Explicit

Police Don't Keep Us Safe

Published Aug 20, 2024, 7:01 AM

Matthew Solomon, director of Reimagining Safety, returns to Woke AF Daily to discuss the latest developments in American policing - in particular, police budgets continuing to go up while it continues to be proven that cops don't actually prevent or even fight crime.

Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to WOKF Daily filmmaker and activist Matthew Solomon, who we spoke to last year about your documentary, Matthew Reimagining Safety all around kind of policing and police reform. Give our audience a refresher around the importance and significance of your documentary, which was just recently being shown at a film festival in New Jersey. Because while we have just acknowledged the recent anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, what we know is that unfortunately, at least in my opinion and I'd like yours, that not a lot has changed. Police killings continue you to be at an all time high. So please talk to us about your film and why it's particularly significant still in this moment that we're in.

Sure. Yeah, thank you, Danielle, and thank you for having me back on. I'm glad to be back so Reimagining Safety I have been you know, I'm a filmmaker. I also work in conflict resolution, and prior to the pandemic in twenty twenty, I was traveling and doing a lot of facilitation for a conflict resolution and when the pandemic started and we couldn't go anywhere. I decided to go back to school, and so I wanted to a master's program in public administration, hoping to be able to use my privilege and access as a white male to be able to help support social change. And this is you know, COVID the murder of George Floyd, as you mentioned after you know, at that point almost a decade of Black Lives Matter and that movement, after treyvon Martin was murdered. It's also we just passed the tenure anniversary of Mike Brown being murdered. And so you know, I grew up in Los Angeles and I was in college at USC when the LA riots happened. So you know, I've had decades where you know, it's like, wow, we're still doing this. It's not getting better, it's getting worse. And you know, even last year was the deadliest year for police murdering people. Over thirteen hundred people were killed by police in twenty twenty three, and so you know, all of this has continued to happen despite calls for like, quote reform and that sort of thing. And so you know, I'm in my master's program and I'm applying all of the coursework around sustainability and community and transformative leadership and funding and all of those things to the issues with policing and incarceration, and I got really interested in, well, what are the alternatives? Right? And that took me into you know, Angela Davis and Mariamcaba and all of that. And so when it came time to do my final thesis, one of my academic advisors knew I was a filmmaker and was like, we know you know how to write a paper, but we know you're a filmmaker, and why don't you do something creative and do a documentary? And I and I leughed because I was like, that's a lot of work, right, you know, yeah, I write a paper in like a day. But you know, but she dared me, and you know, I tend to accept dares. And so because it was academic, I wanted a variety of perspectives. So it wasn't just activists, right. So it's the District Attorney of La County is in the film. There's usc law professors, so there's several sociologists, mental health professionals, a former LAPD detective, a cop watcher, you know who like film's police all the time, and so the result was a very well rounded representative picture of these are the harms caused by police and prisons. This is why it persists. And you know, a lot of it is we're socialized into thinking that they are the solutions for our problems, despite the fact that we have data upon data that proves otherwise that you know, police don't keep us safe, prisons don't keep us safe. And then here are the alternatives, you know, most of which are already working. When people, when communities have resources, crime naturally comes down. When we have people who show up to mental health calls that aren't armed and uniformed, people don't get killed, you know, when people get the services they need. And so I finished the film in twenty twenty two. In August September did a small screening for friends and family and for members of the USC Criminology Department, and across the board people were like, people need to see this. This is really really good. It's really thorough, it's an educational and so, you know, I followed what they did with the movie Thirteenth was I started reaching out to different communities across the US to do community screenings where we would show the film and then have a panel of local leaders and organizers and so the community members when you know, because they get to the point where it's like Okay, well what do we do, It's like, well, here's the folks. And so this last Saturday was the sixty first screening of Reimagining Safety amazing and the festival was the Newark Reimagining Safety Festival, which organizers there created a festival around the film. So there was the film, the panel, there was art and music exhibitions and art and music is a big part of abolition and community and that sort of thing. And then we had info tables from local organizations that are out doing the work. And so yeah, we've had the sixty one screenings. The film is streaming on Amazon, YouTube, Google, Plan to me, and we have a bunch more coming up. We'll be in Dallas on August thirtieth as part of their end of Black August, all the things that they've been doing for Black August, so on August thirtieth, and I'll be in Detroit with General Strike US and the Black Panther Party of Detroit in September. So that's what's going on with that.

I commend you. I congratulate you on the work on how you've been getting out the word and really engaging with community around your film, because I do think that it's extraordinarily important. And I want to tap into something that you said which I feel like is consistently lost when we are talking about policing, right that I live in Brooklyn in New York, and I will tell you that in the quote unquote highly resourced areas and neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Do you know what, I never see cops? Right, I never see cops. I see clean sidewalks, I see community resources, I see you know, shopping and schools and all of these things. I never see cops. In the lower resourced areas of Brooklyn. There are cops on every corner. There are those big, you know lights that are shown over the subway system. And what you said is just like what we know is that crime goes down and safety goes up when those communities are resourced and not resourced with police officers. And so why is it, Matthew, that we still live in a place even given all of the data that tells us that what communities that are plagued with crime need are resources for that community. Why is that something that is missed and we still continue to see, particularly in New York City, where we have a mayor who's a former cop that is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the police depart wall cutting libraries. I mean, he just gave money back to the library so that they can open again on Sundays. But the logic with them is like, oh, no, we just need more cops and that equal safety, when the data tells us the opposite.

Yeah, on the one hand, you know, it's sort of fascinating. On the other hand, it's incredibly frustrating and angering because the answer, well, there's a couple answers to that. First of all, we're bombarded with copaganda a large part, like half of the fictional shows. This has talked about in the documentary Doctor l. Jones from Halifax Nova, Scotch. She talks about fifty percent of our fictional programming is cop based, like crime shows, law shows, things like that. Thirty percent of what we consume overall is cop based. So like watching the show Cops or like all the variations of that law, law and order. I mean, I grew up watching Chips and you know in SWAT, so we're bombarded with there's a bad guy around every corner, evil is out there, and the only thing that can protect us are the cops. And in those shows, a lot of times it's the cops who don't follow the law of themselves, right, so they have free reign to break the roles because they have to because the evil people are so evil. So there's that part that we were bombarded with even and even our news media, right. And actually, I really I have to say I listened to there was an episode of Yours I heard a few days got I don't remember, I don't know when you recorded it, but you were talking about how the news media by and large is complicit in pushing these false narratives and everything. I was just like, yes, yes, yes, because I've seen it where like Cops City in Atlanta that's being built, and last year there were arrests made, there was a festival happening with forest protectors, and even on you know MSNBC, which is supposed to be quote the left, progress or whatever, you know, Jose Bolart when he was reading the thing about there being a festival, scoffed at it as if it were people breaking the law that were arrested, but they know they were actually having a festival. And I mean I could go on and on, you know, especially in the wake of the campus protests protesting genocide and how that's being portrayed. So the news media, local and national plays a big part in pushing the police narratives and not really checking them on it. There's also, you know, and this has been you know, as somebody who's really believed in people and believes in the good in people, and that if we can appeal to people's compassion and empathy, that we can make big changes. Another unfortunate reality is the communities you're talking about, as you know, are mostly black and brown communities, and so they're not seeing as members of the community. And if it's like, well, the cops are there, but at least I feel safe over here in my mansion in Beverly Hills, which by the way, has it like a perimeter, you know, of cops and drones and all of that. And there's a multimillion dollar lawsuit with was it eleven hundred black people were pulled over by the police in the last two years and only two convictions, you know, so there's a multimillion dollar lawsuit there happening. So it's the media, it's how we've been socialized, and it's the othering and the dehumanization as well. Like I think all of that, and you know, police unions and the people that benefit from I mean, it's like budgets, right, police budgets. Despite all the rhetoric about defund the police, police budgets have continued to increase. Crime goes up and down regardless of that. And there was just a report in the state of California where they audited police response and actually police are doing less work than they ever have according to that report, but.

They have more money.

They have more money.

Yeah, so I went into the wrong field.

Ye. Yeah.

One of the things that I also want to talk to you about and this just you know, you want to talk about propaganda, copaganda. Donald Trump's campaign this week released a photo and it was an image of two neighborhoods and one it said, this is what your neighborhood will look like under Trump and it's this pristine, you know, quintessential suburb. And this is what your neighborhood will look like under Kamala and walls. And it was a picture of I am certainly taken out of context, but a bunch of black refugees and saying that if you welcome in the third world, you become the third world. And there is this, I mean, the insidious nature of racism that is present there, but then this idea that to have a country that welcomes in asylum seekers, that then you're welcoming in crime. I want to get your thoughts on the way in which MAGA and trump Ism has weaponized law and order quote unquote, and what their plan is in Project twenty twenty five, which I've talked about at nauseum on this show, what their plan is for police quote unquote reform. Right.

Yeah, I had to laugh for a second because, right, the law and Order party and then you know, mister, you know, thirty four convictions on everything else, and yeah, and like I heard, you know, there was somebody the other day who was talking about, oh, the millions of immigrants who were flooding into New York, right, But they're flooding into New flooding in quotes into New York because the the racist governors in Florida and Texas are putting people on buses, you know, and shipping them and you know, for a nation of immigrants, it's very clear which immigrants are being singled out as quote criminal, right, which feeds into the communities and what we're just talking about. And again when you look at at the data, the immigrants coming in are the least likely to be committic, like they commit they don't commit crime. You know, they're not the criminals that are being portrayed, right. And then you know they use that same like they bring up Chicago all the time. In Chicago's not even in the top ten, you know, most criminal cities. And so yeah, it's all the narrative. It's the other, right, the demonizing of the other, the fear of the other. Those people are the ones that are putting us at risk. And yeah, it's just all that that racist narrative that this country has been you know, subjected to for how many hundreds of years? Right at this point, do.

You think that we will get to a place where we have policing that actually works, Like in my mind, and I truly don't mean to denigrate officers like as a whole, but policing was never really set up to stop crime. They don't stop crime. It wasn't set up in a way that police are seen as community actors, right like, as part of the community again with the other ring. And so you know, when we talk about police reform, what in your mind would reform look like? And do you foresee this ever actually coming to pass? Right Like after the murder of George Floyd, which we all witnessed in the middle of the pandemic, because everyone was at home, well those that were privileged, in order to be home and work remote work, they put together quote unquote bipartisan legislation, the George Floyd Policing Act, and after eight months it fell apart. So do you foresee a time and a space where we actually get the kind of police reform we need?

No, And I'll tell you why. In my conflict resolution work, I often say that you can tell what an organization is committed to by the results they are producing. So we've been and actually Jody Armor talks about this in the film, and there's a section in the film where he chronicles the reforms in quotes of the last ten or fifteen years, right, body cameras, anti bias training, de escalation training, all of that, and by the way, on the average in police academies across the country. They spend sixty hours on firearms training, sixty hours on fighting and hand to hand submission holds and that sort of thing, and only eight hours on de escalation, which usually is wrapped into at the very end of the academy they do role playing exercises. Right. So, policing, as Alex Batali in the film says, is police are violence workers. They're there to suppress protests, they're there to inflict violence. They're there to uphold the interests of the state and the wealthy, and like, people get uncomfortable hearing that, But when you look at it, like it couldn't be more clear. With the campus protests and encampments right back in May and June, right, college kids, And I've been to the encampments, right, and all the narratives.

Unarmed, unarmed on college.

Kids hanging out eating pizza with banners saying stop the genocide, right, stop killing people. And what happens when the powers of best say it's time to clear them out. The cops in their riot gear with their pepper spray and their rubber bullets that are supposed to be less than lethal, but people get messed up with those rubber bullets, come in and clear them out. And then you have the pro Israel protesters who were given free reign and not stopped, who especially like a UCLA, were inflicting violence and the cops are nowhere to be found. And then once they pull back, the cops come in and you know, wipe out the protesters. So in the four years since George Floyd was murdered, and by the way, Minneapolis had all of the reforms leading up to George Floyd, in the four years since then, we've had more police killings, which have increased each year, police killing people, Budgets have increased, and sixty nine cops cities have been built or are in the process of being built across the country and people are like, oh, but those are training facilities. It's like, all right, post twenty twenty, what are they training for to suppress protests? And you know, people standing up for their rights and to end genocide and to have their needs met, bodily autonomy like all of that. And so policing as an institution like we talk about, and this goes into the other ring part which I was thinking about earlier, Like we talked about police were born out of slave catchers.

Right.

There were the slave patrols, yep. And it's easy to be like, oh, well, those were slaves and whatever. But in the north police were suppressing protests, suppressing the labor movement and union busting, union busting, suppressing labor unions. And then in the west, out here in the West, they were vigilantes to keep those folks in quotes off of in quotes our land. Right. So the whole institution is rooted in that. And then you take their training in the academy, which is overwhelmingly focused on violence and command and control of populations, and then they get out on the street and the way that they prove themselves to their fellow officers is getting in fights, making arrest, writing tickets.

Right.

There are no metri for how safe is a community? What did you do today to keep people safe?

Right? And just to that point, what we learned during Ferguson in particular, were the ways in which they had set quotas in that city. In order to arrest a certainty, you needed to arrest a certain a number of people, You needed to ticket a certain number of people. So the incentive is not in the suppression of crime, it is in how many people can you catch? Yes, right, So that mentality is reinforced by the quota systems that are set up in these places.

And there's I don't remember if you interviewed him or not. There's a book called An Inconvenient Cop, which is a former black NYPD officer who talks about those quotas and he literally joined the force because he was, like you wanted to find out why he had the experience as a black man, you know, in relation to NYPD. So all of that is out there, and so policing I've been saying it's not for the people and will never be for the people. What we can do and what is being done, and it just needs more awareness and support and funding and all of that. Are the community response teams, you know, violence prevention workers, which are being utilized in Newark for example, right, they took five percent of the Newark police budget put it into the Office of Violence Prevention, and they have all of these street teams like One Hood, Equal Justice. There's there's some other organizations, and those are the teams that respond to mental health calls and people needing wellness checks and things like that. And crime is it an all time low? Like a sixty year low in the city of Newark. And that's just you know, with the small budget. And there are teams like when I was doing the film, everybody was really focused on the Cahoots program in Eugene, Oregon, and the Star program in Denver, Colorado, and those are like the ogs that everybody refers to. And having done these sixty one screenings across the country and been in Sacramento, in San Antonio and Atlanta and Newark and you know all these other places, there are these violence prevention workers community responders, yeah, that are working. Is just they're not funded. A lot of them are volunteer. Some of them are connected to the police in some way because the police department wants to oversee. But when these groups go out, people aren't getting killed and not getting arrested either, and they're not calling for backup, you know, which increases the likelihood of violence.

Matthew, we will leave it there today, but I just want to again thank you for the work, thank you for your film, and please just remind people where it is streaming now so that they can take a look.

Yeah, thank you. So. Reimagining safetymovie dot Com is the website and it's streaming on Amazon to Be, YouTube and Google Play.

That is it for me today. Hey dear friends on Woke af As always, Power to the people and to all the people power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck. H

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