i can't stand and we all have to stop. browbeaten into silence by whether it's the fiction of fragility and safety, the fiction of, racial oppression we have, start fighting back and fight for our civilization. well, on that note, i want to thank you,

professor joanna schwartz, it's such a pleasure. finally meet you. how are you. i'm well. how are you? very good, thank you. very good. i really enjoyed reading your book. even though the subject is quite a serious subject matter. so i feel a little uncomfortable saying i enjoyed it, but i always enjoy being informed. and certainly as someone who focuses on these issues in my teaching and as former police officer here in new york city, i just found it absolutely fascinating. i wanted to start off with what what motivated you i know this is your area of scholarship and

focus but broadly speaking what motivated you to write this book. well i before i a professor at ucla, i a civil rights litigator new york city bringing lawsuits. new york city police, police officers and new york city department of corrections, other agencies in the area. and when i was in that practice, there were a lot of questions that came to mind about the way in which our system, the way in which civil litigation actually makes its way through the courts, the impact that it has on police officers and departments, because the underlying expectation is that these cases are going to have an impact, but when i was bringing these, i came to learn that in new york city, at least the money in these cases very rarely came out of police officers and

police officers and departments didn't even seem to have basic about what happened in these cases, i would depose officers, meaning question them under oath, and they didn't know how many times they'd been sued or what the allegations were in cases against them, what the outcomes were in these cases and. so these were the kinds of questions that got me really inspired when i became a professor at, ucla and i started empirically testing these these questions and fast forward ten years after ten years of research and papers in academic journals, looking at the impact of civil rights litigation on the ground. george floyd was murdered and in may 2020 and in the months after i was receiving constant calls from reporters and from

legislators, legislative aides who wanted to our system of civil litigation, what worked and, what didn't, and those conversations really inspired me to write shielded as a way to share with a broader audience what. all the barriers are to relief in a civil rights case and how those barriers came to be and how they impact the lives of real people in our communities and we should do to to make system work better so. you touched on something is amazing. i was going to ask next you know when you're writing a work like this i think a lot of authors the reader and envision how they're going to impact the reader that when they close the book after that final change page, they have thought or they're going to take action or do something or response. what do you envision, the

readers, to get out of this book? what would you like? in a perfect world? what would you like to see the readers response to this work? well, i think, i think there are three sort of main categories of things that i hope readers get out of this book. one is simply understanding because our system of civil rights litigation and civil remediation is very complex. you, if you're an interested learner or reader in this area, you might learn about one area of the law qualified immunity, for example which is a defense. i'm sure we'll we'll talk about later on in the in the conversation but you might learn about one defense or one aspect of the system. my goal is first to really make the system clear, transparent and to a reader who is not a

lawyer in this area, but is interested in learning about. and my goal is to learn, educate folks not just about one aspect of the system but the entire system and the way in which it fits together. so that's one goal. i think another goal for me is to have written a book that leaves people really feeling for those in the book whose stories i tell to understand and the breadth of police violence and misconduct, the variety of people lives it can touch and and has touched. people who are never whose stories never make the who aren't the subject of mass protests, but have nevertheless had their lives really shaken to the core and. telling those stories and

understanding real life impact of barriers to relief in civil rights cases is a key part of my goal. and then i guess a third or a third aspect of my goals in writing this book is, as you say to a path forward. it is not a uplifting, cheery book through through much it or perhaps through through all of it. but i do try to offer concrete steps steps that can be taken by the supreme court and congress but also by state legislatures, by local governments, councils, and also by people simply reading the book and wanting some guidance about what they can do to make the system work better. it currently does. you know, it's great. you mentioned who the book was written for and certainly, as was reading it, i could see it as a something that's written for a work that's written for a

practicing attorney. a work is written for those of us in academia and the work that's written for the layperson. and that was easily digestible. so i can only imagine that's fairly difficult to do. lawyers are not particularly known for explaining the law to non-lawyers well so kudos to you. you know, there's so much, so much work here, so much to offer in this work. but i'd like to cherry pick a few topics that i found very interesting. so the outset you mentioned that basically a person who has been harmed by the police via the abuse of of force, they have three avenues for up for redress. one through the criminal process. right. the police officer can be criminally prosecuted through. interdepartmental discipline, which could range from though the loss of pay loss of vacation days to termination.

and then finally civil suits which as you mention we'll get into because qualified immunity plays a huge part in civil in your opinion these three avenues of redress. would you advocate that they be modified? do you think we kind of need to start over or perhaps have some additional avenues of redress? well, i certainly think that i do think that those are the three avenues that we have available to us, that none of them are working as they should or as they could. if we are imagining a system that actually compensates people whose rights have been wronged and deters future misconduct. now, none of those systems work

as. they should. criminal prosecutions are exceedingly rare. officers violate the law. and there's debate and i important debate about whether the answer in these cases should be to send police officers to jail. whether that is the you know the way if for those of us who don't believe that prison is particularly effective deterrent for people who have been charged with crimes. i, i, i have some questions about whether that is the right system for law enforcement officers as well. i would like to at that entire system if i had a magic wand to do so. internal affairs investigations. discipline and termination are really in much of the country and this is in part because of law enforcement officers bills of rights which limit the the way in which officers can be

investigated and what the standards are for sustaining investigations and disciplining and terminating officers. and i want to put my hope in this book in civil litigation as the best alternative among these three options. one reason or a few reasons that, people who have been wronged by the police can bring these claims themselves. they don't have to wait for a prosecutor decide to bring a charge or an internal affairs investigator to begin to investigate and a person whose rights have been violated also through the litigation process can important information about what happened and and how things went so wrong, which is often what victims of misconduct want to know. that's information that criminal prosecutors and internal affairs

investigators have no obligation to turn over. and that can happen in the civil litigation process. and people who have been harmed can receive money to compensate them for their losses and potentially a court order requiring that departments change their behavior, which again, are things that can't happen through the criminal prosecution or the internal affairs investigation processes. so i think that civil rights litigation is a valuable tool and makes sense a tool to pursue. although much of my book is focused, the many barriers to relief in these cases. if if i had that magic and i could create an alternative system, i certainly imagine what that alternative system or aspects of it might look like. i think there been experiments with, forms of restorative justice or coming together that

the officers and victims to really reach a an understanding of what happened outside of the adversarial process. i think that the kinds of root analysis or understanding what the real causes of these errors are or violations when they occur and figuring out how to prevent it from happening again. that's that's a kind of process that happens in medicine. it happens in aviation and those are ideas that have been. there have been some working to to have those goals integrated into our criminal justice system. and i think that there's a huge potential in those. and that we should explore those ideas with system that we

currently have. i think that civil litigation is the best available tool among some imperfect alternatives. yeah, it's really interesting. you know, i'm certainly not privy to every conversation on restorative justice. it's not necessarily my area research. that being you're the first person that i've heard the concept of restorative justice and as possibly integrating it into these parties right where have a person a civilian that some that was harmed the police and perhaps the police officer or officer or you know precinct commander really understanding whatever entity understands the harm that they have caused. do you think that would go anywhere or do you possibilities there? well, are some example of this happening and i should say it's not an area of my expertise is either actually a student of

mine one of the sort of one of the real beauties of being a professor is that your students teach you so much and i first started understanding this possibility and thinking about it from a student research paper who had looked at a similar type of process used in seattle following, a police shooting and i know there a lawyer named alphonse gerstein, who practices in cincinnati, who really thinks about these kinds of approaches as well. he represented the family, philando castile and spoken with him also about these kinds of ideas which tries to integrate into his practice. so it is out there, but really a case by case level and in policing it's it's often true

that burble up from the bottom and from experimentation in individual departments and so i think that there's a possibility of ideas taking more route in the future. there has be the will to do so and the recognition of, its importance, but i think i think anything's possible. certainly, certainly very interesting. so moving back to to the book you know, i would characterize and this is just a term that i came up with, so i'm going to copyright it. i would characterize book as an informant, peace of advocacy. and why do i say that? there is a very strong historical and narrative that helps the reader to understand basically how we got to where we are today. and it's really interesting and

comes to life. so i'm you and i both i'm sure are certainly used to reading where it's just case after case and then this and here's the whole thing but you really dug into the nuts and bolts of some of these cases and i felt like i was watching a almost so along those lines you know you use the james monroe case to frame the narrative here early on and you cause and you go back that case often in discussing developments of 1983 claims and qualified immunity. so i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that case and why you felt it was so important. sure. and thank you for those kind words about. the about the the book i've centered this case called monroe versus pape and the underlying facts of that case because which i'll talk about in just a second because as monroe versus pape

the monroe versus pape decision, the united states supreme court in 1961 is a crucial turning point in. civil rights enforcement in our country, it's the first time that the supreme court recognized that people could sue government officials for violating their constitutional rights. and so it was an extremely important decision. and and opened the federal courthouse doors to, these kinds of claims before monroe versus pape could only be brought in state court, which state courts were considered far less hospitable to claims against local governments. and as and james monroe's attorney commented after their bringing a claim by an african-american family against

a politically powerful white police officer in state court in anywhere in the country was going to be very, very difficult to and so this was the first time that a case like this could be brought in federal court. this why monroe versus is such an important in the history of supreme court decisions about civil rights and that sort of development of this particular ability to sue. but i also think that the story of james monroe and his family and what they endured is an important story for. what it says about for its similarities to things that we face today. and it's similarity things that were happening in the 1860s and

1870s when congress first enacted this right to sue. so it's an important historical bridge as well as a legal bridge. so james monroe was married to his wife flossie monroe and they had six children and they were asleep in their chicago apartment in october of 1958. and in the of the night they heard a loud pounding on their door. and it was chicago police named frank pape was infamous for people. he was referred to as chicago's toughest cop and he liked to take photos of himself to the bodies of people he killed. he was a he was a very guy. it sounds. and he and a number of other

chicago police broke into monroe's home without a warrant with their guns drawn. they did this because a white woman that day had identified james monroe as having killed her husband. in the truth of the matter, james monroe had nothing to do with killing this woman's husband. in fact, this woman had arranged for her lover to kill her husband to on his insurance money and then she pointed out james monroe, as the person who had done the crime to, avoid suspicion to herself and her lover with that evidence, frank pape and his officers barged into the house at gunpoint got james and flossie monroe out of bed, not wearing any clothes, brought them into the living room. frank pape beat james.

while interrogate him about this murder and using odious racial slurs, the children came in to the living room crying screaming, seeing their parents being assaulted and the police officers assaulted as well. houston monroe, who was the eldest stepson of james monroe, turned 17 on that day, and he recalls that their screaming probably saved his father's life because they seemed like they were going to kill him. the officers then arrest james monroe, took him to the station, held him for hours without letting him see a judge, speak to a lawyer or have any phone calls. and then when the white woman couldn't pick him out of a lineup he was eventually

released. so this a story on that we could be reading about in the news today it's also story that sounded eerily like the kinds of stories that prompted congress in the years after the civil war reconstruction to first pass this law that allowed people to sue for constitutional violations. amazing. absolutely amazing. and that's what struck me as i was reading, if could be reading something from today or yesterday or a few years ago or as you mentioned 100 years ago. so i found that amazing. you the law here that was passed you know, during we construction 48 i'm sorry, 42 u.s.c. 1983. so it's amazing how long this particular statute has been

around. this is, of course, where one can sue the police department or municipality for deprivation of their civil rights, you know, i've heard it put all different types ways, and i'll put the question to you. in 1983, suits are the statute in and of itself, is it dead? is it life support? is it still alive and kicking? what's the future? 1983? i think it's alive and kicking and is there are lawyers to bring section 1983 claims on behalf people around the country whose rights have been violated. but the way in which the supreme court interpreted various aspects of that law, they made it extremely difficult to succeed in these cases.

so the lawyers bringing cases would tell you and certainly have told me. and i know in my own experience from being a civil rights litigator, that section 1983 remains a crucial, important tool of compensate and deterrence. it doesn't work anywhere near as well as it should. so i don't know if that means it's on life support or that it it needs some some serious medical attention. but i'm not willing to say that it is that it is gone because we need it as we need it more today than ever before. so certainly in 1983 exists to for litigants for those who suffer harm to be able to seek some form of redress. however, the entity that does the harm and we've seen this with the exclusionary of course. right that the primary reason

the rule is to deter police misconduct is there is when 1983 was promulgated, was there any concept that this was also to deter misconduct or has that turned into a byproduct? well, i that the if you read the legislative history, if you read what congresspeople were saying about the bill, when were considering to pass it, it absolutely was viewed as a tool to prevent kinds of harms from again it was viewed a tool of deter means to to prevent these harms occurring. so i think that that has been an idea throughout the existence. section 1983, if you read supreme court's decisions interpreting section 1983, they

repeatedly talk about the statute as an important tool of both comp and zation and deterrence and now the supreme court says that in their actual decisions they they seem to to lessen and lessen the ability get compensation or deterrence through that through the statute. but that has, i think, from its inception, been an important set goals, twin goals for the statute. so along those lines i just you know, this is stepping forward into some of the latter chapters in the book. you talk about other forms of redress that could be effective court ordered reforms which we certainly see from time to time. there's almost always some police somewhere in the united operating under a consent degree decree rather you mentioned

attaching the bank accounts of officers, possibly police officials and, of course, suing the city. i wonder if you could expand on all three of those a bit because it's quite interesting sure it's it's my pleasure. so i if you think about how lawsuits can have an impact behavior moving forward there's a couple of different ways in which that might happen and i think all of them are frustrate by our current system the way in which the law works. so one of those ways is a court ordered reform in a court case, the person who's suing can seek money damages. they can also seek called an injunction which could be an injunction to change one police policy to create additional

trainings or a more comp set of reforms that would policies and practices and in department more generally, the right to bring that kind of claim for injunctive relief in a civil rights case has been made extremely difficult by the united states supreme court, which ruled in a case called city of los angeles versus, lyons in the ninth in the early 1980s, that a person cannot bring a claim for injunctive unless they can prove that they will not only that their harms were violated in the past, but they personally likely to have their their their violated in an identical way in the future. and to just give you a sense of how difficult that adolf lyons was, the plaintiff in that case

was driving in los angeles was, stopped for a broken taillight, i believe. and then after some interaction with the officers an officer placed him in a chokehold he passed out and then ultimately revived was not charged or arrested with anything and allowed to to go on his way. he brought lawsuit because he wanted the loss police department to stop using these chokeholds and what the united states supreme court was that adolph lyons could not sue for a change of policy because he could not prove that he be stopped again on a los angeles street and that an officer would place him in a chokehold. this is it would be very difficult for anyone to make that kind of proof in a case like this and so the ability of

individual eyes like adolph lyons to seek that of injunctive relief or systemic relief is near impossible in police cases that you're right there are, it seems always consent decrees against city police departments across the country. those cases are by the united states department of justice, which following the beating of rodney king was granted to bring these of cases and. in fact, it was the lyons case that congress to give the department of justice this authority. but after opposition by union and other and others colleagues decided not to allow individuals like adolph lyons to bring these cases themselves. so seeking injunctive relief, forward looking is an important goal for many people who bring these cases.

it is very difficult to, in our current system. so that's one aspect of our or trying to prevent in the future another would be if you created financial sanctions this sort of presumption about deterrence and lawsuits is that if are forced to pay or threatened with the the threat of having to pay out of your bank account, you will take steps to avoid that in the future and in fact that concern that officers will have to pay has motivated a lot of protections for officers when they're sued. but when i looked at police settlements and judgments in 81 jurisdictions across the country, a six year period, i found that officers paid only. 02 percent of. the dollars awarded to

plaintiffs in these cases and it was in two of the 81 jurisdictions that i studied that could confirm any payment and amount that was paid in these cases was, on average, about $4,000. so these cases are not creating a financial sanction for officers. they're also not creating much of a financial sanction for departments because the money to pay settlements and judgments in these cases almost never comes from the budgets of. these police departments, it rarely creates any meaningful financial for the department. instead, the money tends to come from insurance or from funds without an impact on the officers misuse, without impact on the department's the final way in which lawsuits could have some sort of deterrent effect is if police departments gathered and analyzed information from these cases to try to understand what had gone wrong and what they could do in the future to

prevent something like that from occurring. but i found in doing my research that police rarely gather, analyze information from lawsuits against them. instead these are defended by the city attorney's. as i said, any settlement or judgment is paid from central funds. and the department itself does not even have the information that's revealed during, for example, and make any effort to analyze the information in these cases for trends, officers who are repeatedly or types of behavior that repeatedly result in lawsuits or stations, a department that garner a disproportionate number of all the kinds of analysis that you would expect a employer to do if they were trying to figure out how to reduce settlements and judgments against them. but it rarely happens in departments this is a long

winded way saying there are a lot of ways in which these kinds of suits could deter future behavior. but all of the mechanisms are dysfunctional, right now. and the and the cause a combination of supreme state laws that are providing that local governments pick up the tab when their officers violate the constitution and local governments that don't do, in my view, to require police departments to gather and analyze information from lawsuits against them. professor, what do you think about the argument and that comes from the those involved in the collective bargaining process that you know if we allow the attachment of police officers accounts and homes and so forth, no one would ever take this job and country would be less safe. so i'm, sure, you've heard that argument of you have considered

it, but what do you think that argument? well, the first thing i think is that this is unlikely to happen as a practical matter. those kinds of arguments about officers getting bankrupted for reasonable mistakes are often used in opposition reform of legal protection called qualified immunity. but there is an entirely different set of that are protecting officers bank accounts. these are indemnification agreements, meaning state or local or laws providing that when an officer is sued that the employer going to pay for the lawyer and for any settlement and judgment. i actually think that this system is is an important system have not everyone in police reform circles agree with me for sure but i believe that cities

should be picking up the tab or at least the vast majority of the tab when officers their constitutional rights. one of the reasons why i believe this, is because one of the goals of these claims is compensate. and ellis officers are rarely going to have kind of money that is required to fully compensate a person for their harms. when george floyd's family sued the city of minneapolis lewis and derek chauvin and the case settled for $27 million, i can assure you that derek chauvin did not have $27 million to offer george floyd's there is a value in having a city pay that kind bill for the compensation of the family and and also i think for a that these police

officers are and given their authority by us by the community by the taxpayers and we have a collective responsibility. the harms that they cause. these are harms that are going to be felt. victims and really the question in these cases is who should bear costs? if we put the costs on, the police officer directly, the officer cannot pay ultimate. what we're really doing is saying that the victim needs to pay those costs themselves. with that said, i think there's a value in creating financial sanctions for officers when they cross the line. there have been some interesting experiments in colorado, for example, they passed a statute in 2020 that provided that when an officer violates the law the

city will pay on behalf of the officer. but if the city concludes that the officer acted bad faith, the officer be required to contribute up to $25,000 or 5% of any settlement or judgment, whichever is less. and if don't have the resources and can prove they don't have the resources, the city will up the entire tab. i this is an interesting approach because does ensure that the victim will be compensated for harms but it also creates a financial sanction for officers who have acted bad. faith i think this is an interesting approach and one that should be considered and experimented with in more states. it's a very interesting approach. it needs to say insurance, not my expertise, but i always, if we'll see a day where police officers are perjuring purchasing rather insurance such as the way doctors purchase malpractice insurance doctors

lawyers other professionals if we want policing to truly move into the professional then you know it's inevitable that they will be treated such. so it's really an interesting problem and i should say i think that's is another way going about things and that is an approach that for example, my my friends at the cato institute who really focused on issues of qualified immunity, they prefer that approach personal liability insurance for officers to carry. it's also an idea that has been proposed elsewhere. in fact, in minneapolis, this in, i believe, 2016, there was a a a provision that was introduced. but later voted not to get on the ballot because it conflicted with union the union contract.

but that proposal would have officers to have individual liability insurance. and if i recall correctly the way that the plan would was that the city would pay the base insurance level for all of the officers but if an officer there was viewed as risky the insurer whether because they had a number of use of force events or they been sued numerous times and their insurance premiums rose, the officer would be responsible for those increases premiums above the base level. and i think that's a fascinating idea as. well, i'm i if if if we could experiment with that more across the country. i think that that would be a really interesting to take a look at because it does create a financial sanction again for the officer who is engaged in risky behavior as saw in minneapolis.

the the proposal died because it with the union's with the city and so these kinds of changes will likely face that same opposition if they are explored elsewhere. sure so you know it's very interesting if you think of all the different traffic agents, if a city won't take action, someone who is a rogue law enforcement official, well, then maybe the insurance companies. well, someone can't get insurance to to practice medicine to practice law, can't get insurance to to who perform the duties as a police officer would be interesting and this is also been done i should in small jurisdictions in small and towns usually rely on liability insurance instead of paying settlements and judgments from their own budgets. and there are examples of municipal liability insurer errors as they see claims rise

in a jurisdiction are either threatened to decrease coverage or require that department take some action even in one example a requirement that city fire their police chief. and there is a way in which an insurer who guided by the bottom line by money has more leverage than local government officials who are considering financial concerns. sure, but are also in the grips of whatever political pressures there are. political obligations to the police department and and sometimes don't have the kind of leverage to the kinds of decisive actions that an municipal liability insurer can. okay. i mean, they're just fascinating. now, i want to gears i'd love to

shift gears here to a topic that is so near and dear to my heart. i could talk about it forever. and that the fourth amendment, i always find it so fascinating that just a few lines in our constitution has been interpreted just many different ways and is ever expanding adding but you trace the development of fourth amendment law from this concern solely about the rights of the individual right. that's what the framers were concerned about to the courts. i mean, the supreme court's concern about police and the police, the ability of the police to conduct investigations, police work and don't know. i look at the fourth amendment. i don't see the word police in there, but that's just me. not so fair. it's not there, you know, and you kind of look at henry v, ohio so and the the the

occurrences with detective as a what a shared moment. and i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that why do you see it as a watershed moment and? tell us a little bit the case. sure. so you're right. i don't see the words police in the fourth amendment either. and the protection against unruly searches and seizures really does focused on the subjects of those searches, victims of potentially that overreach. but the supreme court has repeatedly interpreted the fourth amendment not terms of what we, the people, are entitled to in terms of of sanctity of our homes and our possessions and our our bodies. but in terms of what the police are authorized do, in light their need to and control crime

and that analysis or weighing has repeatedly by the supreme court been been done with a real thumb on the scale for the police to i think the detriment of of us as a society as a whole. and i do talk about terry, a team in that shift terry is as a case involving police officer who saw a couple of guys who looked suspicious they looked like they could be looking to try to case out of a business to to rob and ultimately after monitoring these guys for a while, the officer stopped them and searched them and found a gun. and the question was whether this was reasonable for the

officer to do at the time, terry was decided in the late 1960s, the question of police to stop and or stop and frisk people was really being debated by courts and by advocates and to the police view there needed to be maximum discretion to this they the enforcement's side of the was that this shouldn't even viewed as covered by the fourth amendment. it wasn't a full search and police should be able to do this for any reason as a means of controlling crime advocates on the other side saw this is a problem and thought that you police should only have a warrant or probable cause in to search someone. and if you read the brief by the naacp legal defense fund to the

court in the terry they talk about the the the mass of numbers of stops and search as that were being done in predominantly black and neighborhoods in neighborhoods of people with color people of color said we don't need more of this we need more protections from it. the supreme court looking at these two sides, decided sort of to to find some sort middle ground or what they considered be middle ground. and so what the supreme court said was the fourth amendment applies. you don't have unfettered discretion court cops to do these searches, but it's not as much as the fourth amendment is full protection. you need a warrant or you don't need probable cause. all you need the supreme court said was reasonable to believe that the person had done something wrong or in the case

of a search, that they had something on their person that created a danger so although court viewed this as compromise, i think between two competing considerations this reasonable suspicion standard has come to play an enormous role in the fourth amendment and just. one example there is a requirement that is centuries old that before police enter your home they have to a knock and announce their presence in order to the people inside know that the police there and the view is that this will protect both property so that doors won't have to be broken down and the like and also will people's safety they won't think that some intruder is breaking into their home. they will know that it's the police. but the supreme court, the

nineties said that officers can do away with the requirement of knocking and announcing beforehand so long as they have a reasonable suspicion. the language from terry to believe that knocking in announcing would be fruitless or be harmful to their investigator sean and as a practical matter the requirement to knock and announce has essentially gone away with that lessening of the standard because officers can come up with virtually reason to believe or to to have a reasonable suspicion that knocking in announcing would be fruitless. so it's a stand this reasonable suspicion standard initially meant to be a compromise has come to really dominate in many ways. what standards are for police to stop and engage and people and

you quote justice douglas's dissent and i love to read it yet if the individual is no longer to be sovereign. if the police can pick him whenever they do not, like the cut of his jib, if they can seize and search him at their discretion we enter a new regime and i wonder if justice had a crystal ball and to what occurred in new york and other cities with regards stop and frisk are we in this new regime that doug justice douglas discussed. we are absolutely and justice douglas plays a repeated role in the book and in the chapters of the book and in the development of constitutional law and constitute and protections as often a sole voice or a

dissenting voice saying watch out, watch out what you're doing here. this is this. this cannot be what we believe. the constitution requires. and i think that he he must have had a crystal ball hiding in his chambers somewhere because he's absolutely right that allowing officers to stop and frisk people based on suspicion, that standard has absolutely led to the kinds of widespread discriminatory use of, stop and frisk, overuse of stop and frisk in new york city and in philadelphia and in in cities across, our country. i mean the practice stop and frisk practices of police have been studied over and over again throughout country and repeatedly. the finding is that people of color are more frequently

stopped and searched, that people are stopped and searched a vast majority of the time without having done with having done nothing wrong, no evidence of weapons, drugs or anything else. and these stops and searches are are very intrusive they they create their own real harms that the supreme court's doctrine really allows. again, without any compensation or or recovery for these people, people who are stopped and searched without any justification are left to carry the costs of those harms themselves. so in about 5 minutes, the 5 minutes that we have left or so i like to talk just a little bit a better way. i love the title of that chapter is the last chapter of the book where you discuss compensation and deterrence and provide the reader with your thoughts on how

to achieve this and how they're actually find a better way where we can coexist. well, you know, i hate to say coexist. you talk about police and civilians as there's no coexistence, we're all citizens of the united states. so you know, make it sound like there are two different entities. but you focus on better ways to achieve these goals. could you tell us a little bit about that and the time remaining? sure. well i do think our system needs to do a better job of compensating and deterring people whose rights are violated. as i mentioned before, i that those dollars should typically come from city budgets. but i do think that officers as in the colorado statute, should more often required to make contribution to those settlements and judgments when they've acted in bad faith. i think that local governments

should create more consequence issues for police departments in these cases and part of that could be having money come from police departments budgets. part of it can come from local governments requiring that their departments take better account of the cases that are brought against and endeavor to learn more from those cases. i think that that that's system would make us come closer to a justice's outcome. i also think that plaintiffs should more often win these cases. i think that the states and congress and the supreme court could all roll back some of the protections that that the government enjoys include the interpretation of the fourth amendment, including immunity

doctrine. i think it should be easier to sue local governments directly for the harms that their officers cause. and so i think there's a lot that could be done in terms of the the ability to get relief. i think that there's a lot that can be done at the state and local level and by listeners, people who are interested in making improvements. i think a lot can happen at the city level in terms of how police department budgets work and whether police departments are gathering and analyzing information from lawsuits. this is these are things that the governments can require or put into place. and those are things that community members can ask of their city councils. i think that that at most basic level, having representation in local government, city and government, who people who are committed to these kinds of reforms are important.

and there's ways for people to get in either being people themselves or getting people in those positions of power. and at the most basic level, people can serve on juries, these cases and and i have a whole chapter about the challenges getting an unbiased jury in these cases. and so jury service is an important role to play for those lawyers who are listening. i hope that they consider taking these cases in the future. civil rights cases. as much as we might think that the courthouses are teeming with. civil rights lawyers. there's actually a lot of parts of the country where civil rights cases are virtually a civil rights litigants are virtually it's very difficult to find lawyers that are that have the expertise and the to take these cases. and i think getting more lawyers working on these cases is a critically part of the process as well. so there's a lot of challenges in these cases, but it also

means there's a lot of different ways to improve the system and a of ways for people to get involved. well, thank you so much. so the name of the book is shielded how the police became untouchable. the author is professor from uc ucla. sorry listen, it's been such a pleasure. watch out now. i know, i know. almost you in trouble there. listen, it's been such pleasure speaking with you so. informative. the work is excellent. and i encourage folks to read it. so thank you very much for the conversation. oh, thank for the conversation. i really appreciate it. take care.