to go than just talking about the right things to get done. watch afterwards, sunday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span two's book tv. week,g at congress next the u.s. house continues its summer district work period with members not expected back for legislative work until tuesday. return -- she's a former clerk for supreme court nominee bright kavanaugh -- brent cobb at all -- brett kavanaugh. a debate to advance or the motor nomination is on c-span2, and follow the house on c-span. week in this segment of the washington journal, we take some time to spotlight a recent magazine piece. this week, ben austen joins us

from chicago. "high risershor of and burning green: the fate of american public housing." he is the author of the cover story of "the new republic." he focused on a version of extreme community policing taking on test taking place in -- taking place in rockford, illinois. what is the plan? guest: good morning. they are moving officers to live in high crime areas, to actually live in the neighborhoods. really, they're only a sign is to be a good neighbor. not to go out and bust guys for drugs or prostitution, but to be there for the community, share their cell phone numbers, figure out what the needs of the people are who live there. host: what is the philosophy this kind of community policing? for too long, neighborhoods, --

guest: for too long, neighborhoods, police, and the communities they serve have separated. they do not feel a great connection. police do not know the communities and the communities have stopped trusting police. this is a crisis that we are seeing in cities across america, so this is hopefully a kind of antidote to that, to bring back this sense of trust and actually what policing fundamentally is. host: in rockford, in your story, the police officers are given housing to live in these communities where they are policing and where they are expected to be a presence in the community. how many police departments around the country are going to this level to provide housing to do this kind of police work? guest: not many. to be honest, in rockford, a police force of 300, there are only two officers doing this. so this really feels kind of like an idealistic sideshow, but

something that feels like the right elements of regaining trust and legitimacy in policing. but it is not widespread in the country. the los angeles police department is doing something not with housing but actually putting officers in neighborhoods and communities and having them work very closely with nonprofits. there is proof that works. but there are lots of barriers to making it happen. host: describe rockford for someone who has never been there. guest: rockford is a fascinating place. 90 minutes north of chicago, a former industrial powerhouse mid century, last century. it has fallen on tough times. normally, when it comes up in the national conversation it is for some form of problem it is having. it is making lists like the most miserable city in the country, high levels of crime, high levels of drug use, high levels of unemployment, also

segregated. it actually looks a lot like big cities. it is a medium-sized city. so it is experiencing some of the same kinds of city changes that are happening all over. it has a somewhat resurgent a gulf betweenof the downtown and wealthy suburbs is a big problem. and something else you see there that you see in most cities is that police do not have a deep connection to the neighborhoods in which they are sworn to serve, so they not only don't live there, but they may not even have much experience with the community. so you can imagine some of the problems that happen when you show up in a place and it feels like you are an occupying force. when you look at the community for only its crimes and not thinking about what all of its to -- bad, it leads things happen.

host: in this segment of the washington journal, we should note we have a special line for police officers if you want to join the conversation. (202) 748-8002 is that number. otherwise, if you are in the eastern or central time zones, call us on (202) 748-8000 . if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. then -- ben austen, you mentioned earlier, only two officer signed up with this program to do community policing. who are they and why only two? eric thurmond and patrice turner. -- guest: eric thurmond and patrice turner. one is a young cop, a rookie cop. the other is a veteran, both african-american on a force that is predominately white. throughout america, police forces, although they have become more integrated over the and throughout america, police forces, although they have become more integrated, they are still predominantly white and

male. turner, officer turner, grew up in rockford, grew up in public housing there, feels a great connection to the city, -- officerat seen policingas in a different light. and senior officers there are given a different message, maybe, but this sense that you can be in a neighborhood, and you can get to know the underlying issues and you can see what is going on and show up and be familiar with it.

and we had ao, shooting in my neighborhood two weeks ago, in south shore. about these officers in rockford, because an officer showed up here in chicago and clearly did not know the block, did not know the people. gun,son who was carrying a video showed, a legal right in the united states, a black community and a white officer, and officer turner talks about in rockford, showing up and knowing people, and putting initialed or on them and saying, you need to calm down, and defusing something terrible which could happen, which is an officer-involved shooting of a person. host: the photos you have been seeing from the cover story of "the new republic" this week, i want to focus on the reaction

from other officers for second grade you get into that in your story. andwrite, many officers rockford seem to distinguish between what thurmond and turner did and a real police job. i heard training officers barked t him, and greeting him, watched sallyu jesse raphael today? -- n: ben: eric thurmond went to itkford because police say, was busy. he wanted to bust criminals and get guns up the street to read this is what he thought policing -- get guns off the street. this is what he thought policing was. it turns out only one quarter of

911 calls have to do with crime, very few arrests have to do with violent crime. most of policing is interacting with people. so even if officers still have this culture of bravado, macho ism, it doesn't fit what they do mostly. i saw this on the street in rockford, police officers dealing with a homeless individual everyday and incredibly frustrating, what to do with him. you can imagine the kind of social services they would have to link up with to defuse and treat those situations in the most effective way. but that turns out to be what the brunt of policing is. most calls are domestic calls, and many domestic calls can turn violent but an officer's role in many ways is to be a communicator, to listen to and separate people and figure out what the situation is. it is not chasing people in car

chases all the time. we are talking about policing in america, the cover story and the august edition of "the new republic." police officers, we want to hear (202)ou at the number 748-8002. moses from new jersey go ahead. is thatiggest problem political leaders don't have any backbone, from the governor on down. we know the problems that are going on in our state. the people in the community can take you from house to house and show you what the problem is. leaders, theycal have shown that they have no backbone. and been, in rockford

illinois, you saw that. the inability of police to solve crimes in neighborhoods, and not having neighborhood trust, as moses just said, people know who did the crime. we talk about homicide clearance rates in the country, it is in the teens. this is incredibly problematic. win the community trust, because everyone wants public safety? rockford, theers, mayor and police chief are on board for this. but there is still this on-the-ground connection that you have to make between police officers and the people in the community. a year has passed since a

similar incident in ferguson, a similar incident in chicago with quan mcdonald and videotape of a police officer shooting him 16 times. politicians,ederal any issue of reform has been called a war on police by president donald trump. and in the administration, jeff sessions is trying to roll back a lot of the reforms for local departments. a caller from maryland, go ahead please. >> i am in ems sergeant in southern maryland.

i'm talking about the same thing you are talking about with police were they going to the together withget people before problems happened, before crimes happen. i think that is incredibly good. i'm sure police see the same .hings i see you go thereto or three times and in the fourth time it is something serious. and you're part of maryland is their political will and funding behind what you are trying to do with the paramedics? different is a little with paramedics because the people that are funding the paramedics want to cut their fees.

but it is a similar concept, for a different reason. host: harrison, thanks for the call. been? -- ben? broken windows policing, the concept that if you leave a broken window and don't fix it, more windows will be broken and people will believe nobody really cares and it is fine to do crime. that idea of roque and windows is behind the concept of community policing and the extremely aggressive policing we have experienced over the past several decades. and the idea is that you have low-level crimes, marijuana smokers, vandals, you could treat the all as criminal cases and have police arrest everybody , which is basically what we have done, or you could combat it in a way to solve those issues with the community, gain with, police working

nonprofits and local groups, grassroots groups, to mend those issues together. and the collar is saying it -- the caller is saying that it is proven that it works. i cite in the book a professor from your could talks about the drop in crime from the 1990's, which sometimes people wrongly attribute to a form of aggressive policing that followed, but he charges that it correlates exactly with an increase in nonprofits on the ground in these neighborhoods, working with communities. and that is where you can see the drops in crime. chuck is in las cruces, new mexico. good morning. we are talking about police managing and what my opinion our legislators have created. in 1964 we created the great

society where we try to shift the whole community from reliance to dependence. we have gone from 80% mom and dad families to single-parent families. now police are being asked to take care of the situation the legislators created. what you think about the liberal reliance on government, and the idea that you are asking police now to manage? we are tryingt, to fix things from the wrong end. ben: i would approach the comment in two ways. blaming liz burrell is -- blaming liberalism or so circle safety net programs is hogwash, and a red herring.

he is talking about an increase in poverty and people on some sort of subsidies, and if we think about what happened in cities over that same time with all the factory jobs disappearing, we think about white flightities, and housing issues, there is so much more behind that. right, thatnk he is we ask police to do way too much . peoplee the front line dealing with mental-health issues, health issues, poverty. they are dealing with all these issues actually on the ground, meeting individuals. there are not social workers with them when they confront people on the street. that actually has to do with not too much funding, but too little. because we have closed mental-health facilities, we don't have other things to backup the police.

a differenthere is kind of investment. we actually pour so much money into policing for the militarization and other issues. i can say in chicago, 40% of our budget goes to public safety. this is true most everywhere. think about a reallocation of some of those funds so that you go to the root causes of some of these problems. you can invest and things like schools, health care, community building, investment. and a dollaront here might save more than a dollar on the backend. ben austen is the author rises" and also "the

thecle -- oh -- and also cover story in the august issue new republic." police officers, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8002. claudia in michigan, good morning. caller: first of all, you have to address who you are recruiting on your police force first. stop all this police brutality in the black neighborhoods, predominantly black neighborhoods, with white police officers coming in, especially the white male. you have to start addressing the ones you hire and recruit first, because a lot of those officers come in, they don't understand what they are doing in our communities. it then the racism part,

hasn't been properly ever addressed. because there was a time when the ku klux klan could march, and now you don't even see them marching anymore with their sheets and hoods on. your name see the marching anymore because a lot of them went online through the internet and they recruited them. they have hung their sheets up and put on badges. you have to get them off the police force. first thing that the color from flint said is exactly the reason to do this program, both recruiting people from the communities and making sure people know the communities. any professional, you are a public servant if you are a police officer, part of the job is getting to know the community intimately. and that is a job from the top down in the bottom up, you are required to do it, and then you do do it. and this collar is right. largely, what has happened is we have people who are outside the neighborhoods, may not even have

a lot of experience in a black crime and and you see you see this world as a place crime is cropping up all over the place, and you don't see it for its other aspects. the deep sense of distrust that this caller said, there are possibly clan members in the police, i am not saying that there are, but i think that shows that level of mistrust. police officers have awesome power. they have this power in most situations to decide what is true, what becomes reality, in the sense that in an interview or encounter on the street, their word is stronger than anyone else's. phone camerasell that have somewhat equalized

this, but that awesome power can be abused. you can keep shifting the narrative to your benefit, and that you roads trust more and more. caller said, it has been proven time and again that officers have abused that power, they have shaped the truth to benefit, and that is bad policing in the end. i have talked to many police and many feel like they are under and any sense of reform or talk of racism, the don't feel like they are racist. most want to do a good job, and it is defining the job differently that could benefit all. host: to annapolis, maryland. rick is waiting period good morning. the meat that you will hudwledge about theh

projects. back in 1968 we had the riots, and the blacks burned their own houses. for 33 years.ud i'm one of the few guys who knows who owns and manages these hud projects in chicago in baltimore and los angeles and new york etc. and went around the country bought the worst sections of land and financed and developed, and to this day they own and hud hellhole projects, where we have concentrated about 60% of the blacks in this country come out of 42 million. fast-forward 50 years later, they are still there, the worst school systems, no jobs, and do you know who cares about them? nobody. i want your democrat and republican administrations, -- i watched your democrat and republican administrations, they did nothing for the people in

these hellhole projects. freddie gray was arrested 19 times for selling drugs. if he would have been in prison where he should've been, he would be alive today. thanks to our judicial system in baltimore. how i could talk about white communities in chicago and across the country, they also rioted and burned their own neighborhoods when public housing was attempted to be integrated in their communities. history is not told through just these narrow lenses. gray for example, 19 times for a drug arrest. many other have been interventions besides imprisonment as well, which is partly what i am talking about. we have a constitution that doesn't give anyone the right to give him a rough ride, as it was called by the police in baltimore, eventually killing him to teach them a lesson. and police do not want to be known for that.

this caller is talking about underlying problems of poverty and segregation, sure, this is the blight of our country, this is the embarrassment. it is something we need to address more deeply. host: time for a couple of more of "theth ben austen new republic." clyde in san antonio, texas. good morning. ben austen good -- caller: good morning. i haven't watched the whole program, but i think we underestimate the influence that this, and just living in country, has on police officers. the are human beings like anybody else. certainrupt in a neighborhood environment, they go to school with certain -- they grow up and a certain neighborhood environment and they go to school as certain

people, and they are influenced by those people. and when they become police officers they bring all that baggage with them. officers comee out of the military. i was in the military. and you are influenced by that environment more intensely, because first of all you identify the enemy. how do you determine who the enemy is? is it all this growing up that you did, does it happen during roll call, or does it happen when you police suburban neighborhoods as opposed to urban neighborhoods? and you are prejudiced by that. urban as a consequence, areas are policed differently than suburban areas. host: thanks for the call. ben austen. ben: he is exactly right, and i will refer to the previous caller, when he was describing

because he has hellholes and murderous places. imagine being an officer with that mindset, walking in there. your hand is on the trigger because you are terrified. like, if you only think of it in those terms, then you are ready to go to war, instead of looking at an actual community of thousands and thousands of people where there are all sorts of lives going on, including a criminal element but most people who aren't criminals. sense thatu get a the two officers in rockford who are doing this have changed the way the rest of the police department views the community of rockford? ben: now. two officers don't change a culture of 300. this is what i was just going to how the larger question is, you have cultural change inside an institution which couldn't be more averse to change, a police department? fromckford, you have it

the ground up with these two officers, and from the top down with the police chief and the mayor and politicians, they want this shift in what policing can be. but at the same time they have a real crime problem and they actually have homicides, and drugs, and prostitution. so that kind of cultural change, where if you can't hire all officers from the neighborhood, at least you can train them in a new way, that is a difficult transition, it is a difficult transformation. but you have to believe that it could be done, but it has to be embraced by an entire department. the chief of police, chief rockford, says it is priority number one that every officer has to do their job this way. that is certainly a start, and a powerful one. host: st. petersburg, florida. good morning.

caller: i'm a native chicago and. how much time did you spend in rockford with the police department? department? because you have such a negative view of a fantastic organization. i am having a real hard time following all this, i am understanding the other things people are saying, they are very obvious things. but you seem so negative. , not only asppy individuals, the jobs they did, i have lived in rockford myself. i was a single woman living in a house in a mixed neighborhood. people watched out for me. the police did also. how much time did you spend there, with rockford, with the police department and with the people? a negativet have view of the police department and rockford at all. i heard both from veterans and

younger officers, went on patrol with beat cops who did fantastic jobs, respectful and every way. when i talk about a cultural shift in what policing is, is not just a rockford problem. that is a nationwide issue. know, i'm actually fascinated by rockford. i think it's a wonderful city. people are invested in it in all sorts of ways, and you can't deny that it is dealing with what we imagine as big city issues, deep divisions of all sorts, a great deal of poverty and a high crime rate. host: the sub headline is, police officer's and how one american city sought to combat racism and reckoned with police retell it he, that is ben austen 's story in the july edition of "the new republic."

and i'mmy name is mike, a retired bridgeport police enough, and i can't say about how wrong things are being done pertaining to police. i can't say enough about it. i was from a relatively white neighborhood. i worked 18 years in housing projects. the black police officers in bridgeport said we had to get black officers on, to relate to the community, so they had a special test for black officers. they came on after doing a year or two in housing projects, and they went back to federal court and they said, we are in the crime areas. this isn't right. they took them out where they could only work six months out of every three years. i did 18 years. i am white. all this training is a lot of baloney. there is one thing for a policeman, the golden rule, do unto others. i had no problems in

two of the toughest areas fathery in the country, pan it village and beardsley father pannett village and beardsley terrace. ben: i don't have a doubt that whatever your race is coming you could do a fantastic job. and i wish that golden rule that you said is something that we all followed. when you see video after video that finally things are being of course, this is showing only the worst of policing, that is coming to define what is predominantly people doing a fine job. but that has become the image. it is a reality, that those kind

of abuses do occur, that you are not doing on to others and hoped they would doing to you, and it also becomes an image most people at the with, their fear of the police. host: mike, do you have a follow-up? they are not hiring the right people for the job. there is a thing called command presence. if you are intimidated by the people you are dealing with, you are not going to be a good policeman. in other words, you don't have to be a professional wrestler, but you have to have a fairly normal size and don't be intimidated. when you are intimidated, that's why shootings occur. one of the calls i had was with a guy who looked like a linebacker for professional football team. it was just him and i.

that guy actually intimidated me, where if there was a fight maybe he would've ended up getting shot. ben: but when you were working in public housing, you get to know individuals. so you do the young guy who you have seen for years, you have seen him grow up, and you didn't immediately jumped to the conclusion that he might be a killer, you got to know that person. that's a different kind of not being intimidated. caller: that's a yes and no. ben: that's not being intimidated because you learned the environment and can to know the individual. higher the right man. someone that is an intimidated. and have somebody train the police that knows what they're talking about. no offense to your guest, but pointy-headed pencil pushers, i call them.

they don't know the first thing about policing and they make the rules. thing he said where he said, hire the right man. even there, it is a wrong start. one thing i talk about in the what a lot oft, m policing,ll fe women on the job have a different mindset, not just pumping on your chest much of, i'm physically larger than you so i am not intimidated, that certainly helps. ee inve a consent decr chicago coming down after a lengthy investigation of the police force. and it wasn't just about poverty or that these neighborhoods where, the wrong people were hired, that there was a deep, deep tradition of racism in terms of practice, and figuring out how to rectify that is what we are trying to do.

andogram like the one rockford gets added in a really complicated way, beyond the extremes of activists talking about abolishing the police, and on the other red, blue lives matter or white lies matter. and those people are not speaking to one another. that there is work that also could be done that combines the two, that really get at what public safety is, which is what we all want. the article, good cops and how to reinvent policing, ben theen is the author in july-august edition of "the new republic." thanks very much. ben: thank you. c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that affect you. talkg up sunday morning, i about recent tensions between the u.s. and iran. themespaign 28

and races to watch. be sure to watch watching to journal on sunday mornings. q and a, night on cu the trial of president andrew johnson in the fight for lincoln's legacy. it's a scandal. the chapter on johnson, i won't speak beyond that. the chapter on johnson should be expunged from every library in the country. it focuses on a fellow named edmund ross, who cast the single vote that saved johnson's tale. il. vote thells ross's most important moment in american history. i think his vote was purchased. and saving johnson was not a heroic moment. david stewart, sunday night

at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q1 day. a.q and bretpreme court nominee kavanaugh continues to meet with senators on capitol hill. leading up tocess the senate confirmation hearings, and the vote. watch live on c-span and any time on c-span. hour, or listen with the free c-span radio app. next, testimony from the commissioners on the fcc of the operations of the regulatory agency. we heard about net work upgrades to accommodate five g technology, spectrum auctions and wireless broadband availability in rural and remote areas. held by house commerce subcommittee, this is two hours 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations]