(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hey, y'all.

I'm Kiara Butler, and welcome to "Generation Rising" where we discuss hard-hitting topics that are diverse communities face every day.

And today's topic is police reform, and I'd like to welcome executive director of the Black Lives Matter, Rhode Island, PAC, Harrison Tuttle and Corey Jones, who serves on the board for the Time for Change and Community Advocate.

Welcome to the both of you.

- Thank you.

- How are you doing this morning?

- Good.

How are you doing?

- I'm making it.

It was a lot of traffic today, but I got here, got here.

- Yeah, it's a Rhode Island issue.

We go through so much traffic here.

- I know.

And luckily I didn't get pulled over by police, which I think, you know, is our topic for today.

So what is police perform in your own words?

- You wanna start?

- Yeah, I think it looks like having a community that has been long impacted by structural and systemic racism, be voided of pain and trauma that has been inflicted for generations to come.

And so we think of policing, and I think for a lot of folks that are not people of color, they view police as keeping themselves safe.

But we know that Black and Brown communities don't feel safe when it comes to policing and our communities.

And so, not only do we have impacts that go on today when it comes to police brutality, but these issues have been going on for generations.

And so it's intergenerational trauma that we're dealing with.

And we know that because of how deep police are in our country when it comes to our elected officials, when it comes to the different impacts that they have on public safety itself, that it's a long road to make sure that people in our community ultimately feel like they can trust a public safety system that works for them.

- What about you?

- Yeah, I think if we, you know, created a public safety system today, it will look entirely different than the public safety system that currently exists.

And I think that's what police reform is, is that, you know, what if we made a system that met the needs of our constituents and the citizens we serve, but not just the system that happens to exist currently.

And so I believe that system would have, you know, over 12 different institutions that, you know, are different response teams ranging from kids to elderly, to the juvenile system, all the way to, you know, pregnant women, right?

Or homeless, right?

And so, you know, we have to have a system that is gonna meet the needs of our most marginalized community members and not a system that, you know, just seeks to empower a select few and uphold the status quo of white supremacy, frankly.

So, you know, I think police reform is, you know, starting from square one and saying, okay, how do we make a system that serves the people that it's meant to serve?

- I can add on that.

- Sure.

- When we think about policing, and we think about public safety, we've gotta get away from criminalizing folks.

Oftentimes, we think of our communities as not safe because of violence.

And instead of thinking about the root causes of some of that violence, we add more money to the police departments.

We end up criminalizing more folks with only further, you know, creates poverty through generations.

And so I'd really like to see the police, you know, be honest and know that they're not gonna be able to arrest their way out of a situation.

And in fact, as Corey mentioned, understanding that we have to invest in other areas, you know, such as mental health, such as housing, such as education.

And that is the best way that we can be able to end crime in a way that, you know, is a beneficial way to everybody.

I don't think that many police officers, you know, wanna arrest people.

I just think that the system is set up in a way that enforces them through their training and other ways to incarcerate Black and Brown people.

- Yeah, what would you say some of those root causes are that you just spoke about?

- Yeah, we know that through generations of systemic racism that when you grow up in a house that may not have any running water, or you may not have some of the basic necessities that frankly, you know, everyone should have, that you're going to fall behind.

If you don't have a meal, if you don't have a parent that can to nurture you, then you're gonna go to the education, you're gonna get an education, and you're gonna fall behind because you're not having those foundational measures that is afforded and should be afforded to everyone.

And so, you know, I think mental health is such a huge issue that we're facing here.

And we know that mental health and drug addiction are combined, and so we have to do work and we have to continue to do work to undoing the war on drugs, but it doesn't end there.

We have to know that we have to treat folks who are unhoused who are addicted to drugs as people as well and work to get them out of the situation they're in.

And we know disproportionately that folks that are out on the streets, that are addicted to drugs, that are dealing with mental health issues are people of color.

- Yeah, do you see this in Rhode Island as well, like how are our community is impacted?

- You know, every day, every day we see rising numbers of homelessness.

As of this early fall, we know that over 500 people are sleeping outside.

8.8% of the state is made up of people of color.

Yet we make up a large percentage of our homeless populations.

And that's, by no mistake.

It's by no mistake that people of color are incarcerated or are arrested at a higher rate here in Rhode Island.

And so, for all the talk in 2020 about different changes, ultimately it's frustrating that the people that have often been in power and still in power have been people that are not impacted by these issues.

And so it's only until we get people that understand these issues that come from these communities, that we're gonna be able to create change, because they have an understanding of what communities need.

And I think, I'm a firm believer that communities know the solution.

- Yeah, did you wanna add to that?

- Yeah, you know, in George Floyd's death, you know, every three to six months, there's a new case locally in police brutality.

Recently we've seen, what was the guy's name?

Lugo, officer Lugo be acquitted of his charges after, you know, he punched a Black woman in front of, you know, hundreds of people, in front of cameras, right?

And, you know, it's basically like they're telling us what we saw wasn't real, right?

But we saw this man assault this woman, right?

And he should be held accountable for it.

But the truth is that they're not.

And so it's enabling, you know, this type of behavior.

And so, you know, the cycle goes, and, you know, in another three or six months, we'll hear another case, right?

The last, the case before Lugo was the girl who was, you know, the girls in Woonsocket, right?

- Yep.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so, you know, it gets to a point where, you know, you forgot the last four people ago.

What was, you know, that police brutality case, and it's exhausting, right?

You know, you do this work, and you're like, you know, it feels like we're playing the same scene over and over, and no one's doing anything.

And then the more it happens, the more desensitized, you know, our community gets.

It's just the way things are, and it shouldn't be.

- Yeah, so we have a couple of youth-serving organizations in the community, I think Providence Student Union, ARISE.

They're fighting for safer schools and removing cops from schools.

And so you already talking about listening to the community.

Do you think that cops should be in schools?

- No, right?

- Absolutely not.

- And we know that police do not, or SROs do not prevent school shootings.

They don't make schools safer.

In fact, the students themselves are telling the Province public schools department and all throughout the country, this isn't an individual thing in Rhode Island, that they don't feel safe.

And what do they need?

It goes back to the conversation that we had, which is more mental health, more resources.

Because at the end of the day, you know, although police officers may feel safe to the people that are white that are putting these officers in school, they fail to connect those issues, because they're not understanding of the problems that are going on in the community.

And through that, intentionally or not, they're upholding oppression.

They're upholding the school-to-prison pipeline.

And I understand the frustrations, but I also understand that there are better practices, like restorative justice that have been proven to work, that are working in Central Falls right now.

And so BLM RI PAC is working with other groups, as well, and Woonsocket to deal with some of the violence that is in school.

But I know that there's a lot of trauma when kids see, you know, their fellow classmates being pulled away and arrested at lunch by an officer.

It doesn't help the situation and only worsens it.

- Yeah, so when I was growing up, we had to go through metal detectors every day, and we couldn't use our lockers, and we had to have clear book bags, and I didn't realize that they were actually trying to protect us from us, right?

Like I didn't understand what going through a metal detector actually meant.

And so you spoke about restorative justice, but what are some other solutions that we could have instead of those SROs in schools?

- Yeah, so I think, you know, what the kids are asking for is counselors, not cops.

And, you know, the traditional idea of a school counselor isn't good enough, right?

The, you know, one school counselor who attends the 500 or, you know, plus students isn't gonna meet the emotional needs of these students.

And usually, you know, they're burdened with all different type of things, you know, regarding grades and academics, which is important.

But we need therapists and psychologists in our school buildings to be working hand in hand with our kids on, you know, issues in the home, issues in the building.

And also we need to think, what should schools look like?

Me and Harrison did a talk at Roger Williams University, and the professors, you know, the professor was telling us that he was the correctional officer, and he decided to get into academia because he was like, "Wow, this prison looks just like the schools I taught in."

Right?

And that's a problem, right?

Where the school-to-prison pipeline is more than just cops being in schools, is that our education institutions have been designed the same way that our prisons have been designed.

And, you know, we live in a world that's entirely different than what it was, you know, a hundred-plus years ago.

And so we need to say, you know, how do we redesign our school buildings to accommodate the kids?

And how do we redesign our system that, you know, doesn't lead these kids to prison?

And, you know, a lot of it is centered around, you know, the overarching theme of rehabilitation over punishment and incarceration, right?

We need to, you know, right now, we we punish kids for not doing, you know, A, B or C, but instead we need to say, okay, how can we positively incentivize kids to, you know, behave in a certain direction?

And so we have to really rethink as a society, how do we want to guide our next generation, and where do we want to guide them?

- And I think we look at education as a separate issue from everything else, right?

All of these topics that we're talking about we can divert into things like healthcare and housing, and they all come back to each other because they're ultimately basic needs.

But really thinking about what Corey mentioned, when the education system was set up for a select group of people, and those select group of people had their basic needs, and those people had the housing.

They had support systems in place.

They had those institutions that Corey mentioned many folks in the Black community are calling for.

And so when we talk about education, we're just providing equity in areas in which just haven't been there throughout history.

And this is just a part of making sure that we fill in the gaps to make sure that every student, whether they're Black and Brown who are coming from areas in which there's a high-concentrated amount of poverty, have the same opportunities as everyone else.

People can't control where they're born.

- Yeah, and the education system, I mean, is set up, it was set up to help people like be able to work in factories, right?

And to be able to say like, a student is supposed to fit into that box now in 2022, it's not realistic.

So when a student acts out, like that's not their fault, right?

But that is a very big line item on the police budget.

So defunding the police, what does that mean to you?

Do you think that's a solution?

- It's really such a scary word.

- Defund.

- (laughs) Not when they defund education though, right?

- Right, no, we, as a country, have no problem defunding social services that end up increasing the amount of crime.

Look, defund the police is a really scary word to a lot of different people of all races.

- What would you say?

- Huh?

- [Kiara] What would you call it?

- I'd call it reallocating funds.

- Okay, I like that.

- I think that the most important part is that a lot of people want to feel safe.

Despite, you know, us in Providence and all throughout the country, there being lowest amount of crime, there's a lot of crime hysteria.

You know, I see it in New York.

I see it in a lot of different places.

And people want to feel safe.

And the way that people respond to that is looking to the only institution that has made them feel safe, which is the police.

And so here we have an issue in which people here defund the police, and they think that their safety is going to be in jeopardy.

The whole point of this movement is to provide equity in the areas that we need.

And unfortunately, if we continue to fund police in the way that we do, time and time again, to the tune of not funding things like education, not funding things like opportunities in the communities, then things aren't gonna change.

It'd be one thing if we kept funding the police, and we'd have a no-crime city, right?

And it was backed up by data.

That's just not the case.

And so we've gotta stop dancing around the issues and start addressing them through root causes instead of saying that, you know, if we just have one more cop that's patrolling the area, that people are gonna be less poor because of it.

- I mean, we have to, you know, good government is about funding things that bring the performance that we expect it to get, right?

And when we look at that, for every dollar we put towards nonprofits, you know, we see crime reduced accordingly, but we're not seeing that same correlation between every dollar we give to the police and how crime decreases.

And so we have to ask ourselves, you know, why are we increasing the funding for police, right?

And then we have to say, okay, where should we be increasing funding?

Education, social services.

And then we have to say, okay, how can these things work together, right?

Maybe we need to create new institutions to have first responders, right?

That will bring someone back to, you know, give social service help or give them help where they are, right?

Maybe we need a homelessness response team to work with those individuals.

And then we have to ask ourselves, once we create these new institutions, where does this funding come from, right?

And we have to fund the things that actually work.

And, you know, we've been increasing the funding for police, but crime has not dropped accordingly.

So it just makes sense as a government administrator to put the funding where it actually makes a difference.

- Yeah, so where would you put it?

- Where would I put it?

- [Kiara] Mm-hmm.

- I mean, I'd invest, first and foremost, just based off where we are in Rhode Island and housing, I mean, I think we need more low-income housing, more affordable housing.

And I think we need temporary shelter.

At the end of the day, we see that a chronic number of people that are out on the streets are dealing with a multi-layered issue.

And so we've really gotta be in our schools, number one.

And number two, we've gotta make sure that those kids go home to a house in which their parents can afford.

And so once that is addressed, mental health, education, housing, then I think we're gonna start to see different changes and results in terms of outcomes, you know, being able to send more kids to different opportunities.

- You know, I'm a little biased 'cause I work at the Department of Labor and Training, but, you know, other than the homelessness response teams, you know, crisis intervention team, I think that we should be funding community violence intervention programs, CVI.

And what CVI does is it says, okay, who are our people that are interacting with the population that is most likely to be involved in crime?

Our teachers, police officers, parole, probation officers.

And then they say, all right, clergy, church and pastors, they say, okay, let's bring these people together.

Let's create a working group.

And then let's say, let's have a plan to divert these people from the life of crime into good paying jobs.

Give 'em supportive services.

And so what that would look like is, you know, a teacher might call a student and say, you know, officer so-and-so talked to me and told me that you've been up to A, B, and C, right?

And they're on the verge of arresting you, but I told them not to, I told 'em to hold back, and we're gonna give you an opportunity to join this program.

You're gonna get a job with upwards mobility, maybe an apprenticeship, maybe becoming an electrician, and we're gonna give you the opportunity to walk away from this life of crime.

He's gonna stop his investigation long as you go to work, meet up with your mentor.

And, you know, what this does is it gives people the opportunity to, you know, meet the demands that they were probably committing these crimes for.

And so in Boston, they did this in the '90s, and they seen homicides reduced by over 40%.

They've seen youth violence reduced by 63%.

And so we know these things work.

We know that, you know, especially from covid, we watched as people lost their jobs, we watch crime increase accordingly.

And so we know that these things are correlated, but we just have to act like so.

- Yeah, so do you think reform is actually possible if we know all of these solutions exist?

We know the root causes as Harrison said, why aren't we moving?

- Absolutely, I think change happens slowly, and it's frustrating, and, you know, we've been on the front lines of dealing with that frustration, but I think change is coming.

And I think that the people in power are becoming more receptive to these things.

You know, community violence intervention is actually something that the Providence chief of police supports.

Chief Clemons.

It's something that, you know, I know the governor supports, but it's just a matter of having our different agencies communicate and then putting together, you know, who's gonna lead this project, right?

At, you know, the local level, we need a leader.

We need to have our agencies come together with data-sharing agreements.

So it's very, you know, complicated and nuanced, especially when you have, you know, things like HIPAA, right?

How does a social worker tell you, you know, I know this kid is on the verge of this or that when, you know, there's HIPAA protection?

So we have to find innovative ways to work within the constraints we have.

You know, one of those things is hotspots, right?

We can, you know, hospital data tells you about 50% of violent crime that the police doesn't report, right?

And so the hospitals can't tell you, you know, this person did this at this time, but they can tell you that something happened to someone in this area at this time.

And that's hotspot data that we can utilize to make our community safer.

So there's a lot of work in order to make these things work, and a lot of people that we need at the table to make it happen.

- Reform is a frustrating word to a lot of different people.

We've seen the word reform get thrown out a lot of times and haven't really seen the changes that we're talking about.

And so I think reform needs to be actual reform that's based off data.

And so, to me, I don't really care what it's called.

I think what me and Corey has talked about today are real solutions that have data behind it.

And I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for us to have a world in which Black and Brown people are treated equally within the public safety realm.

- I agree, and I think our viewers would agree too.

How can they stay in touch and continue to follow your work?

You all gave some amazing solutions, and so I wanna make sure that they're amplified.

- You wanna go to blmripac.com or you could follow us on our social medias @blmripac.

You know, we'd love for you to donate.

All the money that is donated goes directly to our candidates and our community.

We're all a volunteer group, and so every donation really helps because it's gonna go right back into our communities.

We're gonna be having a large voter registration and engagement over the next two years.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, you can keep in touch with me at timetorun.org or timetoadvocate.org.

And as Harrison said, you know, we'll be working together to increase voter registration and voter turnout in Black and Brown communities.

So Time To Run is dedicated to building political ambitions and multiracial multicultural in young people.

And Time To Advocate is dedicated to increasing voter registration turnout and helping young people learn how to advocate on behalf of themselves.

- Well, I wanna thank you both so much for joining us today and for engaging in this conversation.

But we have run out of time.

But you can watch past episodes anytime on watch.ripbs.org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

I want to thank today's guests, Harrison Tuttle and Corey Jones, for their time and incredible work.

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