get to the answer and patients will not get the care they need. it is announcer: c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that affect you. coming up, talking about recent advances in north korea's nuclear capability. developmentsg the in the u.s. standoff against north korea and president trump's relationships with traditional u.s. allies. less, the cost of operating the executive mansion. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on monday morning. join the discussion. next, georgetown university

law school professor paul butler talks about his book. and later, a discussion on seeing how regulations affect in the unitede states. -- medical care and united dates. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," georgetown university law school professor paul butler. professor butler discusses his book, "chokehold: policing the black man." brian: in your new book "chokehold," you write this near the end of the book, "the united states is a country of gross racial inequality." paul: yes, and the chokehold is thatvice grip

african-american men feel from the criminal justice system. when police put you in a chokehold, they are trying to get you to comply, but you can't comply because you can't breathe. that is emblematic of the black male experience in the united states. the social and legal response to the issues that black men have is to lock us up, to put us in cages, to stop and frisk us, to treat us as citizens whose rights other people do not respect. we are not full citizens of the united states. brian: you write more in this particular chapter, chapter

eight, you say "their lives are not afforded the same dignity and respect as white lives." my question is, why not? paul: people are afraid of african-american men. there are studies that show people have unconscious reactions of anxiety. they are concerned about crime and there may be more nefarious motives, as well. some research indicates that a lot of people don't think of african-americans as fully human. they think of us as apes. then there are stereotypes criminality associated with black men. those are based on statistics i breakdown in the book. while people have these concerns, when you look at street crime, black people do commit a disproportionate share. i talk about why that is and what we can do about it. when you look at some reactions people have to african-american men, i talk about brothers whose experiences that people do not want to sit next to us on the subway. there is a famous writer who writes about taking the amtrak and you can sit anywhere you want. the seat next to the black man

is always the last to get filled. on southwest airline, you can also choose your seats. a sports journalist joked that if a black man is sitting on an aisle seat and the other is in the window seat, the middle seat is the last to go. he joked black people love southwest because they get more legroom on it. there are responses that people have to black men that are relatively benign like that and then others that are quite harmful, like police being more likely to shoot like men and more likely to put their hands

on us when they do the stop-and-frisk than other people. brian: there are people watching saying, i'm not listening anymore. why should they pay attention to your book? paul: i wrote this book for people like you. you are not racist, but you don't understand the stuff you see in the news about the black man. the kid who bum rushes the old lady, the folks who are at the hip-hop club. in "chokehold," i try to break down this situation that african american men and ourselves. on the one hand, we are public enemy number one. on the other hand, we are the stars of pop-culture. not only are black men disproportionate in the criminal justice program, we have an

outsized influence on youthe culture. who has the most twitter followers? who has the most facebook fans? those are full of black men, from president obama and after that, a large number of athletes and artists, especially hip-hop artists. brian: let's go back to chapter eight. none of this is new, you write, african americans have never been free, african-americans have never been safe. paul: when we look at the way the police treat black people, there has never been a time where community relations has been anywhere near good. for a long time, if you were a black person and you called the police to report a crime, if you were the victim, the place -- police just didn't pay much attention to it. now the sense is, the police are overwhelmingly in african-american communities, but not to protect those communities, but rather to lock folks up. when you look at the things black people haven't been through in this country, from slavery to the old jim crow segregation, separate schools, separate water fountains, to situations now like the poison water crisis in flint, michigan.

it disproportionately impacts black people. for those extreme deprivations, black people are more willing to go to court, to peacefully protest. but there is something about being attacked by the police, the people who are supposed to protect and serve you, that sets african-americans off like no other. so when you look at every single blackinsurrection when andle have risen up abandoned peaceful protests and taken it to the streets in newark, in baltimore, in ferguson, in los angeles. it's always been because of

something the police have done. it's like, when you feel under attack by your own government, that is an extreme form of frankly, prejudice, and it just makes you want to rise up. it makes black people rise up like no other kind of discrimination. brian: you have been a professor for 20 years, you teach at georgetown law school. you are a graduate of harvard law school and yale undergrad. you're a graduate of st. ignatius high school in chicago. how did you do all this? paul: i'm fortunate i had a wonderful set of parents who raised me in a beautiful, all-black neighborhood in chicago. growing up there, i had a number of experiences with the police, like any black boy does. once i was riding my bike to the library, which was in an all-white neighborhood literally miles from my house. a cop car rolls up next to me, a white officer says, is that bike

yours? i said yes. is that car yours? and i sped off. when i got home, i told my mom what i did and this is a woman who marched with malcolm x and martin luther king. when she heard what i said to that cop, she spanked me. don't i know what happened to black boys that talk to the police like that? it's one of those spankings where the parent cries as much as the child. some 30 years later, might mom -- my mom was absolutely right. i now know that during this time, the police in chicago were operating this off-site where they were literally torturing black men. electrodesttaching

to their private parts. they were doing an equivalent of waterboarding. the city of chicago has paid out $60 million in settlements to black men who were victims of this kind of police abuse. growing at in that kind of environment, i was passionate about civil rights, about making a difference. after law school, i thought the way i might affect change was to be a prosecutor, to go in as an undercover brother, a classic idea of treating change from the inside. but what i found was rather than change the system, the system changed me. you don't go to harvard law school and not come out, like a lot of lawyers, competitive and ambitious. you want to be the best. in a prosecutor's office, the way you rise to the top is to put as many people in jail for as long as you can. it turns out, i was quite good at that, especially with the jurors in the district of

columbia who were mainly african american. i was hired to be a black prosecutor. if you go to criminal court in washington, d.c., then and now, you would think why people don't -- would think that white people don't commit crimes. they don't use drugs, they don't get into fights, because they are not present in criminal court in d.c. like a lot of cities. one reason i was hired is for jurors that have concerns to see this beautiful round skin. -- brown skin. it was supposed to send you a message.

if this black man was prosecuting the case, you could be sure things are on the up and up. it is so not all good, brian. in d.c., there is one of the highest rate of incarceration. they are heavily under criminal justice supervision. i left the prosecutor's office at the end of the day. i said, i didn't go to harvard law school to put black men in jail. brian: let me go back to my question. how did you do it? you talk about your parents, but you had to get into yell, you -- into yale, you had to get into harvard law school, what was your way of doing this? how did you train yourself? paul: i love to read and i appreciate you trying to give me some of the credit for my academic success. i had a great set of teachers and public schools, these segregated public schools, sometimes african-americans are trying to romance it about the segregated past because the idea is, we were more of a community because of segregation. doctors and lawyers had to live in the same spaces and

neighborhoods as bus drivers. there was more economic diversity. people took care of each other more. in some ways, that is not true. when we look at rates of homicide, they were just as bad back then as they are now. in terms of feeling part of this beloved community, that was my experience growing up in this totally segregated all-black chicago. when martin luther king came to chicago, he said it was the most segregated city he had ever seen, worse than birmingham. after this experience in elementary school, literally going for days without ever seeing a white person except on tv, my mom made me go to this elite high school in chicago, where mayor daley sent his kids and all these rich, italian and irish and jewish kids went. my mom wanted me to have the same shot at that kind of high school education because she knew it would help me get into a good college.

i got a great education there, went there kicking and screaming. it was an all boys school. i didn't want to go to an all boys school with a bunch of white kids. it turns out to be one of the best decisions my mom made as far as having a positive impact on my life and the education i got from those jesuits, and i teach at a jesuit institution now, georgetown law school. jesuits train leaders. in addition to getting great education, i got a sense of what it means to be a leader. not just somebody who is out there in the pulpit, but someone who helps guide conversations, discourse, on important issues.

that is what i tried to do throughout my practice and teaching with regard to criminal justice and especially the profound difference that race makes. brian: you tell us in your book, i don't remember the number of the chapter, maybe chapter four, on things prosecutors do that we might not know about. paul: yes, so one is to coerce people into pleading guilty. justice kennedy said in a recent supreme court case, we don't have a system of trials anymore in the united states. we have a system of plea bargains. 95% of people who are charged with a crime and up pleading guilty. in many cases, they plead guilty and not because they want to, but because if they don't, the prosecutor says, i am going to

throw the book at you. that is not supposed to happen. you are not supposed to the be penalized for exercising your constitutional right to go to trial. prosecutors do that every day, including bluffing about your case. there are a lot of cases, especially for the low-level misdemeanor ones, millions of americans get arrested for every day. prosecutors don't have that much evidence, in part because the case is so low level, the police are not that careful when they

make the arrests. because it is just a misdemeanor, the prosecutors are not all that concerned about convictions. in a lot of those cases, people would be better off going to trial. but they are afraid that if they do, and they lose, they are going to get a lot more time than if they plead guilty. in "chokehold," i tell this tragic story about a young man in new york. he was a kid who was accused of stealing a backpack. now he was absolutely innocent of that crime. the witness at changing his mind about when it happened and what happened. his family couldn't make bail so he sat in this editorialist rikers island, where he was abused by other inmates and he was abused by the guards. you can go online and look at video of him getting beat up. they kept saying, plead guilty, you can go home today. he said, i am not pleading guilty because i didn't do it. he sat in that jail for a year. they put him in solitary confinement, allegedly to

protect him, but what happened to him is what happens to virtually everybody, especially kids, who get put in solitary. that's why it is unconstitutional. most other countries in the world. it does something to your mind. there was a point where your judge looks empathetically at him and says, if you just say you are guilty, you can go home today. he said, i am all right, your honor. finally, after two years, the prosecution dismissed the case, he got to go home, but he still suffered the same kind of demons we know happens to virtually everyone who is in solitary. so one day, not long after he was released, he tied bedsheets to his neck and jumped out of the window of his mother's house, killing himself. that is a tragic case and in "chokehold" i suggest that one, really unfortunate lesson from that story is that he actually

would have been better off pleading guilty. if he pled guilty and had gotten to go home, he might still be alive today. i hate saying that. i hate saying anybody who is innocent should plead guilty, but this is the chokehold, brian. this is the way african-american men especially are dealt with by our justice system. brian: you write a lot about white supremacy. give us your feelings about white supremacy and where does it start and how often do you see it? paul: it's a harsh term, i know. and a lot of people don't like hearing it. i was careful to think about how to use it, but when i think about what explains how people of color are dealt with in the united states, we always have had this identity as a white nation, so slavery is embedded in the constitution in the infamous 3/5 provision.

there is a fugitive slave law there and part of the constitution says, slaves can continue to be imported into the united states. like merchandise until 1808. then they can't be imported anymore. but slaveowners can breed them like cattle. the question is whether a nation that founded this idea of black people as property and that has continued throughout the years to exploit black people, including through apartheid, the kind of segregation that reigned in the south for years after slavery. convict leasing. until now, the new jim crow,

where we have more black people who are under criminal justice supervision than there were slaves in 1850. when we look at all these mechanisms that are designed to control african-americans, the question is, why is that? and is there anything that can be done about it? suggesthokehold" what i is there is kind of a political economy that is going on. our system requires a group of people to be exploited for economic reasons. often, that group we turn to is black folks. slavery is the most obvious example, but even these days, if you are a black man who doesn't have a high school degree, you are more likely to be in prison than you are to have a job.

there are 1,500,000 black men who are missing from the economy in their primary working years as they suffered early deaths or because they are underground. they are locked up. i hate to say it, but i think we need to acknowledge that the system benefits some folks. it especially benefits working class white folks who do not have to compete with this 1,500,000 who are just absent, who are underground. it also benefits white elites. people make money. there is a prison industrial complex we can talk about these days like we used to talk about the military-industrial

complex back during the vietnam war. unfortunately, when we have this racialized system, we have a race winners and race losers. an african-american folks tend to be the losers. and a lot of people look at poor white people and ask, why do so many of them vote for trump? that seems to be against their interests. but if you look at some of the trump rhetoric that seems raced-based. which seems to exclude some white christian straight men. i think one message of this era of trump, is that there is a property value of being white and trump and his folks enhanced that value. so in some ways, it is not

irrational for poor white folks to vote for trump because he is trying to enhance the status of being white. cnnn: you talk about a anchor named don lemmon who is a black man. watch. [begin video clip] raised without culture, young black men often reject education and gravitate towards the street culture, gangs.

nobody forces them to do that. it is a personal decision. paul: he is right about that too, that in my estimation, he doesn't go far enough. if that doesn't apply to you, i'm not talking to you. pay attention and think about what has been presented in recent history as recent behavior. pay attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace, a culture that glorifies everything i just mentioned. thug and reprehensible behavior. [end video clip] paul: i like don lemon, i had the pleasure of meeting him a few times. he is an excellent journalist on cnn, but on this issue, the brother is just wrong. he has a lot of good company. in "chokehold," i talk about the speech of president obama, a man who i have enormous respect for, he told them to stop making excuses. he said, nobody cares how much dissemination you suffer. so from president obama, don lemon, a lot of folks have this cultural critique of what men,

-- black men about the way we perform masculinity. as don lemon says, if we just all pull up our pants, it will be all good -- i get it. when i see the guys on the streets with their butts exposed, i don't like it. but those are not responsible for the plight that african american men face these days. when we look at this image that folks have of us as thugs, when we look at all this anxiety, that existed a long time for before hip-hop. it existed a long time before some black folks tried to

re-appropriate the n-word. it would be helpful for some black men if they were more in line with white, middle-class standards of respectability. they might get less attention from the police. but at the end of the day, that is not going to make a difference with regards to the fact that the black on a plummet -- black unemployment rate is always twice the white on -- white unemployment rate. they are either in prison, on probation or parole or awaiting a trial. one reason i don't think it will make the huge difference is because even now, as a middle aged guy, as a law professor, my experiences with police are still fraught. i still get a little sweaty when i see a cop car behind me. me and my middle-class, upstanding friends, still have experiences with police, try as we might to do the right thing. it's just the problem is not with black men, the problem is with the police. brian: when was the last time you felt this?

paul: in chokehold, i talk about one big dramatic example when i got arrested for a crime that i didn't commit. that's obviously dramatic, things worked out fine -- obviously traumatic, things worked out fine for me. the instances we think of as micro-aggressions are -- i am trying to think about what specific one to tell you about -- i can tell you a couple weeks ago, when i was in new york city, there was a guy standing outside an apartment near where we were staying. he got out of his car, he was just standing there. an hour later, i looked out the window, the guy is still there, but now he is surrounded by police. so i asked the police, what going on? and they say, we are arresting

this guy for drunk driving. and i said, i have been looking at him for an hour and he wasn't driving. and i said that seems weird because he wasn't actually driving and he said, who are you? and i said, i am just a concerned citizen. and they said, if you don't want to be arrested, why don't you go back in the house. brian: were they white or black cops? paul: these were two white officers.

gotas a young black man who arrested. others willt i hope do. i videotaped with my phone for the encounter. sometimes that encourages police to do the right thing. i asked the young man if there was anything i could do in that moment to help. he gave me his sister's telephone number. the police say, you don't have to give him that number. him to help me. so again, these are the kinds of experiences that i have with

police that a lot of black men have. brian: have you ever had the experience of sitting on the train and people unwilling to sit next to you? paul: happens to me all the time. there was this op-ed about it in the new york time a few years ago and it got a lot of attention and for a few months after that piece came out, white folks made a beeline to sit right next to me on the train. once there were these rows of empty seats and this white guy pops right down next to me with a big smile on his face. these are the kinds of experiences i have with police that a lot of black men have. brian: have you ever had the experience of sitting on a train and people are unwilling to sit next to you? paul: that happens to me all the time. there was an op-ed about it in the "new york times" a few years ago, and the op-ed got a lot of attention. for a few months after that piece, white folks made a beeline to sit right next to me on the train. i remember once there were rows of empty seats, and this white guy plops right down next to me with a big smile on his face. and i always liked having the extra room, but i appreciated what that guy did. there is an expression in the african-american community -- when you know better, you do better. a lot of people probably did not realize that unconsciously, they were avoiding sitting next to black men. when they learned about it, they took steps to correct it. this is how bias is undone. you first have to be aware of it, then you take steps. when i say white supremacy is this overwhelming force, that does not mean that i think that individual white folks are racist -- some are, but i don't think that most are. again, i think they have a legitimate set of questions and

concerns about black men that i try to address in "chokehold." i think lots of them really want to do the right thing. that dude who plopped next to me, if he is watching now, mad respect to you. that guy, that is the way forward. specifically with regard to police and prosecutors, and with respect to the district attorney of new york, cyrus vance -- what he did was invite this research organization, vera, a well-respected public policy group, into his office, and had them look at everything his prosecutors do. he is a progressive. he said, i don't think we are doing anything, that we are

treating black folks different from anybody else, but to the extent that it is an empirical question, i want some good researchers to find out. what they have found through this research is at almost every step of the criminal justice process, black folks got treated differently, and usually they got treated worse. black men got less favorable offers and pleas. they were more likely to be arrested. at every step, inferior treatment. the idea is when you know better, you do better. what i encourage is a lot of these actors in the criminal justice system, police and prosecutors, to start collecting the data, to learn whether they are treating black folks differently. almost certainly, from every study we have seen, the answer is yes. then they can take steps, like this white guy did who sat next to me, they can take steps to correct. brian: you dedicate your book to

your father, who happens to be named paul butler. when did he die? paul: about four or five years ago. he was a great actor. he originated a lot of roles in august wilson plays. he came up in chicago during the 1960's in the black arts movement. he was a race man through and through. he dearly believed in african-americans, and he believed in the role of art and culture, both in helping us survive in what is often a troubled land, but also creating empathy and activism around racial justice. i tried to follow the inspiration that i got from my dad. he had a booming voice as well, so i often remember that voice. mine is not as deep or as booming, but i hope it is

resonant. i hope the impact he made through his art, i can do through my activism. brian: i assume we are right about this video. did he appear in "crime story"? paul: he was. brian: let's watch, 1987 nbc show. here is your dad. [video clip] >> excuse me. >> sit down. >> no thank you. walter, i know we have not agreed on a lot of things and i'm not sure we ever will. >> you have always struck me as a woman who wants to fix, like

you want to put band-aids on problems. i want change, basically and fundamentally. >> maybe, maybe you're right. maybe i have just been chasing dreams. >> we have always had the same dream, just different ways of getting there. [end video clip] brian: do you remember that? paul: i saw it like 20 years ago, thank you for finding that. wow. brian: what did he think -- how much of what you are feeling today did he think back then? paul: all of it. for my first book, he was actually around to come to some of the readings. he would say i am right on. his experience was, like a lot of african american elders, who when they see younger people talking, they shake their heads and say, i thought things would have changed more than they have. the last time i think he was at

my house here in d.c. was for the first inauguration of president barack obama. he came with his partner and we all stood out in the cold and listened to president obama's inaugural address, and at that moment there was so much hope. again, my dad, a race man through and through, but on that frigid day, january 2008, i think he believed in this nation more than he ever had before, like a lot of us. brian: barack obama, february 27, 2014, at the launch of "my brother's keeper." i want you to explain what impact this has had. [video clip] pres. obama: i did not have a dad in the house, and i was angry about it, even though i

did not necessarily realize it at the time. i made bad choices. i got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do. i did not always take school as seriously as i should have. i made excuses. sometimes i sold myself short. by almost every measure, the group that is facing some of the most severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young men of color. [end video clip] brian: what do you think of "my brother's keeper"? paul: first let me say, i miss president obama. seeing him addressing these issues, even if i don't entirely agree with the way he responded

-- man, do i miss having someone who commands that kind of authority, that kind of moral force, as president of the united states. so, "my brother's keeper" was the president's signature racial justice initiative. there was a concern among a lot of black activists that the president had not been as proactive on race as he had been on some other issues, like lgbt rights and women's issues. so he was being pressed. and at the same time, during the era of the first african-american president, we started having all of these videos of black men and women being beat up or killed by cops. so the president, in some ways, was getting a pass. the president of the congressional black caucus said that if this stuff was going on and there had been a white person like bill clinton in office, the caucus would be marching on the white house every day. but this congressman said black folks were giving obama a pass because he was black and they knew that he was being treated unfairly in some other ways. i don't actually think president

obama wanted that pass. so finally when he was pressed, he announces this initiative to help young black and latino men, called "my brother's keepers." so at that press conference, seated in the first row were the parents of trayvon martin, the 16-year-old kid tragically killed wearing a hoodie by the neighborhood watchman, george zimmerman. so obama says he gets the idea for "my brother's keepers" when he is thinking about what happened to trayvon martin. there is kind of a cognitive disconnect right there. trayvon martin did not need a male role model. he was on his way to his dad's house when he was gunned down by this racist neighborhood watchman.

so what is the connection between all of these young men being killed by the police and the program to help black men, to provide them with mentors and training -- at that press conference, obama looked out, he saw al sharpton and he saw bill o'reilly, and he made this joke -- if i can bring o'reilly and sharpton together, i must be doing something right. the concern i have is a lot of these programs that are designed to help black men are still based on this chokehold stereotype that we are thugs and criminals. so these programs are designed to tame the savage beast. a lot of the folks who work in them are well-intentioned, and there are some programs that are very effective.

african-american men, we have this intersectional identity. we are black and we are male. so we absolutely need programs and initiatives that respond to all of those aspects of our identity. but i worry about these strange bedfellows at these black male achievement programs. also in the audience was mike bloomberg, the mayor of new york city, who at this time was a cheerleader for the stop and frisk program that a federal judge later ruled was unconstitutional. the concern was that black and latino men were disproportionately being targeted. bloomberg actually made a speech where he said, i don't think there are enough black men being stopped, i think the police are being politically correct. we have to ask, if he is there at this my brother's keeper initiative, what does he think is the purpose of this program? again, i think it is well-intentioned and there is nothing wrong with helping black men graduate from high school, giving them job-training, but i think some of these programs

send the wrong message, in part by making it seem like black men have it worse off than black women. we don't, on a lot of measures, including poverty and income. black women lag way behind black men. so there is some sexism involved in this. it is weird that president obama, the most feminist president in our history -- his wife went to harvard law school with me -- the president's first act was signing a pay equity bill for women. it is kind of strange that his signature racial justice act leaves out women and girls. i think the problem is it misunderstands the force of white supremacy, white privilege. if you think black women have it ok or better, you kind of don't get what the problem is. black women have the same set of issues as black men, and that is

because of white supremacy. it is not because black boys need to pull up their pants. again, the concern is this chokehold stereotype impacts even efforts to try to help black men get ahead. brian: i heard you tell the story back in 2013, when your first book came out, about your own charge against you, where you were acquitted. i think we need to -- because we said this earlier, i think those who did not see that need to hear the story about when you were arrested and what happened. what year was that? paul: this was when i was a prosecutor with the department of justice. it was the early 1990's and i had the most high profile case in the department. i was the junior lawyer on a team that was prosecuting a united states senator for public corruption. brian: david durenberger.

paul: yes, senator from minnesota. while i was working on that case, i got prosecuted. i got arrested for a crime -- commit.idn't i did commit. brian: how did it happen? paul: i was a young lawyer, just moved to d.c., had an apartment that came with a parking space i did not need. i got the bright idea i would sublet my parking space, help me pay back some harvard law school loans. it turns out a neighbor of mine was already subletting it, even though it did not belong to her. i put on my good lawyer suit and visited her with my lease. she slammed the door in my face. then somebody starts leaving threatening notes on -- the woman who i rented the space to was parking there, she was a plucky white social worker -- pleasant now, gentrified, but then kind of a hardscrabble neighborhood, so this lady was

very happy to find a space to park. she was ok with the notes, but they started getting more and more threatening. one day -- i am at this time finishing my floors, sawdust is everywhere. so we leave the sawdust out for the trash collectors. one morning we wake up, sawdust is all over this person's car. i go to the front and i see -- detroit was my neighbor's name, she is shoveling -- brian: is she white or black? paul: she is an african-american woman. she's shoveling all this sawdust. calling the

police." the first thing i did was look at the car. as a prosecutor, one of the things i learned in training to be a prosecutor was that d.c. police take damage to cars very seriously. in some ways, more seriously than fights that happen between people. so we always joked in the prosecutor's office, if you want the police to come quick, don't say somebody hit me and i am bleeding, say somebody put sugar in my gas tank. they will be there in 10 minutes. i looked at the car to see if there was any damage. as i'm looking, police roll up, jump out. you are under arrest. what? for what? it felt like a kafka kind of thing, surreal. why am i under arrest? simple assault, a misdemeanor in d.c., what you get when you have a fight with someone. detroit says i ran up to her and pushed her and ran away. this was patently absurd, in part because she always had these two big german shepherds. they never left her side. i told the cops, you see those two dogs? ask the neighbors. they know the situation.

this is just crazy. they said, well, we are taking you to jail. brian: were those cops white or african-american? paul: one was latino. there were about four cops, as i recall. my arresting officer was latino. i want to say the other cops were white and black. i play my trump card -- i said, i am a prosecutor. the cop responded, so you probably know this already. you have the right to remain silent. anything you say can or will be used against you. you have the right to an attorney. that, brian, is where the privilege kicked in. i did have a right to an attorney. i knew so many that my hardest decision was who to call. a couple of lessons from that. one is my boss at the justice department calls the u.s.

attorney for d.c., the one who is prosecuting me. he says, what is going on, this is crazy. the u.s. attorney says, i know, but your guy had a case against someone in our office. which is true -- i was a public corruption officer and had brought a case against an employee of the u.s. attorney's office who was stealing money from that office. the u.s. attorney said, we sure would have liked to have known about that case. you got our guy, now we are going to get yours. that's how criminal justice works. but the other way it works is the reason why things worked out well for me. things worked out well for me because i hired the best lawyer in town, a former public defender named michelle roberts. things worked out well for me because i had trial skills. i had literally prosecuted people in the courtroom where i was being prosecuted.

things worked out well for me because i had social standing. we made sure that jury knew that i went to yale and harvard. i had these great character witnesses. i knew how to present myself as the kind of black man who a d.c. jury would not want to send to jail. the last reason things worked out well for me is because i was innocent. when i thought about the reasons why that jury deliberated for less than 10 minutes before they came out with a not guilty verdict, the fact that i was innocent did not seem like the most important reason. brian: was there race in the jury? was it a mixed group or all-black? paul: it was predominately african-american. there were some whites, there may have been two or three, but most were african-american. brian: the woman that was involved, detroit, was she in the courtroom? did she testify? paul: she did testify. my defense attorney destroyed

her testimony on cross examination. she exposed her as someone who is not a credible person. as a prosecutor, you learn how to read juries. when she is testifying, the jury is sitting there like this, not believing anything she said. that was before some of the government witnesses -- prosecution witnesses -- came forward. the prosecutor made a classic mistake. you learn as a lawyer, never ask a question you don't know the answer to. so these prosecution witnesses testified that detroit had told them that i ran up to her and pushed her and ran away. the prosecutor asked, did you believe her when she said that? and they said no, she lies about everything. we know this didn't happen. we don't know why we are here. again, the jury took less than 10 minutes to find me not guilty. brian: had you been convicted, what would have been your sentence? paul: it is very unlikely i would have gone to jail.

i probably would have done some community service. it was a first-time misdemeanor. in terms of my reputation and my profession, it would have destroyed me. so fortunately, i did not have that outcome. in some ways, it wasn't a bad experience. i said that being arrested and prosecuted made a man out of me, it made a black man out of me. so i felt connected to my brothers in ways i had not before. brian: you say in your book that this still has a psychological impact on you. paul: i have a record. there is still people in the u.s. attorney's office who look at me differently. one reason i have this chapter in "chokehold" for other people who find themselves in the criminal justice system is that

now i have this kind of empathy. i beat my case. i have a whole chapter that tells people how you can beat your case. it is unfortunate that anybody has to go through this, but i want to try to get something positive. i could not talk about that experience for a long time. i finally described it in my first book, "let's get free." my mother did not know about it until she read about it there. she called me crying, how could you not have told me? i said, ma, i am a prosecutor. i have seen too many african american mothers in that front row while their son is on trial, crying. i just could not see you in that place. i could not deal with that. brian: you basically conclude in this book that this problem

can't be solved. paul: not at all. i have some short-term solutions and some transformative ways that we as a nation can get to a better place. brian: but you suggest it is unlikely to happen. paul: i am hopeful. when you look at racial progress in the united states, it is slow as molasses. it is incremental. in some ways, no matter what happens, black folks still seem to be on the bottom. brian: you suggest a white person has only one black friend. paul: that is one of the reason folks have stereotypes about black men. if the only thing i knew about black men is what i see on the evening news, read in the local newspaper, i would be scared of them, too. there are these images constantly of black men committing crime. the reality is most black men have never committed any violent crime.

way too many of us have been arrested -- about 50% -- but most of those are for low-level crimes like smoking weed or jumping the turnstile at a subway. so when we look at who ought to be afraid of black men, the number one victims are other black men. if a white person is very concerned about being a victim of crime, the main person she ought to be concerned about is her intimate partner or husband. statistically, that is the person most likely to cause her harm. but her or his chances of being the victim of a violent crime by a black person are less than one in 500. what i say in "chokehold" is if you see a young black man in baggy pants walking behind you on the street at night, your evidence-based assumption should be that that young man is on his way to work or school or the movies. he is much more likely to be doing that than he is to be

trying to rob you. brian: so what's the biggest, most important solution to the problem? paul: in terms of police violence, police being quicker on the draw, there are two things we could do right now that would make a huge difference. half of cops should be women. and cops should be college-educated. female cops, college-educated cops, are way less likely to use force, including deadly force. they are much better at working out problems without arresting people. they are more like what president obama's task force on policing recommended. he says that police ought to be guardians. too many officers now have this warrior mentality when they

patrol communities of color -- us against them. women cops or college-educated cops are just as good at enforcing the law, but more guardians than warriors. the other big solution, a controversial part i know, is abolition. when we think about racial justice, they have all been movements for abolition. abolition of slavery, abolition of the old jim crow. "chokehold" calls for prison abolition. what? that sounds crazy, sounds reckless. when we ask, what is it we think prison does? what do we want it to do? i think two things. we want it to keep us safe from people who are likely to harm us if they are not locked up. and second, we want it to make people who have done harm accountable for what they have done. most prosecutors, police, know

that prison does not do either of those very well. almost half of people who get locked up are back in within 18 months. they have not received the kind of services they need in prison to come back and not go back to a life of crime. so prison is not keeping us safe from offenders, and it is certainly not making people responsible for the harm they have caused. folks are pleading guilty not because they are being accountable, but because, again, they don't want the book thrown at them if they go to trial. there is lots of communities -- brooklyn a great example, a program called common justice where when men are accused of violent crimes -- men and women, but mostly people in the program are men -- if the victim consents, that is moved outside the criminal justice system and

into this restorative justice, where the victim and the person who has caused harm, they sit down, they work it out, including in a way that makes the victim feel whole. victims overwhelmingly say they like this better than prison, better than jail. it makes them have a kind of closure that they don't get from prison. so abolition -- again, it is an idea you are going to hear a lot more about in the future. it is a way forward, a way out of the grip of the chokehold. brian: our guest is a professor of law at georgetown law school. his book is called "chokehold: a renegade prosecutor's radical thoughts on how to disrupt the system." "policing black men," another subtitle. we thank you very much. paul: it is an honor to be interviewed by brian lamb. thank you for having me. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017]

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪ announcer: if you enjoyed this week's interview with paul butler, here are some other programs you might like. former new york police department deputy inspector talks about his book "once a cop." the baltimore police commissioner on the challenges of policing that city. and author nathan mccall talks

about race relations and his involvement with gangs early in his life. you can watch these anytime or search our entire video library at c-span.org. >> c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. monday morning, arms control association daryl kimball talks advances in north korean activity. and the editor of foreign affairs magazine discusses developments in the u.s. standoff with north korea and president trump's relationship with traditional allies. and we discussed the cost of the renovation of the white house. watch c-span's washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on monday morning. join the discussion.

>> the british parliament is in recess until early next month so prime minister questions will not be seen tonight. coming up, senator jerry moran discusses health care, veterans services and the opioid epidemic. this runs an hour and 20 minutes. >> good afternoon, everybody. i miss the days of more normal town hall meetings. i am not accustomed to the attention. we welcome the press to great bend and i am delighted to be here as well. congress is out of session until later birthday and i'm using my time -- until labor day and i'm using my time as i have every other august to have conversations with all of you. this is