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And those are reforms are here. No more begging the police industry, no more begging the mayor, no more having them ignore you and put in little token reforms or changes that they're going to just go back away from. The only way for us to take control of this problem is to elect non LEOs into the position of sheriff, where we will come in and we won't give a damn about how it's been done for a hundred years. We're going to start doing it right.
Taya Graham: It's clear, despite the protests, calls for reform on both the national and local level, there are forces that drive policing which insulate it from the normal processes of a functioning democracy. The death of Rayshard Brooks is case in point. Given the widespread outrage over the death of George Floyd, one has to wonder why the officers who confronted Brooks felt empowered to use deadly force, despite promises of reform, or, and I'm putting this in quotes, deescalation training.
Police continue to use violence to resolve situations that hardly even warrant their presence. Take a look at this video if you want to understand the depth of the problem, it depicts a gang unit, that's right, a gang unit, arresting 13 and 15 year old boys for jaywalking. Let me repeat, a gang unit. One of the plain clothes units we exposed in a previous piece as often focused on seizing property and making arrest profitable, stopped children, threw one to the ground and put another in handcuffs for jaywalking.
Now we thought just to be clear, we put the actual definition of the law on the screen. Not all definitions are the same and I'm sure they vary by jurisdiction. But generally jaywalking is crossing the street when a crosswalk is ultimately available. It does not mean, as police alleged here, walking down a deserted street. So we have an intriguing case. A group of so-called elite officers, tasked with making high profile arrests, zeroing in on two teens walking down the street. Is that the best use of what's supposed to be the most highly trained and best paid cops? The point here is not just to demonstrate the absurdity that over-policing can occasionally conjure, but to show how disproportionate American policing has become to the actual problems it's supposed to solve.
Take a look at this graph. It's two interesting trends. Since the 1990s, crime has consistently gone down. Not in every city, but in general across the country. But at the same time, spending on policing has increased. That's right. As crime has dropped, police budgets have soaked up an even greater share of municipal spending. It doesn't make sense, or does it? If you've been watching this show, you already know part of the answer. That's because, as we've reported before, part of the explanation for why policing continues to grow as crime declines and protests multiply, is simply that law enforcement has evolved. The graph certainly makes the case in part that policing is not just about fighting crime. Instead, as we reported before, policing has evolved into an arbiter of inequality and a force for diminishing the political efficacy for communities of color and the impoverished. Both critical tools for enforcing wealth, disparities and racial inequities, that would most likely be unsustainable otherwise.
This is one of the reasons it's so difficult to hold it police accountable, because while their actions often seem inexplicable, we have to consider that what they're doing is exactly what the political economy demands. Case in point would be the career of a cop in my hometown of Baltimore. Baltimore is of course, best known for the nefarious exploits of the Gun Trace Task Force. The group of nine officers who pled guilty or were convicted of robbing residents, dealing drugs and stealing overtime. But before the GTTF, there was another unit that wreaked havoc on the city that has received less attention. It was called VCID, the Violent Crimes Impact Division. It was a group of roughly 80 officers who roamed the city, without supervision, in plain clothes, pulling people over, blanketing poor and black neighborhoods with military style cops wearing jeans and tee shirts. And, according to $5 million worth of lawsuit, meting out brutality at prodigious rates.
But the reason I'm telling this story is about how it reveals part of the underlying imperatives that insulates policing that we discussed at the beginning of the show. And we can tell through the story of a Baltimore police supervisor named Robert Quick, or as he's known by his rank, Captain Quick. Quick was one of the supervisors of the VCID, and as such was responsible for much of the unethical strategies that led to the lawsuits and allegations that the unit was corrupt. But it's what happened to him since that is so illustrative.
In 2010, the inspector-general's investigation determined that Quick, along with another high ranking official, had violated department policy by awarding themselves overtime. The BPD does not allow officers with a rank above Lieutenant to earn it. But it gets worse, because the inspector-general determined that Quick and his associates had submitted multiple time sheets and received thousands of dollars in pay they were not legally entitled. An investigation into what happened was shut down so some of the details remain murky. But it's what happened too Quick after the fact that's the point of this story.
That's because when I attended an internal administrative hearing for the officer who drove the van in which Freddie Gray died in 2015, his defense called an intriguing witness. His name? Quick. And his title? Chief of best practices. That's right. He had been promoted to head the division through which the BPD seeks ethical and productive policies. The former cop, who once ran one of the most problematic units in the history of one of the arguably most corrupt departments in the country, is now its chief catalyst for reform. The same person tasked with making the department better and improving its ability to function by searching for the so-called best practices which have so far alluded it, had been caught red handed, violating policy.
This shows how deep the problem is and how hard it will be to fix and why American law enforcement appears to operate with its own sense of intrinsic logic, immune to any pushback or protest to the contrary. That's why we will continue on this show to do our part, exposing these conflicts and contradictions for all to see. And if, and when, this will bring about change is the question even we can't answer.
I want to thank my guest, James McLynas, for his time and wish him the best of luck in his campaign.
James McLynas: Thank you very much for having me. It's been a real pleasure.
Taya Graham: And I also want to thank intrepid reporter, Stephen Janis, for his reporting, writing and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thank you for having me.
Taya Graham: And of course I want to thank friend of the show, [Nollie D 00:22:28] for her support and help on this piece. Thank you know, Nollie D. And I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course you can message me directly at TayasBaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like, and comment. You know I read your comments, appreciate them and answer your questions whenever I can. My name is Taya Graham, I'm your host for the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
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