how to improve relations between police departments and community members. and we will be taking your calls so can join the conversation at facebook and twitter. washington journal is next. ♪ host: good morning. it is saturday, march the seven. menendez has denied wrongdoing. in economic news, 295,000 jobs for february. the unemployment rate fell to 5.5%. businesses are now hiring of the fastest rate in two decades. we want to know what you think. what does recovery look like to you? we want to know. we will be take your calls for

the next hour and a half. if you have recently found a job, call us at (202) 748-8000. if you recently lost a job, call is that (202) 748-8001. if you are unemployed, call (202) 745-8002. all others can call (202) 748-0003. you can also tell us your story on social media. you can f find us on twitter @cspanwj. facebook, facebook.com/cspan. or send us an e-mail, journal@c-span.org. from the council of economic advisers, they point out that the public sector has added 12 million jobs over 60 straight months, the longest streak on record. you can see the genetic change here between the number of john laws during the dust of the wrist -- job loss during the

depth of the recession and the last 60 months. the recent bout of cold weather has not derailed job creation and perhaps economic growth as well. you can see february 14 and 15th. it is also much lower than it was in 2006, when many workers had to miss work because of bad weather. in the new york times, they have these charts showing the decline in unemployment rate from nearly 7% down to 5.5%. that is the lowest unemployment

rate we have seen cents the recovery began. you can also see the time people are spending in on employment has declined. the average time spent unemployed is now 31.7 weeks in february, and that is a 14% decline from one year ago. the median length a 14.1% nearly a 20% decline from one year ago. those two are hidden unemployed. those who may be working part-time and one full-time work, that number has also declined. people who want a job who are not currently in the labor force, that number has increased about 7%, or 6.6 million people. we will go ahead and take our first caller this morning. his name is bob, from new york he is unemployed. bob, are you there? caller: yes. thank you for c-span. host: thank you for calling this

morning. what are your thoughts? what does the economy look like to you? caller: you know, i think contrary to the reports, the job market is far more tight than i think the reports lead. certainly, there are minimum wage jobs. no question about that. if one wants to work one or two or three different minimum wage jobs, $10 per hour, or less. you can get them. in terms of trying to get a job as a professional where you are earning yourself -- $50,000 per year, $70,000 per year, those jars are hot -- jobs are hard to get, few and far between. host: how long have you been looking for a job j? caller: about one year.

and i just want to say, our elected officials are a complete waste of time. they are out there fighting obamacare, when it is a good thing. you have poor and middle-class people who are on obamacare, and they keep voting -- voting about obamacare when they should be focused on creating jobs in the united states and dealing with our trade policies, building infrastructure, all the things that should be done for the american people and taxpayers. whether it be democrat or republican, they are complete waste of time on capitol hill. only worried about themselves and not worried about the american people. it is an outrage. host: that was bob. from new york, new york. he has been looking for a job for about one year. we will keep on this topic for the next hour and a half or so, but we do want to spend some

time discussing this week's anniversary of the police attacks on civil rights marchers in selma, alabama. this moment was a watershed moment in the civil rights movement. president obama and other officials are in selma, alabama to commemorate the events. here with us to begin about what happened 50 years ago and the legacy is david jackson, a reporter from usa today. can you tell us what happened in selma, 50 years ago? break it down for us and why we are commemorating the event. 50 years ago -- guest: 50 years ago, they actively work ted to keep african-americans off the voting role. they were denied the right to

vote. one of the worst places was in selma, alabama. a very rural area, in south central alabama. eventually, martin luther king and the southern leadership christian conference got involved. on february 18, 19 65, there was a demonstration near selma where a man named jimmy jackson was shot and killed by the police. that inspired people to march demonstrating the need for voting rights legislation. the march was scheduled for march 7, 1960 five, exactly 50 years ago today. governor wallace oppose the march and an army of state troopers and police were waiting at the bridge to block these folks to from getting out of selma to march. the group was dispersed, and they were attacked, basically at

tax and club to prevent them from marching to montgomery. about 50 of them went to the hospital, including john lewis who is now a member of congress. host: you mention in your article yesterday that these events were particularly influential in president obama's life. can you explain that at the. caller: even though he was only about three years old at the time the idea of an african-american officeholder was very rare. after the outrage of this attack 50 years ago, it inspired congress to pass voting rights legislation which got rid of a lot of these barriers. as a result, we had millions of african americans come on the voting rolls. more and more african-americans got involved in politics. in addition to voting, many got

involved in office, elected to state school boards, local city hall,'s eight legislators, and work their way up to congress. 50 years later -- well, i guess 42 years later, we had an african-american run for president and one. a lot of people say he could not be president if it weren't for the voting rights act of 1965 and we wouldn't have that voting rights act if it weren't for somma. in 2007, right on the cusp of the 2008 election, there was a commemoration of the events in selma. all of the democratic candidates were down here, including barack obama, and he spoke very eloquently about why he was there. host: you mentioned there were many political candidates, presidential candidates, who were there back in 2007. president obama said this week and he is attending with his

family. does that have any special significance? caller: very much though. president obama does not only want to commemorate what happened 50 years ago, he wants to look ahead to the future. he and his wife michelle are bringing their daughters down here to talk about what happened here and how they have the obligation to carry on basically the march for freedom. there are still things left to be done. the nation still has some racial problems. we have these police community incidents, economic challenges in the african-american community, and president obama is bring his daughter's to trying convince other people to talk to their children about the legacy of selma and how the next generation needs to carried on. -- carry it on. host: obviously, this week there was an justice department report on the events in ferguson. we will be talking about that later on in today show. you expect that to come up at

all this weekend, or have you expect present obama to navigate the topic? caller: he himself said he is still working on the speech yesterday afternoon. he made a presentation in south carolina, and said he is still working on it. i'm surely he will reference some of the continuing racial tensions in the country. also, the economic challenges that facee african-american families. i'm not sure how specific he will be. host: what are the plans for this weekend, what will the commemoration look like? caller: this happens every year some kind of commemoration of selma. hundreds of thousands of people have attended. this year, the same groups are also scheduling a variety of events. present obama will be speaking at the foot of the edmund pettus

bridge, the bridge where the attack took place. i expect he and other leaders who are here will have a symbolic walk over the bridge. not just present obama but president george w. bush will also be here and i expect him to march over the bridge as well. tomorrow, there will be another be creation of the march with a lot of residence and state officials. there's a variety of events over the course of the weekend. host: david jackson, thank you so much for your time. c-span will be covering these events live on "american history tv" on c-span 3. we will be covering this both today and on sunday. at 1:00 eastern president obama, george w. bush, and congressman john lewis will be commemorating the event at the foot of the edmund pettus bridge. you can go to c-span.org for more details. we are taking a calls on the

state of the economy. we are changing of the lines for this segment. if you recently found a job, you can call (202) 748-8000. if you recently lost a job, call (202) 748-8001. if you are unemployed, (202) 745-8002. all others can call us at (202) 748-0003. of course, we are on social media as well. our twitter handle is @cspanwj. on facebook, we are at facebook.com/cspan. or you can e-mail us, journal@c-span.org. we will speak to i needa anita. caller: this is wonderful. thank you for taking my call. host: we want to know what your view is of the economy. caller: i think it is wonderful

that we are recovering. i think we should give some more credit to the obama administration. people don't give him enough credit. for doing the things that he has done for this country. i would like to make a comment about selma. i think it is wonderful that 50 years later we have the vote and the people in this country have the right to vote. -- i believe, and i am african-american, i think black people have become complacent in voting. you take ferguson. 67% of the population is black, but they have a white mayor, a white police department, and police chief, most of the school board is white.

what's going on down there? i don't understand why black people are not voting. host: next up is ernie from florida who has recently found a job. is that right? caller: yes. thank you for taking my call this morning. host: congratulations. what kind of work did you find? caller: clothing. clothing industry. my call this morning is about how i see a lot of people that won't work, but in america it seems like they feel they are too good to go back and get an education for the jobs that are available now. it seems like some people feel they are just. the reason they are stuck is because they will not make a change in their life. they won't get up in the morning and say, listen, i see that the jobs have collapsed in the area that i was in i need to get a

little more training, more education to find a better job because a lot of people, we have to agree that we won't get on the back of a truck and go out and work in the field or in the lawn care industry, roofing industry. host: did you have to undergo extra training to find your job in the clothing industry? caller: no, i was already trade in the industry, so wasn't hard for me to find a job. i see others that get stuck and get complacent looking at work and they see that may be the job is gone in the area they are in. they won't go in get a new training and they won't work a walmart job, because walmart only wants to pay eight or nine dollars per hour, and so they get stuck and complacent. they get mad at the

administration, saying it's not doing a good job. we can see, there are jobs. they won't go get training and the president, i see he is trying to bring along free education for let's say that to first years of junior's college to get your associates. i hope the republicans just stop fighting when another and try to work together because they need to put a different focus on american people instead of us squabbling and fighting one another. maybe we could sit down and try to help people get their mind focus on working and bring in this country back to the prominence it once had. host: all right. our next caller is pete from highland park, new jersey. calling on the other line.

pete, good morning. caller: good morning. boy, it's hard to get on here. i want some time to say something. republicans, six years of doing zero. no ideas. zero. what are they going to do? zero. what are their plans? zero. $3 trillion going to $4 trillion, on white? the iraq war. republicans. i want to speak up for obama and what happened with this netanyahu thing. host: do you have a view of the economy right now? are segment this morning is focused on the economy. you agree with the previous caller that obama is not getting enough credit for the economy? caller: absolutely.

but what i'm saying is netanyahu. hthe prime minister of israel was assassinated and his wife blamed netanyahu -- host: we will keep our discussion focused on the economy this morning. our next caller is cindy. cindy, you have lost a job recently. caller: yes. after 30 years in the same industry. the industry collapse. it was outdoors -- outsource. sd. i just want to touch on why some he people are out of the workforce. i'm over 50. i have an excellent track record. i've never been unemployed in my y life. after sending out resumes and

applying online, you don't get a lot of responses. they don't even respond to you. that becomes very degrading after a point. people do give up. you do what you have to do is to survive. it's a shame what's going on. they make it seem like it getting better, but for a lot of people it is not. when you do take a job, it is at a much lower rate. i don't think that is being addressed enough. host: all right, cindy. from pennsylvania. she recently lost a job. the washington post on the front page this morning has the story. as more go to work, more hold onto cash. the story says, the u.s. is short of a full scale lifts off. people are struggling with wages that are yet to grow fast enough to show a major change in behavior. that wage issue is related to what the college as mentioned

in that people may be finding jobs, but faced challenges as to what those jobs pay. president obama was in south carolina yesterday and spoke about what the unemployment rate shows. [video clip] president obama: our businesses have now added 200,000 jobs per month for over a year. we have not seen a street like that in 37 years since jimmy carter was president. [applause] all told, over the past five years, our businesses created nearly 12 million jobs. what's more, the unemployment rate for african americans is actually falling more than the overall unemployment rate. which makes sense because it went up higher in the recession. it is still too high. the unemployment rate across the country and here in south carolina is still higher than we want. which means we still have more work to do.

host: that was president obama speaking in south carolina about the state of the economy. we are taking your calls. getting your view on the progress of the recovery so far. next up is mike from germantown, maryland. mike, you recently found a job. is that correct? caller: i got it back in august. i don't know how recent you would consider that. before i continue with my statement, can i ask a question of c-span? host: is it related to the economy? caller: it's related to your format. i can no longer watch c-span on the internet, and live to believe that i should get cable tv to watch it? host: you can find more information about that on our website, c-span.org. there is information about how to watch c-span clips. if you do not have cable or you

need a sign on in order to do so. tell me more about your personal situation. caller: yes. i have a job. i think it is fairly secure. what i told to the screener is that you can believe what obama says. the real unemployment rate is closer to 30% or even higher. i would like to reckon it -- recommend a good guess, john williams. the government doesn't really include people that have given up work, people that are working part-time that would like a full-time job. host: my, actually, the chart that i showed earlier, i will bring it up again, from the new york times, it does include the hidden unemployment measures. people who are working part-time who want full-time work has actually declined 8%. caller: you are dealing with the

mainstream media here, so you're dealing with propaganda that is doing their best to prop up obama's lies. the affordable care act is make it even harder for people to find full-time work. the real unemployment rate is probably closer to 30%. john lewis would make a good guest. host: next up is steve from ohio, calling on the unemployment line. steve, go ahead. caller: i would have to say what the other gentleman said with regard to the 5.5% is false because it does not include the participation rate. it's probably more like 10%. in my case and i think in many people's case, one of the real problems is age discrimination. there's a lot of people like myself out there that are qualified. yes, people to overturn calls because they are so busy picking and choosing the has is a pick

and choose kind of thing these days, even with the jobs that are open. with regard to the stock market, that is false. can you hear me? host: i can hear you. caller: with regard to the stock market, that is a false number. the feds are keeping interest rates down. they are keeping interest rates down because the economy is in such a bad shape. host: that is steve from ohio. he was calling on the unemployment line. the wall street journal, in his newspaper, front page this morning also mention the stock market. they say the dow jones average slid three points. meanwhile, the dollar is at a high. investors seem to be pulling for

their execution of when the federal reserve will increase interest rates on the back of the strong jobs report. host: next is rene from san antonio, texas. rene, you are calling on the recently found a job line. caller: yes. i am a financial systems analyst . i think a lot of these people have skills and keep trying and trying. finally it doesn't pan out. i do believe that a player rate is distorted. i do think, before the labor department was using statistics that were found to be false and bogus. that really bothers me a lot. i also have a real beef with the treasury's chief that cause the situation. paulson, ruben, and diner. i think their policies host up a lot of people's lives and, like that one lady said, the psychology of being out of a job

is difficult. my heart goes out to her. host: next up is tom from arizona, calling on the unemployment line. tom, good morning to you. caller: good morning. host: tell us your story. caller: i agree with all of the colors of the unemployment numbers are false. most of our facts are false. then again, what can we expect when we see the number one liar in chief running the country. host: tom, how long have you been unemployed? caller: over two years right now. host: and what type of work do you do? caller: road construction. host: how have you been managing to make ends meet during this time? caller: welfare. host: all right. tom from arizona. our next caller is dan from salt lake city, utah.

dan is calling on the recently found job line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i did secure job recently. i'm certainly glad for that. however, the job that i got pays about two thirds of what i was making before. i had to apply to many many different places. one of the things i have working against me is the fact that i am 56 years old and i have come to find that age discrimination is more than a rumor. it is a fact. i've been told many many times that more qualified people were chosen despite the fact that i was number one in my communications job before. i also want to make a comment and that is that i think there

is a contract that has been broken. it always used to be that when you work full-time, there was an obligation that the employer would pay you a living wage. pay you enough to pay your bills. i don't see that anymore. i see that the wages -- i'm calling from utah, and the wages are very depressed. that's basically the way that employers want it. they feel no obligation to basically cover and paint a job that covers your bills. if their job doesn't pay the bills, that's tough. i think something is broken down and that is a concern to me. host: all right, dan from falling city, utah. next up is ray from pennsylvania, calling on the other line. ray, good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to i guess express what these other people have been saying about the false

number you have of 5.5%. i would like usc's then to do this. see if you can get the numbers i'm sure you can, of how me people are on welfare disability, social security. how may people are out there that you can estimate the are no longer receiving unemployment that are out there floating around that get neither one. they aren't being counted. at all those numbers up and see what you come up with. that is the true rate of unemployment. not what the government tells you. all these jobs being created half of those jobs are part-time jobs. how can you call those jobs? host: ray, i suggest you stay tune for our next guest coming up in about 15 minutes because she will be making down some of those numbers. all right, that was ray from pennsylvania. this was a response on twitter

from the white house and some other elected officials. the white house tweeted out 2014 was the best year of job growth since the late 1990s. you can see the change of the jobs that were lost in the recession to the jobs that have been created during the recovery. meanwhile, house minority leader nancy pelosi said this on twitter. five years of uninterrupted private sector job growth is a great milestone but we must do more to put the middle class first. that was also the message from the republican party as well. house speaker john boehner tweeted out welcome news that more americans found work but policies continue to lead out others. the ways and means communittee also tweeted.

robert is on the air. caller: good morning. thank you for giving me the opportunity. the problem -- with the exception of the minimum wage, the government doesn't care the amount of money that employers pay. we need to focus on the employee years, instead of the government. excuse me, if the minimum wage would increase, i think that would happen overall effect on salaries overall. but, the congress is reluctant to do that. so, i don't really understand why they complain about that. host: what do you think about employers like walmart and aetna voluntarily increasing the minimum amount that they pay employees? caller: i think is great.

overdue. i applaud those, but alive others have not followed suit. like i said, if congress would take action on their behalf to increase the minimum wage, i think that would be an impetus for other employees to do as well. host: all right, robert. next up is truly from west babylon, new york. troy, you recently found a job. is that right? caller: yes i did. thanks to some good people, i was disabled. before was disabled, i was a dj and a limo driver. technology wiped out a lot of industries. i was a dj and i ran a records job. -- record shop. itunes wiped out records. my heart goes out to people like the lady from pennsylvania they can't find a job.

as far as the gentleman who lost a job in broken structuring, you can blame republicans because they keep holding up the highway bill. bear with me a second. as far as people going to the government for grants, they got a lot of money. i can try to start my own business. other facts that i found out from other networks, there is a shortage in health care. if you bite the bullet and get your rn license, you will deftly have a lot of work no matter your age. i'm pushing 50 myself, but like i said, i have a job getting blind people like myself jobs. i'm going to be dj and a

house party next week and that will probably lead to a lot of jobs this summer. host: it sounds like that party will be a lot of fun. related to his comment, here's a breakdown of how jobs were added in february. the construction industry added about 29,000 jobs, food service nearly 60,000 jobs, health care 24,000 jobs. our next caller is thomas from humble, texas. he recently found a job as well. thomas, good morning. caller: good morning everybody. everybody's crying about we can't get the jobs and all that. when you got rid of the unions what did you think would happen? your wages would go down. people have fought and died for you. now you are crying. stop crying. what you need to do, another thing you need to do is get the

same pay rate for prescription jobs and canada and the united states, that would save a lot of money. host: next up is she left from corpus christi, texas on the unemployed line. sheila, go ahead. caller: good morning. i'm calling about unemployment. i am a mexican-american. it's not that we are trying to look for jobs. you can't find jobs. they are picking and choosing who they would like to hire for certain jobs. especially where i'm from. if you are african-american, you are not being able to get any jobs. i think barack obama has done a great job as president, but congress has put their foot down on the middle class for young black men who one decent paying jobs to make a decent living are not able. we, as women, are also

discriminated against and not able to get the jobs. ageism is also a factor. host: what industry do you work in? caller: i work in the mental health profession. with that profession, you have all kinds of people coming in trying to get jobs. it does get hard and takes a psychological toll on several people in this day and age try to find a job. for the people out there saying that people are not trying and blaming it on obama, no. people are trying. as the gentleman said, they are picking and choosing who they would like to employ. it's only some people who can get a walmart job. they would take that walmart job and do the best they can. but to be picked and chose based

on your race, age, sex great that's a problem in america. host: sheila from corpus christi, texas. next up is dana from north carolina who recently found a job. caller: i had to move out of my town to find a job. a small community. it is a minority community, but run by caucasians who are less educated than we are. host: how far did you have to move in order to find a job? caller: two and a half hours. because of the racist community that we live in. i've never really heard of a place where you can have a human resource manager that does not have a degree. but just because i know the right people and they are caucasian, they can actually get

a job. have you ever heard of a place where you don't -- where the human resource manager does not have a degree? host: sheila, what industry did you find a job in? caller: the health care profession. host: how long did it take you to find a job? caller: about seven months because of the way i was let go. at my previous job. host: are the wages what you are hoping for? caller: the wages not depend on the government. the wage depends on the employer. because we had deregulation from the republican party, there's no no one regulating how they let people go. racism still exists. you can't blame president obama for something he doesn't have control. i'm tired of these people getting on c-span and calling him obama.

if it wasn't for president obama care, i would not have health insurance now. host: next up is mclean from national tennis -- nashville, tennessee. who is also recently unemployed. caller: good morning. i'm from nashville. i just got a job. a third job, in fact, in nashville. i'm not an expert on the numbers, per se, but i can deftly say from my experience -- going back to the guy, actually all the callers that said the government numbers for unemployment are not true or inflated. most of the sites or the graphs that they state, cannot be corroborated either.

everybody they got a job and complains about wages, it's because of the republican policy. the funny thing about it is that most times you hear on the news, but no one really wants to say it, it's the republican policies that hurt the economy. they don't want to raise the minimum wage. they were union bashing. last time i checked, obama inherited a terrible economy because of republican policies. before president bush, clinton had a good economy. before him, he inherited a terrible economy from another republican. george bush first had to raise taxes after reagan. if you look of the last 40 years of american history, republican policies have actually made the economy worse. every time we have democrat policies, you can even see on the local level.

right now, all the states run by governors, their unemployment rate is higher. host: we have to leave it there. on twitter, there is this comment. jobs up, but buses are cheap. dita is calling from dayton, ohio. caller: hi, dear. i'm sorry, my name is dita. i recently went back to school and got a second master's degree, started working with a private school. i am in education. in 2012, -- i'm sorry, 2013, i am with a public school right now. my concern is back in 2005, i was in the business industry, insurance industry. no one seems to focus on back when the republicans were in office, in 2005, there was an attack on -- i call it an attack

-- on single parents, on moms who had children, or children in college. we were making good salaries at that time, but slowly but surely we were being dumped on with work. they found reasons to let us go. i had my son call me when he was at school, in college, and said, mom, the same thing happen to one of my friends. his mom had worked with the same company for 15 years and they let her go. this has been -- now, in 2015, i'm starting to get my feedback on the ground and it has -- feet back on the ground and it has a lot to do with president obama being in office and his policies and what he is pushing for. host: that is dita. our next caller is william from georgia who also recently found

a job. caller: good morning. i recently found a job. the problem is, most of these people are calling complaining about aids dissemination. these are the same things happening in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000. i'm discriminated because of the color of my skin. now, all of a sudden, older white guys are screaming ages given nation. if you want to vote on what's in the best interest of you instead of a party, you will see, middle-class voting for republicans is not in your best interest. host: william in georgia. our last caller for this segment is from missouri, calling on the other line. good morning. caller: good morning.

i'm calling because i am a registered nurse. i have tried over the last 10 years, three different times to work. i am in desperate need of a laser surgery, so i can't get back to work. i am 55 years young. i'm willing to work, but our state of missouri has as paying them $560 per month. we recently lost our home of 23 years because they cannot afford the upkeep. we've had to move to these apartments. we lost our car because we could not keep up the car payment. i've written to our governor. in 2005, we had a republican governor, and he change this medicaid, where people now have to spend in or paid to get this insurance. i have tried numerous times to call the number to get

obamacare. every time i do, they tell me there is no help available in missouri for me. so, i am just really frustrated because i feel like if the government would put a little money out and help me get this health problem of mine corrected, i could return to work and be a productive citizen again. i've cap might are an license. -- i've kept up my artrn license. this is not an obama problem, this is a problem in missouri. host: we will be continuing our discussion of the economy in the next segment. we will be speaking with michelle jamrisko of bloomberg news to break down the numbers. later, looking at the events in ferguson, missouri, we will talk to the former civil rights

lawyer, william yeomans. stay tuned. ♪ >> here are some of our featured programs on the c-span networks this weekend.

today, starting a new easter, we are live from selma. on sunday, our live coverage continues with service from the historic brown chapel, the starting point for the selma marches. find our complete getchell on c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us at 202-626-3400. join the c-span conversation -- like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. the political landscape has changed with the 114th congress. not only are there 43 new

republicans and 15 new democrats in the house. there are also eight new women in the house, including the first african-american woman in the house and the first woman veteran in the senate. keep track of the congress with the congressional chronicle on c-span.org. the congressional chronicle has a lot of useful information including voting statistics. new congress, best access on c-span. "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with michelle jamrisko. she is a reporter with bloomberg news. thank you so much for joining us this morning. the economy added 295,000 jobs in february. the unemployment rate fell to five point 5%. is this a good thing? what are these numbers telling us to go guest: those headlines were very good. we have seen such a good job

growth over the past year. we had the best year 2014, and we sell those gains continue in january and february. those are all looking good. i think one edge on the report was wages. people were hoping those would rise faster, we really saw an agreement arise. host: why haven't wages kept pace with the west of the -- rest of the recovery? guest: that is the big mystery. companies are finally feeling the pressure that job seekers coming into the workforce and a need to raise wages and order to attract those jobseekers and retain workers that they have. i think we are starting to see examples of that. you mentioned wal-mart at at not earlier. they may set that trend.

february is a disappointment in that regard. host: you can call us and weigh in. we are keeping up the phone lines for this segment. actually we keeping the normal lines for the segment. if you are a democrat, you can call us at (202) 748-8000. on the republican line, (202) 748-8001. the independent line, (202) 745-8002. outside the u.s., (202) 748-0003 . you can find us on twitter @cspanwj. on facebook, facebook.com/cspan. or send us an e-mail, journal@c-span.org. michelle jamrisko something they came up last segment was at the other employment numbers are false or misleading. guest: i think none of the gauges are perfect. we were talking to some private sector folks that measure jobs in a different way.

people had criticisms about how they are collected. to be fair, there aren't that many counterproposals out there that seem to have a broader sample size. i think what the labor department does is they call households and businesses together those numbers, together the job gains as well as on the appointment rate. the sample size they have -- about 95% of households participate in the survey, which seems surprising if you think about willingness, or lack of willingness, to respond by phone to surveys in general. an establishment have a similarly high rate of participation. once we get more survey data from establishments, they update the figures for the prior month. it is pretty comprehensive. again, not perfect. of course, you have discrepancies in terms of how people answer certain questions. some people made he too

embarrassed to talk about employment, and maybe there are a few that say they are employed and they are really not. that is on the you have to deal with as a survey provider. host: we are taking a call this morning. first up is air from little rock, arkansas. on the republican line. caller: hello. i believe the economy is doing rather well, but as your guest pointed out, wages are stagnant. that is potential to be a problem. also, we need to consider the future. automation, when it replaces thousands and thousands of jobs. the most common job in the country is chart drivers. imagine when automated vehicles take hold. we will need some sort of program take over. we need to consider universal basic income. at potentially dismantle the

social welfare state to find it. host: that is a good point. you hit a much broader issue. there's any number of articles week to week in the economy world on automation. i think certain industries may feel threatened by that. there are ways of gauging whether there are people coming into the industry, to figure out how to change the economy to adapt to be technology that we had. we have seen rnd spending in the economy really improved. i is something we can maybe keep an eye on to see if that helps the job picture, as far as adapting our economy to the new world. host: are there any signs that the wages may be picking up? the wall street journal reported

that -- restaurant wages doomed more than 3% in the second half of last year. they are doing better than wage gains in the private sector overall. guest: that's right. we've seen a lot with restaurant demand, it is actually very strong right now. people look at that and take a glass half empty approach saying, restaurant growth is great, but those wages are low. the good thing there is we have seen it quite strong for a while. a lot of people say they may be eating there fuel savings. they are saving at the gas pump and think they have enough to go out and spend at a restaurant. obviously, that is a positive thing. bumping up wages at restaurants. the important thing is it seems

more broad-based than that. we sell wider payroll gains last month. he hoped to see in months to come higher gains as well. there are leading indicators. surveys of small businesses, the federation of independent businesses does a survey of businesses and they seem to have plans to raise wages. they are optimistic about the outlook for this year. that is good. host: the next caller is terry. terry, go ahead. caller: good morning, ladies. how are you this morning? host: good. caller: i'm listening to the republican bashing this morning and you've had one of the main charts of their showing when job losses started in 2006. that year was a major year. democrats want a major election. we started losing jobs in 2006 when democrats took control. we start taking jobs back up in

2010 when john boehner became speaker of the house. the democrats need to understand that they have some role in what happened. it's not just republicans. and for obamacare, there's that and the other, i've heard a lot of democrats complaining about the rich. you've got wall street and the martha's binge figure it. here in the south we only have walmart and kentucky fried chicken. host: whenever you bring politics into the timeline, it can be tricky. there was a study last year about how the economy -- the economy and the president are not always connected. there are a lot of things out of politicians control, so does the tiered policies can only go so far. i think as far as the timeline

that terry mentioned, it is accurate, but is hard to pin it on any single party. everyone loves to take the credit, as we saw with the statement out yesterday, but it's not easy to ascribe outside side. host: is there any sense that the gridlock in congress is hurting the economy? guest: it's hard to tell. i used to be a political reporter, but that's not might be anymore. people will say -- businesses will say there are regulations restraining them. if that holds, that could affect how they operate and of course how jobs are added and how wages are increased. host: next up is rick, from jacksonville florida on the independent line. go ahead. caller: was that last caller telling a joke? are you kidding me?

the great depression started in -- what, 2009? and he's saying republicans were in charge? that's terrible. what i want to say is -- the unemployment numbers, when did that start? host: i'm sorry, can you repeat your question one more time. caller: my question was the recent callers have been saying the jobless numbers are fakes. the 5.5 number is not correct, it is actually a different number. did this question just start being asked when obama was president? guest: it is a good question. there is a lot of data in this report. a lot of the data go back to

caller: just a couple of facts that i read recently from the bureau of labor statistics that say there's 57 f 52 million women not working in the labor force which is i guess the largest amount ever posted. and there is approximately 92 million americans either not working or under employed. so my question is, did the -- if the economy is improving why is government dependency uncreasing? guest: well, to your point, the women -- i'm not sure those figures, i would have to look to verify the exact figures but women have actually improved better than men in terms of job gains. i'm not -- i would have to check how they did last month. but underemployment is

certainly an issue. certainly something that federal reserve chair janet yellen and her colleagues is worried about. as we see these broader gains we want to see people who when we say underemployment, people who are working part time but want a full time job. those are the people involved. of course long term unemployment is still very high. something that's almost twice the historical average. so certainly kind of a mystery why we're not able to get those folks back to work. most say that will come in due time. we're having these phenomenal job gains. to bring these people back in will take some time but it should come. >> host: two related questions. one asks. guest: they're not exactly the same because first they're different time lines. we do the claims every week.

they're reported for the last survey period was roughly a few days before. and that's of course is every month. so you tend to see sum lar patterns in each. of course it makes sense we're talking about the gains. initial claims are low. we saw a fairly high number last week but this time of year can be hard to adjust for seasonable factors. a lot of people may not be going out to file. there's a snow storm. or it could go in the other direction and more businesses lay off workers when they don't have enough demapped during snow storms. so there can be a little bit of volatility there but the long term trend is showing us claims around 300,000 which is a very good level. 300,000. so it's certainly very indicative in reflecting the job gains we're seeing. host: brad from michigan.

caller: the seat of michigan just kicked loose a lot of money for community colleges to train people. skill trades. electricians welders machinists. i'm a machinist by trade been one for 30 years. my employer is trying to find a machinist. he's been looking for three or four months and cannot find one. and this is old-fashioned technology. unfortunately they're going to train these kids to -- but it takes many years to get up to speed on the things you have to know to be an actual machinist. the diversity of things you do. it's just amazing that you have all peeze people walking around with college degrees and $80,000 worth of college debt and right now they're starving for skilled trades people.

the school system the last 20 years have been telling students that don't get into them. they're old-fashioned. it's all going to chipea. and they didn't. now they have a shortage. kind of like the nursing shortage in the 80's. >> it's an important point. one of the conversations that the administration has been having, too, is to what extent do we actually encourage a lot of people to go to these training programs? college is great but not for everyone. something president obama has said too and leaders in both parties. i think these training programs are trying to get at one of the things we hear a lot, especially manufacturing, is that there seems to be some sort of skills gap and different economists will debate. the skills gap idea is that there are not, as the caller mentioned, the same types of skills being retained in

certain manufacturing jobs. and machinery that might seem outdated to some that, you know, my generation and others older than me and younger than me are going into different jobs and they're not going to the same jobs that we've traditionally had a lot of. so manufacturing is an interesting industry. it's good to hear an example of a state that's doing the training programs. it's kind of enlightening to see how different states are handling the issue. host: nesk up is joe. caller: thanks for having me on c-span. the question i have is first of all i live in an area of the country where things statsically always kind of look rosy. but when i look back it is a tough place out there. i'm an executive in a company and we work like crazy and we can't hire a lot because we have to work like crazy to get sales and all that.

but the bottom line is this on the unemployment. i assume that you read the article by -- called the big lie. i would love to hear your response on that. i would also like to hear -- the overinvestment that ultimately triggered the event in the 2007-2008 that kind of tore the economy apart. there's a lot of factors that go into what's going on. i would love to hear your response. >> sfoo guest: i'm not sure i'm familiar with the article you mentioned. caller: as a journalist you should read it. the title is called the big

lie. and it was published within the last two weeks. if you google the big lie, you will find it. guest: i'll have to take a look at the article. he does address the underemployment issue which again has been something that we've been taking a look at. we didn't mention it earlier but underemployment actually dropped to 11% last month. so that was kind of receding from a level alarmingly high for some and it's getting better. >> wall street did not seem to share the numbers yesterday. this headline in the wall street level. on twitter. guest: it's always a fun game to gauge why the markets move

the way they did. yesterday the prevailing series seemed to have been -- and this has happened in previous months, too, is that the stock markets especially are looking at what does it mean to have a good jobs report. and that goes back to federal reserve policies. so everybody is waiting for this year the federal reserve to take the next step in normalizing what they say is monetary policy. and what they are intending to do is to raise the interest rate. they haven't raised the interest rate since 2006. it has been near zero since 2008 to keep borrowing costs low to help spur housing recovery especially. so the stock market gets skittish about this. they do not want interest rates to rise. so to see a great jobs number leads them to believe the feds will be encouraged to move sooner and encouraged to raise the interest rates. host: harry calling from medford, new jersey. caller: good morning.

i was just calling because i am -- want to make a point. banks, large companies, wall street run our economy. and with all the laws we have and the competition that's out there makes it hard. for people to get jobs. i feel that there should be an easier way for us to make people become self-employed. number one. it takes money to become self-employed. number two is in order to become self-emploimed everyone thinks you need all this education. well, i have years of experience. i work for a large corporation ran eight businesses or eight company stores and was successful. but when you leave that position and try to get a job it's hard. guest: i think he hits on an important point. this is something i was

thinking about this morning. self-employment and entrepreneurtial. this is another area where maybe we would benefit from more statistics on how encouraged people are to kind of launch on their own. in the monthly jobs report you do have a statistic on those who are self-employed and that went down. but sometimes that can be a good thing that again going back to how you respond to a survey. maybe you say if you're unemployed maybe you say you're a consultant because you're doing work here and there, so it's kind of a gray area where we're not quite sure exactly how well that's doing. i think there are organizations that are certainly gunning for more entrepreneurism in the economy that certainly helps to have a lot of people starting small businesses where the job creators. so it is an interesting point to see someone advocating for sell employment. host: diane on the democratic line.

caller: what my thoughts are is like the gentleman previously. i think as an employed black female in new jersey a lot of this starting with the outsourcing. if you don't do anything about the outsourcing then yes the job numbers are going to look really great because they're outsourcing to overseas. so the americans suffer actually. when you outsource the jobs. when you can pay someone an zutive per se $17,000 a year as opposed to an american say rf of $50,000 a year, it's kind of like it hurts the american economy. guest: she also hits on another big topic to discuss.

bigger than certainly than just the monthly jobs report but the onshoring, scrauf shoring debate. we've seen the past couple decades a lot of offshoring. moving jobs to lower wage countries so the companies don't have to pay as much. we've seen some encouraging signs of that kind of reversing itself a little bit in terms of finding -- wages are rising in some areas of the world that they weren't before. china being one example. so some people are advocating for companies to bring those jobs back home. a lot of manufacturing jobs being created in that sense. not quite enough. manufacturing is one area that has kind of been lagging in terms of the job gains this recovery. we saw some encouraging signs last month again because it was so broad based across industries. hour the president has this goal of 1 million manufacturing jobs to be added in his second term. i think we're barely a third of

the way there. so that's kind of one gauge to look at. one piece of the pie that she mentioned of this broader onshoring debate. >> you mentioned earlier how the lower price of gasoline might be benefiting consumers. you rote wro an article in bloomberg recently. can you explain that a little bit? >> inflation can be a tricky issue because you look at it from a consumer perspective and a central banker's perspective. the consumers, as you mentioned it's nice to go to the gas pump and see a much lower price. those are rising but still near six-year lows. it's nice to see anything. go to a clothing libe store and see clothes discounted. these are things consumers look at. the things they spend money on.

food prices can be volatile. from the central bankers' perspective we often talk in the economy world about what it means to have very low inflation. 2% is sort of a goal that a lot of central banks incheweding our own use to kind of gauge whether there's enough inflation, enough price growth to be indicative of broader demands. you don't want to have a flat line 0% price growth or what we call deflation negative price growth. that can set off negative effects in the rest of the economy and be signs of negative effects in the economy. host: emily -- caller: thank you for c-span. you all do a great job. i would like to make another attempt to drill down. that's the disbelief in government figures.

there's good news import bid the government. jobs increasing over the past 5 years. productivity growing. perhaps a decade. stock market at record levels. yet wage growth seems flat. wage gap is growing. labor participation is low. it's been flat the past year. i'm not giving a conspurry theory but there does seem to be a consistency. can you come back to the subject and say a few more words about why there is a such a discrepancy? guest: i think you hit on two different things here. one being the integrity of the survey which we were talking about. that addresses -- there's two different pargets of the monthly jobs report. there's the household survey and establishment survey. and speaking of them kind of telling different stories. sometimes one will look good and the other won't. for instance if we have a month of -- this has happened in the past year where we have a month

of a great jobs gains but the unemployment rate rises. there's certain reasons that can happen. it has to do with the size of the labor force and whether or not more people were coming in but hadn't yet found jobs. and that can still be an encouraging sign. but you can kind of dissect that in one sense. and the latter part i think the caller was talking about the theme that we've hit on this morning also, these headlines look great. the job gains, the unemployment rate goes down. however wage growth not where we want it to be. again i would say a lot of this stuff the economists are telling us that it does take a little bit of time and we would have maybe expected to see more hints in february of that wage growth and a lot we're really disappotented. obviously the sooner the better. however, some of these signs take a while to present themselves. wage growth is now on a year over year rate at 2%.

that's the same actually matches the average since this expansion started in 2009. so obviously we would like to see a little more improvement kind of accelerate past that level but we're not seeing it quite quiet. host: is there any movement to include people who are under employed or people who are discouraged workers into our assessment over the overall unemployment rate? guest: we do. we have different measures. the so-called u-3 measures, the 5.5%, which is the overall measure, we also have the u-6 measure which is the under employed. and that's what we mentioned earlier, parttime workers who would like a full time job and other whose are kind of not quite where they want to be in their job situation. so that is another level. and some people say that's a better and more broad and comprehensive gauge of where we are. that obviously not as

encouraging as the 5.5%. it's at 11%. and then we mentioned long-term unemployed. those who have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. and those numbers have been receding. they made a lot of gains in the past year in terms of kind of getting bark to work or at least back into active participation. and but it still is very high. it's around 31% of jobless have been out of work that amount of time. that's not very encouraging. host: so those measures do exist. they just don't get the same amount of attention. guest: it's hard to give them the attention when some of these other headlines are crowding them out. of course they're still very important and something that janet yellen and her colleagues have said they're also looking at month to month as often as they can. host: ronny, go ahead. caller: i appreciate you all.

just want to say that it's funny that the republicans in washington have fought the president from the time he got in all the way through now. just to hear them complain about jobs doesn't make a lot of sense. the thing that gets to me is that they first started out making him a one-term president and they have done everything that they could think of to stop him in any way that they can. i commend him. he has been successful. host: all right. next up regina calling on the republican line. caller: this is to ronny and all these people who think i'm supposed to subsidize all this that's going on. the republicans are working

correctly. a report by the center for immigration studies found that 1.5 million fewer workers employed prior to 2007 recession. 2 million foreign born workers got jobs during the same period. president obama's plan to allow more than 5 million new illegal aliens to get work permits will make it more difficult. you can only work 30 hours a week under obamacare. the guy that called in and said that wal-mart and aetna are doing the right thing. wellings wal-mart has gotten zones for years sucking the money out of my income while i pay for schools and hospitals because they are under programs that they don't have to pay taxes. now we have more companies that don't have to pay taxes while the smaller companies are the ones that haven't been hitched up yet to the tax free zones they still have to pay the taxes. aetna is getting these

subsidies that need to be stopped. people need to get a grip. we can't afford these subsidies. in pennsylvania they need to be rejected. we don't want to have to be in bondage for these unbelieveable high cost. we cannot afford it just as they can't afford health insurance. the mandate has put me in bondage. that's what obama did and all his democrat friends. host: do you have any thoughts? guest: well, again these callers are hitting on the political dynamics here. we see as you showed earlier a lot of statements from either side talking about the things we still need to do. we've been on this path for several months now for the last year of very steady job gains. it's almost like there's not enough creative things to say in response to one monthly jobs report. so a lot of them are kind of hitting the same points.

both from the democratic side they talk about wages and different things that they're trying to do to he the middle class. the republican side are trying to create jobs through keystone pipeline for instance and other things they have advocated for. so i think the same arguments are coming through month to month right now. host: james,nd nt line. caller: good morning. i'm a union guy. we have lost -- they're trying to outlaw the nlrb. they're doing everything they can to speak bad about the unions. when i got out of the service after vietnam i went under an apprenticeship and the v.a. helped me supplement my income so my family could live. we should do something like that no now.

but it does -- a nonunion family it costs a nonunion family as much to build something as much a union company to build something. host: all right. guest: he hits on the union decline. i think this is something that a lot of people especially in a stagnant wage atmosphere have looked at. union participation, union membership has been declining for a couple decades now at least. and that could be dampening factor for wage growth. host: democratic line. patricia good morning. caller: good morning. i'm calling because i'm a small business owner and they say small businesses create jobs which is absolutely correct. i give out at least a dozen w-2's at the end of the year. home care, goes to different

jobs or get better jobs. i'm calling because how do they expect a small business to be able to pay the payroll taxes and the workers compensation and the labor when they have to go through up employment? it really -- we need help with the taxes that are imposed on small businesses. we're just spinning our wheels. we are creating jobs and i just don't understand when they say small businesses create jobs and they do, where is the help so that we can stay in business and employ people? guest: can i ask if you've -- we've lost the caller. i would have been interested to hear her business plans as a small business. but she is absolutely right. we're talking about the job growth among small businesses so that they make up about roughly 85% of the jobs that are added. but this is something that we've heard from other small businesses especially in kind of an uncertain regulatory

environment. a lot of things happened after the recession ended in trms of trying to rejigger our regulations not just with wall street and the banks but how do we protect this business community and how do we change kind of the environment that may have led to the last downturn? so -- and that can be very uncertain with small businesses. you don't know, as she mentioned, the taxes and the uncertainty of paying different levels now and paying more in benefits and that sort of thing. i think that takes as kind of a -- a little while to sort itself out. there's still a lot of debate in congress an elsewhere about what do we do about certain business regulations. is it too strict? have we gone in the other direction and kind of restrained them from making further job gains? making progress in terms of not just adding people but raising wages as we talked about? so this caller hits on an important point. small businesses do feel like

they need help dissecting that landscape and understanding what they should do in order to keep their business going. host: i want to ask you quickly about the federal reserve's role in this recovery. you wrote an article that now versus then. how the economy stacks up. and by several measures that you show in your article we are in a similar economy to the last time the fed started raising rates. we've had a couple comments here on twitter. guest: well, that's the big question. that's the million-dollar question. i think a lot of people as you mentioned some of these gauges look very similar to where we were the last time they did this. and a lot of people are saying, well we're ready. it seems like a lot of these things are pointing to them moving. the fear is as someone on twitter meppingsed there's always a fear you can move too soon. but when they do move, when

they raise interest rates it could set off some jitters in the economy. it could be some short-term tumultuous atmosphere. it's certainly in the markets. but maybe more importantly more broadly and main street and elsewhere. but i think that the fed is trying to navigate a very new environment after the last recession. it was a very unique recession. so the timing has been tricky. i think there's always the risk that they move too late. that they raise interest rates too late and it could spur too high inflation. and get that going. but we'll see how it goes. they're certainly expected to move this year so it's around the corner. >> we have time for just a few more callers. caller: i really don't think it has anything to do with somebody as incompetent as

obama and his -- we hear him every morning. none of them tell the truth about anything. it's the people that create the jobs, the people like me that went out and started a business with all their money that they had and scraped by to get a business going. and hired people. for anyone to think it's some government guy that plays golf and is so busy trying to figure out his next golf game that he can't pay attention to a rock it's hilarious. host: all right. i'm going to get in one last call here and let you have the final word. michigan now. independent line. karl, go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. michelle would you answer a question. after the 2006 election, what party was in control of the senate and what party was in control of the house?

guest: well, i mean you're asking me to engage in a political analysis of this and i usually stay away from that as i say because i think often times it's not as productive to talk about the political implications of some of these numbers. it's a fairly loose connection in our world i would say. host: did you have another point? caller: yes. i'm 77 and i am from detroit. if we want to see how government and the indians respond and take care of things, come to detr and spend two days driving around. we should be spending more time on the things that the government have destroyed and has taken apart and made difficult for the country instead of talking about how government can solve the problem. government is the problem. and i'm very disappointed that you wouldn't answer a simple question in 2006 who was in controlte and the house. that's not a tough one. host: that was karl from

michigan. guest: hinge he addressed detroit which is an interesting point to look at. especially we had an auto bailout after the recession. and to that point manufacturing in detroit is doing very well. car sales are doing quite strongly right now. host: michelle economics reporter for bloomberg news. thank you so much for taking some time this morning. next we'll be talking with william yeoman a former civil rights lawyer at the department of justice. he will be speaking about the report from the department of justice this week on the ferguson police department.

>> you would see what they used to call when i was a kid a mut and jeff combination or a stick

ball set. washington is -- was a large man. six foot very robust. terrific natural athlete. and madison is a skinny little guy. >> this sunday on q&a historian david o. sturert on founding father james madison and the part npship that aided in our fledgeling nation. >> the gift i write most about is his ability to form partnerships with the great people of his era. but it alludes to his gift to the country of his talents and what he was able to do to help create the first self-sustaining constitutional republic. "washington journal" continues. caller: our next guest is

william yomans, a professor at american university washington college of law. he spent 26 years at the department of justice where he litigated civil rights cases including hate crimes and police misconduct. thank you so much for being here this morning. >> it's a pleasure to be here. host: you're here to talk about the reports the doff justice released this week. can you tell us what those said? guest: there were two reports. the one that closed the investigation into the shooting of michael brown, the criminal investigation. and the federal government decided that concluded that there was insufficient evidence to seek federal charges against officer darren wilson for the shooting. what they meant was that they didn't think there was sufficient evidence to satisfy what is a very high federal standard for prosecution. it requires a showing that officer wilson acted with the specific intent to use more force than was reasonably necessary under the

circumstances. what that means is that the federal government had to be able to get into what officer wilson was thinking at the time and it found that there wasn't sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction. it doesn't actually clear people. it just determines they can't go forward with a prosecution. host: we have a statement from the actual report itself that says federal statutes require the government to prove that officer used unreasonable force and that he did so willfully. guest: that's right. and so what they found was, obviously there was a lot of conflicting evidence. we heard that through the investigation. but based on their credibility, determinations and analysis of the physical evidence, the forensics, they concluded that it was not hah prosecuteable case. and that's what they do. they don't actually provide an

all-clear to the victims or to the officer who is being investigated. what they say simply is there is not enough evidence to go forward. host: that's one of just two reports. guest: right. the other report which i think in the end will be far more consequential was a civil investigation under a statute that's called 14141 which allows the department to sue if it finds that a police department has engaged in a pattern or practice of violating federal rights. and what the department found with regard to the ferguson police department is simply astonishing. it's stunning. it found numerous constitutional violations and what it found was a police department that really had lost its sense of mission for a police department and had become a kind of revenue raising institution. that existed primarily to

extract as much money as possible from the local citizenry. and it worked in conjumpings with the local municipal courts. and so the department found that the police department was violating the constitution in numerous ways including stopping people without reasonable suspicion arresting people without probable cause, using unnecessary force, and then as -- and in charging people, giving people citations that in many cases were not warrented. but then adding citation upon citation upon citation. so somebody might be stopped for a traffic stop and end up with five separate citations. and this was all in an effort to enhance revenue. and we have the justice department found e-mails from the leadership of fergsop saying we have a revenue gap. so the police need to step up their enforcement of citations. so there was great pressure on the police to meet their quotas to bring in enough revenue to

keep the city going. because this is the main source of the city's revenue. but what was truly stunning was the finding of racial discrimination. throughout the police department. so all of the constitutional violations that i just mentioned, the stops and all of that, were tingged by racial discrimination. there was racial disparities and intentional discrimination. for instance, african american drivers were twice as likely to be stopped as white drivers. but they were 6% less likely to be found with contra band when searched. african americans who make up something like 67% of the population were made up 93% of the arrested. so there was a huge disparity in the way the law was being enforced. host: the "washington post" this week put together these charts of some of the stats stecks you mentioned such as the number of african americans who were arrested 93% were

black. the amount of unreasonable force that was used according to the report, 100% of all those involved in k-9 biting were african american. petty offenses 90% were african americans and several times -- it goes on court practices 95% of people held at the ferguson jail longer than 2 days were african american. we want to hear what you think about these issues as well. you can call us and join the conversation. we have a special line open for law enforcement to call in with their thoughts and experiences. we're also on social media. twitter. facebook. sepped us an email. we're talking with william who

is a professor at american university. you mentioned the justice department is suing the ferguson police department. what is sort of the scope of d.o.j.'s ability to enforce its recommendations on the police department? guest: so the situation that the department in ferguson are in now is that the department has issued this lengthy and detailed report. and it has come up with roughly 26 things that need to change in the ferguson police department. large things. and so ferguson and the do justice are now in negotiation to see if they can work out an agreement that will bring about the kind of thorough systemic change that is necessary to fix the ferguson police department. if they cannot reach an agreement, the justice department will file a law suit. if they can reach an agreement, then that agreement will be entered into court as a consent decree and then it will -- the implementation of the reforms

will be overseen by the court who will most likely appoint a monitor who will keep a detailed eye on what's going on and make sure that the city follows through with the necessary changes. it's not at all clear that this process will be easy. it certainly won't be easy, it will take a while. and one of the problems is that reaching an agreement and then depending on the people who presided over this very mess to change it is problematic. and so it's quite likely that there will have to be major personnel changes as well as major structural changes to bring about the necessary change. and i noticed that the attorney general yesterday said that if necessary the department would even consider dismantling the ferguson police department. it would have to do that through the court but unless ferguson really gets on board

and shows a commitment to bringing about the kinds of changes that the justice department wants, that could well happen. host: here is a story now from reuters about the comments you just mentioned. what kind of time lipe are we looking at here? guest: i think the department of justice will want to move fairly quickly. these kinds of changes will not happen overnight. the three employees who have left were significant employees. one was the clerk of the court of the municipal court and two were supervisors in the police

department. and i guess the suspicion is that all three were involved in sending around these terribly racist e-mails that the department discovered. but it's going to take much more than changing three people to change a culture that is as corrupt as ferguson police department. host: we'll turn now to our caller. the first one is chad. caller: good morning. i wanted to comment on a few of my experiences in america as an african american. i live in georgia from an area where there's a lot of low income people. i've been stopped quite a few times without probable cause looking for things like drugs on me for doing something as

simple as checking the mail box. i notice when i turn on the tv a lot of people don't believe the things that african americans are experiences. i want to know your thoughts on some of the things that we can do to better the relationship between the community and the police department and help people who have had experiences like mine really change our situation. guest: i think it's extremely important for there to be strong community involvement in dealing with the mis. and certainly we've seen that kind of pressure can bring about change as it has in ferguson. one of the things that i think is key in the kinds of reforms that the justice department is talking about is to reorient the police department toward community policing. which means that the police become much more engaged in the community. and this is true many police

departments do this and do it extremely well. it's effective in not only improving relationships but it makes a huge difference in fighting crime and building a relationship of trust within the community and the police department that makes the whole process much more effective. so i think that community pressure along with an acceptance of the principles of community policing can make a huge difference. and they have to be combined. a part of community policing is to make the policing process much more transparent to the communities and to get the community engaged in the policing process. and where that happens you find much healthier police departments, much more effective police departments, and much happier communities. so i think that's the goal that people need to strive toward. host: linda from michigan. caller: good morning. i would like to say that i thought i heard you say that

one of your statistics show that 100% show that the people who were bit by the dogs were african american. dogs aren't racist. they will react to the actions of others. so if the others have shown aggression, those dogs are going to react. if they have to bite them, they bite white people, too. guest: well, i think -- i don't know the facts of each incident. it does seem striking that all 14 uses of force by dogs were against african americans. and i think it has enormous symbolic resonance obthis the 50th anniversary of the march from selma to montgomery. as we know dogs were unfortunately very involved in

combating civil rights demonstrators. and i think it brings back a very sour memory. host: president obama, who is in selma this weekend, did speak about the justice department reports earlier this week while he was in south carolina. >> what we saw was that the ferguson police department in conjunction with the municipality saw traffic stops arrests, tickets, as a revenue generator, as opposed to serving the community. and that it systemically was biased against african americans in that city who were stopped, harassed, mistreated, abused called names, fined,

and then it was structured so that they would get caught up in paying more and more fines, that they couldn't afford to pay or were made difficult for them to pay which raised the amount of additional money that they had to pay. and it was an oppressive and abusive situation. host: that was president obama speaking in south carolina about the department of justice's reports and findings out of the ferguson police department. how common do these practices seem to be not just in ferguson but across the country? are there other police departments where situations like this have occurred? guest: sure, there are. and i think it's important to say that it used to be a

heavily majority white jurisdiction which has now become 6% african american. and i think that we see a numb of cities like that surrounding large metropolitan areas. where there's been an outmigration from the inner city and african americans have moved into the first ring of the suburbs. and in many of those jurisdictions the traditional white establishment has stayed in power. and those transitions have created the kinds of tension that i think you see in ferguson. so i think it's particularly important for all of us and particularly for the justice department to pay attention to those -- that particular model of jurisdiction. host: larry from new york. caller: you kind of addressed the issue that i want to bring up. is that if a community is 67% african american i'm assuming

that 67% of the votesers were african american also. and if that's the case then how come there wasn't more representation on the city council and in the police department? it seems to me -- i'm sure the report is accurate but it seems to me that the black community has some responsibility or the civil rights leaders has some responsibility in getting the black community involved in their own city government. guest: i agree. political participation is key. i think there are lots of reasons that people have not participated in the political process in ferg son i suspect you will see an uptick in political participation. but remember that in some instances because people are in jail because people have criminal records, whatever it becomes extremely difficult to vote. so i agree that the local citizenry bears a burden to participate in the political process. but that's not the full answer,

the full explanation here. host: patricia on the democratic line. caller: good morning. i'm 58 and i just want to share my story. camden is not a place that traps formed from white to black recently. it's been black and now it's mostly black and hispanic. on top of that -- our city is like a police state. one night i was coming home from work and my back light was out. the officer was nice. but i did wonder -- he was a young white guy why would you want to work as a police officer in camden? what difference did you think you were going to bring to our community? in camden they have these devices that you can't see the officer. i don't see police badges or

numbers on the uniforms as i used to do when i was younger. why would they have blinding lights where i can't see the officer -- i didn't even know if it was one two or three people. and is that an amendment violation? guest: i can't say whether it's actually a violation. i can say that when people are stopped it's usually the fourth amendment that's implicated. the fourth amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. and a stop by a police officer is generally a seizure. and then searches, the search part of the fourth amendment kicks in. so that would be a fourth amendment situation. i think you raise an important point about diversity in police departments. and i think there is general wisdom out there that police departments that generally reflect the composition of their communities are more

effective because they can relate to the community better. so diversity is important. and ferguson did not have diversity. ferguson has 54 police officers, only four of whom were african american. but diversity is not by itself is not an answer. the culture of a police department has to be right as well in order for officers no matter what race they are to function properly and effectively. host: republican line now. go ahead. caller: good morning. i have a problem with this gentleman's analogy of what was going on in ferguson. first, the town is 67% black. so if the ratio of ar rest stops is made on that basis, who would be arrested? more white people or more black people? secondly, why didn't you and holder in the very beginning of

this mess come out and say that the police officer had a legitimate claim to what he said instead of allowing the riots to take place to allow a liar like al sharpton to come and say hands up sit down and all his other nonsense cause racial tension in this country that was unbelievable? and you folks let him get away with it. and he constantly gets away with it. so you're expecting us to, the general public, to believe you and obama and holder? he came out and said that the police up in massachusetts acted stupidly with skip gates? host: all right. we heard your point. i do want to point out this article from august 24, 2014. written by william yeoman our guest here. titled why officer wilson probably won't go to jail.

guest: i think it was apparent to many of us who are experienced prosecutors in this area that it would be a -- it was unlikely that there would be federal charges here. which i think doesn't mean that the rest of what this department of justice discovered in ferguson is in any way tainted. i think that the fact that officer wilson will not be charged criminally is certainly not an exoneration of the ferguson police. and unfortunately the ferguson police were operating in a way that depended almost exclusively on force. they were almost an occupying force within the ferguson community. it depended on that kind of policing which inevitably, particularly when it's tin ged by racial bias is going to lead to incidents like the killing of michael brown which should not have happened. that was the result of a bad police department doing bad

policing. and they really spoiled -- a really spoiled relationship with the ferguson community. host: next up is jack calling on the independent line. caller: good morning. i found it ironic that chief ramsey from philadelphia the head of the commission, he works under mayier nutter. i'm far lar with -- familiar with their statistics. if you compare it to ferguson as far as the vehicle stops and arrests, it would not be that dissimilar from ferguson. how can you explain that? host: i want to just piggy back from one comment from twitter. guest: i don't have the

statistics in front of me from philadelphia. but i hope and i think it's hugely important that police departments across the country look at their practices. and they do it on a continuing basis. there are something like 18,000 police departments in the united states. it certainly is not possible for the justice department to go around and do an investigation of each one nor is it warrented because many are functioning well. but what that means is there has to be ways to leverage what are increasingly recognized as good police practices. so the practices that have come out of the justice department's program of investigating police departments are applicable to almost all police departments nationwide. and the department does have some ways of leveraging what they've learned. obviously they give out an enormous amount of money to local police departments. that money can come with strings attached. always subject to title 6 of the 1964 civil rights act that

prohibits discrimination by anyone who receives federal funds. ultimately so much of this will depend on local people getting engaged with their police departments. police departments getting engaged with their communities and ensuring that they are undertaking these best practices and being the most effective police departments that they can be. host: are there cities or police department that is have gone through this settlement process or restructuring already with the d.o.j. that can serve as models? guest: there are a number of city that is have gone through this. what we've seen is a real increase in enforcement under the obama administration. so since obama came in there have been over 20 investgations of police departments many of which have ended in consent decrees. some high visibility decrees like new orleans, albuquerque, seattle, even haven

connecticut. and those are still in process. these remedies take time. and so in those cases they're still being implemented and of course there are problems along the way. but it is essential. that's why it is essential to get them in court so that a court has jurisdiction to continue the oversight of the implementation. and it's also essential that the department of justice maintain the political will to keep pushing forward and make sure that the remedies are fully implemented. host: our next caller from chicago, illinois. caller: good morning. very interesting topic. i just like to share an experience. i was from -- i'm african american highly educated over 50. ok? high salary earner. i was beat up by a cop in my neighborhood two years ago. went through a whole year investigation for abuse. and got a form letter saying

ungrounded. i think it's time for african americans to stop trying to convince everyone on their rights and most of our friends on the left -- are caucasian. when i was beat up by a cop, i did not tell them. it was humiliating and no one believes me. we cannot spend time trying to convince fellow citizens that systemic racism is alive in well -- and well in america. everything you are saying this morning illustrates that. when it gets ignored, you get blowups like you did in ferguson. i want to ask one question -- is

there, or is there not systemic racism in american law enforcement? william yeomans: certainly. ferguson is an example of precisely that. racism exists in many of institutions in our society. police are not exempt. there is a long history of tension between the police and african-americans. this extends back throughout our history. what we have now is a moment where we can think about going forward, and the awareness of racism that you speak about i think it is very important, and i think this is a moment where we can all talk about this and come to grips with it and understand that it does exist. it is a powerful force and we can address it. it is imperative that we address it. both over racism and implicit racism, which affects so many of

the actions of all of us on a daily basis. i hope that that is something positive that will come out of what appears to be a mess. ylan: whether concrete offers on how to fix is going forward? william yeomans: yes, there were extensive recommendations made, a lot of them started with apply the constitution to law. there are lots of steps to be taken, which focus on a lot of training to get police officers to understand how to engage in community policing how to use force only when it is necessary, when it is a last roof -- resort. how did abuse -- how to achieve -- diffuse situations like the michael brown incident. recommendations about getting community engagements at every level of policing. recommendations about stopping

the over citation of people. recommendations about separating the revenue raising function of the city from the policing function. it will be an extensive process. it will require in order to training, -- enormous training. disciplining officers. it will require a lot of will on the part of the court, the justice department come and leadership department of ferguson. ylan: republican line. caller: this is all about people perpetuating racism. obama, holder comment sharpton. as for inciting riots and defamation of character.

also, i notice the gentleman has point of contact in the department of justice, where they looking at prosecuting sharpton, he owns millions in back taxes? william yeomans: it is interesting that when people accuse the president and the attorney general of inciting racism, what that suggest is that you cannot be serious about trying to do anything about racism in our society without being called racist or being accused of being divisive. that is unacceptable. we have to be able to talk about this. we have to be able to take it seriously and address solutions. we have to think about it in a forward-looking context. we need to understand our history, but we need to set our vision forward and figure out

where we are going and how we get there, how we decrease the influence of race in all of our institutions in society. and how we get beyond this. ylan: comments about the department of justice findings in ferguson. >> a disturbing history of using force against people with mental illness. our findings indicate that the overwhelming majority, almost 90%, is directed against african-americans. this deeply alarming statistics points to one of the most pernicious aspects of the contact that our investigation uncovered. these policing practices disproportionately harm african-american residents. in fact, our view of the evidence found no alternative explanation for the disproportionate impact on african-american residents other than implicit and and was it racial bias -- explicit

racial bias. despite making up only 67% of the population african-americans accounted for 85% of all traffic stops by the ferguson police department. after americans who work twice as likely as white residents to research during a routine traffic stop, even know they were 26% less likely to carry contraband. between october 2012 and july 2014, 35 black individuals and zero white individuals received five or more citations at the same time. during the same time african-americans accounted for 85% of the total charges brought by the ferguson police department. african americans made up over 90% of those charged with a highly discretionary offense described as "manner of walking

along roadways."\ use of dogs by ferguson police appears to have been exclusively reserved for african-americans. in every case in which ferguson police records recorded the race of a person bit by a police dog that person was african-american. ylan: that was attorney general eric holder. we are speaking with the professor at american university's washington college of law and if for -- a form of -- a former civil rights attorney. you wrote an article earlier this year. why is congress the one to blame? william yeomans: congress deserves its share of the blame. that is the headline writer.

the point i am thinking in that article was, we prosecute these federal cases under a statute that is almost 150 years old. it says nothing about police officers. for most of its history it was not enforced. many reconstruction statutes were not. because of a lack of political will to enforce them. it wasn't until 1945 that it was first applied to law-enforcement officers. at that point, the supreme court narrowed the statute further with construction that requires there be intent on the part of the officer to deprive someone of a federal right. the officer does not have to know what the constitutional right is, but the officer has to know he is doing something wrong and has to intend to do

something wrong, but the constitutional right has to be clearly established. if that is clear to you, you are way ahead of 99% of the jurors that had to enforce that standard. what we don't have is a clear federal standard that properly balances the interests of individuals and the need to -- of the police. in a perfect world it would be highly appropriate for congress to take up this issue and draft a new statute that specifically applies in police officers. if we want a federal law to be a truly meaningful acts out in these cases -- backstop. ylan: next up is frank from new york on the independent line. good morning. caller: two years ago in new york state, a police officer

came out and said his boss instructed him to go after blacks and minorities. what i am saying is that i am going to pose it to you right now -- racism in america is equal to what it was in the 1950's or worse. they are just smarter about it. they hide their racial bias. as white power, fox news, look how they treat the black president. he was humiliated in the congress. ylan: that was frank from new york. william yeomans: as i said,

there is still a great deal of racism in our society. i do think it is wrong that it is not better than it was. that we are not a better country than we were. it is important to remember on this 50th anniversary of the march from selma to montgomery that we have made progress. we have a black president. that was unthinkable in my youth. i think it is a wonderful thing that we are able to do that. we do have problems. even though on this important anniversary we have a problem in that part of that act has been invalidated by the supreme court. states again are taking on the issue of how to restrict the vote. we need to be continually cottages of the need to keep moving forward. i do not doubt that we have moved forward in the last 50 years. ylan: we have an e-mail response to a previous caller. the e-mail says, the dogs are

not racist, the dogs are handled by the police officers, they do not go out in force the law on their own ylan: i would next caller is from the independent line. a law enforcement. good morning. caller: retired out of southern california. 23 years. i taught self-defense most of my career, i was in self-defense from a very young age. i worked with the departments up and down california. one of the difficulties i had and i cringe when i see these incidents that happened throughout the country. i always look at the tactics and look what got them to that place. i see policeman -- and i worked

with many -- and 99% of them were great people -- they did not know how to speak to people. not one person likes to be talked to like dirt. i never had difficulty, very few incidents where i had trouble with people, if you talk to them with decency, the problems i had the most were suburban types -- they would be angry that they got stopped in the first place they would defend their children. stop and frisk should have been a signal to people that we do not have the right to go up to somebody and start putting our hands on them. william yeomans: i think those are very apt comments. one of the things that comes through in the ferguson report is that the police department simply lost sight of the principles you discussed. they lost sight of the fact that in many instances, the people of ferguson or people.

that is a basic thing. it is the foundation of good policing that the police have to have respect for the people for whom they work. they are there to serve these communities and they need to treat people with respect. ylan: we have time for one more color and that will be walled from pittsburgh, pennsylvania on our republican line. caller: my grandmother was mexican and with george zimmerman i started looking at this. 94% of blacks are killed by a lax, 72% of whites are killed by blacks. i am part mexican, the first thing the black caucus did was convict zimmerman before they knew any facts. i submit to you, you are part of this problem, the police have a right to protect themselves, black people nowadays think they do not have to give into the police. put your hands behind your back, this guy in ferguson, this black

kid who was 6'4", 300 pounds, they have them intimidating the clerk. ylan: we will have to leave it there, i will give the final word to our guest. william yeomans: the ferguson report demonstrates that we have a lot of work to do. i think that we come as a country, are up to the job, but we need to be able to address these issues. it is a mistake for people to attack people who want to talk about these issues and who want to try to do something about it. i hope that we can have a dialogue in the country that will be constructive and will allow us to move forward on a variety of remedies to these very serious issues. ylan: you are professor at american university, washington college of law and a former civil rights lawyer at the department of justice, thank you for being here. ylan: we will continue our discussion next.

we will be speaking with eugene o'donnell of john j school of criminal justice. the cochair of president obama's task from lisa -- policing joined us this week, she answered a reporter's question about body cameras. >> one criticism of your report, even know there are many great recommendations, is that you didn't require body cameras. some officers i have talked to feel like they would like to have those. can you tell us a little bit more about why you did not require the body cameras and why federal -- another requirement people felt should be in the report was federal funding tied to training on racial bias. >> addressing the first point -- any jurisdiction -- because policing is a local matter in this country -- any jurisdiction

could go ahead and require body cameras. for our report to say that every jurisdiction should necessarily have the body cameras, i think ignores the fact that there may be local decisions that will vary on that front. part of what we said is every police department should consult their communities about what that community takes his best. -- thinks is best. i think it is overriding for local communities to decide. part of that goes to cost. the cost is high. i am not a technology person but the cost are apparently much less about purchasing the individual body camera then about the storage, the reductions cost -- reaction

cost, which requires the time of somebody to go through the re daction. it takes a full-time person because the tapes -- they are subpoenaed regularly. it is a big job. there are other issues around it. it is a little more confident than just, we will order them up and send them out. >> you can see the entire interview with laura robinson otway first century policing tomorrow at 10 a.m. and at 6 p.m. on c-span, you can also hear it on c-span radio and newsmakers is available online at c-span.org. we are joined by eugene o'donnell. a former member of the new york city police department here to talk about 21st century policing.

can you start by justifying this term -- fighting this term -- 21st century policing? eugene o'donnell: the president decided to create a panel that would come up with recommendations for making policing better and instituted a report with recommendations that have provided food for thought for law enforcement agencies. ylan: what were some of the recommendations? eugene o'donnell: diversity community policing, how you recruit people, training issues, nonlethal weaponry. ylan: how long do you take it might take or some of these recommendations to be in limited? eugene o'donnell: some of them have already been implemented in some agencies. they do not have the power to impose the suggestions, but it will create a dialogue in the polish community.

what thing the report lacked his nuance. it's been stop talking about police indiscriminate use of police resources, which is a legitimate issue, but it does not address the issue of disengagement by the police. ylan: what you mean by disengagement? eugene o'donnell: thousands of young people are murdered every year and in some cities the police are disengaged and the danger -- we cannot suddenly have a situation where there is no disincentive for the police do not be engaged. some of the cities you see police departments where the cops feel that the cost of being engaged, the possibility of being criticized, of being called a profiler that makes police officer say, i will not engage. a lot of good ideas, a lot of them, you wonder why they have not been talked about earlier but there has to be a balance. ylan: we want to hear your thoughts on our discussion.

call us on the democratic line at 202-748-8000. republican line, 202-748-8001. independents can call 202-748-8002. we still have our special line for line first meant ---- for law enforcement --202-748-8003. what is your response to the recommendations, are these things, as an officer, you would want to do? eugene o'donnell: some departments do them already. 18,000 police department in the country, there are some great and awful department. there is some glassing over of the writ -- realities. when you get pulled over by the police come and they ask you for the license, it is as asking them to do that. the idea that the police and the community should be together is a great idea but there are

deflection point for problems and in communities that have violence, in washington, 93% of the people murdered were african american. you want the people -- want the police to be engaged. you will get us a situation like ferguson, the worst of all worlds where there is not particularly bad crime problems and the police, 95% of the jaywalkers are apt american. -- are african-american. we need to have enforcement, reasonable enforcement community supported enforcement. the conversation cannot tell too much in the direction of police department becoming employment agencies where the cops put in eight hours and don't do much of anything. ylan: one of the issues in ferguson was his idea of policing as a revenue generation. is this a problem you find in other police departments? eugene o'donnell: the political leadership has collapsed in some of these places and the legislature has failed to fund

localities. the police have enough to do. we have to minimize their role, we have to clarify their role, and lawmakers have to step up and things like mental health, we have to have an infrastructure that takes care of those muscle the police can be reserved the police can do best. as it is now, an overexertion of the police and overuse of the bullies and it is disrespectful of the police to make them revenue collectors. nobody took the job to be a revenue collector. ylan: our first call this segment is from roseburg, oregon on the independent line. caller: i am wondering why nobody ever brings up the idea of disarming the police once and for all. get rid of this attitude of these guys and disband all swat teams which are nothing but assault teams against the people. ylan: your thoughts?

eugene o'donnell: a philadelphia police officer was shot and killed yesterday, so violence is very real and police officers have to defend themselves. we need to look at other profession, other countries where people are not armed, they are able to nonviolently resolve difficult situation and learn things from those places. i do not take it is really sick that our police will be disarmed, in europe, some of the threats of terrorism, countries like the u.k. are wrestling with the idea that there are finally going to arm their officers over there great objection. ylan: one of the items cited in the 21st century police report was this idea of technology being used in police departments in a more effective way. what are some of the interesting innovations you see? eugene o'donnell: the things that exist -- the top of the

list should be nonlethal weaponry. the police use firearms found. they miss 80% of the shots. the ideal technology, and this is mentioned in the report, some of his a button any persons's hands are disabled. we guess and bombs 3000 miles, most police interactions are we one feet away and we cannot get a reliable nonlethal weapon. some use of not adversarial arrest with eric garner, the -- having a tablet where you sadly say to the person, give me your finger, and we will give you a receipt and you come to court. this idea of dragging people to court amidst all this technology is something -- we want to do things that are win-win -- we do not keep -- we do not need

people to pick sides. we can achieve the police system that works for the public and we need to find a way so the police do less of this wrestling around, these physical interactions, the idea of arrests is simply to notify somebody -- identify them and tell them to come back to court. ylan: mary from mississippi on the independent line. caller: yes, ma'am, i have a question -- who will hold those rioters and looters -- who is going to hold them in accountability? eugene o'donnell: i think we have to be nonpartisan come across partisan about our justice system. very good commentary from car -- conservative people, liberal peace and -- people, let's not takes i. we can have a good justice system and treat people with respect. we had to recognize the root causes that minority americans

are primarily in the criminal justice system. the idea of picking sides is not helpful. ferguson did involve riots and public order has to be cap in those situations, because, especially in that town where you have a diverse population, it is not helpful to continue that town is a growing concern to allow violence to erupt and not do anything about it. that was an example of equilibrium we have to strike. one of those nights we were accusing the police of overreacting, the next night we were accusing the police of being paralyzed. ylan: how likely is a conference of reform of our criminal justice system and would that have to happen through congress or what happened through decrees like the one that the justice department speaking with the ferguson police department? eugene o'donnell: i hope this will be a nonpartisan issue, this will -- it is -- we should try to fix it.

it has to be an honest conversation. it cannot be grandstanding. some officials have grandstanding, blame the police who are a parliamentary group of people. if you ordered them to do them they do them. we are laying it this -- this at the door of patrols. anybody who is dealt with the department of justice and the fbi knows, this is a very brutal system and making reforms is not easy. when you say -- the community in many parts of this country is calling for more police involvement, more police engagement communities that are hollowed out. you have to have this balance. ylan: erica is going from oklahoma city, oklahoma on the democrats nine. good morning. caller: i agree with everything he says.

it is refreshing to hear an objective assessment of what is going on in regards to ferguson. the income generation issue is a lot easier to remedy. the systemic racism within some of the police departments has been fueled by the hate media. it is a much deeper problem. i remember reading a report from -- regarding an issue in florida where one of the guys who was let go from a police department said that the -- how do you erase the hatred for people who actually sometimes get into that

field so they can objective five their hate? eugene o'donnell: we need to get hate speech out of the law enforcement world. you can have any disagreement you want, but the idea being engaged in hate speech as we saw in e-mails in ferguson, has been not occurring along fourth it. we have 80,000 police departments, some of them should not be in business -- 18,000. it is almost like radioshack, it is a radioshack management mentality. as much as their are larger issues, we need to create much better leadership for police departments. a lot of people want to be cops, they do not want to think about becoming cheese. how do we get people recruited and heavily fast-track people at

hadley create police leadership. if you are police agency, the justice department does this well, they can create an atmosphere that racism is not tolerated. there isfor that in their agency. -- there isfor it -- there is no space for it. if you read this report, i recommend it to anybody interested in policing, there is tremendous amounts of food for thought, and some of it is shocking, you look at it and say , we are not doing this yet? this is a good starting point. localities have to be entitled to have their own policing, meet the needs of the community. it has been kicked off well, i have a very major concern that this dialogue -- if you read the report, is that coming in policing is a panacea. you need to have different approaches. ylan: defined community

policing? eugene o'donnell: that is the problem. what is it? if you have a street that is taken over by drug dealers people with guns, quality of life has deteriorated, communities are leaving, cities where there are economic reasons why people left but there was also a complete collapse in a public safety, will you do respectful community based policing with people that have another lifetime felony parole. you have to have a realistic conversation about this. the community totally gets this. they understand that this is much more nuanced than it sounds. policing of a wealthy neighborhood, that is easy. policing networks in a community that has problems, that is a challenge. ylan: republican line from texas. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call is morning.

sir, i was curious -- i like -- places like ferguson -- i crawled -- i called on the wrong line, i am retired military and worked law enforcement and worked in los angeles for five years. i would law school then. i have seen a total disconnect with everything over the last 10 years. i am bi-racial. my mother is latino in my father's anglo. i look like my dad, my brother and my sisters look like my mom. i am probably the most liberal. how would you address the point of getting people to trust the political process where they will run for office and become law enforcement? eugene o'donnell: great question

. when you make these reports, you have to remember you have to find humans to do this job. when you talk about having cameras on cops, tracking every movement, making it easy to complain about them, cite them come with a lot of this report talks about things like that. where will you be humans to do the job if the cops feel like they are public enemy number one? a political discussion is well-documented. in ferguson, you have an african-american to me to do with a white mayor, a disengaged population. the political class is failing a lot of these places. people should be doing the oversight, how do you have a town with 95% of people are cited for jaywalking and this byzantine remote justice system what they said then, they cannot get out, there are warrants, all kind of financial penalties. or many poor, working-class people struggling, where was the state legislature, where was the governor, where's the attorney general of the state, where was the prosecutors? ylan: on the issue of body

cameras, this question from twitter -- who is in charge of the footage, the pd or do we need another government agency? eugene o'donnell: we will see if they will be a solution at all. the reality is that policing is adversarial and involves police using force, authorized by us. when you get pulled over, it is not a conversation because, it is the police asking you to do some been you must do. i have concerns about cameras in terms of privacy, and in terms of the chilling effect they may have on citizens crying to have a robust interaction with the cops. i would have a very serious concern that you will have eight hours of nothing on that video because police will say, why would i engage somebody in a situation where if it looks bad and it almost always looks back, i will be criticize into -- i'm happy to report that the task force did not take the time to endorse these cameras. the idea that if you're doing

every thing right come as a police officer, you do not have any tory by, -- worry about, i would raise questions -- especially when it goes viral it is on 20 47 cable. -- on 24 ylan:7. 24/7. the elected officials cannot figure out this is a bad idea. the cops are probably assaulted. they are injured, they try to use nonlethal weaponry, they finally resort to lethal weaponry that you can see the picture of the guy tried to take their guns and there are people trying to cite this as police abuse. this is not police abuse. this is an abuse of the police that could have been killed. ylan: stephanie from chicago illinois on the democrat line. caller: good morning. i wanted to know, with all of

the funding that goes into the training of the ponies prior to them actually getting a badge and a gun, how many of that financial funding is training to make sure they are not bringing what may be ingrained racism into their job. you cannot help for some it comes from, but maybe they can be trained as far as actually being able to realize there is thinking that maybe wrong prior to getting their job? eugene o'donnell: we have to stop 10 -- cap dancing around this, the racist attitudes cannot be tolerated. they have to find ways to drive it out. primarily, getting good people and elevating those people in departments. we have a country where hundreds of thousands of police officers are out there for the right reasons. the restraint exercise in difficult situations is remarkable. i guarantee you somewhere in

the last way for hours, there were situations where cops could've used lethal force and they did not do it. this is a profound question and we have been cap dancing around it. there has to be zero tolerance in law enforcement for displays of racism. the subtle things are more difficult. police chiefs, we have to train them on how to lead. i believe there are 11 least people who do believe we can have a justice system and do our best to drive out racism. ylan: west from midland michigan is calling on our independent line. -- wes. caller: my biggest concern in these investigations, ferguson included, the investigations are handed best handled by a secret grand jury. the result of all the inquiries and examinations, testimonies are secret. shouldn't it be required to have

all police shootings, especially the fatal ones, to be an open, public hearing? or to have the grand jury record open to the freedom of information act for inspection? eugene o'donnell: it is important. this is where political people do grandstanding. police are protected in their use of force, because it is hard to micromanage their job. this is looked over sometimes. the police are judged differently than others. that has to be explained before we get to the point where we need to have more transparency of. restating things like the police are like everybody else is misleading. they are not like everybody else . not as a matter of fact and not as a matter of law. they go into harms way in situations that are unscripted. people believe, because they see it on a video they knew that was the way it was going to end up. for every situation -- just

about any arrest and in badly. there needs to be more transparency. be advised, with more transparency, it will be highly unlikely that police officers in our countries -- coast-to-coast red state, blue state, minority -- minorities, they will continue to be vindicated. it is hard to second-guess them. ylan: robert is calling on our independent line. he is in law enforcement. caller: i am a former washington dc police officer. when i got back from vietnam i joined that police department. one of the things i noticed about the d.c. police department as well as the new york city police department, they train their officers and very well to handle people exercising their

first amendment right to the constitution. what i saw in ferguson were officers who were ill-equipped and ill trained and left to their own insecurities. these guys did not know how to handle that situation. they used to have marches there every week about something and those guys were very professional in handling large crowds. ylan: that was robert from maryland. along the lines of that same question, this question from twitter. eugene o'donnell: it is done, in terms of people reading from a book, or saying things that do not thousands year. i do not believe you can implement change like that. you give -- i -- i was reading a magazine, a poll of

african-american readers, the readers in that poll said 70% wanted more diverse the training . -- 17%. others said we need more tactical training. like the aragon or case, where they have to make physical arrests. -- the eric garner case. policing is done disproportionally in minority communities. it is often incompetence, could be rate -- racism, it often is in confidence by the police and doing things like using force that ashley causes many of these outrageous endings. -- actually causes. ylan: bob in alabama on a republican line. caller: i have three friends that -- police officers that were murdered in the line of

duty. each one of them was white and was killed by a black ball breaker. violent men. -- lawbreaker. how come we are not making steps in law enforcement to let people be advised about how racism works both ways? we should judge things on their merits. a crime is a crime. eugene o'donnell: if you have been in a hospital emergency room when a police officer get shot or killed, you see officers of all races. it is not a helpful conversation to have. there are realities, but dwelling on those realities is not helpful. we want police officers to judge situations individually and not to get into this either or mindset or this team mindset. yesterday in philadelphia, i was there when and after american officer killed. things in that city will reflect

what we want law enforcement to be. it is an attack on society, an attack on all of us and who the perpetrator is in terms of their race is secondary. that said, this is something that these rallies and they do have to be parsed out and there has been lack of nuance in the twitterverse century report. -- 21st century report. ylan: she talked about the concerns that the task force found. >> we were concerned about the crisis of municipalities and police departments of having quotas for officers going out and issuing tickets and summons based on some number. for purposes of revenue generation, rather than public

safety. that was something we made a recommendation specifically that this should not be pursued. testimony we collected said that this is a problem that is not common only to quote we heard through the media that was occurring in ferguson. ylan: that was the cochair on the president's task more on policing and on newsmakers this week. your thoughts on the reporters thoughts? eugene o'donnell: there is overwhelming evidence that many ponies are playing a numbers game. we need to have an identification of where crime issues are, where patterns are and the enforcement should be overlaid over that. what we saw ferguson is this helter-skelter arbitrary rounding up of people based on perhaps their perceived vulnerability, and that is the very worse an area.

there is no reason to believe ferguson is not more violent than the average jurisdiction. you do have very violent jurisdictions where there are people being killed and hopefully be strategic policing, which may generate large numbers , is based on the need to do it, not just to have a quota or to get revenue. ylan: tom from little-known texas is on the republican line -- little l, texas. caller: good morning. i had an idea of some counties in texas have taken up, the idea was to have a para people it is a man or woman, two women or two men, and they would have a police badge that they could hold up in the air when the police car arrives or a policeman arrives to witness something that is going on that even eagle -- illegal.

they need to have more identification as to what is going on and where it is going on, rather than just collaborating on the vulnerability on some individuals. eugene o'donnell: i am -- i do not quite get what the caller suggesting. caller: you have a volunteer police plane closed people that would be working candidly with the police department. eugene o'donnell: in big cities this is a common thing. that is community policing at its best when you can get citizens engaged to work collaboratively with the police, not as vigilantes, they are trained, they are the eyes of the police and observers. a do not actively involve themselves and when there is a need for the police they call them and assist them. that is a win-win and that makes

the police feel that the work they are doing is meeting full. -- meaningful. ylan: do you think police departments outside of ferguson are reevaluating their actresses and policies in light of what has happened in missouri? eugene o'donnell: my guess is that most would be. my guess is that the worst departments do not think they are bad. you say, you are disdained by euro citizenry, and there seems to be just -- by your own citizenry, and there seems to be disconnect. it is a job where you make those kinds of calls. when you go through a community and the vast majority of the people -- this is a profession that is highly steeped in the country, there is a lot of reservoir of goodwill for police. cap into it and increase it -- tap into it.

increase it. if some people selling drugs and shooting people, that is tough. if a large number of people in the community will not cooperate with you, see you and go the other way, who are doing nothing wrong, that is a failure and the police have to own that value. ylan: we received this question over e-mail -- how important do you think it is for these police forces to represent demographically the community? eugene o'donnell: i do not think there were any black police officers in ferguson. it was hard to recruit. something tells me, if you are police chief in america, and people respect the work you will do, you will did -- you will find a diverse group of people to come to work for you if it is not a hostile work environment.

there are police department's that are representative in some places and that are not very good at what they do. it is a multicultural society you want to have that -- this is a majority, minority department that does a first-rate job. we have to keep in mind that minority youngsters are the first person to hear if there are under -- unfair bashing of the police. we are talking about a profession where we will need humans to do it. if there will be indiscriminate -- the l.a. shooting is not a justifiable shooting, every time the police do something that is legitimate, they are maligned for it, you have a shortage of people wanting to go in for this job. the issue is who will want to do the job. somebody will do it. my measure is the most

idealistic people. when i see that idealistic people do not want to be in a police department, that is the problem. you will probably get bodies in uniforms, but what you get the kind of people you want to get? you have to have a knack for it developing policing that is racially sensitive, there has to be recognition that there are good people that are willing to go into difficult situations and they cannot be fairly -- unfairly castigated when they are doing things in good faith. ylan: next up is falls church, virginia on the democrat line. caller: i worked for the national institution of medical science in the early 1960's. they have a behavioral sciences department. they did a study over a

half-century ago with 25 rats. they gave them each their own cubbyholes. as long as there was enough to go around, they could live in harmony. what they would do is take food from one rat and then another rat from a different section. then they would begin to turn on each other. it seems to me as though the string might be pulled from the top. people can live together if there is enough to go around. if law enforcement take them out of the workforce because of a minor violation of some sort then they are homeless almost. they can't fend for themselves, cannot feed their families, they get the same type of behavior.

they become desperate and a desperate person becomes dangerous. it is common sense to me that nobody wants to go out and shoot people down. people want to survive and they wanted chance at life. ylan: the report on 21st century policing also included this recommendation. the president should promote programs -- community based issues that address the core issues of poverty, health, and safety. eugene o'donnell: the question is i do not see any plan for that african-american and a lot of white kids. we have a lot of minimum wage jobs, where will that kid be in 10 years? how will he get to the middle class? you exacerbated by turning these kids into by offenders. criminal offenders in a situation.

we send the justice department into ferguson, we need to have the commerce secretary go in the labor secretary, there are underlining issues. police have to on their part of this, that in a just and good society, the police should have a much smaller role than they do in many places. ylan: north carolina, independent line. anne. caller: thank you for c-span. i noticed that john jay college of criminal justice is celebrating its 50th anniversary. i find that ironic with everything that is being celebrated with soma and the voting rights act -- selma. this term "nonlethal weapons." manufacturers call them less lethal weapons. that is my first question. police were used to go away --

after runaway slaves. then they arrested blacks for walking the street. in the recruiting process, are any kind of psychological testing done for these men and women that choose to go into law-enforcement? i think something could be caught early if they undergo some kind of psychological testing. eugene o'donnell: as for the psychological testing, yes, many agencies do. the report addresses the issue where police department's do not exchange information about people inappropriate for the job. that is something that has to be looked at. the police have a bad history in terms of race relations going after slaves, but we have to realize that the reality on the ground is that the police are absolute necessity.

you have to be responsible for that reality. in terms of the less lethal stuff, it is amazing to me that we cannot find a completely nonpartisan group of lawmakers to charge up the capitol hill monday morning, pick a date, and say, by 2017, we will have no more lethal weaponry. i do not know who is stopping that progress, i do not know if it is the industry making the firearms, i do not know why that is being stymied. we know the dod, the pentagon has interest in technology, we need weaponry that will reliably hit his target not -- allow the police to go home without the psychic trauma of having to take a life and the offender to be brought before justice. ylan: independent line, indiana. good morning. caller: i am a democrat and i am

glad that the federal government has that then. -- has spent in -- stepped in. a lot of blacks, younger blacks, a lot of us need to be police officers, and may be the trend would change, but a lot of those police officers are coming from other communities where they have been fired and then they come to these communities. a lot of the caucasian police officers may have an attitude from their policing in predominantly black areas, and more blacks have to be into the criminal justice system. i am glad that the federal government has stepped in because it has gotten out of control. eugene o'donnell: on the anniversary of soma, this is why the doj is important. for the good cops out there, you are rescuing them when they are

working these dysfunctional agencies that are involved in overt racism. the doj is indispensable to going in and not taking any nonsense when you have clear patterns of abuse. they must go in and stop it. it is an indictment of the local leadership, but we cannot stop there. if they will not do their job they will not takes things like revenue base summonses ticketing, it it has to fall to the dj to go in and they should do it unapologetically. ylan: alabama, independent line. go ahead. caller: yes. good morning to you all there. yes, i have a question, first of all, i know your job is pretty hard and i commend you all. you cops are serving us well. you are in various areas. my question is, how could you

all say, like in ferguson, new york's finest, when you put a plunger to a man. you put a plunger to him. eugene o'donnell: there was an incident in new york to post apartment back a number of years ago. they are not perfect. if you look at hard evidence statistics with the new york city police department, with diversity, all you of calls it had -- volume of calls it handles. the number of deadly force uses -- 2% of their arrest involved force and 90% of the rest do not appeared -- 90%. ylan: eugene o'donnell, former member of the new york to post a permit, thank you for being here.

"washington journal" will be back tomorrow. ♪quick snack, senior presidential adviser, dan pfeiffer on working in the house house. -- [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, keystone pipeline bill. on monday, senior adviser to the president, dan pfeiffer sat down to talk politics and policy with mike allen.