The Department of Justice released its findings in a civil rights investigation into the Memphis Police Department, and it concluded that the police in Memphis routinely discriminate against black residents in a 73 page report. Federal authorities found that the MPD uses excessive force, [00:00:19] discriminates against black people when enforcing the law, and conducts unlawful stops, searches, and arrests. The probe also found that the agency unlawfully mistreats people with mental health issues. Now, this investigation was launched after 29 year old Tyree Nichols was beaten [00:00:38] and killed by Memphis police in 2023. Body cam footage of the January 7th attack revealed that during the traffic stop, Memphis police officers kicked Tyree Nichols in the head, hit him with a baton, doused him with pepper spray, and beat him [00:00:55] while he cried out for his mother, leading to his hospitalization and death. On January 10th, footage of the attack also showed the officers issuing Nichols 71 commands, many of which were impossible to carry out, [00:01:10] such as showing them his hands when they were restrained and telling him to get on the ground when he already was. And as for the officers responsible for Nichols death, the five officers involved in the killing to Darius been Demetrius Hailey, [00:01:27] Emmett Martin, Desmond Mills Jr and Justin Smith were fired and charged in state court with murder. Two officers struck plea deals and three were convicted in October 2024, including one found guilty of civil rights abuses and two of witness tampering. [00:01:44] Additionally, Axios points out that the Biden administration has not done anything to address the problem of police violence at scale. The DOJ under the Biden administration has launched 12 investigations into police misconduct. [00:01:59] Conduct, but so far none has resulted in consent decrees or court ordered reforms. In fact, police killings have risen over the past few years, according to the Mapping Police Violence Project. 30 more people have been killed in the US by police through October 22nd, [00:02:18] 2024, then compared to the same period in 2023, and there have only been 11 days this year, 2024, where police did not kill someone. And you can see that calendar here. [00:02:34] I mean, this is a president and an administration who took office shortly after the George Floyd uprising in 2020, who promised to be different and more compassionate than Trump. But on a systemic level, what have we seen beyond photo ops? [00:02:52] I mean, they did not deal with with the cloths, but that's about it. Yeah. So this is why I get so frustrated. So when people talk about criminal justice reform, police reform. So look, as you guys know, I thought defund the police [00:03:07] was not a good slogan, as you guys know. I thought crime is real and and I, I never once said that I want misdemeanors and felonies to be turned into misdemeanors and people let out. But you've heard me say maybe hundreds of times, [00:03:24] I don't know if I got into the thousands. Can we please reform the police? They're shooting people too quickly. They're beating the living crap out of people. And we showed you how many cases? Hundreds of cases, right? Tamir rice shot dead in two seconds flat. [00:03:40] The white guy in the hotel hallway begging for his life. They tell him, look, you know, put your hands up, put your hands down, and then they murder him, right? And then, let alone the black guy in the in in Ohio, the Walmart goes to buy a toy gun and they shoot him in two seconds flat. [00:03:57] And so it's gone on and on and on. And there's some, police departments, I think, overwhelming. I think all of them should be retrained, retrain all of them. They're obviously out of control. But we didn't do any of that. [00:04:13] So the actual gigantic cancer of a problem where the police are taught, hey, better to be, you know, judged by 12 than carried out by six. Ha ha ha ha. Go, go! Shoot and abuse. ET cetera. People. It's not. [00:04:29] It hasn't been fixed at all. So. And every time we do these stories, guys, it's not just once or twice the reason that they're the Justice Department is stepping in with Memphis, as they did with a couple of other cities, is because it's systemic. It's over and over and over again. [00:04:46] There's another case that that was cited here. There's so many cases. But just as an example, another guy tased, pepper sprayed, kicked when he wasn't resisting at all. He wasn't, you know, running from the cops in the. [00:05:01] And the guy who was killed. He didn't. Some of the folks were like, oh, he ran from the cops. He only ran after they pepper sprayed him and tased him for no reason when he hadn't done anything to them and he hadn't done anything physical. Then he runs, then they literally kick the living crap out of him, [00:05:17] and then he dies a couple of days later. So I'm sick of the police abuse, and I hate that there hasn't been any police reform. Yeah. Biden at his state of the Union, I believe in 2021, maybe a misremembering [00:05:32] the year to, denounce, defund the police, screamed defund the police. And, you know, you and I have gone back and forth on this. You've you've laid out your case. I think this is an example of why. And what we're seeing is why we need the components within that movement. [00:05:48] If I understand you don't think the slogan is helpful, but what people are arguing for within that movement is reallocating some of the funding. I mean, Steven Semler in his Substack today just showed the military equipment [00:06:04] and you could just see as the war on terror and as boots on the ground started to dwindle in Iraq, all of these MRAPs started to appear on city streets. That's the kind of stuff people are talking about. We don't need a militarized police force showing up in every circumstance. [00:06:20] And if this is a traffic violation, do we really need to kill him on the spot? Absolutely not. If people are dealing with mental health issues and they need help, is somebody with a gun showing up the best response in that situation? Someone who doesn't have any training or and doesn't have any firm commitment [00:06:39] or a priority to de-escalate. When people say defund the police, it's not just abolishing the police. There are some people, of course, who want that. But if you're talking about just funding, it's reallocating resources, some of the resources to overly inflated police budgets [00:06:56] into other sectors of city governments, county services, state services, so that we have a better, more nuanced, more deliberate, more thoughtful approach and a more appropriate response to every different circumstance. [00:07:11] Someone's holding a bank, like if someone's robbing a bank and they're armed. Yeah, sure. Maybe then somebody who's armed shows up. If somebody is having a meltdown, someone had a mental break on the sidewalk, someone selling loose cigarettes, maybe someone who's armed [00:07:29] does not need to respond. That's that's what it is. And I understand you don't like the slogan, but I think within that, we need to talk about the components of what people have been advocating for, and maybe we can find some cause for agreement. Do you think maybe some police departments, especially in major cities, [00:07:46] should have their funding allocated to a more robust social services? - Can we find agreement there? - I mean, yes and no. Jordan, because that's a second layer thing that that deserves a good conversation and debate and to follow through with. [00:08:02] Wait, okay. How much are we reallocating? Let's figure out where to draw the lines on. And by the way, when someone is out of control, maybe you don't want to send someone who has know what you know who's totally unarmed. Right. So it depends. [00:08:18] So those are interesting and important conversations and conversations we should have. But we're skipping the most important conversation, which is redo their training. Stop telling them to shoot within two seconds flat. Stop telling them, hey, you know what? [00:08:34] You get to beat up anyone you like, and if anyone even looks at you askance, kick the crap out of them. And that's almost. I know some cops will say, no, that's not how we're trained. And there are there good cops in the country. Oh, of course, of course there are. Right? Are there even good police stations, units, etc. [00:08:52] That do it right? Of course there are. And sometimes some of them have been retrained. I believe in San Antonio and have a great result out of that, but we have to wholesale retrain all the cops to not abuse the citizens. To me, that's such an overwhelming number one priority that we shouldn't [00:09:08] get distracted by priority number 2 or 18, because when we do, we never get the priority number one. There's a a couple of different things on the training. There's a good documentary called Do Not Resist from 2016 that goes [00:09:24] into some of these training seminars. And you see, I mean, I think that we definitely agree there in many cases, and especially at some of the more popular training seminars for police, they are instructed and encouraged to act with force and act with violence. [00:09:40] First, because there's this sense that they instill in them similar to people who are like fire teams in a in a battlefield. You don't know what's waiting behind that door. I mean, how many times have we covered on this network or and especially on indisputable? [00:09:56] They do a fantastic job. Doctor Ritchie does a fantastic job chronicling incident after incident of people calling the police for help, people calling the police for assistance and then they are killed. We just had another incident last week. [00:10:12] That's the type of scenario someone's calling you for help. That is a scenario where the police do not need to respond. And within the defund the police movement, it's allocating resources to different departments so that they can be tasked with being the first responder in [00:10:28] situations where people clearly need help. Yeah, I hear you, brother. I mean, let's do the retraining first and then let's have that debate. We do what we can. All encompassing approach. Why not both? No, but we can't. Because when you say defund the police, you said it earlier. [00:10:45] Joe Biden goes fund the police and then just doesn't do the number one priority. Doesn't even come close to doing the number one priority. But Biden doesn't speak for me. I didn't vote for him in either election. Like, why? Why is Biden's obstinance on this issue in support of police? [00:11:00] That shouldn't dictate how I feel or what the best policy solution forward is. Jordan, the minute you turn off the majority of Americans, they're going to go, oh, forget it, I'm backing the police. Let them keep kicking everybody's ass. Let them shoot people quickly, I don't care. Like, like, let's do the retraining, okay. [00:11:18] Jordan, can I let me ask you the question in reverse. Can we just agree? Before you get to the 18th priority, retrain them. Retrain them. Do we agree on that? I don't think those are mutually exclusive though. Like within any like look at any bill, any reform bill, [00:11:36] any sweeping piece of legislation. It doesn't give a chronological order. Many things happen simultaneously. Yeah. Look, if you find I'm not stopping you from saying, hey, we should put some money into mental health. Of course we should. I mean, you want to talk about a holistic treatment of crime, homelessness, etc. [00:11:56] We would have many, many agreements there and we would have some disagreements there, right? And if you want to get into that morass and you think you could pass a bill despite that morass, bless your heart. But I'm telling you strategically, if you don't focus on something that all [00:12:14] of America agrees with or not all, but a lot of America agrees with, which is retrain the cops so they don't shoot you instantly and they don't do excessive force. You're not going to be able to win on any of those things, Jordan. Just it's just bad strategy. [00:12:31] But here's what no one's running. No one's running on. This has to happen. Then that has to happen. And then police retraining is later. I think what we saw, we saw polling in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd, because that killing in the video of it was so visceral for a lot of people and woke up new people to injustice, [00:12:48] to police brutality, there was an opportunity to have a conversation about how we can take the next steps. And, you know, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was some sort of a response. - We didn't get anywhere with reform. - This isn't because it's wrong. [00:13:04] No, I can't let you say that. No we did. That's a perfect example of how we blew it. We had George, like the George Floyd, galvanized people. And that's a moment where we could have pushed through retraining of cops. Instead, we said, defund the police. And Biden said, the police. [00:13:19] And we lost everyone. We lost everything. No one said defund the police. Do you know how that bill, that bill died? Ryan Grim wrote about it in his book. Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott leaked the details after expressing support publicly leaked the details to build a whip up fervor against it on the right. [00:13:38] And that's what killed the bill. It wasn't. No one called it defund the police. Biden didn't call it that. The Democratic leadership didn't call it that. You can point to a handful of progressives who have used that slogan, but that's not what that bill was. I know that's not what that bill was, but the minute they used that slogan you just said. [00:13:54] They said defund the police. And then it died. Hey, Jordan, are you claiming that defund the police as a slogan did not help the right wing to defeat that bill? I don't I don't think it really matters. People can mislead what it is. You can you can split hairs over a slogan, but we can talk about we have [00:14:11] a responsibility to educate people about what things mean, and we can talk about these things in substance. And that's what we're saying. That's what this is. We have a responsibility to not come up with dumb ass slogans that are counterproductive, that turn off all Americans and go, [00:14:28] oh, wait, there's going to be no cops. I'm super scared. Okay, then I don't want it. I don't don't retrain them. Hey, you guys are killing me. Terrible strategy. And for God's sake, these people are getting beat up and and abused and killed every day. [00:14:44] Can we just retrain them like most of the country wants instead of having hypothetical. Ridiculous conversations with the worst slogan in the world. If people went out and deliberately messaged about what that meant, [00:15:01] saying, hey, you're spending most of your tax money, which is a conversation that any politician is willing to have on other issues, especially if it's about cutting social services. Oh, I don't want I don't want your tax money going there. If you go out and say, hey, your tax money is paying for a new mRAP [00:15:19] for your police department, your tax money is going to overtime for cops who stand around and play games on their phones. Shouldn't that go into after school programs for your kids? Then you will start to see traction. People will get it. It's a politician's responsibility to sell legislation to sell these ideas [00:15:38] and advocates can certainly make the case. But politicians deliberately lied about what that meant. They knew what it meant. They conflated it with abolition and then people. People, unfortunately, took the bait. I'm just telling. I'm telling you. I've said it repeatedly. [00:15:54] I've said it on this network for years. What? That means we can't pretend like it means something else. Of course you, Jordan, you're not getting it. When you come up with a slogan that says, I want to take all funding away from the police. People naturally assume that you that that you're there's going to be no cops. [00:16:12] And if you say no, I meant it a different way. And it is your responsibility to figure out what was in my head. And I need you to go and check a thesaurus. I need you to go and check whatever manifesto, and then you'll figure out that even though I said take away all funding for police, I didn't mean that. [00:16:29] What I meant instead was take away some funding, put it to the right places. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I'm going to come up with like like so okay. I mean, so under your logic, can we say kill the police is our slogan and go, no, we didn't mean kill the police, we meant reform the police. [00:16:45] But you should have read our mind. And even though our slogan is so stupid and preposterous, you should. You have the responsibility to know that what we really meant. Why didn't you just come up with a slogan that you actually mean? Wow. I know, I'm so. [00:17:01] I'm so right wing for coming up with that idea. Okay, so for God's sake, do better, do better so we can pass the laws so we can actually help people. We got to take a break. But just my last point, Jake. [00:17:16] - We're going to kill them with kindness. - Don't kill anyone. Okay? Even with kindness. Okay. Thanks for watching The Young Turks. Really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. [00:17:32] You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. [00:17:47] Thank you.