Today, Explained - “I can’t breathe.” Again.

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

The former police officer who killed George Floyd has been charged with murder. But Floyd’s case is just one of many recent incidents of police brutality in Minneapolis. The Marshall Project’s Simone Weichselbaum explains why police reform hasn’t worked in the city. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Protesters torching a Minneapolis police precinct while thousands took to the streets, demanding justice for George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in police custody. I think what we saw here in the Twin Cities last night and yesterday and really all this week between just the mayhem, the melee, the chaos, standoff with police officers, there was just this sense that the city was being overrun and it was definitely scary for a lot of people. This several block area that Morgan and I are in right now is out of control. We were seeing a demonstration in downtown that had been largely peaceful, but quickly grew violent.

I was following the procession and there was a group that sort of splintered off at one point. But then a series of police cruisers swooped in and started pepper spraying the crowd to try to disperse them. And that's when things really started going a different direction. We may have gas canisters now. The police are deploying something. All right, there's milk being spread around, so that is cure gas. I'm just going to stick this on. Minneapolis police decided at some point to abandon the third precinct. They decided it was no longer safe for the officers who were working there. There is now a person who, excuse me, sir, there is now a person who is going and trying to get physically into the third precinct there.

It was overrun. People set a fire and that's when the rest of the city started really going up in flames as well as that started spreading. There are fires burning to the left of it at the wine and liquor store. Communities burned down to the ground and deprived of resources like grocery stores, pharmacies, auto parts stores and things like that and communities that already struggle to attract economic development. But a local AutoZone also was looted and then set on fire and AutoZone was not alone. I got a text message from the station manager of a Spanish radio station here who said the building their station is in completely burned to the ground. And it's a historic building that had been a pillar in the community then. I'm going to be driving around town today just sort of take a closer look at all the damage.

But I was down in the Longfellow neighborhood where the third precinct burned down. And I can't recognize it. The destruction, the devastation is just really widespread. And so in parts of the city, it's going to take a long time to rebuild, I think. I can't breathe. Ricardo Lopez, you're a senior reporter at the Minnesota Reformer. These protests were sparked after a police officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Why were the police called in the first place? George Floyd was detained Monday night in South Minneapolis

over a call of forgery. This is the cell phone video from America's heartland that's inflaming passions across the country. And so four officers had arrested him and placed him in handcuffs, but the officer kneeled on his neck and kept his knee there for several minutes. Even after Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe. You know, this was all happening with multiple witness bystanders who were pleading with the police to let him up, to let him go,

because he was struggling to breathe on the ground and saying as much. He's not even resisting arrest right now, bro. His nose is bleeding. You fucking stop and he's breathing right now, bro. You think that's cool? That, I think, is what outraged a lot of people, this idea that you could have a man pleading for his life in the middle of daylight of a busy street

and have multiple witnesses pleading for them to let him go that really outraged people. Before the protests last night, what was the reaction to this killing, this tactic of a cop putting his knee on Floyd's neck? I think what is very interesting about this case is just the widespread and universal condemnation about the tactics shown there. I think police chiefs in cities all over the country have already weighed in and told even their officers that what they saw on video was entirely wrong. I think I thought of what every good, hardworking police officer, quite frankly, thinks. And I was appalled. As leaders in law enforcement, when we see something that we know in our hearts is wrong, we can't remain silent.

And have any of the officers been arrested yet or charged? As of just a few minutes ago, I'm getting notifications that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was the one shown in the video kneeling on George Floyd's neck, has been taken into custody by the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Good afternoon. I'm Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. I'm here to announce that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder. We are in the process of continuing to review the evidence. There may be subsequent charges later. And what about the other officers who were there when George Floyd was killed and didn't do anything to stop it?

We're still waiting to hear what charges they might face. They've obviously been fired from their jobs a few years ago. Minneapolis police enacted a reform that called for any officer who was witnessing a fellow officer using excessive force to intervene. And if not, they're just as culpable because Minneapolis police have said this week that all officers are expected to take a leadership role. And so they should intervene when they're seeing fellow officers use excessive force. And obviously this isn't the only time an unarmed

black man has been killed by a police officer in the Twin Cities. How does this fit into the bigger picture in Minnesota? Well, I think, you know, we can remember sort of the bigger situations that have happened here in Minneapolis in recent years, you know, going back to Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. And a lot of these underlying inequalities and equities have continued unaddressed in Minnesota for years and years. And obviously, this is a place that sees some of the widest gaps in income, in household education, in household wealth, in home ownership, in car ownership, in health, in education. I mean, name any area, and Minnesota has one of the worst racial disparities. And I think that this is a state that is very largely white. And it's a very nice place to live if you're not black. And that's the reality.

I'm a person of color here in the state, and I have faced a number of incidents that I know are related to my race, but it's hard to escape the reality that in Minnesota, your quality of life is very different if you're not white. Has the president weighed in at all? So President Trump tweeted something that was immediately received as very inflammatory by people who, especially his language around, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. And so the president's tweet last night did little to calm tensions here. I think in history, we've always looked to the leadership of the United States president to help quell unrest

and help try to heal the country. But I think that the tweet was very poorly received. It took a dig at Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. What was the other tweet? There was an earlier one calling you a radical leftist and a weak mayor. Which prompted a press conference by the mayor who stood by himself as he pushed back on Donald Trump's tweet.

Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions. Weakness is pointing your finger at somebody else during a time of crisis. Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis. We are strong as hell. Is this a difficult time period? Yes, but you better be damn sure that we're going to get through this. Like I said, he stood alone and looked pretty visibly tired. And I think this morning you saw what the governor's address today, you know, essentially say the state is now the lead element in keeping the city safe and the state safe. To ensure that tonight our buildings do not burn, our citizens are secure, and that space that we're going to create allows us to get back to the conversation

of serving justice and making sure that we're not adding to that list of unheard names. This is very uncharted territory for Minnesota. The idea that an entire police station would burn down to the ground is just something that had been, until last night, unbelievable, inconceivable even. But the state has a task force that has issued a number of recommendations

around how to improve policing. So I think that, unfortunately, the death of George Floyd is going to provide a big, big reason why lawmakers should take a good hard look at these task force recommendations and go about implementing them. I think people are hopeful for long term change what that looks like. It's and struggled to reform its police department. I'm Noam Hassenfeld filling in for Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Thank you. corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money

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game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. — Simone Weichselbaum, you wrote an article for The Marshall Project about how the Minneapolis Police Department has struggled to implement reforms well before George Floyd was killed. What reforms have they tried? — So I remember the days when Minneapolis was considered an example of liberal police reform.

They had a police chief who was a woman who was openly gay, very into working with academics on police reform, and also invited DOJ to come in when she took over. Then in 2015, DOJ found that there were ways to improve, especially with police accountability. One was fixing their internal tracking system, which flags bad cops. And second was fixing something they call coaching, which seems pretty unique. Instead of disciplining all their officers with a long history of complaints, they send them to classes on police policy called coaching. What do we know about how effective that early warning system was? Did the police officer who killed George Floyd ever have a warning against him?

We don't know if he was ever flagged by the system. We do know that he had a long history of complaints. There were at least 12 that I found on a city database that tracks police complaints, but we don't know if he was ever disciplined or coached for it, so to speak. I did speak to police accountability experts who worked with the city on implementing the recommendations from DOJ, and they told me that that has been stalled and a lot of pushback from the police advocacy community to start making those changes. And because of sort of the switch in leadership, they have a new police chief who was there during the former person's tenure, but those changes have not really been rolling out. If these reforms aren't exactly working, are there better ideas out there? I think it comes to culture and it's something that police departments are working. Are there better ideas out there? I think it comes to culture, and it's

something that police departments are working. How do we change culture? So de-escalation classes is something that comes up a lot. Washington State recently implemented rules that all cops in Washington State now have to do de-escalation training every year. It's not just the policy. It's like, how do you change the hearts and minds? Another thing cops and departments have been doing is trying to change who they hire. So instead of hiring like this cop in the Floyd case is an older white male who one could argue is a cop's cop. You have departments saying, no, we want to hire bilingual people, people with tattoos, young people, people with graduate degrees. So there is this push in policing to say, we're going to stop hiring these sort of hyper-masculine guys and let's focus on hiring people that better represent our community.

But that takes years and years to force change like that. Yeah, and I guess, you know, reforms need to be put in place, but also holding people accountable, right? I mean, this report from Minneapolis from 2015 that you're talking about did put in this warning system, and then there's just no way to know if it's working. I mean, do we know if something like this is working anywhere around the country? So there is a lot of work being done on like, how do we hold them accountable? But cops, police departments are notorious for not being transparent. So someone like myself and other journalists, accountability experts, we don't really know what goes into these tracking systems. Number two, they're not uniform. Like one city may track one thing, another city may track another. And number

three, if you're flagged, the outcome also varies from department to department. So the issue with policing in this country has always been, we're not a monolith. There's no one clear rule. There's no one clear best practice. So one city could be working, and across the line, it's failing. You know, you're saying that it's not a monolith, yet we do have the Department of Justice. Is the Department of Justice doing anything? Could it do anything? There's this idea by the public that when you have DOJ come in, they're going to save the day. I've written a lot about DOJ and reform.

DOJ, their police wing, if you will, who works on reform of police departments, it's a very small group of people who work in the civil rights division. They don't have a lot of resources. They don't have a big team. And it takes a lot of work to force a local police department to change. So just because you call in DOJ and just because they order reforms doesn't mean they have the resources to force the police department to keep working on those reforms. So I keep, it frustrates me when people say, let's call in DOJ. No, city and state officials need to work on this issue. Stop outsourcing it to Washington. It's not working. So if the Department of Justice can't solve this, who can? Well, as we pointed out in the story, my colleague talked to Philando Castile's mother.

And as he pointed out in his reporting, the cop who shot Philando Castile did go through the court system. And juries let him go. Right? He was prosecuted. But so what? So that's another problem is that even if you have buy-in from prosecutors and they're like, yes, we're going to indict this guy. What this guy did was screwed up. You know, let's get him convicted. You have to have a group of citizens agree with that. And we've written about juries and bias. Do they believe the cop? Do they don't believe the cop? I was surprised that Philando Castile, the officer who took his life, got off. I thought it was pretty clear cut what that guy did was wrong. So, like, what is justice in this sense? Would justice be more police reform, which we don't know will work?

Will justice be if this cop is indicted and is charged? Is justice that they figure out a fair group of jurors to come in and decide whether or not this person should go to prison? And that's what we need to think about. Okay, so the DOJ can't solve it and police departments can't solve it because they can't control juries. It sounds like it's almost an impossible problem. Right. And another point to my colleague, Jamiles, wrote, he spoke to Keith Ellison, who's the attorney general of the state of Minnesota, and he actually was working on police reform and pushing legislatures to vote to start making uniform laws across that state for de-escalation, use of force training, and other measures. And he couldn't get the legislation passed. So that's another problem. Like, this is so complicated,

right? Like, it doesn't even matter. Like, Minneapolis, this is a great example. They had police reform. They have a new attorney general, Keith Ellison, a big player in the Democratic Party, come in. I want to make changes to the state. I'm the new attorney general. And state lawmakers are like, screw you. It's a white state, 85% white. So the people voting to make those changes also have to buy in. And they didn't do anything yet. There's just so many elements. And, you know, I am a policing nerd. I've been writing about this for a long time, so I understand it.

But I think most people don't understand. And it's so hard to change. And yes, burning down the city is waking people up. But will that force policing to change? I mean, we burned down cities in 1968, right? After MLK was assassinated. And policing is still pretty screwed up, so I don't know. Thank you.