What A Day - More Police Money, More Police Problems

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

More than a third of states are seeing increases in Covid-19 cases in the last week. It’s hard to draw conclusions about what’s behind that trend—among states that reopened early, some are seeing cases plateau, while others are seeing cases ramp up. Plus, journalist and lawyer Josie Duffy Rice fills in for Akilah Hughes. We discuss the culture of policing in this country and how shifting money from law enforcement to social services could cut down on the need for law enforcement.And in headlines: Amazon won’t let police use its facial recognition for one year, racist statues and monuments keep coming down nationwide, and the pandemic’s effects on king coffee chain Starbucks.Check out Josie's work at The Appeal: theappeal.orgListen to Josie's podcast: theappeal.org/topics/justice-in-america/

It's Thursday, June 11th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Josie Duffy Rice, filling in for Akilah Hughes. And this is what a day where we can finally get super into NASCAR now that they've banned Confederate flags. Yay, I'm looking forward to becoming insanely well-versed in lap times and engine specs. Yeah, and I'll know exactly which laundry detergent brand is on every single car. It's always tied. Always. On today's show, we're going to talk to journalist and lawyer Josie Duffy Rice about how to reimagine policing and then some headlines.

But first, the latest. The coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing in the United States, and confirmed cases have now surpassed 2 million. Crazy. Formerly hard-hit places like New York and New Jersey are continuing to see their numbers steadily decline, which is good news. But there's new concern about emerging trouble spots elsewhere in the country. So Gideon, give us a sense of where things stand. Yes, there's a few different ways to look at this, and it's kind of a moving picture that people are trying to capture. But if you look at where the cases are just growing,

more than a third of states are seeing increases in the last week, which is obviously a scary sign. And if you look at hospitalizations, they've gone up in at least nine states since Memorial Day. That's according to the Washington Post that is tracking this. So it's difficult to get a complete and current picture because of the incubation period of the virus. And also that for hospitalizations, at least different states report figures differently, and in some cases, incompletely, too. But that being said, what we can say is that the states that have come up in cases include Texas, Florida, North and South Carolina, California, Utah, and Arizona, among a few others. Now, the full reasons for this are not 100% clear yet, and it's a bit too soon to say that protests against police brutality are making a difference across the country. Though public health officials have expressed some concern about the protests for their size and how difficult it can be when you're in them to actually socially distance.

Officials have encouraged people to wear masks when they attend and get tested if they did go to a protest. Many have also said, though, that they endorse the cause of fighting for racial justice, and they draw a connection to the racial health disparities that we're seeing in the pandemic. Right. So it's too soon to see the impact of these protests on the numbers. And it's too soon to see the impact of these thousands of arrests on these numbers, too. That may become clearer over time. But for the states you mentioned where cases are up, what do we know about what's happening there?

Yeah, so some of it seems kind of cut and dry, right, that they relax stay at home orders. And cases went up. I mean, that was the case with Texas, one of the first to actually relax those stay at home orders. And there were over 2500 new cases reported yesterday, which is reportedly their highest one day total throughout the pandemic. And then you look at Florida, they reported the most cases over a seven-day period. That's since the start of the pandemic as well. And in California, where reopenings have been quite a lot slower than other parts of the country, they've also seen hospitalizations rise nine of the last 10 days. But if you look at all of these states and the information that we have right now, the one that people are most concerned about is Arizona,

which was another state where stay-at at home orders were relaxed pretty early on. Over the weekend there, the state health director wrote a letter to hospitals saying that they needed to, quote, fully activate emergency plans. That is according to the Arizona Republic. And that has a lot to do with the amount of hospital beds in the state, as well as the amount of individuals who are in ICUs. But when it comes to reopening and whether and how it can be done safely, there's still a lot that people are learning and things are murky because other states like Georgia, for instance, which was the first in the country to reopen, have seen their cases plateau and not rise. We should also mention, though, that Georgia did have issues a few weeks ago with their data reporting.

And the broader thing here is that there are other factors at play in all of it, too, like individual behavior of everyone, the mask wearing that people do or do not do, adherence to social distancing when you're out, all of those things. Right. I mean, the bottom line really is that it seems like we still don't know how many cases there are, what's sending people to the hospital, just how much we can reopen. We're still kind of flying blind in this pandemic. And in the midst of all of this, President Trump is apparently going to return to the campaign trail. It's very irresistible for him in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19th, also known as Juneteenth, an interesting choice for the president. Yeah, the hope, I think, for whatever this event turns out to be is that he neither acknowledges the significance of the day nor the location that he's in. Please just don't say anything about it. Yeah, that's the hope. But in terms of how it's actually going to go down, the early reporting suggests that

there may just not be social distancing practices that are actually put in place for the event or requirements for masks. But, you know, there could be hand sanitizer on site, which I guess would be some small amount of comfort if you feel that you absolutely need to see this man speak in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think you take what you can get at a Trump rally, you know? Yes, yes, this is 100% true. But you know, the pandemic has already upended the planned RNC with Trump insisting that North Carolina's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper allow for an event at full capacity, or he would just move it to

another state. There's been a lot of back and forth on this. There's reporting that some of the events, perhaps like Trump's own speech, would be held in Jacksonville, Florida, a state that, like we said, has seen a bump in cases. There's also reporting, though, that the RNC is going to hold portions of the event in Charlotte with fewer people. It's sort of like, do you want to gather people in one city with rising cases or two cities with rising cases? We will find out. Still very much up in the air. So we're going to be tracking that and the pandemic. But that is the latest for now. All righty, so now we're going to shift gears and get back to the conversation around ending police violence. And we are so, so happy to have Josie Duffy Rice with us today to talk

about policy changes. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you so much for joining. So for those of you who do not know, get in the know. Josie is a lawyer, a journalist, and president of The Appeal, which is a news site that is all about criminal justice and other broader social issues. It rules very much. Definitely go check that out. They do amazing work that's tracking mass incarceration, policing, and the legal system. So Josie, I wanted to start the conversation today around this legislation that's being considered at the federal level. Democrats in the House, of course, introduced a reform bill earlier this week. It's called the Justice in Policing Act. It has a lot of provisions. It would, among other things, mandate bias training, require

body cameras, ban the use of chokeholds, ban no-knock warrants, which would give the Justice Department more power to levy charges if they are used. And a bunch of other things are in this as well. But overall, when you look at this, what do you make of the bill? And how important is federal legislation in actually dealing with this issue? So I think that it's good to see Congress wanting to do something about the policing crisis. I don't think that this is the way to do it. Some of what you see is great news, no knock warrants, we'd love to ban those. And there are other elements of the bill that could be considered decent. But a big part of this bill is sending money from the federal government

to states and municipalities for policing. And that's a big problem. Most of policing is a state and local issue. So even the federal government's involvement at all is pretty small compared to what you're going to see on the state and local level. But we do not want more money going to police departments. We have seen what happens when we do that. And we know that these reforms, many of these reforms, body cams, banning chokeholds, mandating bias trainings, they just don't really work, right, when we're talking about trying to really reduce the presence of police and the harms that police cause in neighborhoods across the country. Yeah, and is the money element that's kind of flowing down primarily for things like body cameras and for

even paying for the bias training? Yeah, I think the money, I mean, it does various things. Like there are lots of different parts of this bill, right? But the last that I saw, it had about a billion dollars in funding going from the federal government to localities. And the bottom line is no matter what the money is for, you're driving money to departments that are already spending an enormous amount of money on policing, enormous amounts of their local budgets on policing. And that money is better used spent on other things, right, that help address the issues that get people involved with the police to begin with, that really help avoid dealing with just the back end solutions to these issues and

really invest money on the front end to ensure that police don't need this money to begin with. Right. And on a local level, we've seen some actions that are a little bit similar to what's talked about in that bill, specifically chokehold bans, the New York, the targeting of 50A that had to do with personnel records of police officers. So when you look at the local actions that have happened so far, some of which have gotten some amount of celebration, what has seemed to be the most impactful and what is actually enforceable among these laws? Some of the stuff that involves police holding other police accountable, for instance, seems like kind of wishful thinking. Yeah, I think what we're seeing right now is a movement among activists, advocates, and experts to not just try to band-aid this problem by implementing these sort of reform rules that don't really work, right? They're trying to remove resources from law enforcement and put them elsewhere.

And that's where we can really see some movement on the power of policing and on what policing does to neighborhoods. So really the principle here is that show me your resources for mental health, education, parks, after school programs, social services, then what you get is, you know, you get what you pay for, right? You get a bloated police department, you get a police department that is kind of tasked with solving all these social ills. And so the answer is to shift the funds. Right. And when you talk about things like that, you talk about defunding police or reducing the size of the budgets of these various departments. There's some questions and pushbacks that come up, you know, for any person who is online like yourself

or myself. What would you and some of those questions are like, you know, what would you do about violent crime? What about communities that, you know, previously in, say, the 80s or 90s that actually asked for more policing? So when you're talking about these issues and working through them and those questions come up, what do you typically say? Yeah. So that's everybody's first question, right? What about murder? What about violent crime? And I'm always like, do you think I haven't thought about murder? I have thought about murder. Look, police are not doing a good job of solving violent crime. What we know is that in most cities in this country, police are solving 40 to 50% of murders, right? And that's a higher

percentage than other crimes are being solved, right? And so what we know is that we are pouring in a ton of resources for police to not be particularly effective at their job. And a lot of those resources are being spent policing people on misdemeanors, broken windows policing, focusing on stuff like stop and frisk and low-level drug crimes, or just doing this quality of life policing that we know is harmful to communities, right? And so when we think about what are the solutions, I think we first need to recognize that we don't have a very good sense of the problem.

People don't really recognize just how ineffective police are at their jobs. And it's true. In the past, there are communities, including Black communities, some communities, including Black communities, though not all, some communities, including Black communities, though not all, actually asked for more policing in the late 80s and early 90s when crime was higher. But what they asked for was more policing in addition to other resources, right? In addition to better schools, in addition to jobs, in addition to parks, in addition

for places their kids could play. And they didn't get any of that. They just got more police. And what we see right now is that in those places where people ask for more policing, in the places in America where police are the most prevalent, those are the places that can imagine a different future, right? Those are the places that are saying, we have too much policing, we have too much police. Many people in this country basically live a life of abolition, right? In their communities, there are no police. There's nobody stopping frisking on those sidewalks. They see police rarely, right? In upper to middle class, mostly white neighborhoods, right? In the suburbs,

for example. And we know that those are the communities that actually have a harder time imagining a world without police than the policed communities. Policing just isn't working. American policing isn't working. It's causing harm. We're not solving crimes. We're not addressing the root cause of issues. And if we shift funding from law enforcement to other social services, I think we will need less law enforcement. And I think that is the goal. Right. It's like if you were being given allowance and you kept getting like 50% on the tests after you got allowance, people wouldn't necessarily say like, here is more. Right. Right. Exactly. And that's what we really have to think about. I mean, without it being about

punishing the police, this is a real question of what do we want for every dollar we spend? And my hope is that I can imagine a world where my kids grow up, where they get more than 50% of murder solved, where they live in a world without violence. And I think it's very difficult to eliminate violence from communities entirely when you're using a violent system to do that. And so it's an opportunity right now to imagine a different future. And I think we really have the opportunity to do that. And so, you know, it's an opportunity right now to imagine a different future. And I think we really have the opportunity to do that. And so talking about that in a more pointed way, obviously, the overhanging thing here is just reducing footprint of the police, thinking about it in a bold and transformational way, while public opinion is moving on this, in some cases, quite rapidly.

What are sort of the major impediments to making this happen? Look, police in this country have really a stronghold over public opinion in a lot of places, right? The culture of policing in this country is very pervasive. And it's very difficult. A few years ago, when black people were saying police are brutalizing us, people wouldn't believe them. Videos started to come out. We're starting to see more now that people are saying, OK, you guys weren't kidding. But that took years. I mean,

that really literally took years. And so people talk about police unions as sort of the main obstacle. And I absolutely think police unions are a major impediment to this. But really, police unions are powerful because of the police. Police aren't powerful because of police unions. And so what we know is that we're facing an uphill battle when it comes to having people reimagine a world. And in general, I think reimagining a different system is hard anyway, right, for all of us. It can take time. It can take research. It can take talking through this stuff. And that's what I think a lot of people are trying to do right now. That being said, this is America. We got rid of slavery. We, you know, we ended Jim Crow. We can do this. This is like, of all the abolitions we've done, this is actually not the biggest one. And when people talk about, well, what does the world look like without police? I imagine that that was the same question people asked about many of the systems, in particular slavery,

that are gone now that were probably hard to imagine a world without it, even when you thought it had its faults, right? And so the first thing we have to do is think that it's possible. And the second thing is figure out how to get there, not have everything figured out, or not know all the answers before we decide to believe it's possible. Right. And I think that's a helpful note to leave the whole conversation on. But Josie, thank you so much for helping us understand how all of this works. And by the way, if you want to hear more from Josie, check out her podcast called Justice in America. We really hope that you can come back sometime soon. Thanks for having me. I'd love to come back anytime. Let's wrap up with some headlines.

Headlines. Amazon will not allow police departments to use its facial recognition technology for one year. In a blog post yesterday, the company said they hope this will give Congress enough time to enact better rules for the use of this technology. Facial recognition software has been widely criticized for misidentifying black people, other people of color, and women. Amazon follows IBM, which said earlier this week that it would stop building and selling facial recognition technology in general. The CEO of IBM said in a letter that he was concerned about how the technology could be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.

I am too. Amazon software named Recognition, spelled with a K, extremely punk, has been used by law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S., though it's not clear how many. One whole year, huh? Just giving us a head start. Yeah. Before they bring back the terrible facial recognition technology. Statues and monuments honoring bad, bad, bad

racists continue to get exactly what they deserve. Three statues of Christopher Columbus were damaged by protesters in the U.S. this week. I think they should have listened to us when we told them to just put them in museums. One in Richmond, Virginia was thrown into a river. One in Minnesota got

knocked over, while another in Boston got his head cut off. Now they just need to take Christopher Columbus's face off the salami that they sell at Trader Joe's. Meanwhile, in the UK, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that the city will be reassessing all of its statues and monuments. And this comes after protesters pushed the statue of a slave trader into a river in Bristol. Kahn says he will be putting together a commission to ensure that all the monuments, the murals, and the statues in London reflect the city's diversity. Honestly, bring them all down besides the Colombo one that I think is in like Belgium or something. Yes, keep Colombo at all costs. Yeah, agreed. CrossFit founder Greg Glassman, who was the first person to come up with the idea to exercise in front of a big open window,

stepped down on Tuesday after doing a significant amount of racism over the weekend. Glassman's problems began when he responded to a health research group's call to treat racism as a public health issue by tweeting, quote, It's Floyd 19. Kind of cryptic, but definitely bad. That comment, plus CrossFit's silence on the issue of police brutality, led Reebok to end a huge sponsorship deal with CrossFit and hundreds of affiliate gyms to end their relationships. Glassman's real reckoning came later, though, when BuzzFeed published audio from a Zoom meeting

he had with gym owners on Saturday. The meeting saw him deny the existence of systemic racism, push conspiracy theories about George Floyd and coronavirus, and basically do his InfoWars audition in real time. Sir, good lord. Glassman will retain his ownership stake and CrossFit will be replaced as CEO. He has free time now, so call him, I guess, if you need someone to flip over your giant tires. For the past few months, many of us have been making our unicorn frappuccinos at home. And now the consequences are clear. Starbucks said on Wednesday that they expect the coronavirus pandemic to reduce their sales this quarter by $3.2 billion.

That's a lot of money. That's led the company to accelerate their plans to add more pickup stores, meaning ones that don't have seating and cater to a mobile customer who is probably running late to a networking meeting at a different Starbucks. The company expects to open 300 of these pickup locations in the U.S. and Canada this fiscal year while closing 400 traditional stores. Financially, it's like keeping a close eye on Starbucks performance amid reopenings since it's basically the main store and will be seen as an indicator of customers' willingness to go outside and spend money. Starbucks' disclosure of their rough quarter was followed by a drop in other restaurant stocks as well. I gotta run to a networking meeting, but those are the headlines.

That's all for today. If you like the show show make sure you subscribe leave a review flip our giant tire and tell your friends to listen and if you are into reading and not just nutritional facts on cured meats at trader joe's what a day is also a nightly newsletter so check it out and subscribe at cricket.com subscribe i'm Josie Duffy Rice. I'm Gideon Resnick. And please be careful when you knock over bad statues. But knock them over still. Yeah. Yes.

Absolutely. Just wear boots or something. Watch out for your toes. Yeah. Yep. What a Day is a product of Cricut Media. Yep.