- Over the past summer, the slogan defund the police gained widespread attention following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

It's been a rallying cry, a protest, in cities across the country.

But according to a YouGov opinion poll in late May, less than 20% of American adults support the idea, with similar levels of support among Republicans and Democrats.

It's noteworthy that neither presidential candidate supports the concept, its inflammatory rhetoric, the effects of which have been felt here in West Texas.

So tonight we ask, defund the police?

(inspiring orchestral music) Defund the police.

What does it mean to activists and to local police?

Tonight we will hear from a government professor who will define the movement, and we will visit the two West Texas Police Chiefs.

First this evening, welcome Sondra Richards, Midland College Department Chair and Professor of Criminal justice, Government, and Paralegal.

Welcome Sondra.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much for being with us.

We've heard that term a lot this summer, defund the police.

What does it mean?

- You know, I really think it means different things to different people, right?

And you can, there is a strain of defund the police that actually means defund the police and eventually abolish the police.

It's a smaller thread.

I think really instead of defunding the police, I've seen activists and community leaders and protesters coalesce more along the definition of reallocation of funds rather than defunding the police.

- And what were the issues that sort of are driving the movement?

- Well, there has been sort of a low level interest in defund the police that was renewed after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

And so you start to see some of these conversations that have bene ongoing re-energized.

- When we spoke earlier this week, you talked about how defund the police has been tried several different places.

And I do think we need to talk a whole lot more about what that means.

You said it means reallocate and I think that's really important.

It's been done in a couple of Texas cities, could you talk about that?

- Yeah it has.

I mean there has been some of what would fall under the defund the police movement.

You see for example, and like I said, it means different things in different communities, right?

So in Harris County for example, I saw that the DA took small levels of marijuana possession.

And instead of putting people through the criminal justice system, she ends up providing educational programs for those people and keeps them out of the criminal justice system.

It saved taxpayers $28 million and it freed up police officers to go after more serious crimes, robberies, and assaults and those types of things because they weren't having to go back and fill out hours worth of paperwork for low level nonviolent offense.

- I think you also mentioned Austin.

- Yeah, Austin has a homelessness problem, and they started some programs for homeless outreach, right, rather than using the police as the first responders to all the society's problems.

I'm thinking about too like the Dallas Police Chief said at one time, we expect police officers, we expect too much of them, right?

We expect them to solve every societal failure, and we can't expect them to do that, right?

That we keep throwing police officers at society, things that communities need to fix.

- Is it a negative or a positive when someone says defund the police?

- So when you see defund the police on a protest sign or as this quick way of sort of getting people angry and arguing about politics, I think you can see it as a negative.

You can also, in communities where they've already started doing some of these things, where law enforcement works in partnership with community organizations and they've reallocated funds, that's a really positive thing, but that's really hard to put in a sound byte or on a protest sign, so it doesn't tend to get the attention.

- It's a very poor marketing tool.

- [Sondra] Yeah, it is.

- To say the least.

- [Sondra] Yes.

- You mentioned also when we visited earlier that the defunding police was tried in Camden, New Jersey a number of years ago, and not particularly successfully.

- Well they had some wins and losses, right?

In Camden, New Jersey, they had some problems with police corruption and use of force, and so they actually did defund their police, and they moved policing to the county level rather than the city level, and they implemented a number of reforms from deescalation training to saying that choke holds were deadly force, to requiring police officers to report if one of their colleagues had used excessive force, to having to walk in neighborhoods more, have community barbecues, any number of things.

And they actually did end up decreasing, I think violent crime by something like I think 42% between 2012 and 2019, so that was a success in many ways.

There's bumps in the road and that's not the entire story for Camden, but you can take some of those similar programs.

Those programs were being done in Minneapolis as well, and did not succeed in Minneapolis like they had in Camden.

And I think part of the issue is when you look at the statistics, in 2008, we had a recession, and a lot of police forces lost money like a lot of other public services did.

And just taking money away is not gonna solve the problem, right?

It leaves police officers with fewer resources to handle even more problems.

And so you know, this conversation is shifted even from requiring body cams and deescalation training, instead to actually let's get community partners who have professional training in crisis intervention, or mental health or drug addiction to partner alongside law enforcement.

- We're gonna talk a little bit later in the show with some police chiefs, but from your point of view and the research that you've done, what effect does this negativity have on police officers and police forces?

- Yeah, I think there really has, there's this us versus them mentality that has come up on maybe both sides, right?

And I think that's why a lot of people from police chiefs to protesters to community organizations are looking forward to the conversations about maybe reallocating funds because it creates a partnership with the community and sort of takes away that us versus them mentality.

It's hard to operate under that type of mentality.

- Yeah, I could see how it would be.

Have you seen places where, or are we far enough along to know if it works?

- We have a couple of examples.

I know in Eugene, Oregon, they started a program called CAHOOTS.

I always forget what each of they sound, but crisis intervention where they have social workers, and mental health professionals, and even some medical professionals that will take calls.

And last year, I think they ended up taking about 20% of the 911 calls, many of which are not emergencies.

- [Host] Maybe a cat in a tree.

- Well yeah, it could be, right?

I think I saw statistics, and we're like, and I'm not sure here locally, but in LA, nine out of ten 911 calls are not an emergency right?

And so, this group could bring a police officer with them if they thought it would be violent.

Last year, they did so less than 1% of the time.

And they end up taking 20% of those calls to deal with mental health issues, crisis, even mediation dispute, drug addiction, getting people to the right resources, and that frees up police officers to deal with what they're really trained to deal with, right?

And that's serious crimes.

- Thank you so much for coming and visiting with us and shedding some light on what people mean when they say defund the police, thank you so much Sondra.

- [Sondra] Thank you for having me.

- Coming up next, Midland Police Chief Seth Herman.

(inspiring orchestral music) Chief Seth Herman was sworn in as the Midland Police Department's Chief in December of 2018.

He's a 25-year veteran of the MPD, and has served in various units throughout his career.

Patrol, Canine, SWAT, Narcotics, and the Gang Unit.

Thank you Chief so much for coming.

When you hear the term defund the police, what do you think?

- Well, it depends on the source.

Obviously from the police aspect, our concern is we're talking about cutting funding tremendously from departments that are always in need of funding for training, for equipment, to keep our men and women professional.

And then the other aspect of that is completely abolishing the police force, which I don't think anyone can argue that that's a direction that any of us should concern ourselves with.

- When the protests started, and since the protests have been going on for defunding the police, has there been any initiative in your department or any conversations about things that you should change?

- You know, we've been pretty, I don't know if it's lucky or we've learned over, at least the last 30 years of my law enforcement career, from other departments on what mistakes not to make.

And so all of our focus with the Midland Police Department is on training and selection and personnel.

And ongoing training not only from the academy standpoint, but throughout their careers.

So, you know the statements of deescalation training, those pushes, we've been doing that for years.

The abolition of choke holds.

We haven't employed choke holds for 15, 20 years.

So all of these different ideas that they're being brought to the forefront nationally, we've already addressed previously.

So, as far as new conversations with our personnel, what we're trying to is just ensure that they understand that this is cyclical.

These events, although they didn't happen here and weren't perpetrated by our personnel, they are gonna negatively impact them for at least a while, and we just need to be prepared and vigilant and continue to train and continue to hire and retain the most professional police personnel possible.

- Talk a little bit more about your comment that this sort of thing is cyclical.

Throughout my career, I came in in the early '90s after Rodney King.

And as everybody, one who can recall who's old enough, there were riots at that time, protests very similar to what we're dealing with now after the death of George Floyd.

And this has happened more than once within that 30-year period.

So, I've seen these events transpire, I've seen the riots, I've seen the, not necessarily the defund the police, but the resistance and the, you know the, the consternation between police and citizens.

And it spurs some positive dialog, and then it subsides, and then something else transpires that brings it back up.

So, it's nothing new, and it will never end unfortunately.

But my hope is that we all learn from each event, and continue to improve ourselves.

- Well you seem very philosophical about it.

Are you able to communicate that to your officers, your younger officers?

I hope so, I hope they understand that this is not what's gonna continue throughout their careers.

I realize that for these young new officers, these are their first experiences with these sort of events.

And so they can see nothing past this.

But I believe that our supervisors are doing a good job of encouraging them and keeping them motivated.

- You talked a moment ago about training, and deescalation training which, as you said is something that's talked about a whole lot.

You also mentioned to me when we were visiting the other day that you all have lots of anti-bias training.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- Of course, and that starts at the selection process, from our written exam to the psychological exam to the board interview for a prospective candidate.

And it continues through the academy, and then ongoing training through the Field Training Officer Program, and on a almost monthly or bimonthly basis, for each officer once they're out of the program, we focus so much effort on ensuring that we do not have or retain officers who show any kind of bias towards a specific demographic.

The only bias that we as police should show is towards the criminal element.

And so it's impressed upon our personnel repeatedly throughout their careers that it's unacceptable.

I can't think of any better way to combat such events.

And those sort of personalities should not be in law enforcement.

- Have you, has the current climate impacted your ability to recruit officers?

We haven't seen a decline in our recruitment capabilities.

In fact, unfortunately, and this is an unfortunate aspect of the oil field, is with the economic downturn that we're experiencing right now.

We've had an uptick in actual applications.

Now, again, that doesn't change the selection process.

We may have 40 applicants, and that may boil down to three candidates who actually make it into the academy.

But at least we have a larger pool to pick from.

- Are there police unions in Midland or in Texas?

- No mam, not in the Midland Police Department.

I couldn't speak for other agencies, but we do not unionize, we don't recognize unions.

There are associations, but there's no bargaining capabilities.

I think unions are a huge concern and may be a very big catalyst for why we're in the position we're in nationally anyway.

- Talk a little bit more about that, what you mean when you say that.

- Well, and I've had this discussion with several Chiefs of Police, and I think we're all in concert that unions, although, just like with any other faction, when they were begun, there was a positive aspect to them, to protect an employee from unfair termination or persecution for lack of a better term.

Well those have evolved into very powerful groups that now can prevent an officer who should be terminated from a law enforcement agency from not being terminated.

And so you see that regression in there, in their law enforcement capabilities and their attitudes, and their performances that eventually lead to something very egregious like what we've witnessed throughout the country.

- One more thing, I'd love your thoughts on body cameras, and do your officers wear them?

- They do, yes mam.

We began our body camera program in 2014.

And of course initially for the old dogs like myself, we were a little concerned.

But they have been of tremendous benefit.

More often than not, what they've done is protected our officers from let's say false reports and false allegations.

And so they've really provided us a very clear perspective on how professional our police are actually performing their job.

- One last question, you had talked a few minutes ago about, or we talked in the previous interview about the police being asked to solve all the problems.

So do you see a way that defunding the police or shifting some of the agencies would be of help to you all?

- Most definitely.

I think that it's already been touched upon and you discussed it the other day, but police have been called upon now to solve the world's problems, at least the nation's problems, and we are not sufficiently equipped for that.

Our main function is to enforce the law and protect lives.

And so I would love to see some of these other programs come to fruition that deal with those aspects of societal concerns that we are not equipped to deal with and should be dealing with.

Everything has been thrust upon us, thinkin' that we're the go to for everybody's problems when in fact, that's not what our training is geared around and it's not what we select people for.

So I would like to see this term defund the police lead into more of an allocation of resources for other entities that are specifically trained and equipped to deal with these other issues within society.

- Chief thank you so much - Thank you.

- for coming today and for your service in Midland, really appreciate it.

We also reached out to the Odessa Police Chief and he was very interested in joining us, but due to a scheduling conflict, he was unable to make it, so we look forward to visiting with him at a future episode.

But coming up next, Pecos Police Chief Lisa Tarango.

(inspiring orchestral music) Chief Lisa Tarango has served as Chief of Police in Pecos since October of 2018.

She's been in law enforcement for nearly 30 years serving previously as a Patrol Officer in both Pecos and Fort Stockton.

Welcome Chief, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you so much.

- We visited a few minutes ago with Chief Herman, and I'm gonna ask you the same question, what do you think when you hear the term defund the police?

- Well, what we hear when we hear defund the police is the way it seems to be used nationwide is to take funding away from the police departments in general.

And the hopes are that instead of taking away, there's gonna be an addition to, and it's other avenues or resources that need to be used to help the police when combating several issues.

- What impact has the movement had on recruiting officers in your community?

- Recruiting has not been easy.

And it was even prior to this, policing just isn't a job that a lot of people wanna take on any longer.

It is a very honorable position, takes a very strong person to be willing to do it.

And so in our recruiting efforts, we have great support from our City Council who's willing to you know help us with efforts to recruit and hire, you know, good quality candidates.

- Since the defund the police movement started, have you done anything different in your community with your officers?

- Luckily, we had already been doing some training with regards to civilian interaction, culture diversity, that type of training long before this incident did happen and before the defunding topic had come up.

So, aside from not changing anything, I think we're just enhancing the training and education that we provide not only to the officers but to the community as well.

- When we spoke the other day, you talked about cultural diversity training.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

- Yes mam, and it's a mandated training.

Our state licensing agency TCOLE requires culture diversity training anyways, and so it's something that's required through the training cycle.

We do provide it to our officers more than once throughout their career.

And even more so, we feel like we need to just impress upon the officers as far as the diverse communities and/or people they're gonna be handling.

- You have talked about teaching officers about verbal judo.

Tell me what that means.

- So verbal judo was a practice that seemed to be in play many years ago.

And it's more of, if you can deescalate a situation by talking someone down, not raising your voice, remaining calm in a high stress situation, many times it'll help to deescalate the situation instead of get it more increased with anger or loud voices, instead if you continue to use a calm voice.

A lot of times you may see a better reaction.

- You also have used the term mirroring, so what does that mean?

- So when somebody's trying to talk to you calmly and you may be in a high stress moment, your voice may get a little louder.

You try to back off and mirror the voice that they're giving you at that moment.

Now at any point that their escalation of, or the situation gets higher, if you can maintain the calmer voice, I think it'll help deescalate the situation.

- What sort of use of force training do you all have?

- We have all kinds of use of force training, and a lot of it is less than lethal force.

We have a very active SWAT unit that helps throughout this West Texas area with their monthly training, we were able to train our entire Patrol Division with our SWAT unit.

And so aside from training someone on a scenario, we give them real life scenarios and we have 'em go out and practice that real life scenario.

So, instead of just say for instance putting a taser in their hand and saying this is how it works, we give 'em real life situations and we use dummies or other type of devices to teach them how to react in that certain moment.

- When we spoke to Sondra Richards earlier in the program, she said that police had been asked to solve lots of structural problems such as homelessness and mental illness.

Do you find that to be true?

- I do find that to be true.

I always say when nobody really has an answer for a societal issue, they reach out to the police to try to figure out, what are we all gonna do?

And so with that being said, we do have a lot of extra training that we give with regards to mental health, we work closely with mental health experts.

We deal a lot with homeless issues, domestic issues, and a lot of it may not be criminal in nature, but yet the police are looked to try to find a resolution.

- Do you find that it's difficult to train officers?

You're in sort of a remote part of the West Texas.

- Yes mam, it's, I wouldn't say it's hard.

We pride ourselves at Pecos Police Department on kind of being a training hub for the West Texas area and we offer a lot of training, not just to our officers, but we open it up to this local area and we invite any agency that we'd like to attend, we certainly would like to have.

- And one final question.

How do your officers feel about the current circumstances?

Are they feeling negatively about it?

- I wouldn't say negatively.

It's very disheartening to see what's happening and the reaction people have towards police.

I have been maintaining professionalism and respect, and I try to remind them that you give them the respect no matter what.

We ask police to take a lot of criticism and a lot of maybe bad language towards them, but as long as they maintain their professionalism, that's what's required within our department.

- Thank you Chief, I really appreciate it.

- [Lisa] Yes mam.

- Coming up, the tales about the piece of art behind me.

(inspiring orchestral music) This painting is untitled by Uruguayan artist Jose Pedro Costigliolo, 1902 to 1985.

His works incorporate black shapes, adding to a sense of aggressiveness between the shapes and the colors.

His repetition of floating shapes accumulates to create a system of permanent rhythm and perpetual mutation.

You can see his work and many others of modern art at Baker Schorr Fine Art Gallery in Midland.

Coming up on Basin PBS, PBS NewsHour Debates 2020.

Presidential debate Thursday, October 22nd at 8:00 p.m. Amanpour and Company weekdays at 10:00 p.m.

Finally, thank you for watching OneQuestion.

We'll be back each Monday at 5:00 following BasinLife, where we will answer the questions you want to know from the people who know.

If you have a question, send it to us at OneQuestion at BasinPBS.org.

Next week, we will ask the question, Election Results: When Will We Know?

We'll talk to county election officials from Midland and Odessa.

Up next, BBC World News America with Katty Kay.

I'm Becky Ferguson, good night.

(inspiring orchestral music)