>> chief david brown, what was your day like july 7, 2016? how did it start? >> is started as a normal day and the chaotic work of policing their city where you have scheduled protesters who had planned as part of a national protest day for a very large kind of static events that would be in a park at her downtown area. that is not unusual in the climate of policing today. we have planned for it to be something that we would manage

peacefully. we have strategically injected herself into the planning process with undercover cops so we could hear any dissension or plans for property damage or violence. we were pretty comfortable that morning that this was people would be kind of navigating, guiding them in a peaceful way. >> how did it develop? >> well, it began as scheduled, on time. there were scheduled speakers that express themselves, no different than what you hear another protests across the country about police officers and armed black men. this was specifically focused in baton rouge and when that happened the day before. this was connected to protest in

new york, los angeles, all the big cities. they were going to plan and people were actually interacting .. this was something, even later into the protest i feel very comfortable with. it was going to be a peaceful event. >> host: how long had you been chief at that point? >> guest: six years, one of the longest-serving since the 1940s. the modern era of dallas. the average was three. i'm looking at every detail of everything and getting going

when the march happened. may be placed on a top other game come gets out of hand. we were really focus on and i was really focus on it remaining peaceful. >> host: where were you when the shooter started killing police? >> guest: i had left a minute before. i live it just right across the street from police headquarters in a condo in downtown dallas, just a couple of miles away from the event. i had just told the second-in-command, sounds like this is about to be over, peaceful. i'm going to go home. , when the last protester gets in the car and drives off. we want to stick to the intimation of fights or nothing broke out as people want to their cars. i had only taken off my gun belt, and they get this call for my second-in-command and his frantic, out of breath. obviously something had just come the pace of the conversation and in what he said to me made my heart dropped. it really did.

>> host: what's the aftermath of an event like that? >> guest:fivepolicemen killed i? >> guest: it is gut wrenching that you have to explain to a widow and offices kids why this happened. and you have to do it many times on a national stage. you have to try to maintain, you want to convey the right message to families when you on television or on radio or just interacting in the public with how you are expressing how you feel about the sacrifice that the department just made. it was beyond painful having to stay composed, hold your grief aside, and be strong for what happened in the city and the country. >> host: in your new book

"called to rise", you talk about losing her 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. 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 we enjoy protecting the community. because his older he had a more mature thought process that relates to policing that i woud gain later through my reflection on him and his words after he passed and was killed in a domestic violence incident in dallas. so only upon reflection does this tragedy makes sense. at the time and made absolutely no sense, maybe want to give up on police and my faith. i was 28 when it happened and it didn't understand how bad things

happen to good people. that didn't register with me as right with the world, and i wanted to give up. it was that get wrenching. >> host: does community policing work? >> guest: yes. it makes us all safer. it makes police officer safer and it makes the citizens safer. and it reduces crime more than any other type of processing -- approach to policing. i have been on the opposite side of it and i been persuaded to come not just their data and results and citizens feedback, i've seen it make communities trust the police department. and perceive themselves as being safer. so all the perceptions of trying 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 not only the neighborhood but other officers come if you listen. >> host: what's the downside? >> guest: there's a tradition in policing and a culture in policing that can't see how putting them all in jail, let god sort them out i is that the best way to police. and it is a reaction that somebody does something that violates the law, let's lock them up and now we are safer. the reality is that's just untrue, counterintuitive, just untrue. you have lower level defenders, people who are mentally ill, drug addicted, versus the truly violent person who needs to be locked up. if you lock them all together your present become a revolving door of not only meant to

illness and drug addictions, but of poverty and people who have been made a result of poor invited, poor education system,, schools, all of the social ills you criminalize them and lump all together and see people revolved in and out and java cyclotron that makes you less safe. >> host: in your new book you talk about the effect of federal policy on city such as yours in dallas. mass incarceration, tougher crime laws. what do they do on the local level? >> guest: they make your neighborhoods dysfunctional. because it makes the family structure dysfunctional. it's the family structure that is the needing of the neighborhood, other city.

and once you dysfunction that through mass incarceration are tough on crime without any thoughts of the downstream effects of these folks are incarcerated for low-level 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, now the mother has to do everything, now the children are on the street when she's at work and top style began to criminalize that behavior, and now they're in the system when the father gets out, the kids are in the system. it's a cycle but for their lot in life, the demographic of poverty and poor schools and all of the usual suspects of what is dysfunctional in our society. the concept resolved with

handcuffs and a pistol. that's not the tools of resolving the entrenched, complexation in our country and the cops often fail at that because the tools they have are just not i committed to resolving those types of things. >> host: from your book when someone wonders aloud whether racist cops are targeting unarmed black man, they've skipped over mounds and mounds of issues against -- what are they skipped over? >> guest: they've skipped over the sacrifice offices have major company mention all cops as racist, particularly white cops, yet you get five white cops killed protecting protesters who are protesting white cops -- they 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 in with not listening comp and we talk at each other. cops to make ultimate sacrifice naked for you regardless of your race. and then to have painted them with a broad brush of racist cops isn't right. and many of our mothers taught us of this. it's really a part of the prescription of resolving some of the divide we have, that if community, if you want something done right, do it yourself. and that do-it-yourself is put on 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 premise it won't be resolved until there's a skin in the game from all sides, including the public beliefs,

participating in local democracies through voting. local democracies, the bony records, you can't create significant language protest when you that paradigm of 90% of people not participating in the local democracy. there will not be significant change. you have to put skin and again. our mothers taught us yet to do-it-yourself. >> host: what's the racial breakdown for the dallas police apartment? >> guest: for the first time for retired in october of last you we are a majority-minority department. 51%. hard-fought to keep that house because particularly for millennials, today the millennials of color, policing is not a preferred profession. it is not, what you see on television is not something you want to be part of it because it's painted in a very negative light currently with a viral videos coming out, some of it quite earned. many of the police involved shootings that i've seen really

describe what out internally, what most cops know this, everyone is suited to be a cop but there's a percentage of people who just can't react under pressure and should be weeded out of the profession can we all know that. it's not just citizens know it. cops know it. that would significantly change until the protests become part of the solution, much more engaged beyond, much more into participation. >> host: let me ask you about two people who appear in your book. who is dj? >> guest: my son, 28 years old who suffered unbeknownst to the family, myself and family, from onset, adult onset bipolar, and self medicated with marijuana and self medicated with marijuana laced with pcp. and he in a mental episode while i 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. you know, not just talking about williams, my partner in a pleased about the killed, my brother killed by gun violence. my beloved and only son killed. i cried many a tear and so i'm here today, able to talk about without crying as i've tried my last year about it because what i found about that type of grief, the most unnatural thing but also bearing a child under the circumstances that i buried my son can't even more so, the deepest pain you could describe, indescribable, the pain that you feel for bearing a child under the circumstances. but what i found in the deepest part, the darkest parts of that time.

in my 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. i 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. my hope for all of this is borne 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, disney a sense of urgency. it's why i retired. i retired on top. accolades. that's not why you go into

public service to receive accolades. you go into public service to actually serve people, not to be self served. so the next phase of my life, particularly in this book, is pointed towards 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 as well as on-air contributor, to supreme court, 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's been divided, and

i hope to be a person who plays a small small part in that resolution. >> host: here's the book. it's called "called to rise" by retired dallas police chief david brown. just out in the bookstores. >> guest: thank you so much, peter. appreciate it. take care. >> c-span, where history unfolded daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable-television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> lisa feldman barrett shirt and installation of her book "how emotions are made: the secret life of the brain." she is a university distinguished profesof