the right family lawyer ben crump who also represents the family of george floyd was introduced as the attorney general for black folks they became part of the fraternity. family. right lifting 2 year old son in a name that be added to the long list of black men in america who died at the hands of police john hendren al jazeera minneapolis. this is. going to here in doha the headlines at least 13 people have died in a fire at a hospital treating covert 19 patients in india it comes as some hospitals will the short of oxygen due to surging number of cases across the country elizabeth brought home reports from new delhi this is happening just.

on wednesday we had in an oxygen tank. to patients. death of 24. health care infrastructure and hospitals buckling under the pressure of. people with cases being hospitalized oxygen there is a critical oxygen in the country u.s. president joe biden is pledging that the u.s. will be a global leader on climate change he's promising to cut emissions and hoff by the end of the decade and china says that it will phase out its use of coal from 2026 dozens of world leaders of joint business chiefs and activists for a 2 day meeting. military judge has issued arrest warrants for 26 members of the national unity government formed a week ago that's led by oh own son suchi who was ousted as the country's leader in a military coup in february she's already detained on several charges.

russia has announced that it's moving its troops away from its border with ukraine it sent tens of thousands of soldiers into the region leading to tension with ukraine and its western allies moscow maintains that it was a military exercise but some equipment will be left behind for another drill due to take place later this year nato and ukraine's president welcomed the move but say they remain vigilant the u.s. is sending aircraft to help find a missing indonesian submarine which will run out of oxygen on saturday it lost contact during a military exercise this week president joko widodo as ordered to an all out rescue effort singapore and malaysia have sent vessels to help and those the headlines the news continues here on out 0 off of the bottom line next.

open source it will be about raising food prices or is this entirely down to the paranormal we bring you the stories and developments that are rapidly changing the world we live in a prime minister designate of a very well telescope fixing awards who are going to come to the coast on al-jazeera hi i'm steve clemons and i have a question almost one year after the death of george floyd with the police knee on his neck is there any hope that this constantly replaying dynamic will ever change let's get to the bottom line. george floyd's death that they handed minneapolis police almost one year ago sparked massive demonstrations and forced americans from all backgrounds to wonder about their police officers attitudes towards black americans now the nation braces for a verdict in the trial of eric shogun he was the officer who kept his knee on floyd's neck for more than 90 minutes during his arrest but the problem sadly hasn't ended with the death of george floyd not far from where he died

a policewoman killed 20 year old dante write during a traffic stop just 2 weeks ago social justice activists say the list of killings at the hands of police just keeps getting longer and radical change is needed in the united states some argue that these are nothing but modern day black lynchings by other means but it's the movement to quote defund the police and send money to other social support needs loses traction what fixes are really out there today we're talking to not a jump the president of the national conference of black lawyers which launched an international commission of inquiry on systemic racist police violence against people of african descent in the united states and is about to release those findings next week and professor james foreman jr who teaches law at yale university and is the author of the book locking up our own crime and punishment in black america thanks to both of you for joining us today and these are obviously tense times. i know your report is about to come out but why. you also have a trial going on and

a verdict expected in the coming day or days with derek show and as we produce this show i am very aware that 3 black people on average in the united states will die in the next 24 hours as a result of police actions can you frame for us what the stakes are in the show in trial and its outcome right now. well the stakes are high as you know you know that the stakes are high in many ways we're looking at how is the jury going to make this decision what are they going to be talking about what are they going to be thinking about and how are they taking all the information that's been provided and obviously across the country and really across the world people are waiting to see whether or not this verdict is a reflection of things to come i think that when we look at this is national conference of black lawyers we look at this as something that is systemic this police violence is not just about derrick chauvet and so regardless of the verdict

you know we've been doing this work for the past 50 years addressing systemic police violence looking fundamentally at how this affects black liberation and human rights and we know that it's not just about one cop it's not just about one police department or when city that this is systemic violence that anti-black violence that needs to be addressed at its core and the goal of our commission of inquiry and of this report is to help folks to see how bad can happen what are the findings that this international commission made what are the recommendations and to bring this issue of the police violence in the united states against black people to the international arena and as families and organizations attempted to do less june and by bringing it to the united nations thank you for that james you and i have known each other for a couple of decades and i have been reading your writings and your thoughts and

concerns on exactly what we're talking about today over that period of time and just this last week in the washington post you and a co-author wrote that one of the other high risk actions that can shatter black lives is having expired tags or temporary plates on their car can you go further with that for us yeah absolutely and not very much since forward to seeing this report i think is going to be very important because i agree because you did it is a systemic issue no one i was in law school. in the early ninety's was when the rodney king trial took place and i remember being sure that he was going to be convicted and i remember my having my face in the law and i was a critic i understood the history of racism in this country but but my classmates and i we are saw that video and and we were sure that he was and that those officers who knew him were going to be convicted and now here we are now waiting

for another verdict in another trial there's another generation of young black people my son is 11 years old we talk about this case every day and so so there's another generation of people that are looking and asking the question when somebody has been so clearly and brutally treated by the state murder is there going to be accountability but but steve as you said that really is just the beginning and so the article that you're referencing that that my student t.j. grayson and i wrote together was really trying to make the point that as long as we have police doing so many of these functions that could be done by non police actors we are going to have unnecessary violence and we're going to have unnecessary racism and unfairness and i think go in forward the big challenge that we face as

a nation is yes to have accountability in these individual cases like what we're seeing right now in minneapolis but we really have to be asking ourselves do we need and want police to be doing as much as they have been tasked to do do we need them or are responding to people who are suffering from addiction people who are suffering from mental health crises do we need them in forcing the traffic laws the way they have done now and so that's what that was really trying to do is to say look what if we created a non cold. force civilians on all armed who are responsible for keeping our roads and that's the kind of thinking i think that is going in that we're going to need to undertake as a nation go forward thank you for that i mean not what is your your thinking on that i mean i and i have to just be honest you know i've been to various shows on this i've been i have seen friends of mine pulled over because they were racially

profiled you know driving through white community and i happen to be and i've seen this for years and years and years i interviewed former republican governor of new jersey chris christie and said in camden they had to basically reduce that police department down to its foundations get rid of officers and really institute very different training valid deming's congresswoman val demings former orlando police chief said we need to have a national commission on police training i haven't seen any of these things happen broadly in the country and i thought after the george floyd protests after the murder and then the protests and so many other murders that we saw this past year something was going to change has anything really changed this last year. so i'm really glad that at my answer would be no christian brother me too if at 1st my answer would be no and i guess we were going to law school at the same time but james but i was here in los angeles a during the rebellion i'm doing the rodney king beating it's and as well as the

rebellion after the acquittal of the 4 cops that beat him and there was a christopher commission i mean there was all of this energy that went into making this different and you know from now on and as we see that hasn't been the case when you we talk about where can we reduce the police force what can we do when you look at really looking forward to you brother james t. to use it to all of the folk to al-jazeera and the activist on the ground organizers other attorneys getting into this report because the commissioners heard 44 cases families and attorneys as well as organized as an act of this case by case including the cases in the family members of george floyd briana taylor botham jean kayla moore and others and then heard expert testimony from folks talking about historic violence all the way to andrea richie talking about police violence against black women gender nonconforming in trance people and so these

conversations are right in the report this analysis about these pretextual traffic stops about mental illness so many of these cases involve traffic stops involve people with mental illness involved people that are looking for help and calling the police to get some help and folks are ending up dead in and when case paralyze you know that we've looked at and so there's recommendations here that talk about of course the domestic issue and looking at what can be done to meth the cli with respect it all the way from training and reform all the way to some aspects of abolition where you're talking about defunding and be feigning the police you find all of that in the. report but there's also the conversations about and findings around the issue of how we take this in the international context what are the international rules about law enforcement in the use of force and the commission

found again and again that the united states the police in the united states don't only not follow the laws in the united states with impunity but violate international law and in fact the commissioners found really importantly you know and uniquely in this report that the systemic police violence against plaque people in the united states constitutes a crime against humanity and the rome statute that it is the wide spread attack on a civilian population in this case black folks in the united states accomplish the murder through torture and their qualifying means it's really one of the main highlights of the report open analysis and in recognition i just want to underscore this point i found it so fascinating in thank you for letting me take a look at the report a bit early but you basically say we are unable to fix this and we need

international intervention we need the international criminal court to take action because the united states has proved itself an able to take the corrective measures broadly even need to be taken i just want to underscore that i have that right and what would be you know in short form because i know there are complexities there for some action like that to actually take place. well the independent prosecutor of the i.c.c. has the capacity under the rome statute to do it on their own they can go and just decide hey we're going to look into this we see that this happens with other countries for some reason there's a reticence saying some reason we know what they are but there's a reticence to do that when it comes to the united states and we're calling on man to happen we're also calling on the biden administration to voluntarily subject the united states to the jurisdiction of the i.c.c. for such an inquiry to happen this is an administration that indicated that black folks in his words brung him to the dance that it is because of black folks and the

work that we did in that in terms of voting and cetera that he and the democrats are in power right now this is an issue that they know must be addressed and one of the good faith actions should be to not just sign the treaty and all of those pieces that take time but to immediately say yes the united states is open to the jurisdiction of the court will put itself under the jurisdiction of the international criminal court and allow there to be this inquiry at that level thank you for that james i use some powerful language in the opening of today's show and i and i talked about our legacy our horrible legacy in this country of black lynchings and how some have used this police brutality and these murders that we have seen not just recently but over a very long unending period of time actually as lynchings by other means but there have been some other changes in atmosphere in tools and tactics in the recent

decades like the global war on terror has ended up with police forces having equipment they would never have had had that not occurred and you've also and they're also complicit players in this that you've written about which i found so interesting and brave to a degree to say we've had black leaders in america that are also culpable that that participate. in over incarcerating particularly men in the black community you know creating a culture that destroyed families and that kind of ripped the fabric apart where we're at so i'd love to give you an opportunity to talk not just about this enduring problem but how both the those that have been part of it have been there but how things like the global war on terror backlashed you know in some of these issues as well. well i think that's right and and i think when you think about what happened in this country in terms of building mass incarceration and building these

this incredibly repressive set of police forces that operate in a lot of cities right in those really go hand in hand that there are a lot of people who played a role in helping develop that it was really a national it was bipartisan in many ways to even as you point out in my book is about is it crossed racial lines i do think that the black leaders and the black politicians who are pushing for this i am somewhat more sympathetic to their position that is to say their motivations in many cases i think it grew out of a real care and concern for their community in desperation they wanted to do something and the truth that they had at hand were so limited so they did turn to the police but nonetheless even though i'm sympathetic to their motives i am critical a lot of of the a lot of the decisions that were made in the 1980 s. in the 1990 s. the militarization is used and which is a result of some of this global war on terror and now i think the question that we face is how do we respond and how do we chart

a different path forward and i would just want to compliment what nano is saying about international so she went up to the international level and i want to go down and say the other place i think we have the potential to resist and to fight back is it doesn't vary local level at the very micro level so when you asked whether anything had changed in the last year i would say. that while police violence hasn't changed and racial profiling hasn't changed what has changed is this movement of activists and local organizers and young people my students i teach in a last minute so i see them every day they arrive with a fervor and a commitment and they're doing very smart things they're going to city councils they're going to county councils they're going to mayors offices to looking at the police union contracts and they're asking why do we have these collective bargaining agreements that allow police officers when they've shot somebody to have

7 or 8 or 10 days before they're even interviewed by investigator why are they allowed to look at the body camera footage before they file their police report why are we funding in our city's police to do things 10 and 15 and 20 times more money then we're funding school counselors and mental health and mental health counselors so i do think the one source of optimism that i see on the local level is i think that there is a incredible energy over the last 6 months over $140.00 laws have passed in cities and counties across the country in some way to roost restrict and reduce police violence and so i think if we can take that international that nonis pointing to and the very local that i'm pointing us to those together can be a complimentary account slower but that's that's heartening and thank you so much

for laying that out but you know it's after you know a couple of decades aging myself in this but you know looking at how very you know people from very different parts of the country that you know different corners of the nation see things differently gravity doesn't work the same everywhere i want to show a couple of graphs and not to get your response to it because at some point we need to come to some common ground in common understanding why i'm doing the show. so that people see and get an understanding of of the tensions that are the horrors that are really out there but we have this 1st chart which shows how many americans say police treat racial groups equally and if you talk to the black community 9 percent believe that they are treated equally 42 percent of whites that is a big gap in perception if you look at political party how many americans say police treat racial groups equally democrats 10 percent republican 64 percent so we've got racial divide and we clearly have party divides in this

country in terms of the perception of these issues not and i know that your report had to deal with you know a cross-section of players but you had difficulty bridging to republican participation i just be interested in what you think it's going to take i mean is it just going to be you know a combat to get folks to pay attention or do you think there are ways to bring over you know some republicans and more members of the white community to understand the anguish and the injustice that your commission has has highlighted. so the commission's work wasn't necessarily on like us party lines it was really looking at it you know rick spose ing this information and giving people the opportunity to see and to hear what is really happening and i will say this we had these hearings open to the public so people could join and you know just

like a regular zoom dad has the chat on the side people asking questions and it was really clear that it was eyeopening i have been following these cases some of these cases you all have been following there were things that were talked about from family members and attorneys that made whatever we think was the horror even more clear in its depravity and horrible this heard things that i hadn't heard before and i think that that's part of it part of it is for people to really be able to hear from to see what's happening as opposed to living in their bubble if you're in your bubble and your bubble does not include black people your bubble does not include police violence then of course you're going to have those attitudes right and so i think it's really important if you go to our web site. international commission dot org you can actually hear the hearing still right now the report will be there soon i think it's important for people to actually hear from boston james mother not

snippets from a press release or press conference but actually hear her talking for 30 minutes about what the murder of her son was what it did to her what it did to her family what it did to the country of st lucia and how it reflected you know upon them i think it's important for them to hear from kayla more a trap black trans woman who was murdered to hear from her sister and to understand being trans and having mental illness and how much the police violence impacts really vulnerable communities and so bad the work that the commission began led by n.c. . as long with n l g n the international association of democratic lawyers last july with our commissioners again 12 commissioners from around the world for brilliant rapper toure as all of us led the able arms of attorney lennox hines to really bring this out to make those connections that james has talked about from the

international all the way to the local and back again so that we can finally address issues honestly and with some kind of you know i. am finding myself you know in this kind of discussion this kind of work to try to bring people's attention to things you know find when i was reading james foreman and his students piece this weekend you know about traffic tags and we had dante wright we also had lieutenant carone and there's ario hispanic who was stopped and i have to tell you it kind of takes you into this place where if we didn't have video and i have to tell you i have mixed feelings about you know video and surveillance and this i you know been spend a lot of time in china and see what facial recognition software and kind of a surveillance society looks like but i'm wondering to some degree whether of body cameras video surveillance we would not know about lieutenant zaria we would not know about many of these cases if in fact if we did not have i phones and smart

phones video recording this what are your thoughts is that the pathway out of this is basically a move to kind of keep police accountable and is in his video going to deliver us james. i don't think so we. can play a role as you said and we can all point to these examples that because of video we now know about them. i think that you know 5 years ago there was a lot of optimism pretty much across the political spectrum that for example body more cameras on police officers would have a significant impact on police use of force and this is the research is out and it doesn't not it just last we have about 30 seconds left and i know this is unfair but also in your report you you. write about the violations of the 4th amendment of the us constitution and i like. to have discussions wedged in

constitutional rights can you give us a quick snapshot of what rights are regularly violated black americans. so we're looking at you know the right to not be deprived of your liberty the rights of you know not being handcuffed not being detained at the right to you know to not be abused to not be beaten to not be subjected to excessive force you know those are the that the right to not be murdered to not be killed to not have the police act as. judge jury and executioner and i think that it's important again that we recognize as the group commissioners did that the u.s. rights are being violated as well as these international right right it doesn't have to be something that's just an international court that can start here in the united states as well right i'll read it the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures

shall not be violated and no warrant shell issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized i just think that says a great deal not a jumpy president the national conference of black lawyers and james foreman jr professor of law at yale university thanks so much for being with us and sharing your candid thoughts. thank you thank you for having me so what's the bottom line for a society to function folks need to trust the police but for a black or brown man or a woman remember sandra bland a routine traffic stop could lead to a life or death confrontation and this is just that point it's not part of any civilized society or democracy and it's got to be called out and changed it's about time that americans had an open and honest debate on the intersection of racism in policing in this country everything should be on the table including rewriting history limiting the use of police to enforce traffic laws less military style and

military outfitted policing changing the laws just whatever it takes to save lives and to create space to hopefully we start building trust across races in our society without trust that america is going to continue to boil and twist itself in did not and never move beyond what many call america's original sin and that's the bottom line. thousands of children were removed from east timor during the indonesian occupation decades later what i want to enjoy is members of the last generation as they finally head home. on al-jazeera. may own al-jazeera. from a 3rd wave to the vaccine rollout the latest developments as the coronavirus pandemic

continues to spread around the world al-jazeera is emmy award winning investigative program is back exploring the folk lines in the u.s. . 16 years since last elected a new leaders palestinians go to the polls but will the elections be freed from foreign interference from hostile to hostile more hotels explores geopolitical conflicts from the perspective of iconic hotels on the frontlines and former south african president jacob zuma goes on trial for corruption. may on al-jazeera. and out the seas for the blind and a robotic arm for the disabled. by jungle straightly an engineer is inventing tools to help people gain independence. and the news all side of that will pull up to recognize objects on the far side of that control with fluorescent vision will be able to recognize everyday objects women make science robot gals on al-jazeera.

a showcase of the best documentary films from across the neck blood on our 0. to. killed by rebels last weekend the funeral for chad's former longtime leader gets underway in the capital and jimmy no. no i'm adrian for the game this is 000 live from doha also coming up a deadly fire at a hospital in western india adds to an already dire situation with record rises in covert 19 infections yet again. a stand down for now russia pulls its.