here. >> yes don't need all the police outside. we'll have order in the building. we'll have order. wait wait. hold it. hold it. every meeting we have called have order. the iowa state fair is happening this week in des moines with several presidential hopefuls attending. on tuesday florida senator marco rubio stops by the event to speak at the candidate soap box. we'll have that life at 11:30 eastern on c-span. later on in the day the same venue will hear from ohio governor john kasich scheduled to speak at 5:00 p.m. eastern. live coverage on c-span. in this recent associated press image within protesters in 0 oakland, california are blocking a street in front of the police department to call

attention to grand jury decisions in missouri and new york not to prosecute white police officers for the deaths of unarmed black men. next on american history tv's weekly reel america series, the people and the police, oakland, a 1974 kron-tv documentary about police brutality in the community and various strategies to reform the police department. >> almost from the day it was founded in 1848, the folks across the bay in san francisco have been making jokes about oakland. there's no there, the poet tryst is supposed to have said. oakland is no other that faceless other city across the bay. today california's fourth large es city is a booming center of art and culture. ♪

♪ but oakland's new glom more and prosperity are not shared equally by all of its citizens. nearly half of the population are nonwhite and many are poor. they don't use the coliseum or the airport very much, nor do they hold their share of the jobs created by oakland's new industry, port and transportation facilities. ♪ ♪

>> most of oakland's black and brown citizens came here from the south during word war i irk lured by recruiters for government and private industry to work in shipyards and defense plants. ♪ after the war, the shipyards closed and many factories moved to the suburbs leaving most nonwhite workers behind. technology put more worker tons unemployment and welfare lines where they were joined by farmers and farm workers forced off the land by the growth of agri business. during the '50s oakland became a stagnant getto surrounded by the white hills of alameda county.

oakland's all white police department earned a reputation for head-knocking brutality that left a well-remembered legacy of bitterness in the minds and hearts of many who lived in that time and place. >> i was growing up in the late '30s and early '40s. at that time the police department was perceived aez blue and for the most part there was extreme fear in the people at that time when the police came in the community. i remember one specific situation where several young blacks were being apprehended by the police or they went into their homes to pick them up for some alenged crime. i remember one particular police officer kicking one of the young people who couldn't have been more than 13 or 14 years old. ♪ i think that the black panthers raised a very significant issues, and that was the brutality of the police when they came into the black

community. >> the police were in the same position as most of the government, not being in fact responsive to citizen's needs. >> for many years in our opinion, in the policeman, what would characterize as a gun hold orientation. we taught them laws of arrest, search and seizure and patrol practices which could only result in an officer-oriented in a very narrow law enforcement way. as we went about, in this police department, as an operational style in the '50s and some part of the '60s of stopping people on various pretexts -- it was a mandate as it were of the police department itself. we incurred very bad relationships in our community. >> today there is a whole new relationship developing between the people of oakland's gettos and the police. police officials hold regular meetings in the community and

they are well-received. >> this is one of the greatest things i've seen in roak land in my 30 years here. i never thought i would see the day. back in '37 and '38 the police sit down and criticize you. >> it's our responsibility to get out in the community and we'll be here if you want us. i'm here to assure dwlau the men you see sitting here that work in the oakland police department will be striving to achieve a goal. they're going to take a human nis tick approach to policing. i don't care how frous traited the police officers are or the citizens, i want to see every citizen treated with dignity. >> i think they're moving away from the head knocking brutal physical approach and trying to be more public relations oriented and hopefully more

sensitive. i've seen some dramatic effects because i've been here when the case was jux that posed in very hard terms. >> in a moment, a look at how things are going in oakland these days between the people and the police. ♪ ♪ block boys don't you let the sun go down on this here town ♪ ♪ aren't you going to go to jail, boy ♪ ♪ or you mind wind up getting dropped 6 feet down ♪

>> i joined the department in about 1965. it was very different from what it is now. i think we were a lot more aggressive there. i don't much care for the word harassment. i would say there was a time we were a head-knocking department, yeah. >> there are about 700 men in the oakland police department. an overwhelming number are white and most live in the suburbs outside the city. patrolman john dixon joined the department after a stint with the coast guard. he grew up in holster as a family man and likes his work. to this extent he's a typical oakland policeman. >> in the past there was a quota system. it wasn't down on paper. but it did exist. you were expected to write a certain number of citations and if you were a good policeman, you made a certain number of arrests. the quota system has to result

in more aggressive policemen. they had to go out of their way to find certain things. maybe they went a little far overproducing numbers in arrests in just about every way. what has happened is that chief gain said no more kwa that system, and there isn't any today, and that's fantastic. we spend more time today talking to people in a lot of situations where they probably would have gone to jail before. and i mean a lot of situations. >> prior to 1968, the mid-1960s at least, the philosophy of the department was to operate base kri as a legalistic tile of police department. gradually into the late '60s and

early '70s, we began to change style of operation into what is frequently referred to now as a service style of police department. >> george heart is oakland's new police chief. he obtained leadership of the department in 19634 when chief gain retired after 27 years on the force. >> the change came about because it had to come about to be responsive to the community. the community was saying to us, i think, that we want a police organization which services the entire community in a fair and impartial manner. and we want a police organization in which we can have confidence. >> first we'd like get you to think as well as you can about the way you looked at police work and the way of operating before you even started recruit

training. >> oakland's new policing style is a product of an unusual collaboration between the oakland police and a group of social scientists. one of these sciencists is j.w. grant. grant and his claegs had been remarkably successful in helping convicted criminals overcome their violent behavior through a process of self study. in 1969 they convinced police officials that by helping violent prone policemen study their own behavior, they would reduce the violence between the people and the police. the chief agreed it was worth a try. today the self study process is carried on by the department's conflict management section. >> at the time there was no regard to the quality of the work. it was just, you know, basically a numbers game. >> one idea that developed early

in the self study process was that of tape recording, actual confrontations between oakland police officers and potentially violent citizens. the recordings have proved invaluable in understanding how to avoid conflict and are now used the training new police officers in the art of discretionary decision-making. >> a police officer probably has the broadest powers of discretion in carrying out his pucks than any other citizen. so what we're going to do today is sit down and listen to two patrolmen as they intervene in a family dispute. we're not saying that everything they do in this tape is the right way to do it. but they made certain decisions throughout this tape. we're going to sit down and critique these bit by pit. this is an actual street incident. these are real policemen and real people. some individual officers when

they come into the recruit academy feel they're coming in to be trained to be a tremendous crime fighter. they don't realize that's only a portion of their training, a lot of it is going to be in how to deal with people, how to meet the everyday problems of the community. >> unless you're going to arrest me, arrest me. if you ain't going to arrest me -- >> i would kind of like to talk about it first. >> say, look, man. that's my wife. i'm her husband. youant got nothing to do with it. you understand me? >> calm down, man. >> don't tell me to calm down, man. >> what we're trying to provide or promote is an officer who does his job, does it well, does it efficiently, who does in fact produce but who at the same time is a very humanistic individual

who understands his familiar len and understands himself in the department. >> he's told you in probably 20 different ways what the problem is. one of the officers already has identified it. >> he wants her back but she doesn't want him back. >> i'm not tell them not to use force because there are those instances where they must use force. but also what i'm saying is there's all different ways to establish your authority as a police officer. you can establish authority by humor, you can establish it by showing concern, pure physical force is not an absolute. that's not the only way one controls a situation. >> what i need is a woman, man, but i can't seem to find myself a woman. i'm looking for it in this one right here but i can't seem to find one. i've been getting drunk every night since i've been home, you understand. >> what's the problem?

he's screaming it at you. >> seems like it might be sex. >> okay. why didn't you say it earlier. very simple thing. until he started screaming. plain old sex. >> but the oakland police do more than just talk about violence prevention in their academy classes. each time an officer must use force in the performance of his duty, it's reported to a computer and periodically the computer selects out those ausers with an unusually high number of critical incidents. they're invited to appear before a panel of fellow officers who review in meticulous detail his handling of situations that resulted in violence. >> we're asking you to be very candid with us. we're asking you to admit your mistakes. every guy on this panel has made some of the same mistakes that you've made.

none of us here are perfect. what we're trying to do is find better ways of doing things. >> the action review panel is voluntary and confidential. no record is kept and no disciplinary action is involved. an officer may sit for as long as eight hours while his peers question and analyze his actions, judgments, personaled a tuds and even his mannerisms. yet since the panels were started in 1971, no man has refused to participate. the moderator is officer bob crawford of the conflict management section. in this case the first ever filmed, the man in the hot seat is officer bernie garhart. >> the suspect had an ill he git mate child and refuses to stay home to take care of the child. he had to be subdued to be taken into custody. oak. what happened?

>> i don't remember it >> you realize that things like this are official records that can be subpoenaed into court and you can be put on a stand, being sued and somebody can hit you with a report just like that and six months later you might remember it. two years later you would be looking at the guy saying i had to physically subdue a 17-year-old girl who has only been out of the hospital for three weeks after having giving birth to a baby and i don't remember a thing about it. it it could color you looking very poorly. >> he has sat on panels before. but i think it struck him being different to be sitting in that rather than one of the other seats >> if he had a machine gun, he could have killed both of us. >> listen to what he's saying. >> i know. >> you could have had your head blown off. >> i know that. >> in his case he realized he had a small man's con plex. he kept thinking he had to take

the affirmative action in the arrest to overcome the small man thing which he doesn't have to do because he works very effectively. >> i might be wrong about what the object of the panels are. but when a person starts showing up with oun of these after another, we're supposed to look into one and i wanted to ask the question, is he one of these men -- it he's not as big in stature as some of us and it's clear in some of his remarks, does he have a small man's complex and he's taking it out on the kids. >> when i first came on i did have a size problem. i'm only 5'8". i'm not defensive about it. i don't think i am. i'm quicker to act because i'm aware of my size, especially when the person is bigger than me. >> if there was no peer panel, no one to call attention to the fact that an officer did have a particular problem, whether it

be a small man complex or what have you, he would act this out on the street and it would be misread. >> i have seen the real hard egg come up here, sit through the panel, totally reject the panel, yet go out and do a different job than he was doing before. >> you pointed out some things that i was aware of. sort of halfway and i didn't think it was really showing much. it's good to have somebody tell you something that you're already aware of. because then you know other people are aware of it and you'll make a better opportunity to control it, i think. that panel is good. you picked a good panel. there isn't an officer here i don't respect. from that aspect, it's good. if there were a bunch of turkeys sitting here, i would have left a long time ago and you would have heard about it in the locker room.

>> the suspect should be considered arm and dangerous. both are wanted for conspiracy and forgery. >> since the inception of the action review panel and other self study techniques, there has been a dramatic drop in the number of conflicts between the police and people of oakland. resistance to arrest and salts on police officers dropped as much as 30% in a single year, while citizen complaints against police officers have been cut in half. but policemen are tradition traditionalists with. many still like the idea of the super cop, the courageous law man who always catches the crook. and some of oakland's finest are still uncomfortable with their department's new style and philosophy. >> there's basically two parts to the job. one part is enforcing the law, and the second part is, let's

say, helping people. relationships with people are a whole lot better than they used to be. but as far as enforcement of the law, we're slacking off, and that's part of the job. >> john dickson works in the hard core getto of west oakland. the neighborhood is very poor and almost exclusively black. it is not an easy beat for a white policeman working alone. >> you got to be realistic. you child may go through some more as a result of my talking to her. >> i don't think he can go through no more than any other kid that's on the street too. >> the move has been good, we're dealing with the people in a much better frame of mind. the results are much better. >> when i go into people's

houses, you don't get as much of a hassell as you used to. yet at the same time, you're still respected as a policeman. >> the public respects us more than they used to. i get a lot mf cooperation and you find that more people are at least willing to give you information on the side than they were before. more people are inclined to give you a helping hand, where before i think very few people were. >> burglary. >> my car has not been involved in no burglary. >> that's what i ubs. >> i just came from any girlfriend's house. >> i remember when i first came on and you made a car stop, you immediately got a crowd. today you don't normally gather the crowds but when you do gather a crowd, the people don't tend to be as hostile. >> the quality of the arrests we're making now are much better, no doubt about it. >> but i think we're getting

kind of lethargic. we're sitting back, we're accepting the fact that we're a service orientated department which i think the person is inclined to think we're at the beck and call of people. and i think that's what a lot of us are doing. we're sitting back waiting to be called. >> unless you want to run him here. >> we're more community relations oriented, more of a service type department. and i think at the expense of enforcement, law enforcement. >> the so-called service style is not per se a weak approach to the problem at all. if anything, it's a stronger approach. >> you can have an effective alert police department which does in fact engage in heads up police work, aggressive patrol. that's what the community wants. that's why we exist. >> would you like the department to go back to the head-knocking legalistic department that it

used to be in. >> no. i don't think anybody wants it to go back that far, not that far. >> why? >> it would just create the same old problems we had before, a hostile society, problems on the simplest of thing. just talking to people on the street, i don't think we'd have as much success if we want back to that. >> you believe, probably more than i believe anything, that the officers in this department do in fact want to do and do in fact accomplish a very capable level of police in the oakland community. i believe that they support totally the concept that any police organization can only operate in a fair and lawful manner. >> do you think you have to make a choice between community relations and good enforcement? >> no. i think they can work hand in hand. it's obvious they can.

♪ ♪ he you, mr. police, you better heed the people warning because the handwriting is on the wall ♪ ♪ hey, you, mr. police chief, you better heed the people warning because the handwriting is on the wall ♪ ♪ so have fun while you can, just like the wall of jeer ko, you're about the fall ♪