other things and you have to be -- you can't figure out how to do the incentives just for economic ropes, but if you also add in all the personalities and what people would do, everybody has $100 and does different things with it. a very, very difficult question. very, very nicely addressed what the basic ideas are that we struggle between. thank you for your book and for your talk and so ends another event at the commonwealth club. 116th year of enlightened discussion. thank you very much. [applause] >> booktv is on twister and facebook and we want to hear from you.

>> host: chafe dived brian what was you day like july 1, 12016. >> guest: started as a normal way in the chaotic world of policing in our big city where you have scheduled protesters who had planned as part of a national protest day for a very large kind of static protest event, where they would be at a park in our downtown area. not unusual in the climate of policing today. we planned for it to be something that we would manage peacefully. we had injected ourselves into the planning process with undercover cops so we could hear dissension or plans for property damage or violence. we were pretty comfortable this would be a seamless event, people would express themselves

and we would guide them in a peaceful way. >> host: how did it develop? >> guest: well, it began as scheduled, on time, so scheduled speakers that expressed themselves. no different than what you hear in other protests across the country about arm police officers shooting unarmed black men but this was specifically focuses on the shooting in minnesota and baton baton rouged happened the day before and this was connected to protests in new york, los angeles, all the big cities experiencing similar protests and similar speeches. i was going to plan and people were interacting well with the cops. they were taking selfies, smiles no dissension. we had worked really hard on that relationship with the community for several years, and it was our strategy before ferguson, missouri, happened, to

be successful with the community, and policing the city. i'm born and raised in dallas, so this was something that mid-protest, even later into the protest, felt very comfortable it was going to be a peaceful event. >> how long had you been chief at that opinion. >> guest: six years. but serving since the 1940s. in dallas the average tenure was four. i'm or on borrowed time so i'm paying attention to everything that is happening. and a park happens and police are not on top of their game. so we were really focused on and i was focused on it remaying peaceful use where were you when the shooter started killing police. >> guest: i had left a minute before. i live just right across the street from police headquarters in a condo in downtown dallas, a

couple miles from the event. and i had just told the second in command, sounds like this is about to be over, peaceful. going home. call me when the last protester gets in the car and drives off. we want to stay to the end to make sure no fights broke out as people walked to their cars. was still in uniform and get a call from the second in command and he is frantic, out of breath. obviously something just -- he pace of the conversation and what he said to me made me heart drop. it really did. >> host: what is the aftermath of an event like that, five policemen killed in one day? >> guest: it's gut wrenching you have to explain to a widow and officers' kids why this happened. and you have to do it many times

on a national stage. you have to try maintain that intimacy that you want to convey the right message. the families are paying attention to you when you're on the television or radio or interacting in the public with how you are expressing how you feel about the sacrifice they've loved one made. so, it was beyond painful having to stay composed, hold your grief aside, and be strong for what had been a city and a country. >> host: david brown in you new book "called to rise," you talk about losing your partner early on in your police career, and you almost left the force. >> guest: yes. he and i became best friends in the police academy. an older jam walter williams. we were batman and robin. it was a relationship that was built for the ages, and we envisioned -- moving up the

ranks we had plans and enjoyed protecting the community. we had -- he had a -- he was older, he had more mature thought process that relates to policing i would gain later through my reflection and his words after he passed and killed in a domestic violence incident in dallas. so, only upon reflection, this tragedy made sense. at the timed made absolutely no sense, made me want to get up on police and my faith. was 28 whenned happened and depend understand how bad things happen to good people. that didn't seem right with the world, and i wanted to give up. it was that gut-wrench using does community applicationing -- policing work? >> guest: yes, it makes citizens

safe and police officers safer and reduces crime more than any other type of policing. i'm convinced of that. i have been on the opposite side of that and have been persuaded not through just data and results and citizen feedback, i've seen it make communities trust the police department. and perceive themselves as being safer. so all the perceptions of crime, and the trust issues that we struggle with as a police force in our country, is resolved through community policing. community engagement. being in tune with what the community is expressing to you or the flaws of your neighborhood and your officers if you listen. >> host: what's the downside. >> guest: there's a tradition policing, and a culture in

policing that can't see how putting them all in jail and let god sort them out is not the best way to police. it is a reaction that somebody does something that violates the law, let's lock them up and now we're safer. the reality is that is just untrue. counterintuitive and uncareer. have to take owl people who are mentally ill, drug addicted, versus the truly violent person that needs to be locked up. if you lump them al together your prisons become a revolving door of not only mental illness and drug addiction but of poverty and people who have been he'll of maybe a poor environment, poor education system. automatic of the social ills -- all of the social ills, you criminalize them, and lump all together and people resolve in and out of prisons, and you have a cycle of crime that makes you

less safe. >> host: in your new book, you talk about the effect of federal policies on cities such as yours, dallas. mass incarceration, and tougher crime laws. what do they do on the local level? >> guest: they make your neighborhoods dysfunctional. because it make the family structure dysfunctional. it's the family structure that is the the meaning of the neighborhood, of your city, and once you dysfunction that through mass incourse racing -- incarceration and tough on crime without the thought of the downstream event of folks who irincarcerated for low-level crimes crimes who might often need drug treatment and mental illness treatment, and their children

see the police as someone who mistreated their father, now the father is not in the home and the mother has to do everything and the children are on the street when she is at work, and cops now begin to criminalize that behavior, and now they're in the system when their father gets out, the kids are in the sim. it's a cycle but for their lot in life and the demographic of poverty and poor schools and all the usual suspects of what is dysfunctional in our society the cops have to resolve with the pistol. that's not the tool of resolving this entrenched, complex issues in the country and the cops often fail because the tools are not acclaim yeted for resolving this. >> host: when nor book, skipped

what. >> guest: they skip of the sacrifice that officers have made. how can you mention all cops as racists, particularly white cops, yet you get white cops killed protecting protesters who are protesting white cops being -- it don't match. there's something disconnected with our conversation, and much of it is about listening and much of it is about really entrenched positions, and then you marry entrenched positions with not listening and we talk at each other. cops who make ultimate sacrifice, make it for you regardless of your race. and then to have painted them with the broadbrush of racist cops isn't right. and many of our mothers taught us this. it is really part of the

prescription of resolving the divide we have, that if of color if you want something done right, do it yourself. and that do it yourself is put down the protest sign, put in an application. we need more people of color in law enforcement to help us bridge the gap between policing and community. we need it. i have a -- it won't be resolved until there's a skin in the game from all sides, including public can police, local democracy, voting. six percent of vote. you can't make changes when you have 90% of people not participating in the local democracy. won't be a significant change. have to put the skin in the game jet what the racial breakdown of the dallas police department.

>> guest: for the first time before i retired in october of last year we are a majority minority depth. 51%. hard-fought to get that balance because particularly for millenials, today a millenial of color, policing is not a preferred profession. what you see on television is something wowant to be part of because it's in in a negative light with viral videos, some of it kind earned. many of the police-involved shootings i've seen describe what i know internally what most cops know, everyone is not built to be a cop but there's a percentage of people who can't react under pressure. should we weeded out of the profession question. know that. not just citizen know it. cops know it. that won't significantly change until the protester becomes part

of the solution, much more engaged beyond process. >> host: let me ask you be two people in your book. who is dj. >> guest: my son. 28 years old. who suffered unbeknownst to the family, dismiss the family, from onset-0 adult onset of bipolar, and self-medicated with marijuana and self-met indicated with marijuana laced with pcp. and he in a mental episode, while was at church, killed not only an innocent citizen but a suburban cop in the dallas area and then was subsequently killed on father's day. not just talking about walter williams, my partner in the police department killed. my brother killed by gun violence.

my beloved and only son killed. and i cried many a tear and so i'm here today, able to talk about it without crying because i've cried my last tear about it because what i found about that type of grief, the most unnatural thing and also under the circumstances buried my son, even more so, the deepest pain you can describe. indescribable. the pain that you feel for burring a child under those circumstances. but what found during the deepest part, the darkest part of that time period in i life in 2010 was the brightest hope that you can ever imagine for not only my family but other families who suffer with people who they love, who have mental illness, who have drug problems, but also for bringing together what is divided.

i have the hope for that. have the hope to bring together people who don't see how they can ever agree on anything, or people who are so entrenched in their belief that whoever disagrees with them is the enemy. i have hope for that. help for this is born out of that deepest despair. that's where you find the brightest hope. and that's what i describe in the book. it's what keeps me going, gives me a sense of urgency. why i retired. i retired on top. accolades. that's not why you go into public service to receivinging accolades. you go into public service to serve people, not be self-serving. so the next phase of my life, particularly in this book, is pointed toward bringing people together, mental health policy and funding, drug treatment policy and funding, police reform and the funding necessary

to make it happen, and reconciling our differences and using this platform, working for abc news and an on-air contributingor to springboard, resolving our wounds around race, around policing, and around differences in our political system that just cannot sustain itself in the way it's going. it's got to be something that bridges what has been divided. hope to be a person that plays a small, small part in that resolution. >> host: here's the book, aid called "called to rise. "by retired dallas police chief, david o. brown. just out in the book stores. >> guest: thank you so much, peter. appreciate it. take care.

[applause] >> thank you so much. it's great to be here at politics and prose again. this is the fifth installment of our race in america series. i want to thank politics and prose for the vision. a a lot of playings don't have the vision. this book store has set the tone for book stores round the nation to talk about such a sensitive issue, matters of race, and, yes, we're authors, and we are people who are real and have dealt with this and written about it, and again issue want