- Thank you for joining us.

I'm Starla Sampaco, host of Crosscut Now on KCTS 9 and your host for Inside the Newsroom.

Today's edition of Inside the Newsroom, will focus on the latest season of Crosscut's podcast, This Changes Everything, which takes a close look at the challenges of policing today, and also seeks to clarify the debate around defunding the police.

Now, today I'm excited to be joined by podcast producer, Sara Bernard and Crosscut reporter David Kroman.

Hey, how are you two doing today?

- Hi, great, thanks for having us.

- Hi, Sara, I'm great.

- So good to see you two.

But before we jump in, I do want to let everyone know there will be an audience Q&A at the end of the discussion, you can submit a question or chat with each other, using the comments section on the right of your screen.

All right, Sara, I want to start by asking about your approach to season two.

This Changes Everything, I know it's a podcast that explores events and movements that are creating a new normal in our society.

So I know that season one focused on the impacts of COVID-19.

So Sara, tell me, what did you want to accomplish in season two?

And why was it important to cover policing and public safety?

- Yeah, well, I would say that This Changes Everything, initially it was kind of born out of, I mean, it was born out of the pandemic.

We were working on other podcast ideas and then a lot of those were scuttled because of the reality, the new normal, you know, and so the first, you know, we decided to focus the first season on the virus because that was so dominant and but not the virus per se, but the impacts on our lives.

And so we just kind of felt like those impacts and the kind of dramatic change was what was most interesting to us.

And so This Changes Everything became kind of an umbrella idea for a podcast series that would look at pivotal change and not so much let's say on the coronavirus, although, you know, continues to change our lives in all these ways.

And so there's plenty more to say about that, but we thought that maybe, you know, the umbrella idea of pivotal change was interesting and maybe we could sort of approach completely different topics for subsequent seasons.

And so it just became clear pretty quickly to us that the pivotal change that we were seeing kind of besides the pandemic in 2020, was defund the police.

It just was so clearly a new thing, even though obviously the conversation around police reform and policing has been around for years and years, it just felt like the conversation has shifted.

And I think David, for example, in this series, put it at that the Overton window has shifted.

So it's like the debate itself is in this new place thanks to these protests and thanks to the reaction of, you know, the Seattle City Council and also other city councils across the country.

It just, it just feels like no matter what happens now, this conversation about policing that we're having today is different than it was six months ago or, you know, eight months ago.

And that is, I mean, that was really what drove me to, you know, kind of think of this as a perfect fit for the umbrella of pivotal change.

I mean it really just, yeah, it just felt like so obvious.

And then from there, I just think it's just, it's an important conversation to have and a really interesting one because it is you know, on its face so controversial, but then as you dig in, you kind of find all these commonalities and that was sort of what we started exploring after awhile.

- Yeah, I think, you know, and I was able to bench this, I think within 24 hours, I couldn't really stop.

And what, you know, what I found so interesting is even as someone who works in news, I do, you know, of course I read the headlines and we cover it, but this was truly a deep dive into the topic and into the nuances of a really big issue.

So thank you for that, Sara.

And I also wanted to turn to David now and talk a little bit more about the issue.

You know, there's a lot of debate about what defund the police actually means.

And David, I know that you've been reporting on this for over six months now.

So if you could just quickly, you know, tell us about what your understanding is of what defund actually means.

- Yeah, I mean, I think it means different things probably to different people, depending on kind of how much time they spent thinking about it or, you know, their personal experiences.

So, you know, I think for some people, you know, a decent number of people defund the police is fairly literal that they've had poor interactions with law enforcement and they don't trust law enforcement to bring public safety to their communities.

I think then there's also this kind of other side of defund the police that is kind of more about, and I think Sara has put it this way more about investing less about the divestment part and more about where should society be spending more money.

And that tends to focus on things like you know, housing and mental health care and community outreach and education and things like that.

And so in that sense, you know, in that sense, that sort of investment part is I think where we found kind of these interesting overlaps between you know, some advocates and even some law enforcement, which is you know, what are police doing that maybe they were never intended, maybe they were never meant to be doing.

Maybe they don't want to be doing.

And certainly a lot of people in the community don't want them to be doing.

And so we kind of explored those areas a lot which is, you know, things like responding to mental health crises or you know, making a lot of rest or citations with people struggling with homelessness.

You know, these are things that police officers will tell you fairly readily that they would prefer to not be doing also.

And then, so in that sense, that kind of definition of defund the police, I think actually and we make this point in the podcast has maybe sort of broader agreement than just the term defund the police might imply.

And that's always been really interesting to me and why I was happy to help Sara out and explore that idea.

- Right, so I, and I do wanna follow up on that, David, you know, what does public safety then look like under defund the police?

- Well, I mean, again, I think we're very early in this conversation, so that's to be seen, but, you know, the main argument that you hear is in fact, not entirely new, which is that public safety is about investing in the things that keep people from doing things that are unsafe.

And so that means portable housing and education and things like that.

So, you know, I think what gets lost in this conversation is sometimes that there is in fact broad agreement around those basic tenants, that if we spend more money on things that people describe as more upstream, that's likely to be helpful more downstream, but the real kind of meat intention of this is how should that be done?

And there are a lot of people now who are advocating for doing that by divesting from police departments and taking that money which, and, you know, taking that money from this kind of one model of public safety, which you know, a lot of folks that we talked to have argued is no longer working and moving it towards this other model of public safety, which is sort of putting society's money where its mouth is and spending money on yeah, upstream events.

- Right and David, you know, I know that you've been covering Seattle politics for a while now at Crosscut and even outside of Crosscut.

So, you know, what level of commitment do you think Seattle has made to some of these ideas about, you know, what public safety can look like outside of policing?

- Well, I mean, they I'll say that I, you know, I've been following kind of police reform and to a certain extent kind of public safety off and on for the last five or six years.

And especially around policing and police reform, that's tended to be very incremental conversation that moves slowly, it happens, you know, takes weeks to sort of hash out specific language.

So what struck me about this summer was that after all these years of incrementalism, we have this period of really intense it was almost the opposite of that.

These protests unfolded really quickly and they grew really big and we got this really quick and immediate reaction from city hall.

And you know, for the first time, in, at least as far back as I could find this Seattle City Council actually chose to make cuts to the police department, wasn't to the level that some advocates had pushed for, but the fact that they were making these cuts so quickly after these protests happened, was really notable.

I think if you were to talk to any of those city council members or anybody who was involved in those protests, that work is still fairly early on in stages and is going to be controversial and there's gonna be fights about it.

But you know, we're about to have a political season and a mayoral campaign, and I fully expect that this is going to be kind of continue to be one of the main areas of focus for people who are seeking elected office in Seattle.

- Yeah, it's really interesting.

And we're going to get into that later you know, towards the end of the conversation, when we take a look ahead.

I think it's, you know, as you mentioned, when Seattle made those cuts, we did receive national attention for some of those decisions.

You know, how would you say this compares to what other cities are doing when it comes to defund the police or you know, handling public safety and considering other options?

How does Seattle compare?

- Sara, you wanna- - I mean, I would say, I mean, I don't know all the data top of my head, but I would say that Seattle's among a handful of cities that are kind of making more significant cuts.

Like for example, Austin, Texas has done some really dramatic things as well and had I don't know all the details, but I mean, I think there are a handful of cities that are really having these conversations and really making some cuts and really talking about public safety and what it means.

And I don't know that there's anything sort of definitive in any particular place.

I think Seattle is one of, sort of a handful it's not I think there is a larger, there are, you know, there's a larger number of cities that have made cuts to their police departments in response to the, or I don't know, in response most likely in response after the protests the, at least a dozen cities have maybe more, but it's less clear, you know, how, if that money is making a significant impact or has you know, sort of having, creating these conversations around what is policing, what is public safety?

I think Seattle's, you know, among a handful of cities doing just that really changing the conversation as well as making some cuts, I think.

- Thank you, Sara.

Well, at this point, I do want to talk a little bit more about the podcast and also have both of you take me a little bit behind the scenes about how it was made.

I do wanna talk about sourcing for a little bit as you know, some of our viewers might not know this, but the entire season two, all six episodes of This Changes Everything are already up on Apple podcast and Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you can binge them now.

And one thing that you can look forward to is episode two, in which both of you take this deep dive into crisis and how policing kind of fits into that.

One of the characters or one of the featured speakers, rather, I should say that really resonated with me or who I found really interesting was Emily Katz.

She's a downtown emergency services center nurse.

So she's this medical professional who works with a lot of people who have mental and behavioral health crisis.

David, I'm curious to find out about how you found Emily and why her perspective was important to the story.

- Yeah, so it sort of, I mean, this was an advantage, there are certain advantages to having been a reporter for a few years now in what turns out to be a fairly small town in Seattle, it is a big city, but so Emily and I had actually, I talked with Emily quite a few times for stories in the past.

She had always been a really helpful person, I think for me to talk to.

So funny enough, I was doing a ride along with this police officer Sandlin Grayson, who is one of the, he responds to basically more crisis calls than any other Seattle police officer.

And we responded to this event of this man sort of acting radically.

And he was clearly in crisis downtown.

And this nurse, as we're responding to this person in crisis, this nurse comes up and she also sort of tries to help the same person.

And it turned out to be Emily and I recognized her fairly quickly just because I had worked with her before.

And so it was in some ways, this sort of, it was this very interesting opportunity for me, 'cause I was getting the police perspective on this event and how it was going, which of course is one side of the story.

But because I knew Emily recognized her had worked with her before I was able to later, I think it was the next day, or maybe later that night or something give her a call and ask her about that same event and have her give me her perspective, which was really valuable, I think, because it, I think at least for me, it was really illustrative of how these two systems looked at the same situation in such different ways and had in some ways very different goals for what they were trying to accomplish.

And none of it was personal, you know, like no one was really mad at each other, but it just these two systems just didn't quite really mesh with each other.

And I just thought that really got to the, it gets to the heart of a lot of this, which is Emily is working with these people all the time and has a really sympathetic point of view towards them.

And so she was really frustrated with how the police had responded to that event, while the police sort of were trying to manage the situation in the way that they may do, which is sometimes sort of taking control of it in a very authoritative way.

And so to have those two perspectives on that same event was really valuable, I think.

And yeah, in some ways part my experience of just having been a reporter in this town and then partners kind of luck that I happened to know all the people who are involved.

- Yeah, she was really interesting and you can hear kind of the frustration in her voice, you know, through my earbuds, I could hear it.

And that's why her story really stuck with me.

Sara, I'm also curious, you know, when we think about policing and public safety, a lot of those decisions are really up to city council members, right?

And I noticed that even though council members are mentioned in the podcast, we might've even had some soundbites, you don't actually interview them for This Changes Everything.

So I'm curious, why did you make that choice?

- Yeah, I mean, I think one reason is honestly these issues are incredibly political and politicians are also very political.

So it just felt like it wasn't these are issues that city council members and the mayor have, you know, talked about extensively in public records.

So for example, there are actually hours and hours of audio of city council members debating these issues, talking about budget concerns.

You know, we have the audio is out there in the public record.

In some cases, those statements are very, you know, extreme and very, you know, confident kind of direct.

And you know, it's just didn't seem like there was anything that city council members or the mayor would be likely to add in an interview with us.

Especially, you know, during the fall, when they were working on budget and everything, it just seemed like, you know, they're unlikely to go off script if you will.

And that's always what you want as a journalist, right?

And so it just didn't seem like devoting time and energy to doing another interview with one of the lawmakers in this case would sort of get them to say anything that they wouldn't otherwise say, you know, in NSC council meeting.

And, you know, all due respect to the politicians in this case, but I just felt like they were saying what they wanted to say already.

And so I kind of just pulled a bunch of that audio and kind of put it out there as kind of framework.

And it is true that it does come down to them, they are making these decisions, but they're sort of, they're making these decisions so much in conversation with what's happening you know, outside of city hall too.

So we just felt like it would be you know, maybe more fruitful and also maybe more interesting to kind of focus our interview energy and resources on people who were not actually, you know, in city hall, if you will.

- Wow, and it was really interesting to hear from folks that we don't usually get to hear from, right?

And it was like for me as someone who hasn't covered it, maybe as closely as someone like David has, I think seeing all of those perspectives for me as a listener also showed me how complicated and tricky it is to try and solve an issue like this, especially from hearing from all of them.

So for those of you who haven't listened to the podcast yet, I'm very excited for you because it's a really great experience.

I want to switch gears here and speak more to you about what it was like to produce a podcast during a pandemic.

Now, Sara, were you and David working together in the same room, I know that you were working very closely.

- Yeah, no, never in the same room.

Yeah, I mean, I kind of had to figure it out during the first season, which I think, you know, a lot of audio producers and video producers as well, have been kind of figuring out along the way, is that, how do you know, get the audio, you know, it used to be that you would always go in person, if you could.

You'd always, I mean, that's where you'd bring your mic and you go and, you know, do the interviews in person, or maybe I would, you know, David and I would get into a room with two mics or something like that, but that we could never do that since last March, you know.

So what I've done instead with this season and last season was kind of, you know, schedule a Zoom call and then have whoever I was talking to mostly it was David and then I did a couple of interviews, but just sort of asked that person to record themselves on their end.

And you know, whether that's an audio recorder in some cases for the interviews I did with the CAHOOT staffers in Eugene, Oregon, they were just using their cell phones just (indistinct) to record themselves.

And the reason for that is it just, even if it's a phone, it just sounds better if you get the you know, recording from in the real room versus the audio that you can record on a internet connection, you know?

And so, yeah, so David and I were never in the same room we would check in from time to time.

We would have these long conversations on mic, you know, I mic myself as well, but I hardly ever used it, felt like, no, no, like I had so much narration to do.

I just kind of yeah, didn't use a whole lot of myself live, but yeah, it was just a lot of video calls and then we would check in and then David did a lot of the reporting, you know, most of it.

And he would also kind of do the same thing most of the time, I guess you had one, he had one interview in person, I believe with masks or- - Maybe a few, but for the most part I had to learn how to kind of be a pro audio producer and instruct them to record themselves.

- Exactly, exactly, so he, yeah, David kind of yeah.

Had to do them for the most part, do the most, the same thing, which is ask people to record themselves if you're doing a, you know socially distance video call, you know so then David would send me the audio.

So I kind of collected all these pieces also, you know, spend a lot of time collecting archive audio from all the public record places and then put it all together.

But yeah, we were just, yeah, Zoom calls- - It's a lot of work.

- How's that it, yeah, yeah.

- Well, and so you mentioned episode four, which it's kind of structured like a virtual ride along with this alternative program in Eugene, Oregon.

How many hours of footage were you listening to?

Like how much did you have to sift through for that?

- Yeah, I mean, it was, let's see, it wasn't actually that much person who recorded all that at least coal hour, they go by Dandy, but they did a really great job actually.

I was so grateful because I was kind of worried that there would be about eight hours of audio, but they came back with a good, you know, hour probably or something.

So it wasn't that difficult to find, you know, the good pieces.

And I was really grateful for that too, because again in non-pandemic times I would have really tried to get to Eugene and go there myself and bring my mics and just kind of have, you know, do the ride along experience that David did.

I mean with, you know, with masks that was pandemic David, but still I, there was no, I mean, CAHOOTs had COVID rules where it's like, nobody no ride alongs because, so I kind of created that sense through having Dandy record their shift like just, you know, Dandy and their colleague.

So, I mean, it worked out, it kind of made me feel like I could have, I was there a little bit.

And so I tried to recreate that.

- Yeah, I definitely got the sense.

If you had told me that you weren't there, I would not have believed you.

- When I first heard that episode, I sent a message and I was like, I didn't know Sara had actually gone to Eugene.

- Yeah, that's what it sounded like.

I do have one last question before we quickly move to Q&A, that's for David.

I just wanna do a quick look ahead, you know, I know that you've been covering policing for so long in Seattle.

So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how you think this issue will play out in the next several years, but also in the next year where we have some big elections coming up in Seattle with the mayoral race and also those city council seats, what are you expecting to see?

- So I think this year will include a lot of planning in some ways and research because, you know, there was this sort of initial rush of pledges to cut the police department by 50%.

But I think what followed that is a sort of understanding that if the Seattle City Council wanted to do that, they would have to do it in a way that worked.

And that I think is gonna require a lot of planning, a lot of conversations with people.

And so, you know, I think that's what this year is gonna be about, is exploring, okay, if we're gonna create alternatives to policing, who's gonna do it?

How do we scale this thing up?

And then, you know, of course, hiring and staffing at the police department will be something worth watching.

We saw reduction last year.

And so it'll be from officers leaving and not being replaced would be interesting to see if that trend continues.

And then, like you mentioned, you know, there's gonna be a mayor's race and mayor's race to city council races and a race for city attorney.

All of those are gonna be positions that will be relevant to the question of public safety in Seattle.

So I think that'll be really interesting to see, 'cause that'll be a really strong test to see if, you know, we've done some polling kind of basically on the temperature of Seattle, but it will be really interesting to see what kind of candidate and what sort of message about public safety carries the day, or, you know, are we gonna, is the sort of candidate that keeps pushing for this sort of change is going to be rewarded or might we see some sort of hesitancy about the speed with which elected officials are pledging to change public safety and maybe someone who's pledging to be a little bit more moderate on that gets elected.

I truly have no idea, but it will be you know, a really interesting temperature check of where people in Seattle are at.

- Thank you, David.

Well, we have a few minutes now for Q&A.

So let me just see our first question from the audience.

What voice from this podcast sticks with you as the one that most represents the complexity of this issue?

Who wants to take that one?

- That's a good question.

- It's a really good question.

I think in some ways the complexity of the issue kind of comes out through the multitude of voices.

I mean, everybody has, not everybody, but a lot of people have a really strong feeling about this issue based in some cases on their personal experience.

You know, so I think sometimes public safety, it can be so close to home public safety and policing for some people that is just you know, it's a belief about what works and can be, you know, hard to change people's minds, you know, that kind of thing.

I, well, I don't know if this answers the question, but I really, the voice that sticks with me period would be Dominic Davis's voice because I don't know, he's just, he just really puts a lot of passion and emotion into what he's talking about, but I think in a lot of personal experience, but he's somebody who really believes that public safety doesn't come from the police so much as basically resources being in the hands of people who need them.

Which I would say is represent that sort of idea kind of represents the complexity of this issue in some ways, because on the face of it, if we talk about structural racism, if we talk about income inequality, if we talk about communities that don't have access to a lot of resource and opportunity, but find themselves in some cases over-policed or people believe that they're over policed.

I mean, there is this sort of broader idea about maybe if people had what they needed, that we wouldn't see so much crime, you know, there's a lot of crime that happens out of desperation.

You know, but so that, I think that idea, I mean, I could be wrong, but I think that idea kind of resonates with a lot of people, but what's complicated about that is how do we actually make that happen?

Actually, you know, how do we actually I mean, it just sort of begins to really complicate the issue of policing because it means that this conversation is about public safety is also about resource allocation, writ large.

It's about capitalism, it's about, you know, access, you know yeah, about centuries of racism, but it's, you know, it's also about economic reality.

It's also, you know, it's about a lot of things.

It's about how, you know, what causes crime, it's about all kinds of things.

And so it sort of starts to be like, okay, but in terms of policy, how do we create a world where people have access to resources in this way that's really transformative on a public safety level.

And there's, that's just a hard policy question, I think.

- Yeah and we have another policy question from the audience.

Someone asked, why didn't you include the policies that other countries use to address mental health crisis?

- It's a good, yeah, it's a good question.

I would, I'll again, different to Sara, my guess is it would be, as we've talked about many times we could have done 30 episodes on this and it's just endless.

- Yeah, I know it's sort of a cop out of a part of the reason is time and resources.

I mean I, yeah, I mean, we made six episodes because, 'cause we had one producer.

I really think, especially when I kind of figured out the structure of everything, I kind of wrapped the season, I was like, okay, we could definitely have done 20 episodes on this, you know.

I mean, there's so much to say.

And even in only in the conversation about mental health crisis and so yeah, to be honest, I would, yeah, I would love to have looked at more models outside of the country, outside of Seattle.

I kind of, we kind of stuck to Seattle mostly, and then ventured out just the one time to go to Eugene, Oregon as in part, arguably in part, because that specific program has been mentioned by one of the Seattle City Council members, council member Louis was, did put out a proposal that maybe Seattle should create a similar program.

So that was kind of the reason I initially started to pivot to seeing if we could do an episode on CAHOOTS, but actually, yeah, there's so many other models out there that are, you know, waiting to be explored in other countries and other places.

And I'm sure, yeah, there's just so much more to talk about.

There's so many more people have so much to say, you know, and I just like, I have a long list of things I would have done with more yeah, more time.

I mean, yeah, it's a really very rich and complex discussion that we could just go on for hours really.

- Well, thank you.

- We would be, we'd be sort of talking about what we were gonna do and suddenly, you know, an hour later we'd realize we were talking about, you know, homelessness in some, you know, you would just quickly balloons out to these big, big issues.

And I think that was just to the indicative of like, what we're dealing with here is, it's hard to just talk about policing in a bubble.

You know, when you're talking about policing, you're talking about housing, you're talking about poverty, you're talking about substance use.

You know, you're just talking about all these things and you gotta draw a line around it at some point, unfortunately.

- Yeah, all right, well thank you to both of you.

Unfortunately we are about out of time.

I know that this is a very big topic.

We could be hanging out here for hours.

But thank you so much for taking time for this Sara and David.

- Thank you.

- Thanks Starla.

- It was so good to see both of you and also a big thank you to all of our viewers for joining us.

Again, you can binge all six episodes of season two of This Changes Everything now on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And for more information on This Changes Everything go to crosscut.com/podcasts.

You can also learn more about upcoming Crosscut events at crosscut.com/events.

Thanks for tuning in.