time. they are try to figure out a few different manners. the first is a trade legislation that is not time sensitive but senate republican leadership wants to pass before they leave for memorial day recess. after that, there is going to be a time sensitive deadlines it the deadline. the end of the month, the and is able collection of phone metadata will and midnight on the 31st. there could be some lapses if the senate does not pass a house passed bill by the end of today. then, of course, there's also the third item -- a highway trust fund authorization that the house has passed a temporary two-month bill there as well. they have a lot on their plates. you can argue start smelling them as they try to get home for all the parades and everything else this weekend. host: alex rogers, what kind of

negotiations are going on right now to get these things passed? guest: what has happened so far is that the senate has pushed for this trade bill and got an advance only with last-minute maneuvering on the chamber floor yesterday. you had a band of senators who really want to get the export-import bank passed and that also has a time sensitive deadline at the end of next month. and mcconnell got these senators on board and that bill was advance. now they are tried to push through today and bunch of amendments and maybe final passage of this trade promotion authority, which would pave the way for future trade pacts by

limiting congressional debate that congress will not be able to tinker too much with these major trade deals that are coming down the line. after that, it is going to be this big debate on the nsa's bulk collection of telephone metadata. there are two different things that are going to go through. there is going to be a vote on the house nsa freedom act. that passed overwhelmingly in the house. there's going to be a vote on that and we are not exactly sure if that has 60 votes yet. it seems like they could be nearing 60. right now, it does not see like they have enough votes. but if that fails, they are going to go to a clean two-month extension, which the gop senate leadership really wants to try to increase leverage later so they can come back and have a compromise with the house. the problem is that the house is arty gone and left -- has

already gone and left and they will be have to be called back into session and that will be a clean session of the senate's authority. what will happen after this is to vote on the nsa's book collection and the question is up in the air if either one of them can pass. host: this is all happening today and potentially saturday as well, correct? guest: yes. although senator mccain told me yesterday, we have the new spirit of compromise, but this weekend determines the degree of bipartisanship. they are hoping that the senators will be able to consent and move forward on all these bills in quick order. as you saw with senator rand paul earlier this week, some senators may be willing to take up floor time and talk about these issues. that was not an actual

filibuster but a delay of schedule. some of these senators will actually do that when push comes to shove and we may be here for the weekend. host: alex rogers, final question. what is the role of the export-import bank in some of these negotiations? guest: sure. that was kind of a latebreaking twist on all this. yesterday on the senate floor, you have senator maria cantwell and lindsey graham in a tight circle formed around senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. then rings of other senators around them. it was quite a sight to see. what they have been pushing for us to try to get assurances from the leadership that there's going to be a vote in june on the export-import bank, which

its charter expires at the end of the month. that bank helps to ensure loan guarantees for american companies who are exporting goods abroad. those three senators that i mentioned all have boeing as a major company in the state. they want to be able to see that company's success continue into the future. boeing thinks that export-import bank needs to be reauthorize. the problem is that house conservatives and some house gop leadership would not mind at all to see the charter expired and the bank is an example of crony capitalism. there has been a debate on whether there will even be a vote on the charter to be reauthorized. what happened was after mcconnell gave his assurance to these three senators, they all started voting one by one to advance the bait on the trade. it was just boom, boom, boom.

you had six senators all in a row vote on this yesterday. then the trade bill advanced and now we could actually see this trade authority passed today. maybe into the weekend. the export-import bank was a key factor in getting these senators on board and moving this major trade legislation going forward. host: alex lodges, "national journal," thanks for the update. >> we are alive now at the cato institute. the group hosting a discussion today about law enforcement in minority communities. the focus is on community policing in the baltimore protests in the wake of a death while in police custody. lifelive coverage. peter: i'm peter russo and i'm pleased to invite you to our discussion. yesterday, charges were filed

against six police officers and their roles in the death of pretty great. this stemmed out of finale of violence in west and northwest neighborhoods of baltimore. soon fires were part out and curfews were ended and the media went on to cover more enticing stories. left behind were over 100 injured police officers and some 500 people jailed innumerable burned vehicle, and also many questions. most obvious -- who is to blame? there's plenty to go around. including writers who said justice with more injustice. it was likely counterproductive. what about the police? last year, we have seen a wave of well-publicized incidents of deadly force. these procedures result indiscriminately policing. it is no longer novel to see the thin blue line square off

against violent demonstrators. for those of what's -- watch national policy on fall from washington, to restaurant arrested what role does it have in resolving them? first one would assume none. the police function is a state and local matter, right? not so fast. starting in 1964, the federal government wants to domestic wars -- the war on poverty and enterprise spearheaded by lyndon johnson, and in 1971, nixon's war on drugs. more recently, a third war called the war on terror ushered in the department of homeland security. no longer were we just worried about aren't drug cartels but international terrorists. terrorists with a passion for violence. collectively, the results of these well-meaning but misguided efforts have contributed pernicious effects to american life you resources are spent through the federal

government to solve all problems of poverty's and drugs and terrorism. the cost of these efforts are not pecuniary but the loss of property rights as well. does congress need to spend more money on jobs programs? should the department of justice due to baltimore a practice of civil rights violations? i'm aware that the president and congress have made steps in this direction, but what about police equipment? it seems to be a no-brainer, but does it make sense for local police departments to the play weapons of war like bayonets and grenade lancers -- launchers? what do body cameras merit? can we get andy griffith results with an arsenal of batman? to my right, tim lynch is director on cato's department of criminal justice. and has been a leading voice and civil liberties. his interest are terrorism the

drug war, the militarism of police tactics and drug control. he joined cato and 1991 and has been published in periodicals and has been a guest on many interest progress. he graduated from marquette university and is a member of wisconsin, district of columbia, and supreme court bars. matthew feeney worked at "reason" magazine. he also worked at american conservatives, and the institute of economic affairs. matthew has a dual american-british citizenship. he also has a bachelors of philosophy from england. mike has a particular emphasis on poverty and welfare policy could and prolific author, his newest book will be released in

just a few weeks in june. tenor's writings have also appeared in every american newspaper and appears regularly on network and cable news programs. each of our speakers will have about 10 to 12 minutes after which we will open up to a session of q and a's. please welcome tim which. -- tim lynch. [applause] tim: thanks, peter. it afternoon, everybody. it is great to see such an excellent turnout on the eve of a holiday weekend. i'm glad to have you with us. i do have a lot of ground to cover. so let me jump right in. as peter mentioned yesterday, a grand jury and baltimore approved criminal charges against six police officers in that city. the officers who were involved in the arrest of freddy gray.

it looks like the criminal trial of the officers will not get underway until this coming fall. freddy gray lost his life in a horrifying set of circumstances. authorities tell us that he was handcuffed and put into a back of a police van, but police officers did not put him in a seatbelt. with his hands handcuffed behind his back, he was not able to brace himself as the police van move along around the city. and as he pleaded for medical help, again the authorities tell us that the officers who were responsible for him ignored his pleas. the medical examiner later reported that his spine was snapped. he fell into a, for a coma for a week and died as a result of those injuries.

the protests from ferguson last summer and the protests in baltimore that started after freddy's case came to life started a long overdue discussion of poverty and policing, especially in our cities. my remarks are going to focus on police tactics and police misconduct and the criminal justice system more generally. at the cato institute, we started an initiative three years ago that we call the national police misconduct reporting project. you can find that on the web at police misconduct.net. each day, we gather together misconduct incidents from around the country and one of our purposes is to draw more attention to the problem of police misconduct and also to develop policies that can reduce the number of incidents and bring accountability to those who abuse their power. sometimes people ask me, well, isn't everyone by definition already against police misconduct?

my response is that on one level, yes. no one defends police brutality or illegal searches, but people do disagree on -- they do not always agree on what constitutes police misconduct. people do not always agree on the scope of the problem. and people do not always agree on what to do about it. after studying the problem of police misconduct for several years, it is apparent that the problem is worse than many people realize. we are not just talking about the proverbial few bad apples. the department of justice is now investigating the baltimore police department for what it calls "a pattern and practice of constitutional violations." these federal investigations have been conducted before. we have seen department of justice investigators go into the apartments in new orleans -- departments in new orleans

philadelphia, seattle, miami oakland, and many other cities. but it has begun to get more prominence as soon as they moved into the ferguson police department last year and issued their scathing report about that department. and what usually happens is that there is a familiar pattern that is found over and over again in these large big-city police departments in some of the midsized apartments the bank on it too. what they find is that prosecutions for misconduct are rare. disciplinary procedures are often secret and not very secret -- serious. they tend to be tilted toward the officer and against the complaining citizen. civilian review boards are understaffed and have a little impact on the police department and their policies. they do find lawsuits and settlements for police brutality that are brought against the city, but what happens is these

cases have the taxpayers end up paying for the jury verdicts and awards. any culpable officers who journeys found overstep the line above the law -- these officers are not held accountable and disciplined when these jury verdicts come in. sometimes they are not just discipline, they are even promoted. not because of what they did but because there is no feedback loop on what a jury finds a lawsuit and the other work that the officer is involved in. now i'm going to hazard a guess and say that in a few months the department of justice is going to issue a report on the baltimore department and they are going to find a pattern and practice of problems there. as we already know, those problems exist. "the baltimore sun" did an expos a on the department that have been brought against that city over the years. i expect in seven months that

the department of justice is going to issue another scathing report finding many of these common problems with the baltimore department. and they will issue a series of recommendations. and then, the mayor of baltimore and the police chief there will pledge that they will move on these recommendations to get the department on a better track. we have seen this before. a few days ago, i should also mention that the white house task force on policing -- they issued a report just a few days ago that contained dozens and dozens of recommendations to improve policing and race relations. but i'm afraid the reforms that we see, reforms calling for more police training, more data collection, more transparency in the police departments, these proposals are good, but they really talk around a basic problem. so even if they are implemented

in good faith by police officials in the city's, we are not going to see anything more than improvements at the margins. if we want to get genetic improvements -- dramatic improvements from our situation we have to reconsider our policies related to drugs as peter mentioned at the outset. the drug war has been going on now for some 40 years. and it has been a failure. the war policy has not stopped drugs from coming into the country. the drug war has not stopped people from using drugs. and the war policy has not kept drugs away from our schools. each year, the government spends billions of dollars on the war effort, but it cannot even keep drugs out of our penitentiaries. it is bad enough that we are pouring a lot of money into a policy that is not working but it is actually worse than that.

the policy is counterproductive. it is creating more problems than it is solving. one of these problems concerns the relationship between young minority men and the police. during the days of alcohol prohibition, there was a thriving underground market to supply liquor to those who wanted it. today, we have a thriving underground market to supply narcotics to people who want to use them. it is no secret that young minority men in our cities, and the poor neighborhoods, are tempted to make some cash selling drugs. they are disproportionately part of a trade that sells drugs out into the open. in this underground market created by our drug policies is standing out there and telling young men that, yeah, even if you drop out of school, there will still be an opportunity to go make some cash. unfortunately, it is one of the only ways in which many of these

people to make cash because they are in poor neighborhoods and do not have skills from schools that are failing them. and it stands out as an opportunity for them to make a quick but. you combine that situation with what we asked the police to do. the police are tasked with waging the war policy. they are told to go out and make drug costs. -- busts. the police are often evaluated by the number of arrests that they make. and the drugs that they seize. and we have this powerful dynamic at work where the police are constantly clashing with young minority men in our cities. so many of the stops and searches on the streets of our cities -- and they are not about burglary investigations. they are not about rape investigations. they are trying to make drug busts.

there is a marijuana arrest in the united states every minute 24/7, all year long. and that is just marijuana. behind every arrest, there are dozens and dozens of searches and stops and raids that go on. i have to lay that kind of background before we can discuss some of the proposals that have been put forward. one of the presidents proposals is called my brother's keeper and it is designed to help mentor young minority men. we also have proposals to collect more information from police departments about their stops about the person stopped and how long the stop took place and were any jobs on the scene and collect more information from the police. we also have the popular proposal to spend more money on body cameras which matt feeney is going to be talking about in

a few minutes. these ideas -- there are some merits to them, but they are only going to bring us small marginal improvements from where we are right now. if we want to take some intermediate steps to try to get some better results, the police departments can scale back on the stopped and frisk tech the -- stop and frisk tactics that police have been using in minority neighborhoods. these are tactics where police stop pedestrians out on the street when they suspect that there is some terminal activity a foot and will stop and often frisk people down to see if they have any drugs or weapons on their persons. in york city -- in new york city, and these would never be tolerated in the suburbs. a lot of my friends complaining about police searches and tsa searches at airports.

if you can imagine, at least when you're going to an airport you can prepare yourself that you will be going through that. if you can imagine the stuff happening in your everyday life, like when you want to go to work, go see a friend, go to a movie, and you are stopped by the police detained, and frisked, you can get an idea of what life is like for young minority men in the cities. in new york city between 2000 4-2012, there have been 4.5 million stops. what is interesting and this is from a federal case when this was challenged in federal court and the judge found that of these 4.4 million stops, in nearly 90% of the cases, there was no summons given or no arrests. remember, in order to make a stop illegal, police say they have a good reason for stopping somebody because they thought criminal activity was afoot. what the judge found and was on

disputed by the litigants was that in nearly 90% of the cases there was no summons and there was no arrests. they stop somebody, to tame them, and made -- detained them, and frisked them and nothing happened. this is the round where the police have the incentive to stop and try to find drugs. they are not purposely trying to harass people, but they are evaluated by the number of arrests that they make. and yet, we are told in court that they had a good reason for stopping somebody, but in 90% of the cases, it turns out that they were wrong. whatever their hunch was that somebody was involved in criminal activity turned out not to be the case. otherwise, there would have been a summons or arrest. this is happening right here in washington dc as well. we have conservative judges it here on the court of appeals. judge janice rogers brown has

written eloquently about this on how young minority men are treated differently. that if the police had stopped several people in business attire, hanging out outside of a starbucks, we do not see that thing happened. when it comes to poorer people who live in a different part of town police rush up and attain these people and subject them to frisks. this creates a lot of problems and treats people differently and hits the residents of minority neighborhoods against the police department in a pitched battle. that is why we have this rising or amendment -- resentment and so many of our cities. these are the people coming out to protest when things go so far as to when somebody is actually kill. like a freddy gray. mayor bill de blasio in new york city has begun to scale back on stop and frisk tactics in new

york city. that is one thing that leaders and other cities can do. the stop and frisk tactics create a lot of resentment in our cities and they are really misguided. another thing that we can do is stop the flow of weaponry on the pentagon to local police departments. president obama spoke a little bit about this on monday. when the police role into these neighborhoods in our vehicles -- armored vehicles, dressed in camouflage, with military helmets and military weaponry, these are these violent raids on people's homes and apartments. we have a map on the cato institute website that we call the rate map. we kind of track a lot of these violent, paramilitary raids on people's homes apartments, and public housing. when these units role into a neighborhood, constitutional rights are too often trampled. people get hurt. and more generally, even if you are not the subject of the search if it is

nader, people begin to view the police not as a force that is helping them solve problems, but as an occupying force coming in. we used to refer to police officers as peace officers. they were there to respond to a disturbance and restore the peace. but these days, they are too often rolling into neighborhoods in the middle of the night or early in the morning, conducting a violent raid and they are actually creating the disturbance. that is another problem that we need to reverse. another thing that we can take a look at this to re-examine the red tape that too many police units have put in place with respect to employment practices for police officers. there is too much red tape in place that makes it almost impossible sometimes to get rid of a bad police officer. some police chiefs will tell you that they know who the bad apples are right now. but it is also possible to get them off of the force because of

the red tape that is involved. our friends on the right see this problem in the education contexts where it is hard to get rid of bad teachers because of union contracts, but the same problem exists with respect to police departments. but again, we want intermediate steps. we will get intermediate results. since i am almost out of time, let me strands once again. if we want to see dramatic improvements, we have to bring the drug war to an end the same way we brought the mistaken policy of alcoholic prohibition to an end. that is not to say all problems will go away. the problems of police may conduct -- misconduct and corruption will always be with us. we will see significant improvements in these areas if we were to bring the drug war to an end. at cato, we have looked at the policies of other countries, like portugal which decriminalize all drugs in 2001.

what are the primary objections that we used a here was that if we ended the gerard war, we would see a spike and rug used and have a public health crisis and it would be too late to turn back. it turns out, in the study of portugal, that did not happen. drug use -- there was most bike -- no spike. the drug policy has been in that country for many years and there has been no realization that they need to reverse that. other countries have begun to look at portugal and study of they're doing there and move in that direction. we should let the police focus on violent crime and let health officials focus on problems associated with drug abuse. thank you for your attention. [applause] matthew: thank you tim, and thank you peter, and thank you all for coming.

i want to stress the idea of body cameras, which are often used as a remedy for police misconduct. that is in the wake of tragic incidences like the desk of freddy gray and michael brown, i often hear that if we had more cameras on the streets were on police officers that we would be able to hold police officers more accountable. before we see what the effect body cameras can have, the role they play into investigations into police misconducted the role of the federal government, where i'm, i suppose, standing now, albeit in a basement and the issues that must be addressed if anyone is interested in formulating a body camera policy. one of the most cited studies was carried out in california t. began in february 2012 to february 2013 in 54 offices, where all the cameras, there were about 1,000 shifts that

were studied and about half the offices can wear cameras and the other half they did not. interestingly, this was the result. this is from the raw data. you'll see that the last batch, the experimental period, there was a dramatic drop in use of force incidents, as well as complaints against police officers. now, that might strike you as great evidence that body cameras have a big role in improving police behavior, but there are a couple of things i want to point out about this study. firstly, it is not necessarily the case you have this correlation of a problem here, ok? so the study began just after a new police chief came in, the new police chief implemented a number of reforms, so we don't know to what extent the other reforms contributed to this. also, it's worth pointing out we don't know if the welcome results are because the cameras make citizens behave better or

if they make police officers behave better. you have this interesting problem. you can't really isolate the effect. are these body cameras having an effect on citizens and police or a bit of both? while working on this issue, i have come across a problem that other people have found which is i was very limited to actual peer review study on body cameras, so if anyone in the audience is watching is in a position to carry out such a study, i urge them to do so. another study i like to height is from mesa, arizona. this was another study with 50 cameras, and it was 12 months. the first six-month period, activation was required. in the second six-month period, activation was up to the officer. two things i want to point out about this study is that when officers were allowed to turn the cameras on and off at their own discretion, the camera use declined 42%. now, that should tell us something. while looking at the

literature, it's important to keep in mind which of these studies include volunteers and which include people assigned to wear the cameras. in this, it was a mixture of both. but as you can see, blue team refers to an i.a. -- these refer to software officers use to complaints and use of force incidents. as you can see, there is a decline in complaints, as well as use of force. but we have the same problem as we have in the rialto study. we're not sure if this is for other variables that weren't being looked at or because of other reforms in the police department. the last study i want to discuss was actually in scotland. this was a three-month pilot that start with 18 months. they eventually moved up to 39 cameras. concentrated in northfield which are two neighborhoods in aberdeen they were selected because of their socially deprived status. so they looked at things like

crime, homeownership, health and education. and you can look at the charts. and it looks like, well, the same period the year before, so june to 2010 is the trial period. compared to the same month before, there is a decline in crime, including vandalism minor assault, and serious assault. but even the researchers in this study noted that it is doyle show a causal relationship between the use of body cameras and changes in crime. in particular, it is challenging to attribute any changes in crime to one specific intervention. given that there are other changes occurring simultaneously both at the societal level such as increases in unemployment and police force level, for example, in terms of restructuring of police services. so the evidence seems to suggest that after body cameras are deployed in a given area, you have welcome results. whether that is a decline in use of force decline in complaints against the police, and you have a decline in

crime. the next slide shows that the two areas that were studied enjoyed a greater decline in crime than the rest of aberdeen during the period. so what are reto make of this? what i want to argue is that even if police body cameras dent have any effect on police behavior, they would still be using -- they would still be worth using because of the evidence that they provide. the spike here is a still from a body camera footage that was captured in march of 2014. the man in white with his hands in this position is james boyd, a homeless paranoid schizophrenic, who was camping out in the mountains. he was shot and killed. he was also beanbagged and a canine unit was sent on him. now, what i think is interesting about this case is that in january too, officers were charged with murder.

and at the time, the county district attorney said in this case we have evidence to establish probable cause we dent have in other cases. i have seen many, many body camera videos that show police misconduct. what's interesting is that very fact, that even if police officers are wearing these devices, they still do engage in this behavior on occasion. in this instance, two of the officers are facing murder charges, but i've seen -- there was a recent case of a man holding a screwdriver who was shot and killed in dallas. the officers are not facing charges in that case, last i checked. so what i think -- going on this, body cameras are not a panacea. we cannot expect the deployment of this technology, to you know, solve all our problems. there are other policy reforms we need to consider. so finally, i want to talk about federal agencies here. i'm a federalist. i think that policing should be

handled at the local and state level. i don't think that the federal government has a role in telling local police departments how to conduct their business. however, a lot of federal agencies are armed and a lot of federal agencies have authorities to rest people. the d.a. f.b.i., a.t.f., border patrol, so i think the federal government certainly does have a role in discussing body camera policy for these agencies. i know the obama administration has proposed giving money out for body cameras as has senators rand paul and brian have co-sponsored legislation. i don't think that we should be attaching financial incentives for body camera use. i am more than happy for congressmen and senators and the president to take part in a conversation on body cameras, but we should be wary of attaching financial incentives. i want to finish up by talking about what a good body camera

policy might look like. we need to get this right. a bad body camera policy could be very dangerous. looking throughout the country, there are examples of good policies and there are examples of bad policies. the knee-jerk reaction might be to assume that the body cameras should be on all the time and footage should be available to the public all the time. but there are serious privacy concerns here. police regularly interact with people on the worst days of their life. we need to be care whfl we think about the release of body camera footage that includes children who have been sexually assaulted or victims of domestic abuse. police also talk informants, people who have spoke ton police in confidence. they are also first on the scene on fatal auto accidents. they also sometimes, as we know from dash camera footage, interact with celebrities. and also people who have had a bit too much to drink on a saturday night. we need after a prove are you self in place that clearly states when the cameras are going to be on and off, what

information is going to be redacted when the footage is released, and what the process is for that footage to be released in the first place. one of the more particularly controversial things i want to talk about is policy related to when people can view the footage of specifically officers. i have seen policies, thinking specifically of the lapd that proposed a body camera policy that would allowland officers to view body camera footage before making an initial statement after use of force or violent incident. i think we need to have a policy in place that puts accountability and transparency ahead of any opportunity police officers have to try to exonerate themselves by looking at body camera footage. i think body camera footage could certainly be used as evidence in criminal cases but they shouldn't be afforded -- police officers shouldn't be afforded the chance to view the footage before making statements. i am more than happy to take questions afterwards, but i'm going hand over to my colleague

at the moment. thank you for your time. >> thank you 5u8. i'll try to be brief so we can get right to the question and answer session. i also want to take this up to a different level, because if freddie gray's death in baltimore was a spark that set off the riots in baltimore and the troubles there, there was an awful lot of gunpowder already lying around. it was in terms in the general conditions under which people in that area of town had to live. if you look at the area where the incident happened in baltimore, more than half the people there are unemployed. this is an area of town that doesn't have a single grocery store. there's not a single restaurant in the area,ness even a fast food joint. so you have high unemployment. you have very few opportunities for people. and it's not surprising that

there's a certain hopelessness and despair and frustration that sets in, so that when there's an incident like freddie gray, it lights a spark and then everything goes off. the question then becomes, how do you tamp this down? how do you solve the problems that beset an area like that? how do you give people more hope, more opportunity, a chance to get out from under the conditions they're living in in a place like sand town? right after the riots, people thought about it. politicians in particular thought about it for about 10 seconds, and then immediately came one their answer, which is that we need to spend more money. we heard over and over again, we need to invest in our inner cities. president obama said that. congressman cummings, who represents the baltimore area, said that. steny hoyer said that who represents maryland and that area. i mean constantly we heard this refrain, what we really need to do is spend more money,

because baltimore has been neglected for years. the inner cities have been neglected for years. poverty has been neglected in this country for years. the reality is there's very little evidence of neglect. we have been pouring money into poverty and into baltimore in particular for decades. if you want to go back to 1965 when lyndon johnson declared war on poverty, we have spent $22 trillion in this country on anti-poverty programs. last year alone, the federal government spent $6 8 billion financing over 120 separate anti-poverty programs. state and local governments tossed in another $300 billion. we're spending just about $1 trillion last year on poverty. that doesn't strike me as neglect. in baltimore, between 2003 and 2013, which is the last year we

have complete data for, baltimore received $6 billion in federal and state grants to fight poverty. and they received an additional $1.6 billion in stimulus money from the big stimulus program we had, and they spent about $1.4 billion of that $1.6 billion so far. and yet we still see 25% of baltimorians living in poverty. we still see the problems that beset sand toufpble we're not getting a great deal of bang for our buck. and it might be because we're spending, throwing money at the problem of poverty rather than dealing with the things we know actually can lift people out of poverty. number one of those is a job. less than 3% of people who work full-time live below the poverty level. yet, as we've seen there's

very few jobs available in inner city baltimore and places like sand town. well, one reason for that might be the fact that maryland and baltimore in particular have among them some of the worst tax and regulatory climets for business in the nation -- climates for business in the nation. maryland has the 10th worst business tax climate in the nation and the fifth worst personal income tax climate. when it comes to small business they're the seventh highest marginal tax rate on small business in the nation. now, if a business is going to try to locate in an area like inner city baltimore that's a high-risk venture for that business. they're only going to do that if they see a substantial opportunity for return, and the more barriers, tax and regulatory barriers you put before them before they can invest in those areas, the less likely they're going to be to make those investments. you're not going to lure businesses to high poverty high-crime areas while you're

still piling on additional regulations and additional taxes, which is the policy that maryland has undertaken. second is education. we know that if you drop out of school chances are you're going to be poor. you go on and graduate college, you're not. 25% of baltimore students failed to graduate. the s.a.t. scores in baltimore are 100 points below the national average. and less than half of baltimore students pass the standard assessment test for high school. and yet baltimore spends a great deal of money on education, over $16,a5 hundred per student in the baltimore school system, depending on how you want to measure it, baltimore is between second and fourth highest spending big city in america when it comes to education. so we're spending money, not

getting good results. why? because the baltimore school system acts more like its job is to protect teachers than to serve parents and students. maryland has one of the worst, one of the strictest regulations of charter schools in the nation. as a result, there's only some 70 or so charter schools in the whole state of baltimore. more students are educated in charter schools in washington, d.c. than the state of maryland. parents don't even have public school choice in maryland. if you're assigned to a district you're essentially stuck in that district, no matter how bad the school is f. you're living in sand town and sent to a school down the street that's crime ridden, doesn't have text books, teachers don't teach, you're stuck there. you don't have the opportunity to send your kids somewhere else. let alone things like vouchers or tuition tax credits or

something that really would give parents control over the students. so we file jobs. we fail on education. and finally, we fail on family formation. we know that one of the keys to being not poor, or one of the keys to getting out of poverty is waiting until you're married to have a kid. now, this is not a moral judgment. it's an economic one. you're five times more likely to live in poverty if you give birth without a father or without a husband than if you wait until you get married before you have children. and yet we have two separate policies in place that increase out of wedlock births in maryland. number one is extremely high level of welfare benefits, often conditioned by not having a father's income in the family. and second as we've already heard, a war on drugs that criminalizes young men gives them a criminal record that

makes it very difficult for them to get employment in the future and also in the words of william julius wilson from harvard, makes them not marriageable. if you're a single woman in the inner city and you're looking for a husband, chances are it's much more difficult to find one, because they can't get a job. they're not set for marriage. they're not set for a family, because they have this criminal record that they're tied to. and then on the other side of it, we say ok, well, if you have a child, we'll still give you all these welfare benefits on that side of it. so it's not surprising that 2/3 of the births in baltimore are to unmarried women and more than half the households in baltimore are headed by single women, which is a recipe for poverty. the simple fact is that what we've done is try to sue their own consciousness by throwing poor people money. we measure input how much do we spend, how many programs do we have, how many people have we gotten out of poverty.

we're giving people money to make poverty a little less uncomfortable, but we're not taking steps that would actually get people out of poverty. that would include reducing tax and regulatory businesses for businesses that want to invest in these high-risk areas, improving our school system by giving parents control over schools and holding teachers accountable, and improving incentives for family formation by reducing welfare and ending the war on drugs and the overcriminalization of young black men. thank you all very much. appreciate it. look forward to the questions. [applause] tim: we have a limit amount of time, so i'm going ask that everybody keep their question in the form of a question so that we don't take up too much. peter: we'll start with you there. question: i'm from voice of the

moderate. in 1992, i got to go to the l.a. riots. i was living in the bay area. it took an hour. if i had a body cam on me, i would have noticed that it was more of an economic issue than racial issue. the mainstream media portrayed it more as racial, but it was the koreans, it was everybody fighting everybody. it was just madness. but it had nothing -- as much to do with race as it was portrayed. also, with ferguson, i think that the body cam would have helped. but also, it's poverty. and what you said is very valid. so my question is if you don't like the body cam, but a body cam cannot just protect the police officer, it can protect the general public, so we'd know what's really going on. i was told the ferguson indictment was delayed so it could happen during primetime. and then it happened at night. that was a lot more dangerous for society had they just released it five hours earlier.

so any comments that you have about both of those. matthew: i think body cameras actually benefit both police officers and citizens. police officers are sometimes subject to bogus complaints and you recollect hear police officers saying that they like body cameras because it makes -- it cuts down on a certain degree of dealing with that. however, they certainly, i think there's a huge benefit to citizens. the interesting thing that happened after ferguson was because there was a lack of video footage, two different area tives were allowed to emerge. one was, you know, this was a young, angry -- a young angry man who needlessly attacked a police officer and, you know was justifiably slain. and the other narrative was that you know, the officer -- but one of these, or neither of those is true, and a body camera would have helped. i think in the future, an increasing number of americans

are going to come to the mind that officers have body cameras. it's going to become the norm. like i said, we need good policies in place to make sure that's not a zast when her it does happen. tim: closely related is the proliferation of cell phones and capturing where police conduct with a cell phone -- a generation ago a generation ago, when somebody complained of police brutality, the average person didn't know what to make of it, right? somebody says the police need me, the police respond and say, well, we use the force that is necessary to bring somebody you know, under control so that we can arrest them. and your average person, they didn't know what to make of it. i wasn't there. i don't know what to believe. i don't want to believe the police department is telling a lie. nowadays, more and more arrests

and incidents are caught on cell phone coverage, and now the average person can reach their own conclusions about whether the police were using necessary force or whether they had stepped over the line and engaged in you know, just police brutality and police beating. and so this is bringing, really a revolution now to policing. it's having a big impact because now people can reach their own conclusions about it, and then, you know protest about it until there really is accountability. matthew: i really think -- in doing research, i watched a lot of depressing youtube videos, whether it's body cam footage, but also people filming the police. what really is brought home to me is that not enough people understand their rights when it comes to filming the police. it is a first amendment-protected -- if you're legally where you're supposed to be, you can

preliminary film the police. i can show any of you afterwards but youstream is direct video upload, so it goes straight to a website. there's other apps for recording the police. film the police. question: i was jailed for 22 days, 14 days in solitary confinement until 5:00 so that mark warner could be re-elected in the state of virginia. we have an unusual absence of checks and balances that has become the perfect storm. we are saying right now this is an african-american problem, this is an american problem, and what i would like to ask you is, who can we go to and who do you think we should be able to go to for justice and fair innocents courts? we send our young men and women off to war to fight for rights we no longer have in this country.

tim: it's a complicated quefment if you feel like your rights have been trampled, the first step for anybody is to try to find a good lawyer, because they're going to help you, you know, recommend to you the things that you can do and the things that you shouldn't do and get in touch with elected officials, and they'll know to bring the proper complaints against the police departments and to bring viable lawsuits. agree with you. i know what you're saying. there are lots of obstacles in place to get redress of grievances and get compensation, so there's a lot of reforms that need to be done in order to get the system to where it ought to be. question: i understand the secondary benefits of drug legalization, but in terms of distribution, do you really

think that this will benefit, or do you think that a harder drug or marijuana will just take the place and the cycle will continue on? tim: the primary benefit is it brings peace and harmony back to these neighborhoods. right now, there is a thriving underground market, and it's controlled by criminal gangster organizations that fight one another to get control of the trade. so there's the violence among these gangs and innocent people get caught in the cross fire. the gangs have no resmbingses about selling drugs to minors. so by ending the drug war and putting drugs into places like liquor stores, i mean, it's not -- it's not great. there are some problems that are going to be there, but it's a whole lot better than what we have right now, where you have this thriving underground market and the gang violence.

as i said, it's a tempting invitation for young people who are dropping out of schools to go and make some cash. what happens is they make some cash for a few months, and then they either get busted, get a criminal record. it makes it regard for them to re-enter the mainstream economy and get work experience or they go to prison, or they get killed by a rival gang. so these are the problems that we can get away from. that's if we were to end the war on drugs. time for one more. yes, in the back. question: tax incentives in maryland and creating jobs do you have a timeline -- say if it was implemented today -- for those policy changes, for tax and education and coming into business a timeline where you see a change in those communities? michael: it certainly be

overnight. these are high-risk areas for a business to invest in. the people who are working these areas, or living in these areas, are said to be low skilled, criminal records, all the other problems we've been talking about. plus you have high-crime areas and areas that are simply not areas where people want to rush in to create a business. even with incentives, it's going to be a slow process to get folks to invest in that. that said, you can see communities turn around fairly quickly. you only need one or two anchor businesses to bring into an area where you can sometimes see the whole area begin to turn around. you can look not too far down here in chinatown in washington, d.c. where, after the m.c.i. center went in a couple of businesses went into that area and began to turn around, or downtown silver spring in maryland, where the discovery store went in, and they created the pedestrian mall down there and businesses went in. once you can get one or two to sort of anchor the investment, others will follow. i think it's going to be a multiyear process.

you're going to have to deal with the other things, too not just the businesses, but educate the workforce, which means changing the schools. you're going to have to have -- deal with all these other problems as well, deal with the drug wars, so you don't have the high crime areas and so on. there's not a single magic bullet, but it's part of the prosms you can't say there's no jobs. by the way, there's one source moving in there, so let's tax the heck out of them. you can't do that. tim: there's time for one more i guess. question: can you identify by name any presidential candidates or leading congressional figures that got this message of saying, let us decontrolize, back off this stuff, and can you make any statement about either party or caucuses congressional black caucus whatever, any group which has stature within congress that would at least say we can pass a law saying

we will -- any state that wants to take the authority we'll let them let the states experiment, the federal government will stand back and let them give it a try, or something like that. it is important to recognize that the progress that we have seen in recent years with respect to reversing from policy has come at the state level, and it is also come referendum, not by elected officials passing or repealing drug laws through a state legislature. that is how it happened at colorado, washington state, and we have seen it happen and a few other states as well. california will be the big wanted to thousand 16. it is happening inby referendum. that said, there are a number of members of congress who are putting forward back bills who are trying to say were federal -- restrain the federal law enforcement apparatus

by restraining the federal law enforcement agencies by going into those states were bust -- two best people who were opening up legitimate stores and things like that. we are seeing congress there. -- progress there. we will have more and more states, especially on marijuana, begin to tune away from the war policy. i think marijuana will be largely legal in the united states, but it is taking too long. it will happen, but i think it will happen in aid, 9, 10 years. >> as far as the economic incentives go, i think the major candidates at least, marco rubio has a very detailed proposal in which he would turn welfare spending back to the state with relatively fuse few strings for

experimentation. rand paul has a proposal to slash taxes in inner-city high poverty areas that would do that. he also has a proposal with cory booker and dick durbin to eliminate or rollback criminal records for people. i think that would go a long way as well. tim: in the last congress he sponsored a zone bill. that is at the federal level. officially you are all dismissed, but i will entertain which is if you -- questions since we started a little bit late. >> they found time in the course

of the very short remarks on the patriot act extension the other day, it only went about 10 hours, to talk about a lot of these issues. >> senator mccaskill has a bill that aims to curb the problems there. on the house side, they also have a companion bill to that. >> i am glad that you had a speaker on here, michael, to talk about the economic issues and some of the other issues, because i think -- i have noticed that has to be at economy in this debate, where some of us who are concerned with release to talented policeman toleration of especially in the cities, there is always a pushback from some of the more conservative.

you can say that we need to address both problems and in tandem, as opposed to trying to set up the scene or dichotomy. >> i find it odd that self-described conservatives will fight against the war on drugs. we have the highest incarceration rate of any developed country. oftentimes people people incarcerated then putting people through for your college on a per annual basis. this amuses me. there are a number of ways to attack this, especially on drugs. it can be on fiscal arguments and on more arguments as well. michael: it strikes me a lot me

hear a lot of conservatives talk about we need to do more for family formation. and george bush have this proposal what we were going to go out and advertise in low-income areas with no more's the said marriage is good. [laughter] the fact is, most women, and poor women want to get married, but they cannot find men to get married because they were in jail. you need to deal with all of these economic issues as well as the marriage issues. you cannot lecture for all if you do not have a solution for the problem. >> i believe you mentioned the issue of dealing with the bad apples of the police force and the red tape involved. are there any suggestions on how we can create policy or legislation to address that? tim: there are good policies

contained in the task horse reports that was issued a couple of days ago. there are some good recommendations in there. but, the problem is that it is really the political incentives of the elected officials. i thought there was a mistake for the department of justice to lunch at the investigation into the baltimore police department because i do not think the time could be any better to clean up that department than right now. the mayor said she was interested in reform, her police chief said he was interested in turning around that apartment. they do get push back from police unions and so corporate something with the outcry, there is number been a better time to clean up the department and get the right reforms in place than right now. the immediate affect of the department of justice investigation is to kick the can

down the road for whoever, six months, seven months, a year from now. and then they will issue the report with particular citizens and organizations, but the political climate will have changed, everyone will have moved on, and they will make some small changes without having a big political fight. that is the pattern that we see over and over again. so sometimes, these federal intervention can have been enabling effect for the local officials who do not really want to make hard decisions at the local level. sometimes they want to invite the fed in some also -- in, so that they can make the hard decisions. with this is why we elect a mayor and police chief. it is their primary responsibility. now is the time to do it. they have avoided and innovative responsibility by giving

recommendations for what to do. matthew: i would add if body camera policy is in place for it might be easier to hire actual -- bad apples. they are allowed to use the footage, put their own report of what happened, that is going to allow for them to excuse themselves. initial reports need to be how did you feel what did you think you saw open to and including the incident. the footage that is coming out is making this debate a lot more fierce. the shooting in north charleston, everyone saw that footage, and how can this

possibly be justified? it will be increasingly difficult for bad apples to be justified if they are caught on camera, but if only lease are reviewing it, that will be harder. >> thank you everybody. i do have one bit of housekeeping. we will have another event next wednesday. we will have daniel mitchell, as well as representatives from switzerland and hong kong. thank you for coming. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, wiich is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> this discussion on policing

and the baltimore protest will be available later on our website. go to c-span.org and there you can also watch other forums on law enforcement. coming up tomorrow commencement speeches from around the country, including veteran secretary robert donald, also the head of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration kathleen sullivan. and from cal carolinas the university, it is senator tim scott, which includes this. >> back in 1983 when i was graduating from high school, the songs that have stuck with me for the last 32 years is a song called hold on by ouija. you are all too young to know ouija. maybe some of you out there know ouija. will you go ahead and start the music, president?

oh, he said he forgot the music. nevermind, i'm going to sing a cappella. will you help me out? thank you very much. [sings] hold on to your dream believe y'all don't know good music. [laughter] y'all don't know good music. i'm going to tell you the words. i'm just going to tell you the words. the song simply says hold on to your dreams. believe in love and let love be the light to show you the way. >> senator scott speech will be available on our website.

tweeting that the e-mails released today, do not change the essential facts or understanding of the events before, during, or after the attack, referring to the benghazi attacks. more now on the challenges for rebuilding communities over racial divides. speakers focus on what can be done to help families in distress communities, and and lessons learned as the redevelopment of areas.

>> good morning to all of you here today and to those of you joining via our live webcast. on behalf of the brooksings metropolitan policy program i want to welcome you to our baltimore and beyond panel discussion. i'm jennifer vai, a fellow with the metro program and i was asked, or at least i think i was asked to open our session today for two reasons. first, because of my almost 14 years here at brookings, i have focused my research and policy development efforts on how cities and metro areas particularly older industrial areas in the northeast and midwest, can revitalize their neighborhoods and grow their regional economies. that work includes research that i did several years ago that focused on greater baltimore's economy and strategies for better connecting low income residents to quality jobs. the second reason i was asked to

provide opening comments is because i live in baltimore. these two things combined give me both a professional and personal perspective on the events that occurred in baltimore over the past several weeks. in my professional capacity at brookings i, together with several my colleagues, have been trying to understand the circumstances and the conditions in which the protests and riots took place and put them in a broader regional and national context. it is by now well known that the sand town winchester neighborhood where freddie gray lived suffers from joblessness, poverty and the full range of social challenges that accompany approximate economic disparate and distress. over half of the working age population in this community is either not in the labor force or is unemployed and looking for work. nearly half of the children are impoverished and over a third of its homes are vacant and abandoned. such distress isn't limited to sand town winchester, overall one in five people in baltimore lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty. most of which are concentrated east and west of the downtown

areas. these poor areas are largely african-american and highly segregated by race and income. there is another less well known , story that we've been telling in blog posts and media interviews. that is that sand town and other baltimore neighbors are located in what by many measures would be considered a thriving metropolitan area. income and educational attainment levels are high in the region while poverty rates are relatively low. it has a strong black middle class and it's a region that's rich in resources including a , robust network of colleges and universities, several world class opt systems, close proximity to the nation's capital and unique vibrant urban communities where people and firms want to locate. this story, too, must be understood. it is by building on these

strengths that the region can continue to grow more and better jobs and yet it's not enough. to truly raise more residents out of poverty and into the middle class, neighborhoods like sand town and the people living in them must be far better connected to those opportunities. and this is the issue that brings us here today. but while baltimore will be a platform for our discussion, we will look beyond baltimore to focus on what we've learned from years of collective effort to improve the communities around the country. this broader scope is important because the fact is while baltimore has most recently been in the spotlight, is challenges are far from unique. it's degree of income inequality is actually similar to many other big cities, and its level of concentrated poverty.

is actually about average among its peers. unfortunately not only is neighborhood distress a widespread problem in our cities and increasingly suburbs around the country, if we look back over the past 45 years we realize that we actually haven't made much systemic progress in alleviating it. according to joe cartwright and his colleagues at the city observatory since 1970 the number of high poverty neighborhoods in the united states has tripled and the number of people living in them has doubled. there tends to be to be a lot of focus on gentrification when they research those who have seen their poverty rates fall to below the national average. these fact may make us want to throw in the towel, thinking that the problems are much too big and far too complex for us to address, that no amount of effort or resources will really help us move the dial. but as we'll hear from our really stellar group of panelists today we have, in fact, learn a great deal about what it takes to bring people

and neighborhoods out of poverty. from their decades of collective work and that of many, many others, we have a chance to assess what has succeeded and what has not and apply those lessons to their efforts moving forward. as our moderator for the panel amy lou will help us dive into these questions, daem together with bruce cats is the crow director and founder of the metropolitan policy program and brings over 20 years of her own research and policy work on cities and metro areas to this discussion. amy will introduce each of our panelists and then give brief context setting remarks before we get going. i anticipate an incredibly dynamic conversation that draws from the deep experience and expertise from our panelists. we will then have time for questions from you and from our web audience which by the way if you're joining us by webcast you can ask those questions via the #beyond baltimore. unfortunately i will take this opportunity to mention that we

we will not have the chance to hear from daurn walker today. he was originally on our program but was called away on urgent foundation business. he very much regrets not being able to join this conversation. so i said earlier that the second reason i was asked to provide some opening remarks today is that i live in baltimore, a city that i didn't grow up in but where i happily made a home with my family. silent take this time to add to my remarks a bit to end my remashs on a bit more of a personal note. since freddie gray's death and all that's followed i think many of us, maybe all of us in baltimore have a collective purveyervasive ache. for me this feeling comes from two sources, first, the events in baltimore over the past several weeks have simply been heart breaking, heart breaking because freddie gray shouldn't have died the way he did, heart breaking because businesses were destroyed and people were hurt and heart breaking because the young people taking part in the destruction and violence didn't see another better outlet for their frustration at the systems that they feel have shut them out and have left them behind. but the second source of that ache comes from knowing that

because of these events this diverse and special city that has so much to offer and that has experienced so much progress has been portrayed to the world over and over again almost solely through the lens of its deepest challenges. for those of us who care deeply about the city, who root for the city this is really, really tough to see. all the positive statistics i cited are what they are, i would be lying if i said i didn't feel some satisfaction in having a platform from which to tell them. as a way of letting people know there is so much more to baltimore than what they've been told and what they think that they know. and yet it's these two realities together that bring the most discomfort, that the economic hardship that underpins what occurred in baltimore can exist alongside progress and prosperity. not just in baltimore, but in communities throughout this nation that's supposed to be the land of opportunity. it is not that we have not understood this to be true for a very long time, but it can be easy for many of us to forget the real impacts until you see

the impacts firsthand in your community and you're forced to question whether or not they will catalyze change for the better or whether things will only get worse. i have to believe the former. baltimore was an early pioneer in applying new approaches to neighborhood revitalization, some of which have worked and some of which haven't. since then the practice of joining people and place based strategies has evolved and developed a body of evidence-based programs that can make and that are making a profound difference in the lives of families and communities. today we have an opportunity to have an honest conversation about these efforts, to ask important questions and to help lay the groundwork for a new path forward. thank you. [ applause ]

>> while everyone is getting miked up i wanted to say good morning. thank you for joining us today here and on the webcast. i want to thank my colleague jennifer for just a very heart felt opening to this day. it is a stark reminder about why we're talking about these topics. i did have -- listening to jennifer i had a groundhog day moment which was, you know after hurricane katrina which i was very actively involved in there was a design for a renewed conversation about urban policy and poverty. i think part of our motivation for having this conversation today was to make sure that even as the news cycle has resided a

bets that we continue to explore what needs to be done to ensure that we don't find ourselves in this position again. there is no doubt there is now a national discussion about poverty going on in the country right now that we hope gets sustained. in fact, president obama was served -- took part in a panel discussion last week in georgetown among faith-based leaders to talk about how we tackle the challenges of poverty and he it did that alongside with robert putnam who has written a book about the role of parenting and families in that. i want to stress, just to reiterate some of the themes that jennifer talked about today's discussion is focused specifically on the role of place in that opportunity story. because there's so much concern about the fact that your zip code or the neighborhood you live in has such a major predictor on a person's life outcomes. and so when we talk about

entrenched poverty, entrenched poverty as you heard from jennifer is highly concentrated in a neighborhood, whether it's in an urban core or increasingly in the suburbs. so as jennifer said, i think at times when i -- when we read the media stories or we see the images of the frustration on the streets, there is a sense that a lot of our policies and our programs had failed our communities. and so i think what we want to do is really focus on the fact that there has been a lot of well-meaning efforts organizations working in these communities often for decades trying to really reverse a lot of trends that we've seen. and the field has evolved. you know, since those severity early efforts to revitalize

sandtown westchester, whether it is the low income housing the place based investments with people based investment, social services, job training, housing mobility and choice there are now new forms of finance and there's more efforts to connect low income neighborhoods to the wider regional economy whether it's their skills, land use or transportation planning. this morning we are going to try to touch on all of those issues and we're going to explore what are those efforts that are underway today to unlock opportunity in these high poverty neighborhoods. we're going to discuss what we have learned over the years, what has worked and what has not and what we've been trying to build on. and we're going to also say we understand that the work is not finished. we have to acknowledge where the field have to go so we can continue to push the envelope on the policies and strategies that are needed to make sure we improve the life chances for low

income families and their children. so for this conversation today we wanted to bring leaders together and organizations who have actually been on the front lines of working on these issues. often, for decades. now, to convert neighbors of poverty to neighborhoods of opportunity takes a village and so today we kind of brought you a little mini village. [laughter] i know this seems really simplistic, but we have on our panel today a community developer, an anchor partner, an investment banker, a resident and next generation leader and a philanthropist and policymaker. and each one of them have an important role to play in this complex issue about neighborhood opportunity so let me introduce each one. so to my left is bart harvey, he is the former chair and ceo of enterprise community partners. he joined enterprise in 1984 shortly after james rouse started and formed the

enterprise foundation and bart himself ran the foundation from 1993 to 2008. he is an expert on affordable housing, he is an expert on community development. he was with -- helped formed with the foundations and the financial institutions trying to scale cdc's and community development capacity around the country. and like jennifer, bart lives in baltimore and has been an integral part of the efforts in sandtown winchester where we're going to hear about in a moment. next to him his miranda, the director of leadership development for youth build, usa. youth build was started by

dorothy stoneman as a wee little housing rehab program in harlem back this in the late 1970s and today it is a program that has scaled. it is now in 100 programs across ten countries helping disconnected youth become leaders in rebuilding their own communities. and joel himself is one of those leaders. he is not only a graduate of youth build, but he is now a director in the organization and on top of that he's also involved with my brother's keeper. next to him is donald hinkel brown who is the president and ceo of the reinvestment fund. they are expert approximate in financing neighborhood revitalization, providing market information, programs that increase the wealth and assets of people and communities. you're going to hear a lot about the neighborhoods they are involved in. to his left is derek douglas.

he is going to wear two hats for us today, currently he is the vice president for civic engagement at the university of chicago, he is working on a lot of the partnerships around the south side chicago neighborhoods, the city and the region around urban mic development, but the other hat he wore and how i got to know their derek is that he was special assistant to obama in the first administration, helping to lead the domestic policy council and the white house work on urban policy and metropolitan policy. and then not least is michael smith who is the philanthropist and policymaker i talked about. he is rently the special assistant to the president and helps run my brother's keeper and before that he oversaw the social invasion fund and a couple invasion initiatives at the case foundation. so i think we are going to have a really dynamic discussion. just as a reminder we're going to go and have this conversation for about 45 minutes or so, do think about your questions and we're going to open it up for q and a and, again folks, on the webcast our welcome to join in this discussion. so let me start with bart.

and, bart, went to sandtown winchester the day after the riots to help contribute to the cleanup. why don't you start first from that personal story about what you saw and what you experienced. bart: thank you, amy. like jennifer, being a baltimore ian, being raised there and coming back and settling there i was heartbroken. when you saw that cvs on the loop, that kept burning and burning and burning, i wondered what had really happened and what had happened in sandtown. the next day i went to both look for myself and to help clean up and it was a very different scene than you might have expected. there were about 200 people that were out, out of the community and some of the churches and they were -- they were cleaning up. and on north and pennsylvania avenue where the cvs was, and also in a couple of other areas for small stores that had been impacted.

i went and toured all of the investments that enterprise had made, 524 homes that we had directly contributed to and about 250 through sandtown habitat for humanity and they looked better than they looked 20 years ago when we built them. the homeowners were there, they were in great shape, there was no property damage in any of them. there was a beating heart at the center of sandtown winchester. so that was very positive and reassuring. and then i attended yesterday a baltimore meeting of philanthropy in the state and city to see how does baltimore react to this. basically they surveyed everything that had been touched by the riots and the looting and there were 350 different

businesses, a half of them were broken window or something on the exterior. the serious ones you saw on that clips over and over again, a very large shoe store, the cvs one senior center that burnt to the ground. if you take those 350 and look at the cost that is estimated on it, it's about $12.5 million from just initial preliminary estimates, a third of them have full insurance, a third of hem have partial and a third have known. the city and philanthropists and others, banks and community financial institutions are getting together a pool to try and put everybody back into business. so it's a lot more hopeful situation than you might see from what you watch. and i'm sure jennifer had the

same thing, that i got 67 e-mails saying, are you okay? baltimore is burning. you know, and so put it in perspective. it's still is a huge issue and we should get into those issues. >> so let me just follow up with bart about what were the original plans or what was the effort that was made by enterprise habitat for humanity with all of your partners in sandtown? and what's your reaction to the sometimes criticism or assumption that the $130 million spent in sandtown westchester didn't work? bart: and i will say at the outset that this was jim rouse's view, which i think is the right view, of a neighborhood transformation, it's what real community development is.

it's saying what would happen if not only the housing but the schools and the employment and the healthcare and all these systems worked to really help people become productive -- more productive and really integrate into part of the system so there's a path upwards for either them or their kids going forward. and we did undertake a major effort around that and we learned a lot and part of it was successful and part of it was not successful. and if you -- i was interested in fox news that said $130 million wasted in sandtown winchester. well, i went back, if you just take in the housing and infrastructure was a major part of that expenditure, there was other expenditures, but that have the major part and the $130

million is a mix of public and private financing, that was all added together out of an able report. if you took just what we know about ours, which is chicky grace and enterprise homes of the 524 units cost $58 million and it's all there and it's all owned by people that are working and a significant portion of that's being paid back to the state in mortgages over time. so -- and then if you look at the amount that was spent with habitat for humanity, that's being paid back, back into habitat that goes into other houses along the way. so that's all there. now, let me just do one thing if i may on this. not to avoid your question, but just put it into context. if you took 524 people and put them into starter houses in the county and in some of the

wealthier metro areas at a $350,000 home over the same period with the same interest rate you would spend more in the mortgage interest deduction on them. they have their houses, the cost to the government would be more than it is in sandtown winchester if you do the math over the same period of time. so you have these houses almost 700 if you count ours and habitat's together that are there, are effective, they are a heartbeat. what didn't happen? the connection to jobs was incredibly difficult. there is a large number of ex offenders in the area, they are an automatic exclude by law. we went round and round on that. that was a failure. economic development did not occur. so you can see where sandtown's investment begins and ends. where freddie gray lived was on the outskirts of the area that had been improved dramatically

and had the strongest home ownership portion of all of sandtown winchester. and what didn't happen was there wasn't an economic driver that kept that redevelopment going past where the homeowners and were and past where the stability in sandtown winchester was. the employment did not occur. the healthcare systems we -- and i'm sorry i'm probably taking too long -- the healthcare systems, we organized all of the various healthcare providers all the payment systems changed, very hard thing to do, but we signed up every -- almost every kid this sandtown for the chips program, et cetera, so there is more healthcare available than when we started. the schools, we took on two public schools under an

agreement and combined them into one from k through 6 to k through 8 and it went from one of the worst schools into the top half by all statistical measures along the way. so that improvement in still -- is still there. more needs to be done. so there are positives and negatives to this whole situation. most of that investment is still there, it's in -- and it's amazing that it's in better shape than it was when it was first done. amy: so i think that positive progress, the one outstanding issue was jobs. bart: jobs and development, economic development. and which takes us really naturally twoo joel, and he and i talked

a bit before this about how what we see is that despite some of this positive progress a lot of young people still very frustrated and so youth build works directly with those young people and it's, by the way, it is not lost on me that we are having this conversation at an institution that is like the symbol of privilege. so i asked joelle to just get us out of our ivory tower and really make everyone in this room really uncomfortable. and tell a story about how youth build really works with kids who feel left out and how you get to a place of promise. joel: thank you, amy. so youth build, just to give you some background on youth build youth build is in its 36th year

as a program, it started in 1978 in east harlem became a national -- federally funded program in 1993 under the department of housing and urban development and is a federal funded program under the department of labor. as far as the numbers go, we went from this one tiny program in harlem to 268 programs nationwide which sounds great, right, but there are over 2000 communities have applied to have a youth build program in their communities and only 368 are able to operate because of lack of funding. here are the needs if in those communities, the young people who come to our programs they come to our programs, we don't have to do very much advertising, word-of-mouth gets them in. they have a brother, a sister, and uncle who graduated from youth build and talks about this

as a unique experience that helped them tap into their potential it. they're coming to us from fragmented homes, some of our young people were or are currently gang members, single parents, struggling with substance abuse, homelessness. i mean, they're really feeling the sting of poverty every day and they're feeling of sting of generations of poverty. so they're coming to our programs sort of saying i need something to change. they're survivors. in the youth build program they're engaged by a loving and supportive community that believes in their innate and abundant potential and we provide economic enrichment, career redness skills, life skills development, leadership development, the opportunity to engage if meaningful service and we tap into that desire, right to want to change their communities. the story isn't all linear. i will give you an example. myself. i dropped out of high school when i was 17 and i literally walked out in front of high school officials and i remember at the moment feeling like i didn't want to go back but wondering why no one was coming after me. wondering why no one was telling me to turn around. at the age of 17 when that happened and you feel disconnected from the rest of

the world and see that some of the people who are supposed to be responsible for your education, for developing you aren't doing that and don't bother to say, hey, wait. you believe that the world doesn't care. so an enemy of our young people who come to the program in addition to the many stings of poverty that they're suffering , they're coming angry because they feel like they've been disappointed. but when you come to the program we believe in them. , they nurture them. we provide a place for them to heal, to develop real world skills, to tap into what i call, i compare this to the laws of energy which is that their ability is neither created more destroyed but transformed from one form to another and we take these amazing skills and talents that they bring and within the

walls of our program we are that reactor and we tap into the leadership that they already have and we help them come out and find a sense of self efficacy, make better decisions about their lives. they're able to succeed if n career and post secondary education. we provide this ongoing love and support. we have this motto, this mantra amongst graduates that says once in youth build always in youth , build. so we're a family. i have 140,000 brothers and sisters nationwide who have graduated from youth build programs over the years. these 140,000 brothers and sisters have engaged in the building of 28,000 units of affordable housing. so not only are they building themselves, they are building their community. those two things go hand in hand. so we take the young mother who is coming out of an abusive relationship and she comes to us and we provide the healing, we provide the real world skills. the young man who is suffering because he has been the victim of poverty but also has also been the aggressor of the many things that come with poverty, violence on others, violence on a partner, violent on himself.

and so, we work with a group of young people that to many in society are not that attractive. i was having a conversation earlier with you, bart, about, you know, there are some programs that have scaled really quickly but they're working with the people who are a little more attractive. folks from more affluent communities, college graduates they're easier to talk to they're easier to deal with they're not going to blow up in your face the minute you confront them with some of the problems they're facing. but these are young people that need us. we really are living in two americas. one that looks pretty and is pretty to talk about because we're doing something about the problems that kpi in that -- that exist in america and one that we're not really dealing with and one that we know is there because we saw the anger come out, right, in baltimore. and, you know, i think back, a colleague of mine pointed me to an interview on one of the news stations and i can't remember which one it is at the moment, but a young man, the reporter turned to the young man and the

young man said, we are hurting. we are hurting. we are not being listened to. and at that moment the reporter turned away because he wanted to focus on the riots. so that is who we are working with. we are working with young people who are hurting and our goal is not only to them them heal but to become productive responsible citizens who are not just living in their communities and not just part of their families but they are building their families, building their communities, they're becoming leaders. what i mentioned earlier that's who our young people were, today they are community leaders, they are police liaisons, they are working to go into the prison system and work with young people before they're released to give them some hope, to let them know once they get on the other side there are opportunities for them. that was long, i'm sorry. amy: no. no. i don't want to ever cut you off. tell us about youth build's experience in ferguson because i

think you do have a chapter there or working in st. loomis and in baltimore, too. joel: so youth build has a chapter in st. louis and soon after the events in ferguson we got a call from the director in st. louis and she said, you know michael brown's , uncle is actually a graduate of the st. louis program. he needed some help for funeral costs, clothing related to the funeral, we provided that. and the young people at the st. louis program and the staff at the st. louis program said we are close by, we need to be doing something. they were going into the community, sort of just being there, being part of it and beginning conversations with officials approximate in the community. it's taken longer than anyone would have liked, but recently the mayor of ferguson actually

gave youth build st. louis two plots why they can begin to build homes, affordable housing units. and the hope is that this grows so that the young people in ferguson are then able to build real community assets. and, you know, where we've seen this work we've seen in the young people once they're building these community assets they remember that for a lifetime. they drive by that house, that building that they helped build and they say, i built that. and, therefore, i am taking care of that. you cannot touch this. and so what we hope is that that is where we get into ferguson and we think we're on our way there. >> you mentioned in the green room that for every student that come into youth build there are so many more. joel: for every young person that make it into the youth build program we have at least five young people who can't because of lack of funding. so, you know we hope that the following year those young people come back. many of them do. there are some times when they don't. and we'll go out into the community and search for them, but we worry about where they ended up. so if they're not -- if we're not able to capture them when

they're saying, hey, we want this, right, we're going to lose them. it's the responsibility of everyone, right, it's the responsibility of our government, our corporate partners of everyone in the community, it takes a village, right, and we've got to take a look at who is answering the call and most of them are. amy: that's great. lots to cover, but, don, why don't we go to you and talk about trf and trf is actually -- they work in a lot of communities, but they've been in baltimore for ten years. so deep long-term patient capital investment and partnerships in that community. talk about your work in baltimore and what -- how that's a reflection of your theory of change at trf. donald: sure. the reinvestment fund is both a cfi, financial institution that's a nonprofit but also we've founded a development company, very specifically for baltimore, but it is working across the mid-atlantic as well. then we also are a data and analytics company and that's part of both the development entity and our data business

are really -- reveal our theory of change. we were invited to baltimore by by an organization just after the dawson fire bombing, an event that today would spark a riot, but then it sparked a tremendous amount of despair. the neighborhood and all of it organized with build's assistant ce, and they wanted something positive to follow that horrible , heinous event and they invited us to come and help them develop a redevelopment strategy. amy: can you tell the audience what oliver is, where that is. donald: oliver is in east baltimore, it is where they film the wire. it is adjacent to the ebdi region around johns hopkins medical. it is between johns hopkins medical and amtrak station. and we work there near the station, station north through green mount down through johnson square and oliver. we have built about 230-some

units across that region and we have reduced vacancy from over 40% to 8% thus far, we believe we will reach 5% vacancy in a couple more years with a bit more effort. we have increased median incomes within that region which was pretty consistently homogenous impoverished population. median income have raised 64% since we'ven investing there and we have been performing in the city a series of neighborhood iterations over time. i believe baltimore has done four different iterations. they have a time series of the market trajectories value , trajectories of place and can then adjust their programs individual communities can adjust their strategies or make their case based on data for why they need resources and of what kind. the cities in this current

environment of scarcity and ever diminishing resources need to be able to aim their resources. you know, equity 20 years ago was provide every service everywhere and then you provide it to the next person in line. equity today in a sense of scarcity is you had better use your resources where they are most effective. one of our theories of change is around those data advised decision makings for efficient use of resources and amplification of resources. the others to go from strength. we specifically picked oliver not just because of the fire bombing and the organizing effort, we originally told the folks we can't guarantee you that that's the neighborhood we would pick. we scanned the whole region and found that the combination of factors around there presented an actionable development that over a number of years with a specific amount of money we believe we could reactivate the marketplace. a build from strength strategy around community development and the reason why that is our strategy is we want the private marketplace to scissor with us around market activities.

so when we started our work in east baltimore we represented 80% or 90% of building permits over $50,000. today we are a minority of the building permits over $50,000. when we started we were the majority of home sales over $150,000. today we are a minority of the home sales over $150,000. the private market is drafting on our wind and that is what makes it manageable in terms of public subsidy in today's environment of shrinking budgets and it allows you to then shift your focus to the next neighborhood while the existing neighborhood is still being drafted with market activity and you can build a crescendo. it is planned change and, you know, the last topic we need to cover given the context is gentrification but justification -- gentrification

is just unmanaged change where the public sector is disengaged. what we're trying to do is manage a joint effort to building value and opportunity for existing residents and new residents in a way that's managed change and self sustaining then once we're able to move on to the next neighborhood. amy: we promised to get beyond baltimore, so the next is chicago. i'm going to bring tark into the conversation. as you know university of chicago is on the south side of the city and since he has arrived at university of chicago in his role he has really reinvented , the role of an anchor institution in sort of economic opportunity. so can you talk about that particularly in the context of sort of distress and inequality because i think many of us who are observers of the news cycle know that the mayoral race in chicago was very much defined by the frustrations in some of these neighborhoods and the inequality in chicago. so talk about the conditions and your role.

>> thanks, amy, for inviting me, it's good to be here and see so many people i haven't seen in a long time. the issues that chicago faces are not dissimilar to the issues in baltimore and many of the cities in the united states and around the world. you have this phenomenon in chicago where you have a very growing and thriving downtown area and then when you get out to the neighborhoods particularly on the south and the west sides, you see the population, disinvestment, high unemployment. and in my estimation the main issue driving that is is that the neighborhoods are not connected at all to what's driving the economy. i think one of the big challenges that neighborhoods often face is this disconnection that needs to be spoken to. what you saw in the mayoral race was some of that feeling and

some of that frustration. the mayor did a lot of positive things, but a lot of people still frustrated. they felt they weren't listened to, they felt that things were not getting better. and so that was why it was such a contentious race and went to a runoff and all of that. what we have been doing at the university of chicago has been trying to reimagine what the role of an anchor institution is in the city and in the community. looking at it not just as the traditional anchor things that a lot of institutions do which are very important, like our buy local, higher local, and those sorts of things, but trying to really look at what are all the things that universities do and how can we leverage those things to have an impact in the community and the city? and so it's important to emphasize what are the things universities do. so we try to develop a civic engagement policy that doesn't have us trying to become the

city, it doesn't have us trying to be a bank, doesn't have us trying to be a foundation, it's be a university, but there are a lot of things universities do that can be leveraged for impact. the anchor stuff is very clear the amount of -- you know, the university of chicago is the largest employer on the south side, largest purchaser on the south side, largest developer on the south side. we run four charter schools, we have the largest medical provider on the south side. you can go down the list and so there's a lot of things and a lot of tools that we can use and have been using to try to reorient those to have an impact in the city, in the region, in the local community. but we also -- universities are also educators, that's what they do, so we've been trying to develop initiatives to support and provide more access to the educational resources of the university and the city. things like college readiness, college access types of programs. we've been recently doing a lot

more work around leadership development in the public sector, in the nonprofit sector. we created a new program to incubate and accelerate nonprofits kind of at an organizational level which is another big issue. universities are also research discussion institutions, that's the core mission. so we've been thinking about ways in which we could try to encourage and incentivize more of our faculty as they're doing their scholarship that's getting published in the best journals to do things that also can have an impact on policy evidence-based kinds of approaches and we've been seeing a lot more of that. i will give you an example in a second. and the last area we've been really focusing on is around invasion and entrepreneurship. a lot of chicagoans become high priority for the mayor and a lot of effort in the city around had -- and that, and universities are, you know, with the research that goes on, the ideas they're

a huge opportunity to create new companies, new commercialized research, new technologies, new products and so to correct those -- connect those into the neighborhoods and the community and we created new centers. the first one on the south side that ties kind of the neighborhood and the south side into the broader economy. a couple of examples, if i could just highlight that are focused on, one is this initiative called case, chicago anchors for a strong economy, where we at the university brought it to the world business chicago, which is an organization in the city that leads a lot of its economic development, business attraction types of initiatives and the polk brothers foundation was an instrumental partner. the idea was to leverage the procurement power not just of one anchor, but of multiple anchors. and also anchors in different sectors. a lot of times you will see educational institutions or medical institutions band together, but here we have the major universities, the major

medical centers, the city is a partner as well as city agencies like cha and cta, the county is a partner, we have the private sector, banks, health providers and energy company, we have the -- all the largest museums in the city that are part of this consortium and the idea -- the motivation is really to think about ways in which these anchors can come together to pull their resources to connect the neighborhoods that are most in need on the south and west sides to the economy. so a big -- one big pillar of the work is around our purchasing and so we do both capacity building for businesses, which is a big issue, to how they can grow their businesses and get contracts with these institutions. we try to do -- work together to do big plays where we can go to one of our joint vendors and say we like you to set up an operation on the south side and we will give you a long-term

contract and it creates jobs, we also are coming together to borrow from each other's networks. so one of the big challenges we might have from local suppliers, this vendor doesn't know who we work with and so it helps in that regard. we're going to be building out a work force development pillar as well. another example of somethinganother example of something that i think is relevant to the conversation today is this new initiative at the university now it's called the urban labs which is a project that is focused op doing very rigorous evidence-based research to inform policy. it's building on the success that we had with the crime lab and which you know very well was -- studied this program becoming a man which got into issues of youth violence, tested a program that showed how being in the program reduced youth violent arrests by 44% and that program then got scaled by the mayor to 2000 young men, the president met with those young men and then went back and that helped to spawn the my brother's keeper