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Perryman: Good Afternoon. I
want to discuss the state of policing in this country, given
the global protests resulting from the police-involved death
of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Why does it need to change,
and how can we change it?
Stinson: Well, here’s the
thing with the Floyd case. The video’s shocking on several
levels. One level is that the officers knew they were video
recorded, and they kept it up anyway. It’s like they’re in
their natural habitat, and if they’re going to beat the shit
out of somebody, they do it anyway. We’ve seen officers
commit crimes that are documented on the bodycam that gets
them arrested. The other thing was, the members of the
public who were recording the incident were trying to enter
into a dialogue with the officers to get them to focus on
what they were doing, and it still didn’t break them apart.
And then, the third thing is that the three other officers,
apparently chose not to intervene. When I was a young police
officer in the 1980s, if something happened, one of us would
have tackled the cop who had his knee on the guy and
wrestled him off of him, and that’s what would happen in
some places.
Perryman: What are your
thoughts about the police response?
Stinson: If you peel back
the curtain on the police subculture, obviously, in some
places they engage in, it is active street justice. So, I
think that’s what we saw there was that at least the initial
purpose was to teach Mr. Floyd a lesson. I think the reason
you’re seeing so many people out all across the country of
all walks of life protesting and demonstrating is that it
hits too close to home. So many people have either
experienced that themselves or a family member or a friend
has, not just once. Still, they’ve been roughed up
repeatedly and people of color obviously. These aren’t
isolated events in some places across the country, its
business as usual. If it happened here and there weren’t any
video, how would they have written up the reports? Would
they have written up the report that it was an in-custody
death? I imagine not. We never would’ve heard about it,
right?
Perryman: Can you elaborate
on what you call the police subculture?
Stinson: So, because
you’ve got 18,000 state and local agencies and because the
culture is engrained in each agency at the local level and
we see these things over and over again. This incident was
different than Eric Garner because Mr. Floyd was handcuffed;
he was no threat to anybody. As soon as he was handcuffed,
he should’ve been gotten up on his feet and made sure he was
okay. That’s what any self-respecting cop would do. And
the other thing making things worse is, I haven’t heard one
police officer argue to me that this was justified. This one
peels back the curtain. Nobody can rationalize it.
Perryman: When you say that
the Floyd incident peels back the curtain, what does it
reveal?
Stinson: It shows what
people in urban areas have been able to tell you. Any
grandmother in north Philadelphia can tell you these things
happen all the time, but if you were to ask my mother, who
lives in the suburbs, she has no clue that this stuff goes
on. The Floyd incident reveals what it’s like. This [Floyd]
is what many people experience. So it’s part of the way
that police officers are socialized into their local agency
despite the training they get at the academy. No academy
trained them to do that. It’s shocking because it was clear
that he has no pulse several minutes in. It’s shocking.
Policing is broken. We have to rethink what we want the
police to do and who we want to be police officers, because
this isn’t working.
Perryman: How do we change
the police subculture?
Stinson: Well, I don’t
know that there’s an easy fix to it. I think we have to
give a lot of consideration and thought about that. It’s not
as simple as bringing in more female officers or more
African-American officers because we see African-American
officers. It seems like the police subculture trumps their
race and ethnicity. One thing that’s a problem is that many
police officers are not of and part of the community in
which they work. That’s a problem.
Perryman: How often do
officer-initiated deaths occur?
Stinson: I’d have to
look at the statistics. The government tracks in-custody
deaths, and they don’t do a good job of it anymore. The
other aspect of this subculture, though, is that we’re
always at war. We’ve got the war against crime, the war
against drugs, the war against poverty, and when the cops
are going to work every day and they’re not from and part of
that community, they’re warriors going into battle.
It would be a lot
different if you’ve got a kid who’s vandalizing a park if
you knew his grandmother and his mother, wouldn’t you treat
him a little differently? Even if you’re a white cop like
you’ve lived in that community and that black family lived
across the street from you when you were growing up, you
knew the grandmother, and you treat them differently, you
treat them as a human. But we’re not doing that. We’re
dressed as warriors. Let’s step back from that kind of
soldier look. That’s a good first step in changing the
subculture.
Perryman: What else can be
done?
Stinson: It is also good
to see people like Erika Shields, the police chief in
Atlanta, when she got out earlier this week or last,
whenever it was. She kind of went larking at the people who
were protesting. She sat there and listened, one at a time,
to everybody that wanted to say something to her. She
heard, and cops don’t listen. They bark out commands. They
order people. That’s why there’s so much domestic violence
in police families; they can’t turn it off when they go home
at night, they’re used to commanding people. You can’t do
that. So that’s the kind of thing that we have to address
at the root level, really rethink some of these issues.
Perryman: What’s your take
on how the police handled the protests in Toledo?
Stinson: I didn’t hear
anything about Toledo, I was in my own world.
Perryman: Most rallies have
been very peaceful. There was a notable exception where
there were accusations that the police sprayed tear gas and
shot rubber bullets after a peaceful demonstration
concluded. Someone, it has been alleged, attempted to spray
paint one of the officer’s car, and it got wild for a bit
after one rally.
Stinson: Some people are
making calls to defund the police and take away certain
types of equipment they have, but you know what? There is a
time and a place to bring out the tank, we would all want
that if there was like a hostage situation at a local bank
or something, but the thing is to know when to use your
tools. It is horrific when some kid gets shot in the eye
with a rubber bullet. It seems like with all the tasers,
rubber bullets, and all the tools they have that they’re
somehow trained. If you go back and watch the taser
training videos on YouTube, you can find lots of them,
there’s always laughing going on, they find it funny. So as
long as that kind of thing goes on and it can be used as a
tool of street justice, or you use it, you’re very quick to
use it because you got pissed because somebody spray painted
the car, that’s a problem.
Perryman: There has been
talk that many police departments are a haven for white
nationalists. Your thoughts?
Stinson: I don’t know what
to say about that. They do need to do a better job in
screening their personnel and keeping tabs on people that
work there. That’s a big concern, I’d say.
Perryman: Are there any
additional lessons from the George Floyd murder?
Stinson: Another thing I
would say is that when people see something that they think
isn’t normal, they should video record it. There’s strength
in numbers.
Perryman: You emphasized
strength in numbers.
Stinson: Yes, strength
in numbers. So, multiple people should record from different
angles, but only if you can safely do so and without
interfering with law enforcement. You don’t want to get
hurt. You don’t want to get arrested.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org |
