Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 KPI. <inaudible> <inaudible>.
Speaker 1 00:37 Good evening. Thank you for joining disability and progress where we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam. I'm the host of this show. Charlene doll and Amber Johnson. Research women. Amber Johnson's actually in the studio. Hello Amber. Say it loud even though you're far away. Excellent. And tonight we are speaking with Noah McCourt. Hello Noah. Hi Sam. Thanks for having me. And Michelle. Gross. Hi. Hi there. Hi Sam. And Michelle is cofounder of local communities United against police brutality. So we're going to be talking about a lot of things tonight. We're going to be talking about about that very thing. We're going to be talking about disabilities and law and uh, body cams. I hope and as much info is she will pour out to me. So thank you very much for joining me. Thanks. I'm excited to be here. Yes, this is always fun for me. All right, so let's start out by um, having you recap and give a, what is communities United against police brutality?
Speaker 2 01:48 Sure. Communities, United against police brutality has been around for 20 years. And interestingly, we are an all volunteer organization. We've never had any paid staff. So to be around for 20 years is pretty amazing. And we do a ton of stuff in particularly particular, we provide advocacy for people dealing with the effects of police brutality. So, you know, we go out and, um, help people with their cases. We help people gather information, get hooked up with lawyers, go to court with people, all kinds of things like that. Um, and then, but we don't, we're not social services, we're about social justice. So we get people to come to our meetings and get involved in the issue even as we're helping them with their case because we find that getting involved actually helps that person regain their power. So that's a pretty important thing. Uh, we also do a lot of public policy work.
Speaker 2 02:35 Like, you know, getting laws changed. We do lawsuits, all kinds of things that we need to do to change the underlying conditions that allow police brutality to occur. And the third thing we do is a ton of education. So we're always out here teaching know your rights classes and teaching people about the issue and you know, teach you about real solutions to the issue. So we just do a whole lot of stuff. And again, we're all volunteer, so do it with a lot of people power and not much else. So, um, that's a lot of time that you've put into this and education. I mean, some of this feels like it, it must take some kind of funding. Do you get any funding? We do not. Um, we actually do not accept, um, grant money or any kind of government money of any kind. Um, because we think that those things attach strings to your work and we want to be free to, you know, do everything from protest to write policies, um, to go to court with people on every other thing in between.
Speaker 2 03:32 And so we think, you know, the, again, those kinds of funds are a corrupting influence that we don't want them. Um, we live on individual donations alone and frankly, just a lot of hard work by some very dedicated people. Well, it kind of keeps you honest that way, doesn't it? It does. It does. And accountable to the community, which is who we really answer to. Are you a five Oh one C three at all? We are not, we are a nonprofit grassroots organization. We've chosen not to be any of those tax statuses because again, those tax status is determined the work you can actually do and we need to be having free reign. Yes, yes. Everything and anything that we need to make this, you know, to make the changes we need to see happen. Can you talk a little bit about the know your rights?
Speaker 2 04:14 So I know you teach them about, you know, kind of try to get people to understand their rights, but where do you get your information? Well, we work with a lot of attorneys. Um, I am, um, I'm a retired nurse, but now I'm a medical paralegal for my paid work and um, you know, so that gives me access to a lot of attorneys. And over the years we've worked with these attorneys to develop our curriculum. And it's an interesting thing because our curriculum, um, our know your rights curriculum has actually been developed into course content that is being used by the Minnesota literacy council at all 150 sites across the state that, um, that do training for people who are English as second language learners and they are learning about their rights from the curriculum that we developed. So it's pretty, to me that's very exciting.
Speaker 2 05:00 I want to see everybody know their rights and know how to interact safely with police and get out of those interactions as, as safe and, um, on harmed as possible. So we love teaching the, the, the, the course and um, we love that. Now it's like I said, one of the curriculum that's being used by the, um, Minnesota literacy council. I'm super excited about that. So since you kinda dove into something here, so you talk a little bit about, and, and we talked a couple years ago, so I'm hoping that there's been some good changes, but some of the things you teach is kind of about keeping yourself safe and coming out of a, uh, police confrontation. Not, you know, unscaved not hurt nobody. That's, that's the goal. How do you, can you give me some ideas about, a little bit about how you teach that?
Speaker 2 05:56 Sure. Well, one of the things I like people to understand is that the role of police, um, they have a very specific role and their role is to investigate whether a crime occurred to investigate, uh, the individual's involvement in that crime, possible involvement in the crime, and to gather evidence for potential prosecution. So if you understand that that's the police role, then you have to understand, you know, so that's, that gives you a start to understanding like, why we don't want to just have little casual conversations with police and things like that. You have to understand that you're always being investigated and there, and there's no reason that you actually have to participate in that investigation. And so what we teach people is that's the police role. Your role is to, again, come out as unharmed as possible. And then we teach a set of, of magic words and the set of principles that help you understand how to come out of that encounter as unharmed as possible.
Speaker 2 06:46 And that doesn't mean that, you know, every encounter with polices, you know, rife with danger and that there, you know, that you might get shot or this and that. We're not talking about that, but you know, you could have your rights violated or you could end up with criminal charges or, and having to go to court and things like that. So we're really just trying to teach people, um, how, you know, it, knowing what the police role is, how you respond and how you, um, you know, know your rights and then actually uphold those rights, you know, an advocate for yourself. So that's really what the training is about. And I love teaching it because people are, you know, there's a lot of little things that people don't know and they're happy to learn things like that. You don't need to show your ID card just because a police officer asks you, but then you have to know how to get yourself out of that situation.
Speaker 2 07:33 It's not just like, you know, okay, I don't want to show an ID card. What do I say to get myself out of. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so can you talk a little bit about national day of protest against police brutality? Absolutely. So now, um, you know, communities United against police brutality is part of a national, um, network, a national coalition of organizations across the country that we Mark every year on October 22nd as national day of protest against police brutality. Last year was I believe the 26th anniversary of that, of that date. Um, what we do here in the twin cities is we typically will have some type of outward facing event like, um, this year we chose to bring in, um, Victoria law, who's an internationally known prison abolitionist. Um, and we had an event to talk about like, um, incarceration and things like that.
Speaker 2 08:30 Um, and then we also do a more inward facing event, which is, um, an always an annual event for the families of people who have been killed by police, the people that we refer to as stolen lives. And so we always have an annual dinner and we have, um, a very nice event. We Mark, um, the lives of these, of these family members. You know, we give a space for the families to talk about their family members and to share fellowship. And frankly, we're good cooks, so we share really good food. You know, that's kind of amazing. Yeah. We make some pretty darn good food around there. And so we ha, you know, we, we, you know, we cook, we really cook and we really make a big spread and we bring in all these families and, you know, people show up. We packed the room with people that can support each other, that understand what that experience is like. Um, you know, that whole kind of situation is, um, is important because, you know, we need to Mark the names of the people who die at the hands of police. It needs, they need to be remembered.
Speaker 1 09:29 Um, you know, last time we talked about people who were killed by the police officers in Minneapolis, you kind of compared it to st Paul and it seemed that, that that was kind of, we had quite a jump on them. I just not sure now I've heard so much violence this year. What's the status was how Minneapolis and st Paul are doing.
Speaker 2 09:58 You know, a lot of people just don't want to believe it, but honestly, st Paul is the deadliest police department in the state of Minnesota and Minneapolis is pretty far down from there. Um, strangely though they seem to be trying to catch up lately. Um, you know, this year hasn't been such a great year. Um, but st Paul still has a horrific record. Um, there's still 14th deadliest in the country. And to be such a small department and to have that position in the country against, you know, major cities across the country is really appalling. And you know, you compare that, I think Minneapolis is something like 28 or 32 on the list. So, you know, um, just the per capita rate of, of killings by police is, is really appalling. I think Minneapolis, st Paul's like 7.95 and Minneapolis is like four point something. So it's, it's um, really, really, like I said, pretty appalling. Um, but nonetheless, every single death at the hands of police is a tragedy and it's um, you know, one that we have to, you know, keep thinking to ourselves, what can we be doing differently to prevent these deaths, you know? And so I'm really eager to share with you some, some things that we're working on about that.
Speaker 1 11:08 Okay. Do you feel like, I mean it sounds like your, the statistics you're comparing are compared to other cities are same size. Yes,
Speaker 2 11:18 Yes, yes. Because you look at the per capita rate of deaths at the hands of police and then that way it kind of equalizes all the cities so that you're looking, you know, comparing apples to apples. And so, you know, when you, when you do that and st Paul comes out at number 14, you have to think, are you kidding me? What is wrong with this place, you know, um, and, and a lot of why this goes on in Minnesota is because there's so little accountability. You know, we, um, are right now, there's, um, a prosecution of a, of an officer named Brian crook and the killing of a man named Benjamin Evans. And this is only third prosecution of an officer for the on-duty death of a member of the community in the history of this state. You know, the previous ones were like Muhammad, nor for the Justine Damond killing. And then the, um, uh, officer is for the, um, killing of Philando Castiel. So it's only been in the last decade, you know, or less than a decade that we've even had any prosecutions of officers for killings, uh, members of the community. And there aren't very many of them. So it's, it's not very much of a deterrent, let's just say
Speaker 1 12:26 I'm thinking of the prosecution that happened, um, not long ago. It was a female officer. Am sure you know the case, not here. Um, Oh, you're talking about Amber Geiger. So you know, with the bottom John first. Yeah. So I'm wondering, I mean, as you pointed out, it's so rare that officers get prosecuted, that they get held accountable. This person presumably is going to be, do you think this makes a difference in how these cases will be looked at now in the future?
Speaker 2 13:03 Well, I think it's starting to, but again, the numbers are so low that it doesn't seem as enough of a deterrent, you know? And the other thing that I think is important is not just to look at prosecutions of officers when the person dies, but I think, you know, when people are seriously injured or when police officers violate people's rights and abuse people, like situations where, um, an officer beats up a handcuffed person that's a crime, treat it like a crime instead of a personnel matter. And you would see a lot less of that kind of nonsense going on.
Speaker 3 13:39 I think one of the other issues that we're seeing become more of an issue as well as the issue of arbitration. Um, you know, there was an, uh, uh, Peter Brazo the recent arbitration where Minneapolis re reinstated the, Oh, I was, uh, I was thinking about the one over in that the FA the taco, which, yeah, you know, there was a, um, officer in st Paul who, um, kicked someone while they were getting mauled by a dog and is injured. And it was, um, really, um, disturbing to me. And I think it's probably is really just a big to a lot of people, uh, that not only did an arbitrator clear somebody and reinstate them back to reinstate them, um, as an officer that the federal government in DC felt it was such an issue that they took the case from the district attorney in Minnesota and have the office of civil rights, uh, prosecute the case out of DC. And that really speaks to, um, the level of legitimacy that arbitration brings to, um, holding police accountable, which is not, which is fairly legitimate. And by the, in that particular case,
Speaker 2 14:52 That officer was prosecuted successfully. He's been convicted now. So he's, he's going to prison and he needs to because he nearly killed that man. So let me understand. So when first he was tried here and he got reinstated, well he was, he was fired. And what had happened was chief Axtell was the brand new chief of st Paul police. His second day on the job, he fired this officer pocket, which, and then, um, uh, in short order, the arbitrator returned him to the job, said, you know, yes, you can suspend him for 30 days unpaid, but you have to give him his job back. And this happens routinely. And some of the issue is problems with the arbitration. But really the bigger issue is the fact that there's a lack of discipline leading up to that point. So what happened in, in Papa witch's case is that they had a list.
Speaker 2 15:44 The arbitrator said, well, well, you can't fire this guy because you never fired anybody for that same offense previously. And they had a list of six times that similar type of incidents had occurred that the person didn't get fired. Four of them were Palka witches. So when you don't discipline leading up to that, the arbitration, the arbitrators have to follow sets of rules and those rules include that that discipline can't be arbitrary and it has to be, you know, progressive. Like the first time you give him a warning, then you, you know, give him a suspension or whatever you're like, you have to, you can't just go straight to firing unless there's some really egregious thing, you know. But, um, basically, yeah of course, of course. But the fact that he got away with it for prior times, you know, argues against them firing him.
Speaker 2 16:27 And so that's part of the problem is we don't, we don't set it up and we don't good dot and do documentation to make sure that these, um, that these arbitrations, you know, the, the discipline sticks and the arbitrators don't overturn it. So that's a big issue. How did it get turned about so to speak? Well, um, he was reinstated to the job and um, which I know that acts chief Axtell cause I had a lot of conversation with him about this was not happy about it. In fact, we recommended that when they, uh, when the, the st Paul police put into place a new use of force policy, that they adopt a thing that we call the reset mechanism. And the reset mechanism is a way to overcome what, um, the, this kind of thing of past practices of not disciplining. So it's a way to like set a new stake in the ground and say, from this point forward, this is how we're going to do things. And chief Axtell to his credit, did adopt that reset mechanism. But again, it was too late to, for our pocket, which, so Palka which went back to the job. But then the federal government stepped in and prosecuted him successfully for civil rights violations, for nearly killing poor Mr. Baker who had committed, by the way, no crime whatsoever. He just hadn't made the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 3 17:34 Well, and that's something, I mean, even getting into the issue of disability and policing, that's something you see all the time as where oftentimes when inter, when adverse interactions with law enforcement, um, results, um, from disability, oftentimes there's no crime that's been committed. It's someone who, um, police are conducting a wellness check on. It's, um, it's something like that that results in escalation. That's a huge issue by the way that these wellness checks, because you know, normally you have rights not to, um, have police come to your home without a warrant and things like that. Um, you know, they, they can't just up police officers can't just walk in your home, but a wellness check just flips the whole script and they can walk in your home. They can force you to come with them or go in an ambulance or whatever, you know, based on whatever kind of when they have about what's going on with you.
Speaker 3 18:27 Basically. It just has to be like exigent circumstances. So does anything out of the ordinary. So hold on a minute, I want to take a step back. Explain to people what a wellness check is. What does that mean for it, Noah? So basically what a wellness check is is it's a, um, so oftentimes if a parent or a caregiver is worried about an individual who has, let's say a mental health diagnosis and whether they're prone to wander, prone to self, you know, self injury or whatever, uh, they will call law enforcement to go and check on the individual. How does somebody get an wellness check and stated on site? Cause you can't just do that to anyone. Can you actually you can, you actually can and you can. And even worse about it is not funny. I'm just like dumbfounded. What's even worse about it is there's a Supreme court decision allowing them to, um, detain people, um, in their own homes, if they have what they call exigent circumstances.
Speaker 3 19:33 And so often what that really becomes is it's a way to bypass the fourth amendment right, to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. And so basically, and, and, and, and I have often a you that really what it is, is it, um, uh, I've often no give that a disproportionately affects people with disabilities. Oh, there's no question. I think, you know, if some, if officers show up and somebody who's neurodivergent you know a little bit has autism is stemming, that's those are the types of people who are getting shot and killed by law enforcement doing welfare checks because they're not acting the way they expect other people to act or whatever. You know, I have actually argued that really what it is really ultimately what welfare checks are is they're detaining people on the basis of disability. And what it really reminds me of, and I know that some offices have gotten been other shades that I have said this, but if it minds me, a lot of the Nuremberg laws in 1940 is Germany where you could pull someone over based on the fact that they were Jewish and in today's society that's unacceptable.
Speaker 3 20:38 You can't pull people over based on race. So why are we then allowing officers to pull people over on the basis that they have a disability, which they really have no control over. Just as somebody who is black, a Jewish has no control over that.
Speaker 2 20:54 And I agree, although I do like I have asked for someone to check on someone who I knew was depressed and wasn't answering the phone for a day and had gotten out of the hospital. And I feel like that was justified to you. Agreement of, I mean if you have somebody who you know has a depression, I would personally go check on them myself or ask a friend that's comfortable doing it to um, to go and check on that person because I think there really is a danger, you know, one of the problems that, um, I think we see in our society is the use of police for all things. You know, police, um, are not the right responders for mental health crises. They're not the right responders for drug overdoses. They're not the right responders for, you know, a lot of different things. Or people get police involved in their, like their individual squabbles in their, within their families or with their neighbors or whatever.
Speaker 2 21:44 You know, and again, police are not social workers. They're not any of this stuff. The role of police, we're going to go right back to it, is to determine if a crime occurred, to investigate people for their involvement in that crime and to gather evidence for their prosecution. That's the role of the police and that's where it should stay. And you know, we, that's, that's not a bad role or good role. It's neutral. You know, if somebody is raping people or whatever, you know, or brutalizing people or whatever, we want them to serve that function in that role, that's fine. But it's where they get out of that swim lane and start trying to be social workers and this and that. The other thing or where society expects them to do all those other things, that's where we run into the big problem because they apply the tools that they need to be police officers, crime fighters to these other situations where it doesn't fit.
Speaker 3 22:30 And I think another piece of that is when, that is, when they're going into these situations, oftentimes they're not trained or don't have any experience in disability specifically. And I think that part of the issue that we see, um, with police violence against individuals with disabilities is the fact that they just don't accommodate disability. Um, even though, and I, and I, and I say this all the time, that, um, law enforcement is actually legally mandated under the American with disabilities act to accommodate people with disabilities. Uh, there was a case before the Supreme court in the nineties, uh, and it was Yeskie versus, um, uh, department of, uh, of corrections of Pennsylvania where an individual was found guilty and they were sentenced to the state penitentiary and they were told that they could be paroled, um, if they completed this motivational bootcamp and then, and that they could be paroled early.
Speaker 3 23:25 Um, well, so they got to the, so they got to the prison and the court, um, and the doctor at the prison said they, uh, this individual has, has high blood pressure, they're not eligible for this program. Well. So mr Yassky, um, sued, um, under the American with disabilities act, um, stating that they had discriminated against him on the basis that he had high blood pressure and the case worked his way up all the way up to the Supreme court. And the Supreme court unanimously found that that under the broad language of the American with disabilities act, uh, that the, um, ADA applies to everything law enforcement does. And so the case has actually been interpreted by the courts of appeals, um, to apply to things like arrests. Um, there's a case, um, uh, Goldman V barge where the eighth circuit court of appeals and the eighth circuit is inclusive of Minnesota, Missouri, um, and really all the way down to Arkansas.
Speaker 3 24:27 Um, and um, but they've interpreted it to apply to arrest, to detaining, to every aspect. And the problem is that law enforcement just simply ignores that mandate. And I think that people with disabilities and, and their caregivers and advocates in the community are often not aware of that fact. Um, and I have actually litigated against law enforcement agencies that don't accommodate people with disabilities because I feel it's, it's something that needs to be done. Um, and while you're not going to make millions of dollars off an ADA lawsuit, um, the ADA is a really a powerful weapon when you civilly to push for a systemic change. I
Speaker 2 25:07 Know the organization that you're with, Michelle has successfully sued the city of Minneapolis a couple of times, multiple times. We're actually on lawsuits number six and seven right now. So do you feel that this is making a difference? Well, there's no question, um, the law, you know, a lot of it depends on, you know, there's different things that we're suing about. And one of the things we sued about was, um, 592 cases of brutality that, um, that we had gathered. And one of the results of that was to put cameras on all the squad cars. So absolutely we think it matters. Um, we, our, our current lawsuits, uh, both of them, um, were, are related to getting data from the departments, which is very important because groups like ours can't work unless we have the data. We need to help us understand the situation so that we can make policy recommendations and you know, and policy demands early.
Speaker 2 25:58 Um, and so the most current thing we're working on, uh, the very most current one is that, um, you know, in this case of this gentleman Jashar VU who was killed unfortunately on Sunday, um, the city has an obligation to release certain data. There's some data that is public. The way the law reads is public at all times from the originating agency and this, and that includes things like the names, the officers and things like that. And the city never ever wants to release that data until they get getting ready to do it. But public at all tamp times means like right away. And so when we put in a data practice request on Monday, you know, actually, you know, it was in their offices at the opening of business on Monday. And, um, when it got Tuesday afternoon and they still hadn't released that data that we are entitled to have like the man's name and the names of the cops and all the other stuff.
Speaker 2 26:47 Um, we actually went into, um, the courts to get an emergency injunction to force them to release the data. And right before we were going to go to a hearing, they released the data. So we're kind of, you know, in other words, it worked. We forced them to give over data that they did not want to give over. Um, and we're going to continue to keep hammering away at them to make them do the things that need to happen. Um, and I know that sounds like some kind of like sort of arcane thing, you know, like what does it matter or what does it matter about it because it matters. It matters for our ability to advocate for people who are, you know, who are family members of people who have been killed by police. It matters for the community to get to know who these officers are.
Speaker 2 27:26 One of the officers that killed Shasha VU is also killed another man just three months ago. So when you talk about releasing data, um, this isn't data that they have from a body cam, right? This is just statistical data that, you know, so and so was killed at this time and this place and right. It's that kind of data. But it also includes the person's, the officer's name and the person's name. And they don't get to just keep those things secret. They have to give them away. You know, they have to disclose them because actually that data belongs to us. It's, they gather it, but we own it. And so the fact is that, you know, that when they do things like not share the names of the nine officers, all of whom have extremely bad histories, um, including, like I said, one of the officers just killed a man three months ago.
Speaker 2 28:17 And so this is stuff we are entitled to know about. Why did they choose to hold the data? Well, you'd probably have to ask them that question. But one of the things that we know about police is that the police in the city, they like to control the narrative. And by controlling the data, they can control the narrative. They can do this thing where they can say, here's a bad guy and we killed him and we are heroic. And then you come to find out that one of the people is one of the cops is somebody who has just killed somebody else a few months ago. You know, um, this is, this is not heroic action. And when you don't get to get the name of the person, we don't get to find out their story. Like we don't get to know, um, by finding out the name of the person. For example, I was able to go meet with their family today. I was able to offer services and assistance and I was able to help them figure out how to tell their story the right way. And so, you know, these are, these are things and the, and the police, they love to control that narrative. So, but by withholding that they keep the community for being able to know the real truth.
Speaker 3 29:14 Speaking to the point of controlling the narrative. The other thing that, um, you know, the lawsuit that originally actually really brought me and Michelle together, um, was a first amendment lawsuit would be guarding, um, a law enforcement agency. And, um, I was actually blocked for criticizing the practices of the Chaska police department on social media and, uh, and Michelle and I got, uh, got connected via our attorney. Um, but ultimately, um, it's actually, um, a violation of the first amendment for, um, the law for law enforcement to be blocking people on social media because it constitutes a suppression of free speech and retaliation for free speech. Um, and so even beyond controlling the narrative, they just like to have their finger on the, you know, on the general dialogue of how
Speaker 2 30:11 The message, you know, and a big thing for them is, um, is, you know, they don't understand that first amendment. The main core thing of first amendment is the right to criticize government. Their government, when you get to criticize them, they don't want to be criticized of them. Look like heroes when even when they're not
Speaker 3 30:28 Well. And one of the things that I really found to me, uh, found amusing and as I had actually been, um, uh, costed by the Chaska police department, uh, several months prior. And, uh, and it was interesting because, uh, uh, during one of the hearings, the Chaska police chief showed up with several officers and asked the judge to issue an order that I not be allowed to criticize the city of Chaska or its police department, which is not constitutional. Right.
Speaker 2 30:58 They allowed not do they, cause we're pretty sure they, they might, are they legally allowed to edit data, um, to edit data? No, they're not legally allowed to. That's called, you know, evidence tampering. Right. That's a federal crime as a matter of fact. So they can't really do that, you know. But, um, but that's not to say that I don't think I've seen it. I'd definitely have seen it. How long are they legally allowed to hold data until they should be releasing it? Well, it depends on the specific data. Now you asked an interesting question earlier about body camera footage. There is a provision in Minnesota statute that if body camera footage captures the police use of a firearm that causes substantial bodily harm or of course if you're dead, that's way past substantial bodily harm, right? That that data is public also and you know, and that they can't withhold that.
Speaker 2 31:54 And so we also have put in a request for the body camera footage in this Shasha VU case and we, um, are expecting that we'll wind up in court, you know, having to get that data from them. And by the way, that it's, it's a unique carve out because most data other than the data we initially requested most data is, um, the police are allowed to withhold it as part of an ongoing investigation until their investigation is over. But it appears from our reading of the law that that body camera footage that that doesn't apply. And so consequently we are going to, we have placed a demand on the city to give us that body camera footage, you know, if they follow the law. And give it to us. I'm actually going to meet, like I said, I've been talking with the family. I've got to have them look at it first because, or offer the opportunity for them to look at it first.
Speaker 2 32:42 Cause I think that's only fair and respectful to have the family right. But we believe that data to be public right now as it sits. And so, um, you know, it'll be interesting to see how the, the city argues that and we'll, you know, we're not shy about going to court. Um, it's, we work with very good attorneys who really love what we're doing and do the work essentially pro bono, um, to help us because they are, they're standing up for important principles of access of data to the community, which is just a key thing, you know? Right. That we have, it's our data. We own it. They just keep it for us. So a couple of questions. It sounds like body cams don't follow the same laws necessarily as releasing datas. So can you talk about what the rules are about, at least in Minnesota on body cams?
Speaker 2 33:32 And then I've got one following that. But um, you know, one of the things, um, that the data practices act, um, assumes is that data is, um, is public and less, you know, it's what they, what the law basically frames it up as is all pop, all government created data is public unless it's carved out. So is carved out, carved out means like exceptions, you know, so things like juvenile data, data about sexual assault victims, you know, stuff that makes sense, right? Yeah. Certain kinds of things like that are, are private and, and for a good reason, you know, so, so that's been the principle of data practices accents since it was written. And that's a very good way of framing up data access. The issue with body cameras is that when they came along with body cameras, police agencies got very afraid that all of a sudden all their stuff is going to be out there for people to see.
Speaker 2 34:25 And um, so then they um, they flipped the script, they completely flipped it on his head. Basically body camera footage is private with certain carve-outs. So, um, it's very hard to get body camera footage. Um, the only people who can get it are people who are actually in the footage. And then let's say that you're in a situation where, let's say it's a big public space and there's a lot of people in the, in the footage, let's say it was a fight or a crime that happened with a big crowd or something like that. Um, if you're one of the people in the footage, you can get yourself in the footage, but everybody else around you gets redacted out. So, and it's really crazy. We don't, we, we believe that the, that they're supposed to leave all the audio alone, but some of the, um, the just, the police departments are actually even redacting everybody else's audio.
Speaker 2 35:14 So it's almost like you're talking to yourself or something. It's reacting to some ghost or something. It's very bizarre. That's editing. Yes. That's the, where they edit out everyone else and even everyone else's voices and it's, it's nuts. It's the worst kind of, um, you know, redactions that can happen because they make the video make no sense whatsoever. Okay. So let me ask you this, do so, are they, can they withhold that data? What if the court asks for that? Well, that the court asks for it or if the court orders it, they, I believe they would have to to give that. But I mean, think about your average person. Let's say that you are involved in some issue where the police, where you believe that the police mishandled you or abused you or violated your rights. Now you want to get that footage right.
Speaker 2 36:01 Um, and there's a bunch of other people in it. You're going to get that footage to a certain degree, but it may not make very much sense to you. And then do you have, you know, thousands of dollars to go to court to try to get a judge to order them to give you this footage? I mean, you know, to give you an unredacted version that you can actually understand what the heck it is. You know, do you have thousands of dollars? Most people don't. It costs real money to go court. It's a minimum of $350 just to file the suit. And then every motions, another a hundred dollars after that. So, you know, it takes like for us, we have to do a lot of fundraising for all these lawsuits we do because it takes real money to actually do these lawsuits. Okay. So let's jump in and let's talk about PD.
Speaker 2 36:42 People who video now, it's a, it's a, it's a huge thing. People are videoing, um, things that are left and right that are happening. Sometimes I think for the better, sometimes maybe not so much. I think it's always for the better. Frankly. You know, we, we took a case, it's called Gliffy kind of. Um, we worked with a number of other organizations and took a case up through the, um, the federal appeals court to codify the right or make legal, in other words, the right of every person in this country to videotape police. That was such an important decision. Being able to document police conduct is such an important, right. And so we, we worked very hard to get you that. Right? So we'd like you to use it. Okay. Uh, you know, we worked hard for that. So, um, so you have the right to document police.
Speaker 2 37:30 You don't have a right to interfere with their business. So step back enough where you're not in their business, you know, um, don't try to, you know, interfere, whatever, but capture the stuff on film. And I cannot tell you how many times that video footage has mattered in case does, you know, we see them on TV with things like the, with uh, diamond Reynolds capturing from, for example, Philando Castillo, the aftermath of Philando Christele being killed. Um, we see it in other kinds of incidents on TV, but I can tell you there's a ton of day to day stuff that never nobody ever sees on, on TV where a video cam footage that was captured by a bystander makes all the difference in the world. So then how has that handle this bar as if they want to hand that over? How's that? Well, a lot of times people will actually call our hotline and say, Hey, I caught some footage of this person being beat up on central Avenue on such and such day and time.
Speaker 2 38:24 And it's very bizarre because people will say, I want to give you my footage. And this has happened to us many, many times. It's almost just too bizarre for coincidence, right? Um, where somebody will come to us and say, I've got this footage. And then a few days later somebody will call us up and say, Oh, I got beat up on central Avenue on such and such day in time. And then we'll go, well a witness, lucky you, a witness saw this and captured it on video tape and we have a video. So do you feel that, cause sometimes there are really, I think blatant wrong neces that are done. So is this making a difference that people are handing these in or, because I feel like there's a lot of violence and stuff out there now. Is there really a lot of violence more than there used to be?
Speaker 2 39:09 Or is it just that everyone's catching it? I you're talking about police violence or other violence? Police slash. Citizens. I think it's a mix of both. I think it's a mix of both. That we are capturing more of an on film and we're having more ability to, um, use that footage, you know, because one of the other things that, that people don't realize is if you get brutalized by police, it is axiomatic that you're going to get charges, you're going to get some kind of charges like obstructing legal process, you know, disorderly conduct or something like that. So people are going to try and cover the day they have to cover themselves. So we call them copper cover charges, you know, that's the main thing. You did nothing. Right. And so yeah. And so against people with disabilities as assault and the cop, right, which was fourth degree of how do they apply the law? How do they prove you did that? Well, typically they don't have to prove it because it's the cop's word against the personnel. So for example, I can give you a police report.
Speaker 3 40:02 I mean, I can give you a great example of how they do it. So I was actually accosted by law enforcement, uh, two years ago as I had mentioned. And, um, I was walking down by the river. I have high functioning autism and I was under duress. Um, but I've always been able to kind of deescalate myself and you know, walk it off like a lot of high functioning people on the spectrum. Well someone called law enforcement and they called the Chaska police department. And because I, I guess my biggest disability is when I'm under duress, I don't process verbal information so you can try and talk to me as much as you want, but um, I'm not comprehending what you're saying. Um, and so I ended up getting football tackled by a Chaska police department basically for having high functioning autism. And during the process they got a Redskins knee. There was not even a booze. There was a Redskins name. I had a tooth knocked out of my face. Um, but I was the one that was charged with assaulting.
Speaker 2 40:58 So let me ask you though, what did they ask you to do that you didn't hear? Apparently they asked me to stop while I was walking. So you were walking obviously under some stress and they said, stop because whatever was happening, I don't actually think that, I believe the wording was,
Speaker 3 41:17 They asked to come over and talk to me and I said that I didn't want to talk to them.
Speaker 2 41:21 That's it. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And those kinds of, you know, misunderstandings and things like that happen all the time. But then, you know, instead of saying, well this was a misunderstanding, they say, no, here's your charges, you know, and these charges again are done to cover what the police do to the person. And so in those cases, you know, I wish you to have it. You know, I had some of a bystander video that would have been very helpful because, um, because in any number of cases that I've worked on, that bystander video is absolutely huge. And like I said, I don't know, um, I don't know if it's like the way the universe works or what, but we get this thing all the time where people call us up and say, I've got this video, I've got this video, and we're like, great. You give it to us, we'll hang onto it, you know, we'll store it securely and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 42:05 Cause we have mechanisms for all that. And then not any time later, a week later or a couple days later or whatever, somebody calls us up who was the victim of that. And then we're able to match people together and you know, get the lawyer in touch with that person. It's, it's really quite amazing. So once that happens, like if no would have had his done, could that have just melted those charges off his <inaudible> because the person can bring that footage into court, you know, with the lawyer and yes, absolutely funny if you watch my video footage, Chaska pedia that time actually did not use body cameras, but they had squad car cameras. If you watch the video footage, when I got football tackled one of the cops hopped in the car and turn the car around. Oh yeah, because he didn't want that footage to be why.
Speaker 2 42:54 Yeah. So they do a lot. There's a lot of tricks. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of tricks they can use. One of the things that they do in Minneapolis is, you know, it's winter time and everybody's got a coat, right? So somehow that body camera always ends up behind the coat. Just always find the goat. It's always behind the coat. So there are different body cam laws in different States. Yes, yes, yes. And even each department has its own body cam policy. Is there any thought about trying to get things equal the same? Well, you know, here's the thing. Body cameras have some ups and downs. They have more downs than ups. To be honest about it. We did not, um, you know, when people were all going a Gaga about body cameras, we actually, um, our organization was the first in the country of any size to say that we did not think that body cameras were thus solution.
Speaker 2 43:44 They're extremely expensive. Uh, police own the footage and control the access to the footage. You don't control the footage itself. I can't tell you how many times we've tried to get footage and I was like, Oh, that got turned off or this and that. And the other thing, and you know, it hasn't recently been changed that it's illegal to turn them off now, that they must always be running. No, it's not illegal to turn them off. Um, the, the, when they have to be used as a matter of policy for the individual department to decide the case of, I believe it was Justine Damond, I believe they turned it off. Yeah. Right. Well, they never turned it on. Yeah. It never was. Never turned on. Yeah. So here's a woman that gets killed and there's no body camera footage. Why? Because while those officers, even though they had a policy mandating that they ran, that they had their footage on, you know, their cameras on didn't have them on and then is there no, uh, repercussions for them?
Speaker 2 44:33 Well, I mean, there was repercussions for the black officer. Well, no one got fired and prosecuted, but Harrity the white guy, nothing happened to him. He didn't get disciplined or anything. And even the supervisor did not have, his honor, we get, we get, um, you know, complaint data from the city of Minneapolis and of the 1600 or so complaints over the last six years, you know, they sustained a discipline, 10 of them, right? So it's a very low percentage of 0.4%. Um, and only one of those involve body camera footage. So, or you know, failures or turn on a body camera. And it wasn't terribly by the way, so it wasn't that guy. Um, so we are seeing very little enforcement of those policies. You know, it's kinda like, Oh, you know, well, I forgot, you know, and blah, blah, blah, you know, so the cameras are only as good as, you know, they're actually being used and then what happens to the footage and can the public access that footage so they're not really in our mind the beyond the end all.
Speaker 2 45:28 So talk about the number of people with disabilities. It was quite high a couple of years ago when we discussed, um, where are we now with that? Okay. Well, um, I'm eager to talk about that most definitely. Um, one of the things that are a big project our organization is working on is, um, we're preparing a large paper, um, you know, a large policy paper on mental health and policing. One of the things that's happening, you know, and no one knows about this just as well as I do that fully 50% of people who are killed by police are in the throws of a mental health crisis at the time. Um, this is a really serious matter. Um, and we know that, I believe it's, um, um, just able, people are 16 times more likely to have, uh, to be, to be brutalized by police.
Speaker 3 46:16 You know, specifically people with autism are 7% more likely to be charged with a crime without having any
Speaker 2 46:23 Content for the crime. Right? So these are, these are huge issues. And what we've found, you know, there's been a thing called CIT training, crisis intervention training for maybe 25 years now, 20 years, something like that. And, um, what we find is that that training is of so little value that it doesn't stop officers, you know, from brutalizing people who are in the throws of mental health crisis
Speaker 3 46:46 Problems with CIT is when you do these trainings, oftentimes there's peer review to back it up and there's really no peer reviewed to substantiate the fact that CIT is actually, um, a quality training. Um, and, and really to get that sort of data, you would constantly be, you would really have to have a control group of individuals in the mental health crisis and untrained law enforcement officers.
Speaker 2 47:13 Well, we probably have that control group, but in reality, they don't really care.
Speaker 3 47:15 Yeah. So it doesn't, it doesn't add up. But also
Speaker 2 47:18 The thing about it is this, you have to think about who is it that we ask to address mental illness. You know, in the regular world when there's not a policing issue involved and they're not people that have, you know, an eight hour training, right. There are people that go to school and get master's degrees. Okay. PhD. Right. You know, so, um, you know, like clinical social workers or people you know, like that psychologist, you know, these are the people that address mental illness, you know, not some, some person who as a sideline gets an eight hour training and now they're suddenly an expert. It's, it's completely ridiculous expectation and inappropriate.
Speaker 3 47:53 And a lot of them don't even get, I mean, they were training, there was some way of the bare minimum of two. Right, exactly. And then, you know, the other people really don't get how insidious the issue of disability and police brutality, police brutality against folks who have them, um, is, and I think in many ways it's starting to, it really starts in the
Speaker 2 48:16 So, well, exactly. What is your paper asking for? What do you guys, are you setting sure. What we're trying to point out is once again, you know that police are not the right answers for every single problem. They are not the people that should be responding to mental health crisis in this, in our particular, this particular paper. I mean an overall, they're just not the right solution for a lot of different problems. But in this particular case, what we talk about is what's going on right now and how it needs to change in Minnesota in a three week period between November and December of 2018, there were five people in the throws of mental health crisis who were killed by law enforcement officers across the state. You know, we were including Travis Jordan in North Minneapolis, you know, there was five different people. It's, and this was, you know, this is not a new phenomenon. This is happening. And this is even after, like I said, 20 something years of CIT, you know, training. Um, and so we know that
Speaker 3 49:12 The other thing that's a problem with CIT is that it doesn't cover, it doesn't cover the things that people think it covers. And so, like in my case, when I got tackled by law enforcement, the, you know, the police were like, well, we have CIT training. So, uh, how, how could anything be wrong with this picture when in reality, CIT doesn't cover autism or doesn't cover syndrome. It doesn't cover if he fetal alcohol syndrome. Um, all of which are over all of
Speaker 2 49:40 Overrepresented in the criminal justice. Exactly. And it's partially because we apply a criminal justice mindset to the addressing of these kinds of issues. And so what we're looking for is a few things, right? What happens now in Minneapolis on, I'll use Minneapolis for the example. What happens now is a call comes in, let's say a family just wants help getting their dad or their brother or whoever it is to a hospital because a person's having a problem. Um, they'll call and automatically nine, 11, the nine 11 call center automatically flips that to the police. It makes it a police response. What we're looking to do is we want to see what's called a dispatch triage. And in dispatch triage, what happens is that there's a mental health worker embedded in the nine 11 call side of that can say, no, this would be a good case to divert, you know, and we like diversion a lot.
Speaker 2 50:33 We want to divert to a mental health crisis team, a mobile mental health crisis team. So they would be the ones who deserve determined the right calls. That could be diverted. And so we want to see that call diverted to a mental health crisis team that can go out and address that situation. Um, you know, we want that as much as possible. We should be diverting away from, um, police response in any of these situations. But absolutely we should always divert away from a police only response. And so, you know, and this goes back to the point of welfare checks where, you know, nine one, one, you should really avoid calling nine one one. And you should always try and check on the person yourself or have a trusted friend check on them and don't call the cops. Right? But if, you know, if we had this kind of situation in place, then you could call and there could be, um, like I said, mobile mental health crisis workers that could go check on that person.
Speaker 2 51:24 Um, this, you know, this is what we're looking to do is to create a much more robust, um, alternate response to these situations. And again, that's, that's, that's fed from dispatch triage. Now we know that that's not going to be perfect. Like, you know, there's going to be that call that comes in from some shop owner that says, Hey, there's a homeless guy outside my shop and he's harassing my customers. Police come and get him, you know, or whatever. And you know, we can talk all about like how ridiculous that kind of a thing. But, but, but setting out aside, you know, so the police go and they find out that it's really that the guys, you know, having a mental health crisis, he's not really, you know, or whatever. Right? So we know that there will always be some police responses. Um, you know, where the, it looks like it's one kind of call and then they show up.
Speaker 2 52:09 But what they should be doing is immediately pulling in a mobile mental health crisis team. What we've got right now and people will get you now if we had to call and people would be calling me and going, Hey, you know, but we have a mobile health mental health crisis. What are you talking about? Well, here's the problem. They take so long to respond right now. Cope, which is the County response team takes about a two hour response time. And with that, the police are not going to sit around for two hours. For them it's easier to put them on an ambulance and drop them off at a drop off center downtown. There's a big one that had been County just opened recently. You know, it's easier for them to just do this drop-off thing, you know, so they can move on to the next call, which is what they're always trying to do is speed through these calls.
Speaker 2 52:51 So, um, so they're not going to wait two hours. So then what ends up happening is cope ends up being a followup resource, not an addressing resource, not a resource that addresses it at the time. So what we're looking for, like I said, is we want mobile mental health crisis teams to be the responders for all of these mental health crisis calls, unless a weapons involved than we understand that police officers would have to be involved in that. But if there's no weapon involved, you know of the person, you know, um, what I think that you really handle, I mean a lethal weapon. I'm, I'm not talking about like a broom or something, you know, because they wouldn't make that argument. So, so real briefly, real briefly, when we touch base a couple of years ago, you were talking about that you were trying to push for kind of this liability insurance that people would have, the police would have to get individually to be able to, you know, when they did make egregious errors.
Speaker 2 53:50 Did anything come of that? We are still working on that as a matter of fact. And actually it's pretty interesting because a lot of academics are on the country, have studied our model and there's all of these academics that are writing papers, talking about how, um, the insurance, how having that kind of a, um, a countervailing force would actually have a lot of impact on police conduct that w, you know, there's been all of these papers validating all these academics that are validating that approach. And it's really interesting. So we've, um, we were due to some legal shenanigans by the city. We weren't able to get it on the ballot in Minneapolis and we were going to have to do some real work to get it on the ballot later. But we, the interesting part is, even though we didn't get it to happen here yet, um, there are people all over the country working on it.
Speaker 2 54:33 So I'm actually working with a group of people out of Oakland that are almost certainly getting it on their ballot imminently. Um, we're talking about doing it in st Paul. We're talking about, um, there's people in Chicago we're working with, we're working with people in Florida, pretty much all over the country. We've got people that we're working with that are, um, working at different stages on this approach in their own communities. But Oakland is probably the furthest ahead there. They're actually going to get this on their ballot and soon. So this is, you know, to be a very exciting thing. Okay, 30 seconds. Anything more you want to leave me with that we could have probably tucked another hour. I always love that. You know, I have to tell you how much I enjoy being on the show, but I just want to let people know about our organization. You can get in touch with us if you need assistance. Our number is six one two eight seven four stop, or six one, two eight seven four seven, eight, six, seven. You can find us on Facebook or online at www dot <inaudible> dot org so that's for communities United against police brutality, cypp.org thank you, Michelle.
Speaker 0 55:50 <inaudible>.
