May 31, 2023 • 43 mins
It’s been three years since George Floyd was murdered by the police. After a swell of action followed by inaction, an important question remains: What still needs to change to break the cycle of police violence in America? Khalil and Ben talk to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison about prosecuting the officers who killed Floyd. The three also debate their visions of what justice looks like. This conversation was recorded live at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushing.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Khalidea Brad Muhammad.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities
of a deeply divided and unequal country. And today we
are back. After taking a little break in production, we
have been recording some great episodes for you.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes, that's right, we are coming to you live from
the Chicago Humanity's Festival, live live live with former congressmen
and current Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, yes, we talked to Ellison about prosecuting the police
officers who killed George Floyd Man. He was murdered almost
exactly three years ago. We also talked to Ellison about
his new book, Break the Wheel, Ending the Cycle of
police violence. We are so excited to share this conversation
with you today and also to have a live show.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Your pin, Daddy's coming.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Our theme song that you just heard is Little Lily
by Avery R. Young and he was just named the
poet laureate, the first poet laureate of Chicago.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So just gotta shout that out.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So we are really excited today to have our guests
with us on stage here in Chicago. Our hometown brother
Keith Ellison.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Thank you. Glad to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So we're going to get started, and I just want
to say that we often bring our best friends on
and while I can't claim that we're best friends, we
have met each other a.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Couple of times. Not yet. We're working on it. We
get there, we get there.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So I wanted to remind you that a few years
ago in New Jersey, in an organization called Building One America
brought together a bunch of progressives around the country. We
were in South Jersey pretty not just a good place.
But it's great to be back with you. A lot
has changed for you, and in many ways, that's what
we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Well, a lot has changed and a lot of stayed
the same. I mean that some of the fights are
still going on. We're trying to equalize power. We're trying
to get people who don't have any power a little
bit more say so in their own lives. And I
can tell you this, moving from Congress to the Attorney
General's office is lack a dream because what it would
take a year or two to do, we can do
(03:11):
in a week at the AG's office. So it's great
to see you again.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Man, Yeah, I like that. Khalil said that South Jersey
was a nondescript player. So Khalil and I both grew
up here in Chicago on the South Side in the
nineteen eighties the Bears, and you grew up in Detroit
mostly in the seventies. How did that shape your thinking? Like,
how how has that formed who you are?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
So look, Chicago and Detroit have a lot in common.
They both are destinations in the Great Migration. If you
talk to any black person and a whole lot of
white people, their grandparents are from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia,
and folks came up to Chicago to work in meatpacking whatever,
and they came to Detroit to work on the auto plants.
(03:59):
Both my parents have Southern roots. My mother's from Louisiana,
my father's family's from Georgia. He was born in Detroit,
but his father was born in rural Georgia, so that
up south kind of is here. I mean with the
best blues and barbecue you can get in the world,
it's probably in Chicago, right. And so you know, I
was born in nineteen sixty three. That's the year of
(04:19):
the March on Washington. Earlier that June MegaR Evers was
shot down and killed. Earlier in that year, John F.
Kennedy said that the civil rights movement was based on
a moral issue, and he gave this I don't know
if any of you all remember or know this speech
where he gave this speech and said, if any one
of us had to live the life of I think
(04:40):
he used the term negro, you know who would want
to do it. You know, we say we're a country
where there's no second class citizens except the Negro. We
say we're a country that where everybody can stand on
their own two feet and rise to the full measure
of their talent, except the Negro. He has this refrain.
Later on in that year, John F. Kennedy shot down murdered.
(05:01):
So that is what I was born into. And I
wasn't aware of it at the time, but maybe my
body felt it. I can tell you this. On the
issues of policing, I absolutely remember living on Eileen near
Outer Drive and looking out of the window and remembering
that my dad was out in the out in Detroit
(05:24):
trying to help people. Use my dad as a physician, right,
and he was attending to people who were in the riots, the.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Detroita Detroit riot nineteen sixty seven, Right.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I remember it. My brother remembers it, and I said,
and we remember military vehicles going by. And I asked
my brother why would military vehicles be going by? He said, well,
the eight Mile Armory was only less than a mile away.
And so I remember that. And I remember growing up
in Detroit as the auto plants were just abandoning the city.
And a lot of people wanted to say it's because
African Americans were not good at leadership. But the real
(05:56):
truth is for GM and Chrysler figured they could make
it cheaper elsewhere. So I mean, does I get to
the question, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm curious, did this Did you lose any white friends
and that migration out of Detroit?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
You know, not really, you know not. You know, it's
a funny thing. You know, Detroit is an interesting city
along that lines, Remember Eminem comes from Detroit. Yep. Eight
Mile is a real street. In Detroit. And it also
you know, kid Rocks also from Detroit. So in Detroit
you have a lot of interracial cooperation, and then you
(06:32):
got and then it is a city of racing, class
violence too. You got this complicated weird mixture stew gumbo
in Detroit. Whereas some of your best friends are white,
some of your and some and some guys who chased
you across eight Mile Road and you were running for
the fear of your life were also white. There's some
black folks I ran into who made me a little
(06:52):
worried about my safety too. So you know, so, uh,
that's Detroit for you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
There are two things you did not mention about Detroit
and Chicago that they have in common. The first thing
is that brothers were for coats in both cities, don't
they everywhere, which which I have not seen everybody in
any other city. I lived in Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
you name it.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
They have no style. Man.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So, aside from the fir Coats, is also the nation
of Islam. So the nation of Islam is born in Detroit,
grows out of the great migration. My great grandfather moves
there in the nineteen twenties, raises his family eventually moved
to Chicago. Talking about Elijah Mohammack. So talk about your
own Muslim roots, how you become a Muslim and break
through these barriers and politics in Minnesota in particular.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Well, the people who introduced Islam to me were from
the NI. A good friend of mine who's just just
went to his reward. His name was Abdullah bel Amme
and he was about six foot five, but I bet
you he weighed one hundred and forty pounds and he
was the Emam. And I first, you know, heard about Islam,
(07:59):
reading about people like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. I
first met. The first person who was told me about
Islam was a guy who was a Libyan student foreign
exchange student. One day, I was at Wayne State University
and we were studying calculus and he on a Friday afternoon,
he's like, hey, man, I gotta go. What do you
(08:22):
mean you gotta go? Well, I got to go. I
mean it's time for me to do something. I said, Well,
he said, why don't you come with me? I said, fine,
I got nothing else to do. I walk up and
there's all these shoes everywhere. Well, you got to take
off your shoes and we walk into the room and
there's sheets across the carpet. We got to sit on
the floor, so I do. And I heard a message
(08:43):
that stuck with me until this very moment.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
What was the message that stuck with you?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The message of Mohammad that you know. His message was
for the poor, the black, the racially sidelined. It was
a message of human oneness, of the unity of all humanity.
And hearing stories about Bilal, who was a black man
(09:09):
in servitude, who was freed by his belief in that message.
And look, I grew up Catholic, right, everybody in my
family's Catholic. We're from Louere, Louisiana Catholics, right, even though
I had all that Catholic training, I this is the message.
They clicked in my head and it made sense to me,
and it makes sense to me until this very second.
In fact, we just ended Ramadan. And the interesting thing
(09:32):
about me being a Muslim, when I ran for the
State Legislature, I would fast for Ramadan and I'd go
to pray and nobody cared, like nobody cared at all.
But when I ran for Congress, it was this big, giant,
humongous international incident and I just I always ponder why,
(09:55):
you know, and it's kind of like, well, you know,
it's five years after nine to eleven, and people didn't
know what it meant to have a Muslim in the
US Congress, and they wanted to know. And some people
entertained their worst fears, and some of them, all of them,
nearly were many of them were irrational fears.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Right, yeah, yeah, thank you for telling us that. And
certainly my buddy here Khalil Muhammad, after nine to eleven
has been stopped at many airport, Thank you for telling
us that. And I want to ask you another question.
Why the law? So I think I think your grandfather
is a leader in the NAACP, And so why do
(10:34):
you go into the law and why civil rights law?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Well, you know, I I majored in economics because my
dad ninety four years young, still grouchy and opinionated. He
always was like, well follow the money. You know, if
you figure out the economics, you can figure out a
lot of things. Right, So I studied that, and uh,
(10:57):
but then when I was at Wayne State, I started
asking myself, what is what do you do with an
economics degree? I had no idea, Now what I've found
out since is there's a lot you could do. But
I didn't know anything except for being a college teacher.
So I took the lside, you know. And so I
(11:18):
thought it would be the right thing for me because
my mother always told me, you know, you are so argumentative,
you should maybe be a lawyer. And so those two things,
that family background and just you know what God made
me good at, which is uss and with folks, sent
me in a particular direction to why civil rights? You know,
(11:40):
you know it's funny, man. I always feel like I
was destined to it because when I got out of
law school, I had a wife's two children and some
student loan debt and I needed to make a little
bit of money. I was twenty five years old and
I was trying to figure out and I got to
offer to go work with this huge white law firm
downtown Minneapolis.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
So we're talking about mid nineteen seventies or early ladies.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
We're talking about nineteen ninety and so it was so
that somebody basically said, would you go to this silk
stocking law firm? And I was like, what are they paying?
You know? So I ended up there and I started
doing all the pro bono that I could wed a
We did a death row case in Union Paris, Louisiana,
(12:28):
got a man named Albert Barrell not only out of
off death row, but actually exonerated. So that was a
wonderful thing. And I started doing all this stuff with
landlord tenant stuff and then you know, look, my heart
wasn't there. So within three years I applied for a
job to be the director of the Legal Rights Center,
(12:49):
which is essentially a nonprofit engine law office. Got the
job and have a look back.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah, that's great. Well, listen, we are excited to have
a conversation that takes us from your origin story to
the moment that has redefined the history of prosecutustion of
police officers. We're going to take a quick break and
we'll pick that up after the break.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
We'll be right back, y'all.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So I think people might know that Keith as the
State's Attorney of Minnesota, tried and convicted Derek Chalvin, who
is the police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck
and killed him and won a conviction. And we want
you to take us back to that moment and maybe
(13:51):
can you describe what Minneapolis was like in the aftermath
of George Floyd's death.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Well, let me just say slightly before that tragic occurred,
you should know that, you know, I love Minneapolis, and
Minneapolis has a certain sense of itself every he does, right.
We cling to Hubert H. Humphrey and how he was
he in nineteen forty seventy at the Philadelphia Democratic Convention,
(14:19):
he said, we have to walk out of the dark
night of states rights into the bright sunshine of human rights.
And we were so proud that we passed one of
the first we say, the first I don't know if
it's true. I never researched it. Human rights municipal ordinance
in the country. And how there were all these and
(14:39):
how we're this city that you know, really embraces the
diverse gifts of the population.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
It's like one of the largest Somalai populations.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Right right, and we pride ourselves on how, you know,
new Americans come there, you know, like the Somali community,
the among community, the kur In community were from Burma,
and we think of ourselves this way. And there's this
I don't know if y'all ever heard this, but Minnesotans
will say Minnesota nice because we're so nice. I don't
know if they're that nice think of themselves as being
(15:10):
very nice right now. That is and I don't say
this in a derogatory way at all. That is a myth, right,
And it's not that it's not true. It's just that
it's not the only truth. Right. It's not that it's
not true, because people really are good and decent. But
there is another side. We did have restrictive covenants in
(15:34):
like literally thousands of homes, you know, two hours away
the Duluth lynching. You did have three black men lynched
at a light pole in Duluth. We do have in
man Cato. There was the largest mass hanging of Dakota
people in the history of the country, the largest mass
hanging in man Cato of the indigenous community. So these
(15:59):
things occurred. So we're not hypocrites. It's just like people
all over the world, we emphasize the positive. George Floyd
caused Minnesotans to really reflect on how we might not
be somehow different along racial lines than the rest of
(16:22):
the country. And I think people are still trying to
figure out what does this all mean and how it's
not an anomaly. And there were a lot of things
that happened that would have told us that this easily
could happen here. And so that that's something that I
think is important, because if you think you're an American
(16:42):
community that's somehow immune from race class violence in America,
you're not. It's closer than you think it is, and
you better do something about it before you have a
George Floyd incident.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So well, I'm gonna say so. I mean, one of
the things that you're talking about is that Minnesota has
a reputation for being a progressive city and having family there.
I've been to Minnesota many times. There's a lot of like,
you know, there are these pockets of America where people
are like, there's lots of interracial families. You know, diversity
is celebrated, correct, right, And so part of what you're
(17:18):
saying is that this tension exploded onto the streets in
a way that the progressive community was was part of
the ferment already and then in the wake of like
and I really resist the idea of calling what happened
to Floyda tragedy because I think part of the way
in which we both isolated as an incident and also
(17:39):
imagine it as exceptional reduces our capacity to see the
systems as they function or, as many progressives would say,
were designed to do what they do.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I'll buy that, you know, I only mean in the
sense that it was a horrible thing that happened to him, yeh.
But but to the degree that that word kind of
like pulls it out of the general fabric, I agree
with you.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So let's let's let's stay with this point for a
little bit longer. Because one of the things you do
in the book, and Keith's book is called break the Will.
Ending the cycle of police violence comes out in May,
so you all are learning about and hearing about it
well before the book is actually released. But one of
the things you say in the book is that there's
a roll call of victims in the Minneapolis Saint Paul regions.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Filando Castillo may be perhaps most recognizable by name to
a lot of people because he was killed when an
officer asked him for identification, and as he reached for
that identification, and as his girlfriend recorded it on Facebook live,
he was shot dead in the passenger seat. But there's
Jamar Clark, there are many other names.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Do you think there's something about Minneapolis Saint Paul. That
is just typical of every American city. Or do you
think there's something you know, exceptional about it that there
are a high number of cases, or maybe there aren't
a high number of cases. Maybe that's this is what
we're seeing across the country.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
I have to say, what is unique about Minneapolis Saint
Paul is that in our mind we are well intentioned
open up opportunity, but our reality is like the rest
of the country. You see what I'm saying. We're not worse,
We're just right. I mean, you know, I mean what
we saw in Memphis the other day. How many incidents
(19:28):
like that? You talk about the killing of Tyree Nickels.
How many things like that have happened since then? Right?
So that's the tragedy, is that I think that we
need to come to grips with the fact that this
problem must be addressed, and if we ever did, we'd
save one hundred million dollars in Section nineteen eighty three payouts.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
These are settlements that police settlements have for local deaths.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, we're in Chicago, so it's more like seven hundred
million right over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So how many more playgrounds, how many more lighting, how
many more potholes? How many more community centers, how many more?
How many how many more raised? How much more? And
raises for city employees. I mean, police settlements alone have
a devastating impact on the city. If we just solved
(20:22):
the problem, if we broke the cycle, if we could
do a lot and let alone the fact that about
every twenty years or some period of time, there is
a civil unrest. And I know words matter, so some folks,
I'm spuck. I'm speaking about what some people might call
a riot, but others might call something else, and uprising
(20:45):
what those are exceedingly expensive to the city, not to
mention the loss of trust. I believe that police brutality
actually has a causal relationship to crime, because if you
won't call, and you think you're snitching and all that,
(21:08):
you're not going to get their responsiveness and the cooperation
needed in order to promote public safety, and you greenlight
to people who do commit crime. And I'm a prosecutor,
I assure you that some people really do make crimes,
and so police brutality needs to be solved financial reasons,
but also for safety reasons.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
I wanted to ask you or have you talked more
about a decision you made, your strategy in prosecuting the
police officer in this case that it struck me in
reading about it, that you went and spoke to your brother, right,
and you tell him about about all the people who
witnessed this in the community. And your brother says, well,
(21:52):
did they know George Floyd? And you're like, none of
them knew George Floyd. They didn't know him personally, and like, so,
why did they step up and take phone and try
to stop the police. And he said to you, oh,
it's the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, And he said, look, you know, people went right
on by that man who was bleeding on Jericho Road.
And those people were learned in religion, they were supposed
to be, they were the responsible people, and they abandoned
(22:25):
him and walked by, were wre more concerned about their
own welfare and benefit. And the good Samaritan not only
loaded the man up on the donkey and took him
to an end and said, I will pay any charges
he has on my way back. And he said, these
people who didn't know George Floyd demonstrated true love of
(22:50):
humanity by literally sacrificing themselves. And who were these people?
There was no college professors on the scene. There were
no priests on the scene, there were no reverends on
the scene. There were three seventeen year old girls, a
nine year old girl, a sixty two year old hustler,
(23:10):
a thirty three year old mixed martial artist. And that's
who was there in a firefighter and there was a
fire And guess what they were a mixed race group.
And here's another thing. So were the people who killed
George Floyd. Yeah, we talk about Derek Chauvin, Well Jay
(23:32):
Alexander King's black two tiles, Mom.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
They're the police officers who were standing by watching.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Two of them.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
One was holding his legs, one.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Had physically on his body.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
But but there was something spiritual that happened, because a
spirit moved among those people on that street, and they demanded,
they yelled, and even as they were calling on Chauvin
the police to stop, they still had faith in the police.
They said, we're going to call the police on the police,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Can we lean into the trial a little bit? Because sure,
in many ways, the structure of this book is chapter
by chapter sort of how the system worked in this
particular prosecution.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
It was made to how it was made to correct, right.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I'm won't give you a chance, okay, to share it
because part of what is possible in your telling of
this story, the blow by blow sort of legal machinery
and action in the way that, as you say your metaphor,
tried to break the wheel, tried to disrupt the way
this normally goes. Our series of interventions. Now, we won't
(24:41):
have the time in this conversation to unpack all of
those interventions.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
We still want the people to buy the book, to right.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Good point, But there are a couple of things that
I think that I want to throw out there and
want to frame them sort of as if you were
speaking to prosecutors around the country. So one we get
the usual lie in the original press story and not
the press police account.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
No, it was a press it was a press release,
press release, right.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And then the complaint itself, which i'dn't like you to
share with them, sets up essentially from the prosecutor standpoint,
a defense of Chauvin.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yeah, so this tragedy happens around the eight to nine
o'clock hour, and I mean tragedy in that a man
lost his life. The MPD Public Information issues a press
statement saying that George Floyd died of a medical emergency,
no mention of force at all. Then what happens is
(25:41):
within a few days the medical examiner gets it, and
the medical examiner makes a statement that if George Floyd
was found in this medical condition in his home, I
would think it was an od no mention of a knee,
no mention in the fact that there's all kinds of
video of it, kind of ignoring all that, and then says,
you know, and then it won't ever We got medical
(26:02):
examiners who ultimately said, this is clearly mechanical asphyxia. If
you lay somebody prone on their chest, lay and get
on their back for nine minutes, there's not anyone in
this audience who wouldn't be dead.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
At the rest the language for kind of suffocating someone
to yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Right. But the medical examitor said, look, we didn't see Okay,
now we're going to get technical a little bit. We
didn't see any of the petiki, which are these really
small little hemorrhages that you will get in your eye
when you're choked to death, or any disruptions or injuries
to the next structure because we didn't see those. I
can't say it's as fix you. Well, the video and
(26:39):
everything you're seeing shows you that that's what it was.
But he said, I can't say that. I will say
that it was subdual. It was law enforcement involved subdual
restraint and neck compression, which was good enough for me.
He did call it a homicide, but some of the
early language really did create a lot of confusion. And
(27:01):
so you know, and then the complaint got drafted. The
original complaint didn't have second degree murderer had third and
in Minnesota, the third degree order. The Supreme Court found
that it was inappropriate charge. So if we didn't charge
this case, we'd have been left with nothing but manslaughter too,
which is culpable negligence. So y'all follow what I just said. Yes,
So we so that the complaint they drafted would have
(27:24):
ultimately ended up in a manslaughter too. The complaint that
we came back and redrafted resulted in second degree murder.
I mean to me, if without our intervention, I'm not
even sure the case there's a there's an argument to
be made that this thing could have gone extremely different.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
H We're going to take one more quick break and
we're going to come back and talk about breaking the wheel.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Keith.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I mean, so you win a conviction, Yeah, and you're
you're talking about breaking the wheel of police violence?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Is a conviction of a police officer breaking the wheel?
Does that actually do the work of changing the cycle
of violence.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
It's a necessary but insufficient thing. Because let me tell
you why I say this, because I think there's really
only two things that are going to straighten this problem out,
and that is criminal prosecution of criminal activity by law
enforcement and administrative firings of people who are just not
(28:41):
good police officer or a bad police officers and break
the rules. As I say this, the real people I
believe are going to benefit are the of the remaining
police And I'm telling you, within a week after within
a week, fourteen Minneapolis police officers wrote an open letter saying,
we absolutely condemn what happened and we're committed to a
(29:04):
better future. The longest serving police officer in the Minneapols
Police Department took the stand and denounce what happened, and
so did the police chief. So there is a thing
going on within policing where police were like, look, I
joined to help people. I didn't joined to do what
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
You know, you've already started to talk about the lessons
from the Chauvin trial and the implications for how criminal
prosecution has to be a huge part of the overall
strategy of police reform wherever it's taking place. And that's
the conversation that we've been having since the summer of
(29:45):
twenty twenty, this national conversation about police reform. And I
just want you to sort of give us two things
you think just out the gate nationally we should be
doing that we are not already doing in this country,
and maybe even consider the George Floyd Policing Act in
its own limitations or not.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Right, Well, let me just say before I get to those,
you've got to prosecute criminal behavior, and you've got to
fire and administratively respond to rule violations. If you don't
do these things, nothing else you do is going to work.
But here's the good news. This is a fixable problem.
(30:32):
It really really is.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And I know that we're listening, right, we're not sure.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Well, well, let me just tell you this. I know
that there's some folks will say this system depends structurally
on some people being on the bottom end of it,
and people being the system requires victims, and the way
that the system maintains itself is through police violence and
(30:57):
other things. I know that that I'm aware of that
point of view. What I would say is, I think
that point of view is a little bit too cynical.
And the reason why I say that is because we've
seen cities where these cities are not in nirvana, and
I'm not offering them as perfect, but things have gotten
dramatically better in Newark, New Jersey. They have gotten better
in Camden, New Jersey. Right. Well, it takes leadership. It
(31:23):
takes people like Rasbaraka to say this is the way
we're gonna do things differently, and it does take that
kind of leadership. But having said that, what I would
say is that we've got to have a national registry
so that if you are fired for bad policing, you
(31:43):
cannot just go to some other state and start policing.
An example of what I mean is there's a guy
named Loewen who was found by one Cleveland area police
department to be so unqualified that they said, get out
of here, you can't police here. He shows up in Cleveland,
(32:07):
gets a job and then kill twelve year old to
mere rights. It's shocking to me that this guy was
found to be unfit for a police department, but could
just go get a police job somewhere else. So that's
one thing that we've absolutely got to do. And then
the other thing that we've got to do is Okay,
(32:27):
so we've gotten all this body warn camera video now
nearly every it's a common thing we use it to
We use it in litigation to prove or disprove what happened.
But do we use it as a training exercise. We
need to use it like on a every six months
(32:48):
or every four months. Come on in here, see what
you did, See what you didn't do. You can do
this better. Why'd you talk to this person this way?
One thing I'll tell you, And this sounds petty, but
I believe it's very true. Think about the people who
don't die as a result of a negative police community interaction,
the people who survive. How many people I know who've
been called foul names, racist names, kicked in the butt,
(33:11):
slapped in the head. The idea that you're going to
scare the population into submission is false. People will rebel.
They don't like it. They're not gonna just take it.
So we we've got to change the whole culture of
the police policing to be one of guardianship and support
as opposed to you better do what I'm gonna say,
(33:34):
or I'm gonna go upside your head. This got we've
got to do it differently than we've been doing it.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
On the body cameras, uh, and this Tyree Nichols's executioners
were clearly aware that their body cameras were running who
look staging, We're staging a resisting arrest charge because that
was the mechanism they used to say. This guy was resisting.
This is why we kept delivering blows to him. So
(34:00):
that's not to say body cameras can't help, but their
police officers are training themselves also how to get around.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah. But well but here's what I'll say, though, Khalil.
While while they clearly were trying to lie and say,
oh he was so strong, Oh, they were making up
a story, and anybody who watched the team could see
them making up a story.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Except we live in Trump America.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Well yeah, the people say, look, with those who don't
want to see, ain't going to see. But for anybody
who's remotely honest about what they were looking at could
tell we're watching you concocta story.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So I want to you talked about that laundry list
of incredibly valuable reforms to policing, and you know, I
want to talk about another lesson of the George Floyd experience.
I mean in our recent history, because we all just
lived through this where those suddenly all felt like possibilities.
And I was reporting a book where I was going
(34:55):
to parole hearings and I could hear month to month
the country, the people around me be becoming more lenient,
being becoming more open to changing the criminal justice system,
and then it being supercharged after the death of George
Floyd and all those policies that you just listed, there
were municipalities across the country who are like, damn, we
are going to do this right. And then the history
(35:18):
that we lived through is that they didn't happen. That
this extreme backlash that we just went through, where we
didn't even pass in the US Congress of George Floyd
Act that died in the Senate. And so if that's
the lesson of all this, that we can't even sustain
it after the most you know, for most of our lifetimes,
the biggest mass protest, and it is the biggest math
(35:40):
protests in the history of the United States. And so
you know it didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Well, by the.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Way, just for the record, I knew that Biden went
on the record saying fun fund fund the police. Minneapolis
repealed its own attempt to rename and redefined policing as
the Department of Public Safety. And we've had mayors like
Eric Adams run basically on tough on crime messages, reinstituting
street crime units like the kinds that were disbanded in
the wake of the stop in first revelations.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
So, yeah, what is all those things you said are true?
But so is it? So is this true? The state
of Minnesota did ban choke holes, We did pass the
Police Officer Status and Training Board to bake to be
more to be tough for on police violence and misconduct.
We did. We had a number of reforms. So while
(36:32):
I'm not saying that you guys are wrong, you're clearly right.
But what I'm saying is that there's more to the
story than that. The real question is what are we
going to do? Because because one of the things that
I think is a product of the pandemic, is that
there was a measurable increase in crime. There just was, folks.
(36:53):
And so the question is have we learned anything? Are
we going to go back to nineteen ninety four? Are
we going to go back to nineteen seventy two? And
what are we going to do? Are we what are
we gonna Why don't we learn something from those eras
that led to massive cars array and the kind of
green lighted excessive force. Every moment is still a moment
(37:14):
where we can make the changes that we need to.
The question is are we committed? Will we do it?
And I think the answer is yes, because ultimately the
tough on crime message doesn't make you safer, right, And
so we've got to keep fighting back, keep pushing back,
and I believe that we will have the George Ford
(37:36):
Justice of Policing pass and because I'm not quitting, Okay, right,
all right, and thank you all very much.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
So we're almost done. We are coming in for landing.
But Ben's going to take us home to Chicago to
close out this conversation.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, we you know, Kim Fox, who is our
district attorney, is stepping down. So We're going to very
soon have a new district attorney, we have a new mayor,
We're going to have a new police chief. So you know,
this is a city that has been trying to break
the wheel of police violence and police reform since Lakwan MacDonald,
(38:13):
but for decades before that. Also, what do you feel like,
you know, for a place like Chicago, for a place
like Minnesota, Minneapolis, for cities across the country, what is
the chief impediment for these changes that we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, I wish I could narrow it to just one,
but I'm going to start with I'll just say this,
the cheap impediment is that it's not always easy to
maintain dual thoughts in one mind. Here's what I mean.
Can we have a system that is addresses and holds
(38:52):
accountable people who commit heinous murder and has compassion within
it at the same time. That's what we get. That
is the balancing act, because you know, when something heinous
like this happens to Zire and mckeeper, the impulse is
to to retaliate with retribution against a person who did it.
(39:14):
I would say that that's often not the best way
to keep the community safe, but let's not go to
the other end of the spectrum where we're just gonna
let that person go, because that might not even be
good for that person, and it certainly is bad for
victims and community. We've got to have some balance, do
you think politically?
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I mean, you said that the choices are, you know,
throwing the book, you know, sending someone away for life,
or like no punishment. That seems like a false kind of.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I absolutely agree, and that's actually, well, that's what I'm
trying to say, Ben, it's a false choice. We can
do better than that. Our imaginations can take us in
a better place than that. We've got to start imagining
that doing a horrible thing is is horrible, and we're
gonna treat it like it's horrible. But it doesn't mean
(40:04):
you've been banished from humanity forever. The problem is we're
always this or that. Just like you pointed out, Ben,
we don't have the tools, and because we won't allow ourselves,
we're so we're animated by anger or we're animated by
a feeling. The system is completely racist and unjustin and humane.
(40:26):
So now we're not going to do anything. We've got
to understand that, you know, that look, murders, rapes, robberies,
they happen, and I don't care how progressive you are,
you can't wish them away. They're there. We've got to
have a response that gives people a realistic sense of
safety and accountability. And yet at the same time, let's
(40:51):
never forget that second chances and mercy are part of
what we've got to be doing too. One of the
things I'm real proud of is in Minnesota, we used
to say that after you've got out of prison, you
can't vote until you're on probation or parole, and that
might be a decade later after you get out. We've
gotten rid of that. Now you can vote as soon
as you get out. We're proud of that. That's saying
that now now people who are in the criminal justice
(41:13):
system become a voting block suddenly. And believe it or not,
they're not uh, they're not particularly lenient, you know. They
they they got firm opinions on what works and what doesn't.
But you know what, you know, I tell you, this
is an ongoing conversation that we just cannot quit on.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, we're sort of ending where we could just like
talk all day about this.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Oh yeah, so we want to we want to just
say thank you so much, thank you for joining us
this afternoon here in Chicago for this conversation we are.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
We are going to be watching.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
You closely, holding you accountable at least states representative and
also exuding the values that you're articulated. Today's thank you
so much for coming on. Some of my best friends are.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Thanks been, and thank you Khalil and uh hey, listen
to the podcast and check out Break the Wheel too.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
All right, Some of my best Friends Are is a
production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted
by me, Khalil Dubron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang.
It's edited by Sarah Nix with help from Keishel Williams.
Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer
is Constanza Guyardo at Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Thanks to Leital Mollat, Julia Barton, Heather Fain, Carly Migliori,
John Schnarz, Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
want to check out his music at his website, Averyaryong
dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin
Pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at
pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Like to listen.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
And if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Thank you,
Pushing.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Khalidea Brad Muhammad.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities
of a deeply divided and unequal country. And today we
are back. After taking a little break in production, we
have been recording some great episodes for you.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yes, that's right, we are coming to you live from
the Chicago Humanity's Festival, live live live with former congressmen
and current Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, yes, we talked to Ellison about prosecuting the police
officers who killed George Floyd Man. He was murdered almost
exactly three years ago. We also talked to Ellison about
his new book, Break the Wheel, Ending the Cycle of
police violence. We are so excited to share this conversation
with you today and also to have a live show.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yes, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Your pin, Daddy's coming.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Our theme song that you just heard is Little Lily
by Avery R. Young and he was just named the
poet laureate, the first poet laureate of Chicago.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So just gotta shout that out.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So we are really excited today to have our guests
with us on stage here in Chicago. Our hometown brother
Keith Ellison.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Thank you. Glad to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah, great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
So we're going to get started, and I just want
to say that we often bring our best friends on
and while I can't claim that we're best friends, we
have met each other a.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Couple of times. Not yet. We're working on it. We
get there, we get there.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So I wanted to remind you that a few years
ago in New Jersey, in an organization called Building One America
brought together a bunch of progressives around the country. We
were in South Jersey pretty not just a good place.
But it's great to be back with you. A lot
has changed for you, and in many ways, that's what
we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Well, a lot has changed and a lot of stayed
the same. I mean that some of the fights are
still going on. We're trying to equalize power. We're trying
to get people who don't have any power a little
bit more say so in their own lives. And I
can tell you this, moving from Congress to the Attorney
General's office is lack a dream because what it would
take a year or two to do, we can do
(03:11):
in a week at the AG's office. So it's great
to see you again.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Man, Yeah, I like that. Khalil said that South Jersey
was a nondescript player. So Khalil and I both grew
up here in Chicago on the South Side in the
nineteen eighties the Bears, and you grew up in Detroit
mostly in the seventies. How did that shape your thinking? Like,
how how has that formed who you are?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
So look, Chicago and Detroit have a lot in common.
They both are destinations in the Great Migration. If you
talk to any black person and a whole lot of
white people, their grandparents are from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia,
and folks came up to Chicago to work in meatpacking whatever,
and they came to Detroit to work on the auto plants.
(03:59):
Both my parents have Southern roots. My mother's from Louisiana,
my father's family's from Georgia. He was born in Detroit,
but his father was born in rural Georgia, so that
up south kind of is here. I mean with the
best blues and barbecue you can get in the world,
it's probably in Chicago, right. And so you know, I
was born in nineteen sixty three. That's the year of
(04:19):
the March on Washington. Earlier that June MegaR Evers was
shot down and killed. Earlier in that year, John F.
Kennedy said that the civil rights movement was based on
a moral issue, and he gave this I don't know
if any of you all remember or know this speech
where he gave this speech and said, if any one
of us had to live the life of I think
(04:40):
he used the term negro, you know who would want
to do it. You know, we say we're a country
where there's no second class citizens except the Negro. We
say we're a country that where everybody can stand on
their own two feet and rise to the full measure
of their talent, except the Negro. He has this refrain.
Later on in that year, John F. Kennedy shot down murdered.
(05:01):
So that is what I was born into. And I
wasn't aware of it at the time, but maybe my
body felt it. I can tell you this. On the
issues of policing, I absolutely remember living on Eileen near
Outer Drive and looking out of the window and remembering
that my dad was out in the out in Detroit
(05:24):
trying to help people. Use my dad as a physician, right,
and he was attending to people who were in the riots, the.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Detroita Detroit riot nineteen sixty seven, Right.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I remember it. My brother remembers it, and I said,
and we remember military vehicles going by. And I asked
my brother why would military vehicles be going by? He said, well,
the eight Mile Armory was only less than a mile away.
And so I remember that. And I remember growing up
in Detroit as the auto plants were just abandoning the city.
And a lot of people wanted to say it's because
African Americans were not good at leadership. But the real
(05:56):
truth is for GM and Chrysler figured they could make
it cheaper elsewhere. So I mean, does I get to
the question, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm curious, did this Did you lose any white friends
and that migration out of Detroit?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
You know, not really, you know not. You know, it's
a funny thing. You know, Detroit is an interesting city
along that lines, Remember Eminem comes from Detroit. Yep. Eight
Mile is a real street. In Detroit. And it also
you know, kid Rocks also from Detroit. So in Detroit
you have a lot of interracial cooperation, and then you
(06:32):
got and then it is a city of racing, class
violence too. You got this complicated weird mixture stew gumbo
in Detroit. Whereas some of your best friends are white,
some of your and some and some guys who chased
you across eight Mile Road and you were running for
the fear of your life were also white. There's some
black folks I ran into who made me a little
(06:52):
worried about my safety too. So you know, so, uh,
that's Detroit for you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
There are two things you did not mention about Detroit
and Chicago that they have in common. The first thing
is that brothers were for coats in both cities, don't
they everywhere, which which I have not seen everybody in
any other city. I lived in Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
you name it.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
They have no style. Man.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So, aside from the fir Coats, is also the nation
of Islam. So the nation of Islam is born in Detroit,
grows out of the great migration. My great grandfather moves
there in the nineteen twenties, raises his family eventually moved
to Chicago. Talking about Elijah Mohammack. So talk about your
own Muslim roots, how you become a Muslim and break
through these barriers and politics in Minnesota in particular.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Well, the people who introduced Islam to me were from
the NI. A good friend of mine who's just just
went to his reward. His name was Abdullah bel Amme
and he was about six foot five, but I bet
you he weighed one hundred and forty pounds and he
was the Emam. And I first, you know, heard about Islam,
(07:59):
reading about people like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. I
first met. The first person who was told me about
Islam was a guy who was a Libyan student foreign
exchange student. One day, I was at Wayne State University
and we were studying calculus and he on a Friday afternoon,
he's like, hey, man, I gotta go. What do you
(08:22):
mean you gotta go? Well, I got to go. I
mean it's time for me to do something. I said, Well,
he said, why don't you come with me? I said, fine,
I got nothing else to do. I walk up and
there's all these shoes everywhere. Well, you got to take
off your shoes and we walk into the room and
there's sheets across the carpet. We got to sit on
the floor, so I do. And I heard a message
(08:43):
that stuck with me until this very moment.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
What was the message that stuck with you?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The message of Mohammad that you know. His message was
for the poor, the black, the racially sidelined. It was
a message of human oneness, of the unity of all humanity.
And hearing stories about Bilal, who was a black man
(09:09):
in servitude, who was freed by his belief in that message.
And look, I grew up Catholic, right, everybody in my
family's Catholic. We're from Louere, Louisiana Catholics, right, even though
I had all that Catholic training, I this is the message.
They clicked in my head and it made sense to me,
and it makes sense to me until this very second.
In fact, we just ended Ramadan. And the interesting thing
(09:32):
about me being a Muslim, when I ran for the
State Legislature, I would fast for Ramadan and I'd go
to pray and nobody cared, like nobody cared at all.
But when I ran for Congress, it was this big, giant,
humongous international incident and I just I always ponder why,
(09:55):
you know, and it's kind of like, well, you know,
it's five years after nine to eleven, and people didn't
know what it meant to have a Muslim in the
US Congress, and they wanted to know. And some people
entertained their worst fears, and some of them, all of them,
nearly were many of them were irrational fears.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Right, yeah, yeah, thank you for telling us that. And
certainly my buddy here Khalil Muhammad, after nine to eleven
has been stopped at many airport, Thank you for telling
us that. And I want to ask you another question.
Why the law? So I think I think your grandfather
is a leader in the NAACP, And so why do
(10:34):
you go into the law and why civil rights law?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Well, you know, I I majored in economics because my
dad ninety four years young, still grouchy and opinionated. He
always was like, well follow the money. You know, if
you figure out the economics, you can figure out a
lot of things. Right, So I studied that, and uh,
(10:57):
but then when I was at Wayne State, I started
asking myself, what is what do you do with an
economics degree? I had no idea, Now what I've found
out since is there's a lot you could do. But
I didn't know anything except for being a college teacher.
So I took the lside, you know. And so I
(11:18):
thought it would be the right thing for me because
my mother always told me, you know, you are so argumentative,
you should maybe be a lawyer. And so those two things,
that family background and just you know what God made
me good at, which is uss and with folks, sent
me in a particular direction to why civil rights? You know,
(11:40):
you know it's funny, man. I always feel like I
was destined to it because when I got out of
law school, I had a wife's two children and some
student loan debt and I needed to make a little
bit of money. I was twenty five years old and
I was trying to figure out and I got to
offer to go work with this huge white law firm
downtown Minneapolis.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
So we're talking about mid nineteen seventies or early ladies.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
We're talking about nineteen ninety and so it was so
that somebody basically said, would you go to this silk
stocking law firm? And I was like, what are they paying?
You know? So I ended up there and I started
doing all the pro bono that I could wed a
We did a death row case in Union Paris, Louisiana,
(12:28):
got a man named Albert Barrell not only out of
off death row, but actually exonerated. So that was a
wonderful thing. And I started doing all this stuff with
landlord tenant stuff and then you know, look, my heart
wasn't there. So within three years I applied for a
job to be the director of the Legal Rights Center,
(12:49):
which is essentially a nonprofit engine law office. Got the
job and have a look back.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah, that's great. Well, listen, we are excited to have
a conversation that takes us from your origin story to
the moment that has redefined the history of prosecutustion of
police officers. We're going to take a quick break and
we'll pick that up after the break.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
We'll be right back, y'all.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So I think people might know that Keith as the
State's Attorney of Minnesota, tried and convicted Derek Chalvin, who
is the police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck
and killed him and won a conviction. And we want
you to take us back to that moment and maybe
(13:51):
can you describe what Minneapolis was like in the aftermath
of George Floyd's death.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Well, let me just say slightly before that tragic occurred,
you should know that, you know, I love Minneapolis, and
Minneapolis has a certain sense of itself every he does, right.
We cling to Hubert H. Humphrey and how he was
he in nineteen forty seventy at the Philadelphia Democratic Convention,
(14:19):
he said, we have to walk out of the dark
night of states rights into the bright sunshine of human rights.
And we were so proud that we passed one of
the first we say, the first I don't know if
it's true. I never researched it. Human rights municipal ordinance
in the country. And how there were all these and
(14:39):
how we're this city that you know, really embraces the
diverse gifts of the population.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
It's like one of the largest Somalai populations.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Right right, and we pride ourselves on how, you know,
new Americans come there, you know, like the Somali community,
the among community, the kur In community were from Burma,
and we think of ourselves this way. And there's this
I don't know if y'all ever heard this, but Minnesotans
will say Minnesota nice because we're so nice. I don't
know if they're that nice think of themselves as being
(15:10):
very nice right now. That is and I don't say
this in a derogatory way at all. That is a myth, right,
And it's not that it's not true. It's just that
it's not the only truth. Right. It's not that it's
not true, because people really are good and decent. But
there is another side. We did have restrictive covenants in
(15:34):
like literally thousands of homes, you know, two hours away
the Duluth lynching. You did have three black men lynched
at a light pole in Duluth. We do have in
man Cato. There was the largest mass hanging of Dakota
people in the history of the country, the largest mass
hanging in man Cato of the indigenous community. So these
(15:59):
things occurred. So we're not hypocrites. It's just like people
all over the world, we emphasize the positive. George Floyd
caused Minnesotans to really reflect on how we might not
be somehow different along racial lines than the rest of
(16:22):
the country. And I think people are still trying to
figure out what does this all mean and how it's
not an anomaly. And there were a lot of things
that happened that would have told us that this easily
could happen here. And so that that's something that I
think is important, because if you think you're an American
(16:42):
community that's somehow immune from race class violence in America,
you're not. It's closer than you think it is, and
you better do something about it before you have a
George Floyd incident.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So well, I'm gonna say so. I mean, one of
the things that you're talking about is that Minnesota has
a reputation for being a progressive city and having family there.
I've been to Minnesota many times. There's a lot of like,
you know, there are these pockets of America where people
are like, there's lots of interracial families. You know, diversity
is celebrated, correct, right, And so part of what you're
(17:18):
saying is that this tension exploded onto the streets in
a way that the progressive community was was part of
the ferment already and then in the wake of like
and I really resist the idea of calling what happened
to Floyda tragedy because I think part of the way
in which we both isolated as an incident and also
(17:39):
imagine it as exceptional reduces our capacity to see the
systems as they function or, as many progressives would say,
were designed to do what they do.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I'll buy that, you know, I only mean in the
sense that it was a horrible thing that happened to him, yeh.
But but to the degree that that word kind of
like pulls it out of the general fabric, I agree
with you.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So let's let's let's stay with this point for a
little bit longer. Because one of the things you do
in the book, and Keith's book is called break the Will.
Ending the cycle of police violence comes out in May,
so you all are learning about and hearing about it
well before the book is actually released. But one of
the things you say in the book is that there's
a roll call of victims in the Minneapolis Saint Paul regions.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Filando Castillo may be perhaps most recognizable by name to
a lot of people because he was killed when an
officer asked him for identification, and as he reached for
that identification, and as his girlfriend recorded it on Facebook live,
he was shot dead in the passenger seat. But there's
Jamar Clark, there are many other names.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Do you think there's something about Minneapolis Saint Paul. That
is just typical of every American city. Or do you
think there's something you know, exceptional about it that there
are a high number of cases, or maybe there aren't
a high number of cases. Maybe that's this is what
we're seeing across the country.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
I have to say, what is unique about Minneapolis Saint
Paul is that in our mind we are well intentioned
open up opportunity, but our reality is like the rest
of the country. You see what I'm saying. We're not worse,
We're just right. I mean, you know, I mean what
we saw in Memphis the other day. How many incidents
(19:28):
like that? You talk about the killing of Tyree Nickels.
How many things like that have happened since then? Right?
So that's the tragedy, is that I think that we
need to come to grips with the fact that this
problem must be addressed, and if we ever did, we'd
save one hundred million dollars in Section nineteen eighty three payouts.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
These are settlements that police settlements have for local deaths.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, we're in Chicago, so it's more like seven hundred
million right over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So how many more playgrounds, how many more lighting, how
many more potholes? How many more community centers, how many more?
How many how many more raised? How much more? And
raises for city employees. I mean, police settlements alone have
a devastating impact on the city. If we just solved
(20:22):
the problem, if we broke the cycle, if we could
do a lot and let alone the fact that about
every twenty years or some period of time, there is
a civil unrest. And I know words matter, so some folks,
I'm spuck. I'm speaking about what some people might call
a riot, but others might call something else, and uprising
(20:45):
what those are exceedingly expensive to the city, not to
mention the loss of trust. I believe that police brutality
actually has a causal relationship to crime, because if you
won't call, and you think you're snitching and all that,
(21:08):
you're not going to get their responsiveness and the cooperation
needed in order to promote public safety, and you greenlight
to people who do commit crime. And I'm a prosecutor,
I assure you that some people really do make crimes,
and so police brutality needs to be solved financial reasons,
but also for safety reasons.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
I wanted to ask you or have you talked more
about a decision you made, your strategy in prosecuting the
police officer in this case that it struck me in
reading about it, that you went and spoke to your brother, right,
and you tell him about about all the people who
witnessed this in the community. And your brother says, well,
(21:52):
did they know George Floyd? And you're like, none of
them knew George Floyd. They didn't know him personally, and like, so,
why did they step up and take phone and try
to stop the police. And he said to you, oh,
it's the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, And he said, look, you know, people went right
on by that man who was bleeding on Jericho Road.
And those people were learned in religion, they were supposed
to be, they were the responsible people, and they abandoned
(22:25):
him and walked by, were wre more concerned about their
own welfare and benefit. And the good Samaritan not only
loaded the man up on the donkey and took him
to an end and said, I will pay any charges
he has on my way back. And he said, these
people who didn't know George Floyd demonstrated true love of
(22:50):
humanity by literally sacrificing themselves. And who were these people?
There was no college professors on the scene. There were
no priests on the scene, there were no reverends on
the scene. There were three seventeen year old girls, a
nine year old girl, a sixty two year old hustler,
(23:10):
a thirty three year old mixed martial artist. And that's
who was there in a firefighter and there was a
fire And guess what they were a mixed race group.
And here's another thing. So were the people who killed
George Floyd. Yeah, we talk about Derek Chauvin, Well Jay
(23:32):
Alexander King's black two tiles, Mom.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
They're the police officers who were standing by watching.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Two of them.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
One was holding his legs, one.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Had physically on his body.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
But but there was something spiritual that happened, because a
spirit moved among those people on that street, and they demanded,
they yelled, and even as they were calling on Chauvin
the police to stop, they still had faith in the police.
They said, we're going to call the police on the police,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Can we lean into the trial a little bit? Because sure,
in many ways, the structure of this book is chapter
by chapter sort of how the system worked in this
particular prosecution.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
It was made to how it was made to correct, right.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I'm won't give you a chance, okay, to share it
because part of what is possible in your telling of
this story, the blow by blow sort of legal machinery
and action in the way that, as you say your metaphor,
tried to break the wheel, tried to disrupt the way
this normally goes. Our series of interventions. Now, we won't
(24:41):
have the time in this conversation to unpack all of
those interventions.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
We still want the people to buy the book, to right.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Good point, But there are a couple of things that
I think that I want to throw out there and
want to frame them sort of as if you were
speaking to prosecutors around the country. So one we get
the usual lie in the original press story and not
the press police account.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
No, it was a press it was a press release,
press release, right.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And then the complaint itself, which i'dn't like you to
share with them, sets up essentially from the prosecutor standpoint,
a defense of Chauvin.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yeah, so this tragedy happens around the eight to nine
o'clock hour, and I mean tragedy in that a man
lost his life. The MPD Public Information issues a press
statement saying that George Floyd died of a medical emergency,
no mention of force at all. Then what happens is
(25:41):
within a few days the medical examiner gets it, and
the medical examiner makes a statement that if George Floyd
was found in this medical condition in his home, I
would think it was an od no mention of a knee,
no mention in the fact that there's all kinds of
video of it, kind of ignoring all that, and then says,
you know, and then it won't ever We got medical
(26:02):
examiners who ultimately said, this is clearly mechanical asphyxia. If
you lay somebody prone on their chest, lay and get
on their back for nine minutes, there's not anyone in
this audience who wouldn't be dead.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
At the rest the language for kind of suffocating someone
to yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Right. But the medical examitor said, look, we didn't see Okay,
now we're going to get technical a little bit. We
didn't see any of the petiki, which are these really
small little hemorrhages that you will get in your eye
when you're choked to death, or any disruptions or injuries
to the next structure because we didn't see those. I
can't say it's as fix you. Well, the video and
(26:39):
everything you're seeing shows you that that's what it was.
But he said, I can't say that. I will say
that it was subdual. It was law enforcement involved subdual
restraint and neck compression, which was good enough for me.
He did call it a homicide, but some of the
early language really did create a lot of confusion. And
(27:01):
so you know, and then the complaint got drafted. The
original complaint didn't have second degree murderer had third and
in Minnesota, the third degree order. The Supreme Court found
that it was inappropriate charge. So if we didn't charge
this case, we'd have been left with nothing but manslaughter too,
which is culpable negligence. So y'all follow what I just said. Yes,
So we so that the complaint they drafted would have
(27:24):
ultimately ended up in a manslaughter too. The complaint that
we came back and redrafted resulted in second degree murder.
I mean to me, if without our intervention, I'm not
even sure the case there's a there's an argument to
be made that this thing could have gone extremely different.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
H We're going to take one more quick break and
we're going to come back and talk about breaking the wheel.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Keith.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I mean, so you win a conviction, Yeah, and you're
you're talking about breaking the wheel of police violence?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Is a conviction of a police officer breaking the wheel?
Does that actually do the work of changing the cycle
of violence.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
It's a necessary but insufficient thing. Because let me tell
you why I say this, because I think there's really
only two things that are going to straighten this problem out,
and that is criminal prosecution of criminal activity by law
enforcement and administrative firings of people who are just not
(28:41):
good police officer or a bad police officers and break
the rules. As I say this, the real people I
believe are going to benefit are the of the remaining
police And I'm telling you, within a week after within
a week, fourteen Minneapolis police officers wrote an open letter saying,
we absolutely condemn what happened and we're committed to a
(29:04):
better future. The longest serving police officer in the Minneapols
Police Department took the stand and denounce what happened, and
so did the police chief. So there is a thing
going on within policing where police were like, look, I
joined to help people. I didn't joined to do what
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
You know, you've already started to talk about the lessons
from the Chauvin trial and the implications for how criminal
prosecution has to be a huge part of the overall
strategy of police reform wherever it's taking place. And that's
the conversation that we've been having since the summer of
(29:45):
twenty twenty, this national conversation about police reform. And I
just want you to sort of give us two things
you think just out the gate nationally we should be
doing that we are not already doing in this country,
and maybe even consider the George Floyd Policing Act in
its own limitations or not.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Right, Well, let me just say before I get to those,
you've got to prosecute criminal behavior, and you've got to
fire and administratively respond to rule violations. If you don't
do these things, nothing else you do is going to work.
But here's the good news. This is a fixable problem.
(30:32):
It really really is.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And I know that we're listening, right, we're not sure.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Well, well, let me just tell you this. I know
that there's some folks will say this system depends structurally
on some people being on the bottom end of it,
and people being the system requires victims, and the way
that the system maintains itself is through police violence and
(30:57):
other things. I know that that I'm aware of that
point of view. What I would say is, I think
that point of view is a little bit too cynical.
And the reason why I say that is because we've
seen cities where these cities are not in nirvana, and
I'm not offering them as perfect, but things have gotten
dramatically better in Newark, New Jersey. They have gotten better
in Camden, New Jersey. Right. Well, it takes leadership. It
(31:23):
takes people like Rasbaraka to say this is the way
we're gonna do things differently, and it does take that
kind of leadership. But having said that, what I would
say is that we've got to have a national registry
so that if you are fired for bad policing, you
(31:43):
cannot just go to some other state and start policing.
An example of what I mean is there's a guy
named Loewen who was found by one Cleveland area police
department to be so unqualified that they said, get out
of here, you can't police here. He shows up in Cleveland,
(32:07):
gets a job and then kill twelve year old to
mere rights. It's shocking to me that this guy was
found to be unfit for a police department, but could
just go get a police job somewhere else. So that's
one thing that we've absolutely got to do. And then
the other thing that we've got to do is Okay,
(32:27):
so we've gotten all this body warn camera video now
nearly every it's a common thing we use it to
We use it in litigation to prove or disprove what happened.
But do we use it as a training exercise. We
need to use it like on a every six months
(32:48):
or every four months. Come on in here, see what
you did, See what you didn't do. You can do
this better. Why'd you talk to this person this way?
One thing I'll tell you, And this sounds petty, but
I believe it's very true. Think about the people who
don't die as a result of a negative police community interaction,
the people who survive. How many people I know who've
been called foul names, racist names, kicked in the butt,
(33:11):
slapped in the head. The idea that you're going to
scare the population into submission is false. People will rebel.
They don't like it. They're not gonna just take it.
So we we've got to change the whole culture of
the police policing to be one of guardianship and support
as opposed to you better do what I'm gonna say,
(33:34):
or I'm gonna go upside your head. This got we've
got to do it differently than we've been doing it.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
On the body cameras, uh, and this Tyree Nichols's executioners
were clearly aware that their body cameras were running who
look staging, We're staging a resisting arrest charge because that
was the mechanism they used to say. This guy was resisting.
This is why we kept delivering blows to him. So
(34:00):
that's not to say body cameras can't help, but their
police officers are training themselves also how to get around.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah. But well but here's what I'll say, though, Khalil.
While while they clearly were trying to lie and say,
oh he was so strong, Oh, they were making up
a story, and anybody who watched the team could see
them making up a story.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Except we live in Trump America.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Well yeah, the people say, look, with those who don't
want to see, ain't going to see. But for anybody
who's remotely honest about what they were looking at could
tell we're watching you concocta story.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So I want to you talked about that laundry list
of incredibly valuable reforms to policing, and you know, I
want to talk about another lesson of the George Floyd experience.
I mean in our recent history, because we all just
lived through this where those suddenly all felt like possibilities.
And I was reporting a book where I was going
(34:55):
to parole hearings and I could hear month to month
the country, the people around me be becoming more lenient,
being becoming more open to changing the criminal justice system,
and then it being supercharged after the death of George
Floyd and all those policies that you just listed, there
were municipalities across the country who are like, damn, we
are going to do this right. And then the history
(35:18):
that we lived through is that they didn't happen. That
this extreme backlash that we just went through, where we
didn't even pass in the US Congress of George Floyd
Act that died in the Senate. And so if that's
the lesson of all this, that we can't even sustain
it after the most you know, for most of our lifetimes,
the biggest mass protest, and it is the biggest math
(35:40):
protests in the history of the United States. And so
you know it didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Well, by the.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Way, just for the record, I knew that Biden went
on the record saying fun fund fund the police. Minneapolis
repealed its own attempt to rename and redefined policing as
the Department of Public Safety. And we've had mayors like
Eric Adams run basically on tough on crime messages, reinstituting
street crime units like the kinds that were disbanded in
the wake of the stop in first revelations.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
So, yeah, what is all those things you said are true?
But so is it? So is this true? The state
of Minnesota did ban choke holes, We did pass the
Police Officer Status and Training Board to bake to be
more to be tough for on police violence and misconduct.
We did. We had a number of reforms. So while
(36:32):
I'm not saying that you guys are wrong, you're clearly right.
But what I'm saying is that there's more to the
story than that. The real question is what are we
going to do? Because because one of the things that
I think is a product of the pandemic, is that
there was a measurable increase in crime. There just was, folks.
(36:53):
And so the question is have we learned anything? Are
we going to go back to nineteen ninety four? Are
we going to go back to nineteen seventy two? And
what are we going to do? Are we what are
we gonna Why don't we learn something from those eras
that led to massive cars array and the kind of
green lighted excessive force. Every moment is still a moment
(37:14):
where we can make the changes that we need to.
The question is are we committed? Will we do it?
And I think the answer is yes, because ultimately the
tough on crime message doesn't make you safer, right, And
so we've got to keep fighting back, keep pushing back,
and I believe that we will have the George Ford
(37:36):
Justice of Policing pass and because I'm not quitting, Okay, right,
all right, and thank you all very much.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
So we're almost done. We are coming in for landing.
But Ben's going to take us home to Chicago to
close out this conversation.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, we you know, Kim Fox, who is our
district attorney, is stepping down. So We're going to very
soon have a new district attorney, we have a new mayor,
We're going to have a new police chief. So you know,
this is a city that has been trying to break
the wheel of police violence and police reform since Lakwan MacDonald,
(38:13):
but for decades before that. Also, what do you feel like,
you know, for a place like Chicago, for a place
like Minnesota, Minneapolis, for cities across the country, what is
the chief impediment for these changes that we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, I wish I could narrow it to just one,
but I'm going to start with I'll just say this,
the cheap impediment is that it's not always easy to
maintain dual thoughts in one mind. Here's what I mean.
Can we have a system that is addresses and holds
(38:52):
accountable people who commit heinous murder and has compassion within
it at the same time. That's what we get. That
is the balancing act, because you know, when something heinous
like this happens to Zire and mckeeper, the impulse is
to to retaliate with retribution against a person who did it.
(39:14):
I would say that that's often not the best way
to keep the community safe, but let's not go to
the other end of the spectrum where we're just gonna
let that person go, because that might not even be
good for that person, and it certainly is bad for
victims and community. We've got to have some balance, do
you think politically?
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I mean, you said that the choices are, you know,
throwing the book, you know, sending someone away for life,
or like no punishment. That seems like a false kind of.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I absolutely agree, and that's actually, well, that's what I'm
trying to say, Ben, it's a false choice. We can
do better than that. Our imaginations can take us in
a better place than that. We've got to start imagining
that doing a horrible thing is is horrible, and we're
gonna treat it like it's horrible. But it doesn't mean
(40:04):
you've been banished from humanity forever. The problem is we're
always this or that. Just like you pointed out, Ben,
we don't have the tools, and because we won't allow ourselves,
we're so we're animated by anger or we're animated by
a feeling. The system is completely racist and unjustin and humane.
(40:26):
So now we're not going to do anything. We've got
to understand that, you know, that look, murders, rapes, robberies,
they happen, and I don't care how progressive you are,
you can't wish them away. They're there. We've got to
have a response that gives people a realistic sense of
safety and accountability. And yet at the same time, let's
(40:51):
never forget that second chances and mercy are part of
what we've got to be doing too. One of the
things I'm real proud of is in Minnesota, we used
to say that after you've got out of prison, you
can't vote until you're on probation or parole, and that
might be a decade later after you get out. We've
gotten rid of that. Now you can vote as soon
as you get out. We're proud of that. That's saying
that now now people who are in the criminal justice
(41:13):
system become a voting block suddenly. And believe it or not,
they're not uh, they're not particularly lenient, you know. They
they they got firm opinions on what works and what doesn't.
But you know what, you know, I tell you, this
is an ongoing conversation that we just cannot quit on.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, we're sort of ending where we could just like
talk all day about this.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Oh yeah, so we want to we want to just
say thank you so much, thank you for joining us
this afternoon here in Chicago for this conversation we are.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
We are going to be watching.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
You closely, holding you accountable at least states representative and
also exuding the values that you're articulated. Today's thank you
so much for coming on. Some of my best friends are.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Thanks been, and thank you Khalil and uh hey, listen
to the podcast and check out Break the Wheel too.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
All right, Some of my best Friends Are is a
production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted
by me, Khalil Dubron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang.
It's edited by Sarah Nix with help from Keishel Williams.
Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer
is Constanza Guyardo at Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Thanks to Leital Mollat, Julia Barton, Heather Fain, Carly Migliori,
John Schnarz, Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
want to check out his music at his website, Averyaryong
dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin
Pods and you can sign up for our newsletter at
pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Like to listen.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
And if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Thank you,
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