and issue spotlights such as irs oversight come student loan debt , and campus national assault. new perspectives on issues including global -- global warming, fighting infectious diseases, and -- let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. at the number on your screen or e-mail us at c-span.org. join the conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> missouri governor jay nixon declared a state of emergency in the town of ferguson where michael brown was fatally shot one week ago. he imposed a five hour curfew on the community after several days of protest. next, a look at the law enforcement response to those protests from "washington

journal." this is 40 minutes. on facebook, or follow us on twitter. "washington journal" continues. host: i guess is cathy schneider, the author of "police power and race riots." she is also a professor at american university, and she is here to talk about the situation in ferguson, missouri after 18-year-old michael brown was shot and killed earlier this week. cathy, thank you so much for joining us this morning. guest: thank you very much. host: i want to start by reading headlines because there is a developing situation that happened early this morning and ferguson. the st. louis post-dispatch has this headline -- storm after column -- quiet night air routes as police, protesters square off. the story says that for most of friday night,

the story goes on to say that people who had been peaceful, some police officers pointing protesters crowd, pointing cameras at police. elyse told the crowd to disperse immediately. some of the crowd threw bottles at police who did not enlist -- who did not initially react. can you talk a little bit about the volatility in these types of situations and what can be done to ensure that the climate safety for going forward? guest: well, the very first thing is police should not be showing up in military gear and right here in treating a community as if they are an enemy army.

of course things got rough for after that. there had been an improvement because they brought in a different police force with a police chief that walked on arm through the crowd, and there was no problem. the crowd had as he set a festive atmosphere. why are the police treating people who are unarmed and sitting nonviolently in the square as if they are an enemy army and should be confronted with full military gear? we want to make sure we hear your thoughts on this issue as well. you can call us on the republican line at (202) 585-3881, on the democratic line at (202) 585-3880. independents can call (202) 585-3882. and if you live in missouri, we opened up a special phone line for you, that is (202) 585-3883. we also want to make a special point and invite people who are in law enforcement to call in

with your assessment and thoughts on the situation. , your book looks at a previous race right, particularly in the u.s. during the 1960's and then again in france in 2005. are there parallels between those incidents is and what you are seeing happen in ferguson? extreme. in fact, there seems to be a , andant pattern on riots the constant pattern is almost always a case of a situation which there is extreme tension between a community and the police where police violence has been on the rise, with the local authorities not holding violent police accountable, increased incidences of police abuse, almost always the killing of an on armed minority youth. the protest beginning nonviolently, the police responding violently to on armed protests, riots breaking out.

always the case in these kinds of riots. that it ispical frankly enraging that it happens over and over again and that people do not see that political officials do not see the problem with treating a poor minority anmunity as if they are enemy country. >> from your research, what is it that tips the scale from a protest being peaceful to one that becomes more violent or out-of-control? ok, there are two things. on the peaceful side, you respond to a crowd addressing their concerns, and the first concern is will there be justice and investigation? so you tell people, the family, the friends of the victims, the people in the neighborhood, that

you are deeply concerned that an unarmed youth was killed in this way and that you were going to investigate and there will be a trial. you deal with the crowd by addressing their demands and you problem byerbate the attacking unarmed demonstrators. says wect in a way that are unconcerned about this, our police did nothing wrong, if you come out with a story that defends the police and you don't even talk about investigation, you do not give the parents the name of the police officer so that there is no way for the parents to know if there has been a history of abuse by this officer, and then you charged unarmed demonstrators, then there will likely be ryan's. iots. host: our first call is from chris in illinois calling on our republican line. you are on the air with cathy

schneider. c-span.thank you, cathy, i think you have some of your facts wrong. justolice were not in gear to show up. they were there after the riot began. they need to protect themselves from these looters, from these vandals, from these criminals and other people like that. i mean, these people are not taking flowers. were terrorizing the community. i mean, it just so happens to be the community they live in, but they were domestic terrorist. s.i am all for the police and law and order, but i think it is about time that some people start taking responsibility for their own actions. i mean, mr. brown has a record a mile long. i saw it this morning. he was arrested multiple times for armed robbery. his partner was arrested for robbery. i mean, these were not choirboys. quit making it out to some like these were some angels. host: cathy schneider, your

response. guest: ok. ok, so, let me address the points one by one. i find itis curious that the police feel that they have to protect themselves from the crowd. now, the police have full military gear. police have equipment that is left over from armies. the crowd is unarmed. we are talking about a disproportion here in which the police have the power of the state and they have military gear and they are afraid of an unarmed crowd. now you say the writers were terrorizing the -- rioters were terrorizing the community. if that is the case, why is all of the community out there? why are they on the street? why are they walking around with their hands up in the air to protest the killing of michael brown. it does not sound like they are terrorized by the rioters.

-- does ituestion is really matter? it is very interesting that they are releasing a long history of michael brown, who is the victim, and we are told nothing about the police officer who shot him. know why is there this diversion about focusing on the history of michael brown and not discussing an investigation about what happened and whether the police officer that shot him has had violence complaints against him before because i ,now that many of these cases police officers have killed people, have a long history of complaints of violence against them before. so if you want to exacerbate the tension between police and communities, then that is what you do. you blame the victim, you attack -- you act as if the crowd is threatening and dangerous, and you do not address their

concerns. and that is what exacerbates the problem. next caller onur the democratic line from dayton, ohio. dave, good morning. caller: good morning. guest: hi, dave. caller: unfortunately, the caller from illinois example exemplifies the split in our country, but i have to say -- i have not read this lady's book, but i have read "the rise of the warrior cop," and it is shocking. it is terrible. and just lay down in georgia several weeks ago, they rated the wrong house -- and just like down in your just several weeks ago, they raided the wrong house and severely injured a baby. the family says the police did not care, they were at the wrong house is what they said. that is all i had to say, and

thank god for c-span. guest: thank you. what community organizers here in new york pointed out to me was that after 9/11, there was a big sign that said protecting the community abroad and at home , showing a military officer on one side and a police officer on the other, and the community -- are we being equated with countries that we are fighting in a war? in which you deal with crime is to protect vulnerable communities, not attack those same communities that need police protection, and yes, this is an excellent book, "the rise of the military cop you." there has been an increasing militarization of police, it started before 9/11, it

started with the war on crime and the use of martial language and images of war and to fight police the war on drugs and then further arming after 9/11. this is not the way people police should deal with the community. "ost: the "new york times recently published a story about program,lled 1033 which allow for about $4.3 billion in military equipment to flow throughout the country for police forces. the article said during the obama administration, according to the pentagon, police have received tens of thousands of machine guns, tens of thousands of ammunition, thousands of these of camouflage, and night vision equipment and hundreds of thousands of armored cars and aircraft. this morning, they had a chart of several of what they call the tools of war and counties across the u.s. this is in the "new york times,"

of arms are police using things they were acquired from the military. can you expand how this program came to be and the role that it is laying and perhaps in citing tension or concern in ferguson? frank well, i am actually when not sure how the program came to be, but from what i understand, the idea was that domestic forces needed extra military equipment because they were battling terrorism and that there was -- this was part of homeland security and the need for the police to act as protectors of the country. there was also surplus equipment, and there was also struggles in congress about who homeland securityy mone

moneies. --luential conversation got influential congressmen got more money for their police forces. but this is an army in which the side that the police represents are the white, wealthier communities and the poorer, vulnerable by nordion communities -- minority communities, not as communities most need in production, which they are, but at some kind of incubator of terrorism and crime , and everyone there is a potential danger to the republic. this is a terrible, terrible way of understanding crime and issues within poor communities. host: a few comments now from

twitter. fishing sam says violence on both sides is not helpful. oshia, sayson, peg police chief in ferguson moscow. and a complete housecleaning needs to happen. here is jim. caller: i have a question regarding the speaker, you are making a lot of assumptions, and a lot of these generalizations about police retaliate, about the images of them when they show up in this full military riot gear. a place that is notorious for riots. i have families in police forces. what will be the difference if the police chief, as he said, walk through the crowd without any armor? all it takes is one police certain to be shot because they

do not take enough care or caution. i would much rather a police officer be safe and secure so he can feel confident in monitoring the situation rather than constantly fearing for his own safety. you never know what is going to spark the crowd. i do not think that is very fair. and how do you relate to these crowds, and when was the last time you have been involved -- do you have any friends or family in the police force? guest: i do not have friends or family in the police force, but i actually interviewed a lot of police officers for this book, so what i want to say is that rights do not erupt solely because of what happens at that particular moment. is always a history. there is a large movement of reform among police officers. the police executive research forum and washington, d.c. is one of those that has done excellent research. there have been a number of very, very progressive police chiefs who have engaged in what they call problem-solving.

for sample, nick pastore, when he was police chief in new haven, he simply inverted the system of punishment and rewards come and he rewarded and gave promotions to police officers who solve problems with the community, who would work with them deality to help with young people who did not go to school, for instance, without sending them to jail. desk duty police officers who had more than one or two violent complaints against them. so it really all comes down to the mayor. it comes down to the police chief. it comes down to the system, the structure of incentives, and what it is is changing the attitude toward the community. with a do not have riots police force that works with the community in which the community

sees the police as protecting them. one of the other things that police reformers say all the time like ronald hampton, who is the founder of the national black police association, points policeall we want is for to behave in poor black communities the way that they behave in white communities. understand it white communities at their job is to protect the community. why did i not understand that -- why do they not understand and poor black or latino communities? host: david from pennsylvania is calling on the republican line. david, you are on the air. caller: hello. professor, you set me up perfectly. -- whereon to you is where with angst, all this pressure and know-how for this community -- to make my point, right now every white cop

has less ferguson and dropped their jobs, they were the very few policemen there. i heard two thirds of the population is african-american, and there are about three or four african-american policeman in the community. why don't the community itself apply for these jobs? it has been 50 years since you could discriminate against someone to apply for a job, and then when they are not getting hired, that is what all this angst and national attention comes to a community before this blowup. you just said it yourself -- what can we do for these folks? these folks need to do for themselves because they look at we do, every person does. you are kind of in an ivory tower, so you do not know how the real world works, but people look at things in a lot of ways are racialized first and then they back off. both sides are racial in this. why don't they represent themselves?

i say they, not mean i disrespectfully. on?t: am i still hello? schnider,essor your response. the policeway respond is the rules come in from the top, what are the pressures put on police officers, and are they held accountable? now, this community had been white, so it shifted, so the police force had been white and towardsrtain attitude the black community. recruitingoblem with black police officers is that police officers then enter an institution that has a history of racism, that has a history of treating the community badly, so naturally people in the

community do not want to enter, but more importantly, once they officersose police find themselves isolated inside the institution. either they conform to the attitude the police have toward the community because police like that often say we don't trust these black officers, whether they will be with us or they findhers, or themselves isolated and therefore in a situation of danger, and as you know, black undercover officers are often shot by white officers. we do not actually see the reverse. but you cannot transform an institution just buy a recruitment, and given the hostility between the immunity and the police, there is a reason people may not want to join. i do not know how the recruiting goneand how the effort has into recruiting black officers. my guess is not very much.

what i am talking about really is -- how do police interact with community? we are not talking about having no police. there are police who have done this very, very well, but there has to be a wheel at the top, and that has to come from the messages coming from the mayor to the police chief to the officers, which is -- work with the community. t march 3 community with military gear. you act as if most of the members of that community are ind-working, law-abiding and need of protection. police understand that is their job when they march around middle-class, white communities. they do not seem to understand that is still their job when they are in poor minority communities. jerry from baltimore, maryland is calling on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning, and thank you for having this discussion. you know, something that has not been brought up is that police

shooting four people -- poor people. you can look right on youtube and see how they shot that homeless guy with his hands race for illegal camping. in that same town, they shot another guy because he had had three domestic disputes with his pcp. and yes, he was on what, they could not hit him with a beanbag? no, they had to shoot him. here's is another example -- a poorly trained young cop, i did not care if he has been on for six years, he is what, 26? he is scared. cops are scared. that is white is shoot first, ask questions later. that cop who was out and l.a. who thought he was mistreated decided to go shoot these people in the apartment that caused him to be kicked out. cops are running scared.

if they are scared, they do not need to be running on the force. this could have been easily addressed with the police chief coming out and saying hey, we will have more sensitivity training. it will be an independent investigation. please do not destroy your home. that is what i have to say. thank you. thank you very much for that question. i agree completely towards poor people, and again, poor people are the people most in need of protection. ofre are really two kinds killings of unarmed people, two kinds of police officers that do this. there are the people like francis levine the who killed , and he had nine violence complaints against them previously, and there are police shot alike those who

victim 41 times, and those are the police officers that are frightened and have never been in a black community and cannot distinguish one black from another. in terms of training, most of the training from what i understand from minority police officers seems to be the reverse of sensitivity training. they are told that these are dangerous communities, that you should always be prepared, and they don't come from the often fromthey, white suburbs, and they go into these neighborhoods, and they are frightened, and they shoot first. so both problems have to be dealt with. the way to deal with this is again the training and the rules for police officers is that when you see poor people, homeless people, understand they need protection. that you are interacting with the community that is very vulnerable, and they depend on you. host: to recap some of the headlines in the story, the "washington post" today reported

a story that is titled -- police: slain missouri teen was tied to robbery. host: we will take another caller now from missouri, and that is mike on our republican line. mike, good morning. caller: good morning.

professor, so many points in so little time. first of all, let me clarify something to you. you mentioned at the beginning that a police chief was put in charge of security. well, he is not a police chief. he is an officer in the state police, the highway patrol. this is not the department, the way you said it was like a local police -- no commit with the state police assigned here by the governor. second, you used the phrase "on armed demonstrators." i'm guessing you have never had molotov cocktails thrown at you. do not tell me what testers cannot injure you. and the final thing, one night, all is great, so they say we will pull the police back, no police presence, and what happens? the riots and the looting starts. in the police are driving by, and this is from the owners of

the businesses, the county police were told don't stop and arrest anybody. keep on driving, let them loot. please answer those three questions for me. i would appreciate it. guest: ok, so from what i understand when the new police were put in charge with the new police captain who was head of marchede police, he through the crowd, and things calmed down yesterday. from what i understand as of last night, there had been a peaceful, festive atmosphere. i do not know the exact details about when the bullies appeared in riot gear, whether it was before or after, but nobody is saying have no police. workthey are saying is with the community and behave appropriately. about whathe stories michael brown had done in the

been whether or not he had engaged in a robbery, it is important to remember that engaging in a robbery, if he did so, should not be a death penalty. you should not -- he did not have arms, and it is not fair to unarmed people might use stones or bricks and therefore they should be met with military gear. there is a difference -- police have shields, and i am unaware of the police being injured this way. but again, this is a question about how do you respond to an incident that has already become a flashpoint, but how do you deal with a community in general in working with that community? this does not happen overnight. there is a history here. people who do not know michael brown are responding because

they know the story from other experiences. somebody else they know had been roughed up by police, they had been shot by police. tension a history of here between the police force and the community, and it does not happen overnight. it has to be diffused, and the governor was right to bring in a different police force. i do not understand really whether the police force that showed up in riot gear are now the state police or the same had all ofe that these problems with the community and had a history of engaging in violence against the community. if it is the new state police force, it is a mistake. it is a mistake to go into a community that has been victimized or feels victimized by police and military gear. host: professor, and your book, you describe the race riots in new york in the 1960's and again

in france in 2005. what were some of the key actions and some of the situations that public officials took to diffuse the situation after that it once again turned peaceful and they were able to resolve a going forward? guest: in the case of france, after the young people were driven into an electric grid and e minister of interior in charge of police mustd that the youth have committed a crime and that is why they were hiding in electric station and the police had done nothing wrong, and therefore there was no need for an investigation. the police walked into the neighborhood, there was a peaceful, nonviolent march, police chased the two young people after that march into a a tear gassent

canister into that mosque, and the neighborhood exploded, and the next neighborhood exploded, and because the minister ,nterior is a national figure for three consecutive weeks, the government was unable to control the riots, and they actually called a curfew, which had not been used since the algerian war. so they did a terrible job in responding to the riot. they took what was an issue that had been under control in the neighborhood because the mayor had been out talking to young people. outunity leaders had been talking to young people, and they had been promising them to have patience, there would be an investigation, and they blew it into a national issue. this is what you don't do. is youu do do immediately addressed the issue and you say we are going to get to the bottom of this.

we are really sorry that somebody has been killed in this community by police. the police force is your police force, and we are going to work with you to make sure that if this has been a deliberate homicide, there will be punishment. there will be investigation. make sure going to the community is protected from that in the future. that is easier to diffuse riots. in the united states, the main communitynd riots are groups. community groups that have become specialized in dealing with police violence, and one of exertings they do is political pressure on officials to have trials, indictments by the district attorney, federal interventions, they help families find lawyers. method,a stopgap

unfortunately. so in the short term, it diffuses riots. all of the energies and anger of the community is channeled into that. unfortunately, it does not relieve police abuse. the late william stuntz wrote a wonderful book about the collapse of the american justice policeh he argues that institution does not pay a price for a police officer that engages in violence. the institution itself will only govern itself if the institution pays a price for its officers who engage in violence. the reason the institution does not pay a price beside the structural reasons is that the local elected official has to make that clear to the institution that this is not what will be tolerated, and to

get local officials to make that clear to the institution of the police, you need voters to be clear that when they vote, they do not vote for candidates who promise wars on populations in on wars on crime, wars on immigration, wars on terrorism, wars on drugs. this kind of martial law vocabulary is not what we should be talking about on a domestic sets a set of expectations by police that this is what they are engaged in. a war against a population, a domestic population, when in fact that domestic population is the most vulnerable population. host: turning now to atlantic city, new jersey. patricia is on the democratic line. patricia, go ahead. caller: hi. if you don't mind, i would like to say this directly to your guest right now. favoritey favorite,

speaker on the show. you are the true example of justice and liberty, and it just hurts me so bad when i see people call up, and i know that they are basing their comments on racism and stereotypes, and i just want to say god bless you, and we need more people like you. you are wonderful. and it was a pleasure listening to you. thank you so much. you have a friend in atlantic city. guest: thank you. thank you so much. tim: our next caller is from florida on the independent line. caller: yes, sorry for everything involved in the situation. can you tell me, if you put this in context, the last say 5, 10, 15 years, how many african-americans have been murdered by african-americans, and why the sudden outrage

when all of a sudden a white cop is involved? these crimes go on day by day and this country and nobody says anything. you look at the kids on the street, they are out there because they do not have a job, a lot of them cannot get an education, and this happens from the radical leftist policies that destroyed the black structure. maybe you could comment on that. tell me how many african-americans have been murdered by fellow african-americans in the united states senate last 5, 10, 15, 20 years. then maybe we can put this in some kind of context. guest: ok, thank you. am i on the air/ host: you are on the air still. guest: the first thing is the reason there are so many deaths in the african-american community is that there is a plethora of guns. no other country allows

unlimited gun sales. now, it is not just african-americans. look at how many mass killings we have had in recent years. which policeys in officers agree with liberals almost unanimously is we need gun control. you reduce violence by reducing the availability of guns. every state that has no rules against purchases of weapons has higher homicide rates. the highest levels of homicide rates are not stranger to stranger by domestic violence, so if you really want to deal with the issue of violence in poor communities, the violence in any communities, you need to do with the issue of the

availability of guns. now even after the killings of 21 five-year-olds by a white teen, and we are not saying now that all white teens are violent, dangerous, homicidal, we were not even able to get through congress universal gun registration. problem.eally a huge the second issue, the reason the particularlygs are drawing is police are the ones that are supposed to be protecting you. the police are not supposed to only protect whites. the police are supposed to protect everybody in the immunity where they police. -- in the community where they police. when your own police wars have killed your child, where do you go? now, i spoke to mothers who called the police because their child has schizophrenia and was off their meds, and the police came and killed their child. they say what do you do when you call the police for perfection

and the police officer killed your child? this is a particularly painful problem. the police -- these communities wnat police. they want police to protect them. they want police to deal with a tiny,s, which are tiny percentage of the population of even the poorest neighborhoods. 1% to 5% at the most. but what police do because of the reward system is they come in and they look for drugs. because they do better on television to show that they found a big cache of drugs and arrested a bunch of drug dealers than if they went in there to work, to protect the community .rom violent predators so there are relationships between these things. the problem is not liberal programs. the problem is the complete dismantling of gun control.

the problem is the way in which police behave in these futile drug war that has led to over 2 million people in prison, the most thele in prison in country almost in the history of the world and has done nothing ,o help communities in any way help communities so that young people are able to get a good education in these poor quality schools that have been deprived of all resources because of tax sos for the very wealthy that classrooms are overcrowded, the teachers cannot deal with it. if the children have special problems, many of the children go to school hungry because they don't have food at home, their parents are working two or three jobs so that they do not have a parent when they come home. --re are many resources

afterschool programs, by the way, is the most effective -- host: professor schneider, unfortunately we have to leave it there. we are out of time. thank you so much for your time and for joining us this morning. that is cathy schneider, author >> on the next washington journal, a weeklong look at president johnson's great society. obj -- lbl talk about j's goals promoting poverty. and the discussion continues hans from the heritage center who will talk about the voting rights act. we will also take your calls and look for your comments on facebook and twitter. getting live at 7:00 eastern. -- beginning live at 7:00

eastern. >> coming up next, i look at union membership. after that, a discussion on the .otivations and goals after that the aspen ideas festival in colorado. former union members say why they left their union. this is just over one hour. >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation. we welcome those who join us on