sending 200 federal agents to Chicago to do what he called fight crime. Were you involved in that decision?

No. You know, the president frequently says things that may or may not actually be accurate. What hasn't happened yet, but I anticipate happening, is additional resources to the FBI, DEA, ATF, to really plug into existing criminal investigations around guns, gangs, and violent crime. And unlike what happened in Portland, I think the circumstances, are different despite the rhetorical flourishes that come from the president and others in his administration. It sounds like you welcome the help from President Trump. I don't think of it as help from President Trump because there's a lot of things that the president

could do, which he refuses to do. And I get it, I suppose. But our biggest driver of violence is handguns. Every single year, our police department seizes more illegal guns than New York city or LA, and that's a massive number. And the reason is we're surrounded by other jurisdictions that have very lax gun laws. And if the president really wanted to do something that would be a game changer, do something around that, do something about assault weapons, empower the ATF to truly regulate federally licensed gun dealers. There's a number of things that the federal government is uniquely qualified to do that he refuses to do that would actually make a difference in a city like Chicago.

Have you had a chance to express that to him and what kind of response do you get? I have done that in two ways. I wrote a letter and sent that with no response. And out of the blue, he called me and I expressed the same thing there. Not interested. And look, I think we're all smart enough to see what's going on. the president's in the political fight of his life. He is borrowing from the 1968 playbook of Richard Nixon

to scare the white people and the thinking that cities are dangerous and that he's the law and order president. But obviously, the whole country is very, very different now than it was back then. So it's just that tactic is just not going to work. What is the president trying to do when he says things like this? As recently as two weeks ago, he called the violence in Chicago worse than Afghanistan. And he said, that's worse than any war zone that we're in by a lot, which is, of course, untrue. Why is he so focused on Chicago and what is that rhetoric all about?

You know, I can't explain why he's so focused on Chicago, particularly because he has one of his signature properties here. And ironically, if you look at the advertising for the Trump Hotel and apartments, it describes Chicago in the most glowing, pristine terms. You're not suggesting he's hypocritical in any way, are you? Oh, well, you know, just a tad. But, you know, look, I think part of what he's doing, if you look at the cities where he's really been hitting the hardest, well, first of all, they're all Democratic cities. And most of the cities are cities run by Democratic women, whether it's me here in Chicago, Kishelands Bottoms in Atlanta, Mira, Bowser in Washington, D.C., Jenny Durkin in Seattle. That's not a coincidence.

And it says what to you? Well, I think it underscores his utter disrespect for women, particularly powerful women who are actually getting things done on behalf of their residents. He thinks we're easy. And he's picked the wrong group of women to try to muscle. We're all tough. There's been an upswell and demand, as you well know, to defund the police. What does that term mean to you? What's your response to that?

To me, what it really means is this. In a city like Chicago, where huge portions of black and brown communities have seen so little investment, really in decades, what people are saying is they want some equity. They don't want 50% of the city budget spent on policing. They want a more proportionate share of those money

spent on things like a portable housing, things like closing the health care gap, mental health services, job training. The list goes on and on. And I agree with that. The challenge is that because historically, governments have spent increasingly less money on the so-called social safety net and investments in black and brown neighborhoods, the police have been put in, I think, an untoneable position where they're called upon to service calls for service on issues for which they are never going to be properly situated. So I hope one of the things that comes out of this conversation that we're in, both locally and nationally, is a real discussion about what is the proper role of the police, what's the job description? What do you think is the ideal role for the police in practical

terms. Look, first of all, the police have to continue to build authentic relationships with the residents that they serve. They've got to get out of their cars. They've got to be seen as people and not just some dude behind a cruiser with a gun and a badge. When you say that, does the leadership of the Chicago Police Department resist that? No. No, we have a, I think, a very different set of circumstances here than, for example, what has been written about in your magazine regarding New York, for example. We're in a very different place. Because the union here, the police union is so conservative.

It's hardly a reformist union, and they resist these kinds of reforms. I'm talking about New York now. Look, I don't know of a union across the country that embraces reform. I think that's a bitter pill for them to swallow. But obviously, there's degrees on a spectrum. I think New York is probably in the most extreme. and Chicago is probably somewhere in the middle. Now, the Department of Justice found that Chicago police use force almost 10 times more on black people than white people.

We've also seen evidence that the department essentially ran a torture program targeting black men for decades up until the early 90s. Is the Chicago Police Department a racist institution? I think that people believe it's racist. In the aftermath, I certainly think that police officers are the product of the neighborhoods in which they're raised. Chicago is a deeply segregated city. It's not infrequent that officers will grow up in an environment where they nobody who looks different than them. That's how segregated our city is, unfortunately. And then when they get into the academy, they're oftentimes meeting people who, were different than them for the very first time as peers. And so I think the missed opportunity that would start to address the racism is to take that

head on in recruit classes and call it what it is. Now, we have reinstituted procedural justice, unconscious bias training, but I think we've got to go deeper than what we have done so far. And I'm pushing the police department to do that because the practical reality is we live in a time and in a place and in a city where racism is real. Now, we had an interview scheduled yesterday. We're talking on a Wednesday. We're supposed to talk on a Tuesday,

and you postponed for reasons that we don't know, but I think became very clear. A deputy chief, Dionne Boyd, committed suicide in his office. The Chicago Police Department has an unusually high rate of suicide. What are the stressors that these officers are faked? right now. What are you hearing from officers on the ground? Well, look, I think that this is probably one of the most difficult times to be a policeman, certainly in modern time, if not ever. Police officers are human. They're our neighbors. They live in our communities. There's no doubt in

my mind based upon conversations I've had with officers of every rank that they feel under siege. They don't feel supported. They don't think that the city has their back. I don't think that's true. but it's certainly understandable. If I might, what is your understanding of what kind of pressures led Dionne Boyd, Deputy Chief Boyd, to commit suicide? I don't really know that, and the little that I know I think I should keep to myself. I had a respect for him and his children. He was a beloved figure within a department,

and I did postpone our interview because I really needed, to be present. Of course. I addressed a roll call yesterday in the deputy chief's old district where he was a commander. I walked in and there wasn't a dry eye. You know, grown men were weeping. And I've said, and I don't mind saying it here, that we have to do a better job of making sure we're supporting officer wellness.

You know, there's a saying that hurt people, hurt people. And that's usually said in the context of victims of domestic violence or child abuse, they go on to be abusers. But the practical reality is, if you're not well, given the level of trauma that police officers experience every single day, the burdens that they carry when they meet people on their worst day. And there's a lot of, I think, concern on the part of officers if they reach out for help, that they'll lose their licensing.

we've got to demystify that and get our officers healthy and well. They're deserving of help. I wonder, Mayor Lightfoot, considering the amount of anger at the police, considering all the reality and supposition about the guilt of the police on certain incidents, many incidents, gun violence directed toward the populace, corruption, and all the rest, when you speak in these sympathetic ways about pressures on police officers, do you get pushback from ordinary people on the street, from the citizens of Chicago who face the police and see the police not quite so sympathetically, let's say?

Of course. Of course I do. Yes, I'm sure there are people that have heard me say it and will listen to this and think, she's out of touch. She doesn't know what she's talking about. How can she say that in this time? But I know it to be true.

There are men and women out there who are police officers who are still on the job for the right reasons because they really want to make a difference in a quality of life for their neighbors. And that is just a truth. Now, there are clearly some, and I spent my life around police accountability, there are some who have absolutely forfeited the right and the honor to be a policeman. And those are the people that we need to focus our attention on. But we also have to think institutionally and culturally, what is it about our police departments across the country

and Chicago is no different that breeds or attracts those kinds of individuals? And that's, I think, where the hard work has to be done. I absolutely, look, I'm a black woman in the United States. I'm the daughter of two people who were born in the 1920s and the segregated South and suffered every conceivable indignity that you could suffer as a poor black person. So I get it. And I understand profoundly how police departments have been used

as the tip of a spear of a racist institutions and governments who fought tooth and nail to oppress us. So I get it. I absolutely do. Mayor Lightfoot, thank you so much. Thank you. Lori Lightfoot is the mayor of Chicago. We're going to continue looking into the theme

of police reform and the role that police unions have played with staff writer William Finnegan. That's just ahead. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. All right. Good morning, everybody. We're a very powerful moment in history and yesterday a watershed moment. In June, the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, celebrated the repeal of Section 50A of the New York State Civil Rights Code. of the 50A law, a law that had held back the ability to build trust between police and community. This law was in the way for a long time. This was a big victory for police reform activists.

50A shielded the disciplinary records of police officers. So when an officer involved killing, for example, nobody, not journalists, not lawyers, not the victim's family, would be able to know if an officer had a history or a pattern of incident. incidents. And laws like 50A, and there are many similar laws in many states, have played a big role in blocking police accountability. Changing those laws has not been easy at all, even for left-leaning politicians who champion reform. Bill de Blasio is one example. He ran against the police practice of stop and frisk. He promised a, quote, aggressive agenda of reforming the NYPD. But today, activists typically criticized de Blasio for real deference to the police.

police. Staff writer William Finnegan has been reporting for us on the political influence of police unions. Here's Bill. As his administration has gone on, Mayor de Blasio has sent mixed messages on police reform. He expanded the use of Law 50A and then celebrated its repeal. And that isn't unique. We've seen a lot of cases of progressive politicians promising big changes in policing and not delivering them. To understand how that happens, I think we have to go back to the 2014 killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island.

And a warning, you'll hear some disturbing tape. I didn't show anything. Eric Garner was a black man, 43 years old, six kids, allegedly selling loose cigarettes on the street when he was approached by police officers. He denied doing anything wrong, shied away. I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone.

I told you the last time. Please just leave me alone. The officers were determined to arrest him and tackled him. An officer named Daniel Pantaleo put him in a chokehold, got him on the ground. And he cried out. There's a videotape his friend took of this whole thing. Eleven times he cried out, I can't breathe. But they kind of took their time. handcuffing him and within the hour he was dead.

His death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner. Committed a chokehold. Death despite it being un-refused to indict. So the killing of Eric Garner became a national story, the focus of a lot of protest. And then it got much more intense when a grand jury on Staten Island declined to indict Daniel Pantileo for the killing.

Two days after a New York City grand jury, cleared a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man. The protests are growing larger and spreading across the country. People were really angry after that. So it was sort of the Garner family seeking justice and all their supporters versus the police. And in that situation, Mayor de Blasio expressed sympathy for the Garner family. And he told a story about his son Dante, who's biracial.

Charlene and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers he may face. Good young man, law-abiding young man, who never would think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face. We've had to literally train him as families have all over this city for decades and how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers, officers who are there to protect him. So this story, which to many people just sounds like common sense, you know, a sad fact, the conversation that most black families need to have with their kids in America was

really unpopular with the police. And the people who speak for the rank and file tend to be the union leaders. There are five unions and the biggest is the police benevolent association represents the rank and file. 24,000 members. The president is Patrick Lynch. What police officers felt yesterday after that press conference is that they were thrown under the bus.

He needs to support New York City police officers. He needs to say that teach our children, every last one of our children, our sons and daughters, to respect police officers. You cannot resist arrest, because resisting arrest leads to confrontation. Confrontation leads to tragedy. That's the support we need.

So shortly after this very uncomfortable confrontation, a guy with a long criminal record came to New York and saying that he was avenging Eric Garner, killed two police officers, and then killed himself. And that day really poisoned the relationship between De Blasio and the police unions. A shocking moment. As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio entered the hospital Saturday where the mortally injured officers were taken, Fellow police turned their backs on him, a powerful and divisive message to the mayor of this major city who has lost their trust. There's blood on many hands tonight. Those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protests that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day. We tried to warn it must not go on. It cannot be tolerated.

That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor. So these events, this humiliation, really seemed to break de Blasio. That was when he felt the hatred and power of the police unions. And so his reformist spirit, when it came to criminal justice and the police, seemed to wane. When it came to Section 50A, that secrecy statute in New York State that prevented the public from viewing officer disciplinary records.

De Blasio continued to pay lip service to wanting change, but he really never did anything. Michael Sisske works on a police transparency and accountability project at the New York Civil Liberties Union. So, you know, after Daniel Pantelio killed Eric Garner, requests went into the Civilian Complaint Review Board to produce a, summary of any prior substantiated complaints that had been lodged against that officer. The administration refused to release those records, cited 50A to block the release, and that was a decision that ultimately was upheld in the courts. And now I'm going to bring up Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Gardner.

My son was murdered on New York streets in Staten Island. The de Blasio administration, they blocked everything we tried to do, tried to get records exposed. So I'm just here today to say, when this is not going away, we are here and we're going to be here, and we're going to see that justice is served correctly. Even beyond the Garner case, the de Blasio administration continued to ramp up enforcement of 50A. The NYPD ceased a 40-year practice of publicizing records from NYPD disciplinary proceedings. They used to put the outcomes of those cases on a clipboard at one police plaza, where you could see which officers were promoted, which officers were disciplined,

and that was available to the public, to members of the press, to know what those outcomes were. But in 2016, the de Blasio administration made it do. deliberate decision to take down that clipboard, claiming that for 40 years, unbeknownst to anyone else, the city had been violating 50A. Now, it's hard to say why exactly Bill de Blasio and his administration became so much more sympathetic to the police. When it came to 50A, the unions were very vocal about the fact that they did not want these records released. And traditionally, the police unions get what they want in New York State and New York City.

Kirk Berkhalter comes from a real police family. His father and his brother were cops. He joined the force at 21. He was a member of a series of unions as he got promoted. First, the PBA, when he was a patrolman, on up to the detective's Endowment Association, where he was a union delegate. before he retired. He's now a law professor at New York Law School. What's important to remember is that unions represent, the police unions represent their membership.

They do not represent the public. So they are not in a position, arguably, nor should they be in a position, to lobby one way or another for reform. They certainly lobby on behalf of their members. I think where the rubber meets the road is this, discussion of what is good for the membership, is that also good for the public? That's where the debate really lies. And being a public sector union, I mean, it's different. Private sector unions are negotiating. It's basically, you know, workers versus management. Those are the two parties. Whereas public sector unions is more like there's a government and there's the membership, again, the workers. But you have this kind of invisible third party, as I think of it. You know,

the public. What's the public interest here? has to be taken into account. Cannot be so myopic as to just say, hey, I have this job and it's all about me and it's not about anybody else. There is this third party there. Now, does that mean all unions are adverse to the public? I can see how the public might have that perception. But at the end of the day, and this sounds like a radical concept, but we serve the public, the public being the person that the police arrest as much as the victim. They're all the public and they all have rights. So in the Garner case, we saw the unions, the PBA in particular, come out and defend their member,

even contradicting the medical examiner about cause of death and whether he applied a chokehold. They circled the wagons around Pontellio and defied the public call for justice. It was not a chokehold. He was a big man that had to be brought to the ground to be placed under arrest by shorter police officers. Sometimes the use of force is necessary, but it's never pretty to watch. Although Eric Garner was killed in 2014, the story just goes on and on. The NYPD took five years before it finally fired Daniel Pontellio, and he's now suing with the support of the PBA to get his job back.

So this sense of impunity that the police seem to feel and expressed through their unions, it's really kind of shocking. So what makes police unions different from many other unions? They are the first line of support for our elected officials. No politician on the local or state level is going to get reelected again if crime goes up. We see it all the time. You can imagine just one day in New York City. Imagine one day if the police took off.

It would be similar to the movie The Purge, just complete anarchy. And I believe this is an extreme source of power for police unions. Elected officials need them. Now, there are laws against the police union striking, but that doesn't necessarily affect the ability for police unions to conduct some form of job such as slowing down. And that absolutely could result in a rise in crime and a lack of safety for the general public. So politicians need the unions very, very much, and that is their source of power. Over the last number of years since this mayor walked into City Hall, I've stood at

this podium and said, his decisions will have a chilling effect on New York City police officers. Well, the criminal advocates have gotten what they want. The police department is frozen. The police department can't stop the killers. They can't stop the criminals. They can't effectively do their job. The language of anarchy, you know, that fearmongering about what will happen if we don't do our jobs, these unions have often used it in argument and in contract negotiations with mayors.

and for that matter with police chiefs. I mean, you always need to keep that distinction in mind between the police unions and the police department. I mean, police unions can be a police chiefs worth nightmare. Now, activists, you know, people working to make policing less abusive, more accountable, go up against police union power and have no illusions about it. Ju-Hion Kang is the director of communities United for police reform. Yeah, I think that there's a difference between blocking reforms in terms of swaying the public

versus blocking reforms in terms of having elected officials be afraid to pass important reforms. And too many elected officials, it really doesn't matter what party they belong to, too many elected officials are scared of the power of policing use. They're scared of being leafleted when they run for election or re-election. They're scared of being lambasted by the police unions. And so, you know, we're in a period right now, I think, in the country, not only New York City, where many members of the public and more than what the police unions would make it seem, want to see fairness.

And they don't want to see people brutalized by the police. And they don't want to know that this is happening to themselves or their families or their neighbors. So everything changed around these. issues in many places, including New York. After the killing of George Floyd and the enormous protests at the end of May into early June, Black Lives Matter really on the march. And in Albany, what that meant was that this repeal of 50A, that movement, which had been getting nowhere, I mean, the act had not even been voted out of committee,

suddenly moved. And along with other police reform, new ban on choke. Coles, Governor Cuomo said, you know, whatever you send me, I'll sign. And they sent him a lot. And he signed it. And 58 was repealed. Good morning, everyone. We have Gwen Carr with us. Who is the mother of Eric Garner. We have Valerie. The New York State Legislature has quickly passed the most aggressive reforms in the nation. I'm going to sign those bills in a moment.

It was as if the police unions were just blindsided. Suddenly they weren't there telling their legislators what to do. But the police unions aren't done, and they certainly intend to continue fighting and trying to roll back even this repeal. So I think that what we saw in June was that maybe they were somewhat caught off guard, but they were, you know, they were certainly still lobbying to try to make sure that it wasn't a repeal. And I think the difference was that in spite of their huge megaphone, you know, people power and organizing actually won. We heard people across the state in New York City at rallies chanting Repeal 50A, which is kind of a dorky chant. But, you know, it was our hashtag for many years.

It was a dorky hashtag as a dorky champ. But it really says something when you have something so in the weeds capture the imagination and the understanding of large sectors of the public. So the police unions, whether they were blindsided or. or not, were really furious that they didn't have a seat at the table. Michael Mira is the head of the Transit Police Union in New York. I am not Derek Chavon. They are not him.

He killed someone. We didn't. We are restrained. And you know what? I'm saying this to all the cops here. Because you know what? Everybody's trying to shame us. The legislators, the press.

Everybody's trying to shame us into being embarrassed about our profession. Well, you know what? Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect. So right now there's this real question of whether the tremendous amount of energy around change and reform will even affect the police unions. I mean, the unions have always been an arch-conservative force in the state. city politics. But they're not static politically. I mean, NYPD is now a majority, minority force. Older white officers are retiring. And in my conversations, plenty of people suggested that the union leadership will eventually reflect the membership with more ethnic and perhaps political diversity.

On the other hand, as Kirkbergholtr points out, the unions see themselves and are the only line of defense for their members in an increasingly hostile political climate. May this point is kind of trench warfare, you know, statute by statute. And maybe one can only expect so much reform to come from inside the unions themselves. I think it's highly unlikely that the union leadership would lose the support of the rank and file. Imagine as a police officer, when you turn on the television, the only one you see advocating your position, Ready to go down in flames for supporting you is the union leadership.

Would that ever be someone that you are likely to not support? The New Yorkers William Finnegan spoke with Kirk Berkhalter, Jew Heung Kang, and Michael Sisskiewski. Thank you for joining us today. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by a local. Alexis Quadrata. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.