knowles show on his podcast and news of the day. at nine 15 a.m., the bowling green state university terminal justice police officer into police misconduct and institutions. ♪ ♪ host: this is "the washington journal," president biden expects to make remarks about his american jobs plan today. you can see it live this afternoon. a new report from police executive shows violent crime in american cities has had an increase in 2020. other causes like anxiety over the pandemic and in some cases d policing in cities after the protests. we will show you the results and for the next hour, when it comes to rises in crime, has your community been affected? tell us your story. if you live in the eastern

central time zones, (202) 748-8000. mountain pacific, (202) 748-8001 . if you are a member of law enforcement, (202) 748-8002. you can always text us, (202) 748-8003. post on our twitter feed. our facebook page, facebook.com/c-span. the collection of police executives are known as an association and major cities chiefs association. they put out a report taking a look at crime in 2000 20 and here's one of the findings as it was reported on, major american cities saw a 30% increase in homicides last year. a crime surge that has continued into this year. 63 of the 66 largest police jurisdictions at increases in at least one category of violent crimes in 2020, including homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault assault according to that port from the major cities chiefs association.

they do break down those homicide numbers if you go to the website and look at 2020. 8077 is what they showed as far as the number of cases in 2020. if you go to 2019 comparatively they are showing a number of homicides as 6087. talking about rape, those numbers go down from 2019. robbery is well going down. when it comes to aggravated assault, if you go to 2019, 224,000 951 cases lifted. the rate rose in 2020. again, major cities chiefs is how you find that, if you want to go to their website. the cnn report that highlighted this report added this when it comes to causes, saying that experts pointed to a perfect

storm of factors. economic collapse, social anxiety because of the pandemic, d policing, shifting from resources in neighborhoods to downtown areas and beforehand they were reported to reduce risk of covid-19 spread in jails, all possibly contributing to the spread in hospital -- spread of homicides. this when it comes to the idea of crime and rises in the places where you live. if you haven't seen that, you can tell us that, too. (202) 748-8000 if you live in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you are a member of law enforcement, you can call us at (202) 748-8002. one of the hearings that took place last month when it comes to the topic of violent crime took place in the senate and it

was during that, you can find out on c-span, the senate judiciary chairman dick durbin at that hearing talked about, when it comes to violent crimes, connecting it to issues concerning gun control. [video clip] >> this weekend in the city of chicago, 20 people were shot. 20. you know what happens in our hometown. four of them died. across the nation every day we lose on average 109 american lives to gunfire. 109. suicides, domestic violence shootings, accidental shootings, homicides. another 200 americans are injured by guns. the numbers are sobering. and each number is an individual person. a loved one, a neighbor, a friend, a husband, a father. a son or a daughter.

we have seen too many desperate trips to the emergency room, too many funerals, too many families and communities scarred forever by gun violence and we have come to accept it as a part of them -- a part of american life. disproportionately it affects families of color. but no one is immune. host: cory holder says this morning that crime in the immediate community has been rather low, saying he lives in a decent neighborhood thankfully, but that statewide and nationwide the trend was due to the pandemic and its psychological effects, depending on the area that you live in. from laura on facebook, laura moore, drug issues are causing problems in the city. lou senior says that we don't threaten to defund the police in my town. a poster from rogers, these are

the facebook postings when it comes to this topic and you can post yours as well. from aretha in youngstown, ohio. tell us about what you are seeing there were you live. caller: i'm not really seeing a whole lot of crime. if you are busy, you got a job and things like that, it doesn't touch you as much. i think it's more on the street level, where there is a lot of despond and see -- despondency and things like that, on employment. host: do you think that is because of things economically in youngstown? does that have a contributive factor to lower crime, or at least the crime you are not seeing? caller: that is the correct -- that is correct, yes. if you are working you don't have time to be out there committing crime. host: tom is next from south carolina. tom, good morning. caller: good morning, sir.

i just wanted to say, i don't really know in my county that i live in in south carolina, they do not publish too much about how much crime they do have. i live in lexington county over in the neighboring county of bridgeport where we get a lot of reports of crime over there and i just don't understand why my county is not, we are not being told, the citizens are not being told how much crime we may have. i think i agree with the lady that just spoke. we are not going to know something unless people tell us what is going on. as long as it is silent, we are just not going to know. we just don't know unless they tell us. host: the two counties that they

describe, are there big differences economically, are they similar in that front. caller: i do agree that the factors that you have laid out have played a part, the fact that we had a pandemic and haven't been told truthfully about how that really has affected us economically, socially, although other factors play a part in how much crime is committed. it just goes hand-in-hand, one way or the other. host: this is william in

middletown connecticut saying lots of cars are found stolen in other cities if they are found at all. there is an organization known as the national commission on covid-19 criminal justice, putting together a report looking at trends in crime as well, highlighting homicides rising into thousand 20. they say that the magnitude of the increase is deeply troubling and that rates of homicide are below historical highs. 2020, 11 .4 deaths per 1000 residents in sample cities and in 1995 it was 19.4 per 100,000 residents. adding that aggravated gun assault rates in 2020 were 6% and 8% higher respectively than the 2019 robbery rates declining 9%.

you can find that at their website, the covid-19 council on see.org. when it comes to the society in your area, crime and how it impacts the area, janice is calling us from collier, tennessee. caller: i was born in memphis, tennessee. over the years ever since they changed the legislation and the laws, people are getting killed every day in drive-by shootings. little children's lives have been taken by stray bullets. people get getting attacked. people with children in their cars. another thing, sir. what people are not talking about, marsha blackburn, it's republican citizens not mentioning crime at all. they are not saying anything about this crime. host: you said changes to the

legislation. what did you mean by that? caller: i will be honest with you, we have got a flak in this organization and crime has been a. the reason i'm telling you this, sir, it's the truth. host: you said it was legislation that changed. what legislation are you talking about? caller: with marsha blackburn, you can carry the guns out of their and people can carry guns out here now. but why do you want those big army guns used for killing in war? people carry them around. you can see them on the back of their trucks. host: that's jana in tennessee. we will go now to nick in florida. good morning. caller: did we change topic from gun control to something else? host: its overall increase in crime and how it might impact

your community. caller: first of all, gun control doesn't work. when you take away guns, only the criminals have guns. second, because of the second amendment, the reason we have guns in the first place is to protect ourselves against the to radical government that we are currently starting to become, with the democratic party. so, therefore if you get rid of the guns, i mean have you seen black lives matter? that crime wave was financed by the democrats. host: what's going on in florida as far as you're concerned with crime? caller: there have been outbreaks of crime because of the lacking in-laws. of course the covid had some effect. when you have people that don't have money, you have higher crime. and with that, if you don't have a way to defend yourself and then you want to defend, defund the cops, what's going to protect us? who is going to protect us from the people that don't care about

the laws and don't come here with guns and start picking people off? who will there be? no cops because you don't want to pay for them? no guns, we can't defend ourselves. who is going to be here to make sure that we can end up living? host: that's nick in florida talking about defunding the police like at the senate hearing that we showed you from dick durbin. it was also the top republican community on that, chuck grassley, talking about defunding police in certain communities and here's what he had to say. [video clip] >> we can't reduce violence without a professional well trained and fully funded police force including gun violence. the rallying cry last summer was to defund the police. cities that follow that advice saw a rapid spike in violent

crime. many were forced to refund the police. this happened in minneapolis and in portland. maybe other cities as well. statistics show that the murder rate in 2020 increase the most significantly in june, when the rioters were on the march and policymakers forced people into retreat. evidence suggests that june 2020 spiked in homicide and other gun related crimes are related to less policing or d policing. this progressive toll may have translated to 1268 additional deaths in 2020. on the other hand efforts to combat violent crime like the bill barr operation legend resulted in an additional 6000 arrests nationwide, including nearly 500 for homicide and

hundreds of illegal firearms seized. sadly, it does not appear that the department of justice now intends to continue this successful initiative. i hope that violent crime will be a top priority for our attorney general, garland, and for president biden. host: that was the hearing and you can still find that on c-span. rise of crime in 2020 as being what it by several organizations and we are asking how it might impact your community. (202) 748-8000 for eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 four mountain and pacific time zones. (202) 748-8002 if you, if you want to call in and you are a member of law enforcement. you heard the senator talk about homicide. if you go to the website in 2019 they have a highlight of the murder weapons used when it comes to murder victim by weapon . handguns topping the list in

2019 with 6368 cases there. that is followed by a category known as firearms stated as 3200 plus with knives the cutting instrument following that and other weapons after that, personal weapon such as hands, fist, and feet. blunt objects, rifles at 300 624 cases in 2019 followed by shotguns, narcotics, asphyxiation, fire, and strangulation. those are the statistics as far as weapons used for 2019. marion johnson in tennessee, you are next. marion, johnson city, hello. hello. -- caller: hello. i saw your little bit with dick durbin. he should be ashamed to be there. kick that garbage out, with what's happening in chicago.

it only gets worse, lawmakers do nothing about it and i think that the crime rise has a lot to do with leadership. they sit there and they talk, talk, talk in do nothing. we have a lot worse things than gun control. the gun control that has been passed, there you go. they need to take a look at themselves. leadership stinks. host: as far as crime and johnson, tennessee, how would you characterize it? is it a concern? caller: we do not have a lot of crime. we have good leadership in local lawmakers that stay and talk about it. we have some, but it is not that great. it has been going on in the same cities for years and years. then you want to defund the police. the lawmakers in this country, they think they have a problem,

they sit and talk and talk with their little committees and all of that crap and things get worse and worse. host: well, let's talk about the situation in johnson city. you said leadership is the reason you don't see a lot of crime. tell me specifically how. caller: we have a good police force and the people that ran the police force and our mayors do their job and do what they are elected to do and they run the city properly. we are a college town, also. host: missouri is where shirley lives. good morning, surely. go ahead. caller: yes, i'm calling because i live in st. louis, missouri. in st. louis, missouri, the crime rate, the murder rate is highest in the united states. i don't understand why congress doesn't do something about gun

rights. it seems that every state has an open carry law. it just seems like nobody, they've all got ak-47, these big guns. they need to be banned across the united states. as so far as the united states is concerned on voting laws, i think we ought to have the same voting laws across the united states. host: back to crime there were you live in florida. what do you think is the main cause? caller: because of gun laws, ok? nobody knows what we have had babies killed. and now you can carry your gun on the metro link.

if you have a license you can carry the gun. something needs to be done. nationwide as so far as gun violence is concerned, people keep saying that people, gun scale. people don't kill, people kill people ok? and i'm very upset myself. we need to do something across the united states. host: that is surely in missouri. -- shirley in missouri. highway driving never been so risky, according to this person. from joan in minnesota, adding that in her community, and in minneapolis and st. paul, it is higher and she no longer goes to the cities for shopping and entertainment. adding that it is too dangerous.

highlighting the shooting deaths of 2020, the analysis gunshot industries 40,000 to nearly 40,000 in 2017 and that is just some of the statistics the situation where you live, ask if you can think or talk about why it's happening.

go ahead. caller: a lot of it is mental illness and lack of jobs. we were worried about the shooting of people and mental illness when they talk about defunding the police, they don't mean defunding. people that can deal with mental illness and deflate. host: what do you see when it comes to crime and how much of it is a concern to you? caller: in portland they have a

problem. tight alley is a little farming community. so it just, but we have a lot of drugs was also -- a lot of drugs in watts co. county. there's mental illness that leads to drug violence and gun violence. host: oregon giving us the perspective from washington, d.c. jackson, go ahead. caller: i just wanted to say that i don't think that crime is so much on the rise as much as people are seeing more of it, more of it is being reported, more of it is on video, more is being shown. as far as defunding the police, i agree with that 100 sent. i hear a lot of other callers worry about it. the police don't stop crime,

they respond to crime. they are not stopping shootings, they are not stopping anything. they respond to what's happening and figure out what to do after that. it's not like they are saving anyone. don't get me wrong, they have at some point i'm certain, but it is not their main goal. host: what do you think happens to crime overall if you take the police out of the equation? caller: i don't want to take them out of the equation in their entirety but the idea of defund and they don't need military weapons and military vehicles. they have larger budgets than just about any other resource that cities have. they are not that good at their job. there are some great cops and there are a lot of bad ones and mediocre ones who let the bad ones do what they do. host: what do you think defunding accomplishes overall? caller: it accomplishes, give us

resources to put into other areas, like the one caller talk about towards mental health. towards education. towards anti-violence. callers are saying guns don't kill people, it's people that kill people. yeah, there needs to be a change of the mind. people need to respect life. it's not just getting guns off the street. it's the people that have guns and people as americans, as citizens of the world, we need to respect each other. programs to show that life is precious. host: that is jackson here in washington, d.c. you can call if you live close or if you live across the country, like san diego where tom lives. tom joining us on the phone, thanks for calling, go ahead. caller: hello, good morning to everybody. yeah, i have watched crime go up for the last 30 years outside san diego.

in my little suburb. yeah, i live in a town where things are quiet and you could hear a pin drop after 7:00 at night. they put the freeway in. some of the undesirable people are in. i have seen crime slowly going down since the pandemic. since black lives matter, i have heard of break-ins going up in the car and in the house. in the town right next to me. they burned down a couple of banks, which was really surprising to me. host: do you associate those things with black lives matter? caller: it was right around that time, i was surprised that they didn't burn down the whole blood -- block. host: how do you make those

connections with the other things that you highlighted? black lives matter and the other crimes you highlighted? caller: well, it's just i think that because of hard times, more people aren't working, the more crimes there are. defunding the police, it's such the wrong word to use. the people that have that power, holding accountable for their actions, it's that one rule. it gives them that freedom of limitless power in and not holding them accountable for their actions. host: that is tom in san diego,

talking about the gun aspect. people can still purchase a gun, the people with high-capacity magazines are the ones that scare me. george in susanville, california, says that crime where he lives has been minimal adding that look at how kids are being raised, that's what he adds. this is a viewer in orlando, florida, saying that it has grown so it is murders and shooting and he wakes up to someone being shot every morning and there are not enough officers at night and they need parents to curb the young people from being out at 3:00 in the morning and there is a host of reasons listed there. you can add your voice to the mix as well when it comes to rises in crime. several reports from this morning highlighting the statistics but you can tell us your personal experience where you live. if you live in the eastern and central time zones, (202) 748-8001 --(202) 748-8000. if you live in the mountain and

pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. if you are a member of law enforcement and want to give your perspective, (202) 748-8002 . post on twitter, post on facebook, too. tim is up next from louisiana. am i pronouncing that correctly? caller: houma? host: houma, thank you, go ahead. caller: it's a small town, over the years the population has grown. it goes for the big cities as well. you can concentrate people and a lot of times that will lead to crime. it's not guns that murder people, it's the murderers. it's a social problem, not just having a gun. host: as far as in louisiana where you live, what's the situation when it comes to crime? caller: i'm 62.

there are 50 years of law enforcement. the same amount of crime has increased because of population now. host: june, hello. caller: relating to oklahoma, it's all the problems with crime that everyone else has, but last fall there was a supreme court decision called the mcgirt decision and there was one word included in it that declared us a reservation. and when that happened, only federal laws can be enforced if

either the criminal or victim are tribal members. and the remaining laws that we have in our state that our local laws or state laws are not federal laws. and consequently, thousands of people who were incarcerated have been appealing and getting out of prison. from child molesters and drunk drivers and all kinds of things that deteriorate your community. we have murderers being released because they killed native americans. it's crazy. host: that's the situation where you live, or this is a statewide thing? caller: it's more than a fourth of the state where the various tribes are. many of the tribal leaders of the various tribes in oklahoma

are trying to come up with solutions. our state attorney general is working on it and our congressmen are working on it. it takes years to get something before the supreme court and get something changed. they just willy-nilly used one word, and it makes such a difference. it's like there's no one with any common sense warning people in political roles of -- what the consequences are when you change laws. host: in oklahoma talking about the law perspective when it comes to that topic. the majors say these -- they are seen as a perspective of what is going on in canada, with certain types of crime. nine agencies of nine responding to get 260 homicides in 2020 and

7800 plus sexual assaults and 10,000 plus robberies and aggravated assaults, 1100 99 and compares those from 2019 to 2020. more information on the website. from state college, pennsylvania , this is joy. caller: good morning. here in pennsylvania, i live in central pa, we have crime, but you look at the city of philadelphia and it's totally out of control. it's a total mass here in pennsylvania and philadelphia. then you look at what happened in washington, d.c. those two young girls that murdered the over delivery guy. how sad she was more concerned about her phone than the life she took. i think the riots from last year

have given people the power where they think they can do anything they want, they can rob and burn down buildings and they have the right to because of police. from the politicians even in the churches, church leaders, and police, there are bad apples in all aspects of our lives. to defund the police is the wrong way to go. it's my grandmother told me that they got roe v. wade as law, we have no respect for life ended said. look at chicago. these major cities, it's so sad. i'm privileged to live in a community that does not have crime, but i know -- i have people that are law enforcement and their hands are tied and they are sad. host: we've set aside a line for

those of you in law enforcement. kristen is calling on the line from washington, d.c.. caller: hi, yes. i was calling because i've been listening in and i'm a little disappointed at quick associations that are being made to particular political movements like black lives matter. i don't think there is a tie in the rates of crime, i think the actual thing is that it shows, it is not causation, it is correlation, there is discontent, that's what it shows. there is no magic silver bullet to solve this problem. it's systemic and we have to approach it in a systemic fashion from multiple directions. there is no other way to handle it. >> you said you are a member of law enforcement, what do you do? caller: i work for a law enforcement agency. host: what's the systemic approach? caller: i think the systemic

approach ends up being a partnership and taking a role in your government instead of complaining about how things are, actually working, protesting, even writing your own bills to be put forward, it takes a long time for these things to adjust. it doesn't happen quickly and you have to approach from multiple directions. maybe increased citizenship in schools. i don't think the funding police organizations is the way to go. may more funding towards training to talk about unconscious bias and things of that nature with institutionalized problems the whole point is it has become institutionalized so people don't realize it's actually a problem. it has become what is thought of as the norm. host: if part of the idea of defunding the police means putting the budget back in the communities when it comes to mental health or social

programs, what's wrong with that approach? caller: i don't think that's necessarily -- i think it can be done without defunding the police. you can put it back into the community by how you put the money into the police program. it should be -- they are radically, in the best environment, they should be interacting with the public all the time and going into -- they are not mental health or doctors, but this is how we handle that. in smaller communities -- >> that's a perspective of a member of law enforcement in washington, d.c.. we have 20 minutes or so left in this segment. if you are a member of law enforcement and want to give your perspective on what you are seeing as far as rising rhyme and your unique perspective you can call us at (202) 748-8003.

eric in lorton, virginia, you are next. caller: good morning. i went to school in the d.c. in the mid-90's from new york city. if people who lived here during that time remember, crime was horrible. it made new york city look like disney world. it was utterly horrible here. people were getting shot for stepping on your sneakers, really trivial things. crime is not necessarily worse. i think it is more divisible through social media, through news, through social enlightenment, but crime is not any worse than it was before. in terms of defunding the police but caller said it's a ridiculous idea and it is a ridiculous idea. i think the problem when you look at the poor neighborhoods in the area and what they have decided to do is turn their frustration towards the police and the times in which there is

some type of injustice which is never acceptable. when you look at the major issues plaguing poor communities, it is rampant crime within the civilian population itself, that's where it should be focused on. maybe it's just a reactionary thing. let's look at the particular situation with bad apples and disregard that and not deal with all the things that are occurring. it doesn't make any sense. when you look at training there is no other profession, major profession that does not undergo some type of ongoing training or ongoing recertification and that should happen with the police force. these people are human beings and they are subject to corruption just like everyone else is. for some reason they are held to a different standard. there should be something where every five or six years --

just like a doctor gets recertified, that they go do something that way and they have to be held accountable, because the public is not going to have confidence in the police when they see the rare instances of injustice go unpunished. the confidence of the people in the police force gets undermined and they want to defund the entire police force which is ridiculous. >> that's eric giving his perspective in lorton, virginia not far from washington, d.c.. later on in the program we will hear from the head of the organization known as the police integrity research group investigating charges against police officers when it comes to certain things. one of the statistics they put out when it comes to murder or manslaughter charges involving police since 2005, they highlight the fact that 139 officers have been charged, 44 have been convicted, 50 three not convicted and 42 cases still

pending. this is from between 2005. the president at 9:15 eastern will take more of a look at this topic at phillips since and, professor from bowling green state university and you can ask questions about that if you want to join us for that conversation about the rise in crime where we live. we have shown you statistics from 2020 and we are asking for your perspective. caller: thanks for having me on. first i wanted to say that it is not ar-15's that are the problem. maybe there is something to overcrowding or overpopulation and people feel like they are not being heard and that ties in with mental illness. the thing about rising crime is it sounds like defunding the police doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of the police, it

means finding a way to get police officers to have a nonconfrontational relationship with the communities they are in. a lot of what people are saying is that we need a stronger sense of community and usually parents teach that -- teach that to your children. if parents aren't teaching it than the government has to do it and that seems silly that that is where we are at. it was just something i was thinking of. the government should not be parenting your children. but if they are going to have to step in, may be having some form of policing that is less black and white, to use that term is bad, but -- host: the situation there when

it comes to crime, how would you describe that? caller: we are right outside d.c.. we had an incident, i live in a suburb and it's super diverse. you have a lot of people commuting to d.c. to work. here is an example of good community. we had a pack of seven or eight kids from outside our little self enclosed neighborhood roving through the neighborhood. there was one lady that, she lives alone and her husband died a couple of years ago and she was worried about it. she called the police. the police did not show up right away. the kids passed through the neighborhood. the next day one of the other neighbors sat down and talk to the kids and offered them popsicles and found out their names and where they lived. it just -- just kind of opened up to them. one of them is a good tactic and

one is a bad tactic. the neighbor that talked to those kids the next day, she welcomed them into the neighborhood and perhaps changed the future, by calling the cops, now they are running from the cops, they can get into trouble. host: in crofton, maryland giving us the community sense of the situation we are talking about. this is michael in portland, oregon texting assange his experience with the dramatic increase in crime from shootings, murders, and reckless driving. my neighborhood which is close to downtown, people are moving out to get away from the pervading sense of danger. another oregonian saying my daughters live in oregon -- taken a firearms class got their permit and steered clear of portland. they don't go to beaches and state parks and are considering

moving back to indiana. that is marion talking about the daughter's perspective. steve in ohio saying that community -- outside of city limits, criminals -- most of my neighbors have considered -- have concealed carry permits or guns with high-capacity magazines in their homes. i've been a hunter all my life, most homes have motion detectors, lights, and cameras. we look out for each other. texting us, you can do that or between us. some of you posting on our facebook page. to atlanta, georgia, this is jean. >> i see crime as profitable politically and financially. tying black lives matter to crime is political. using the term defunding the police rather than reforming the police, that is critical.

i just have the feeling that some police in some areas, you are saying i am here in atlanta, but i'm from st. louis. some of the police in places like st. louis and chicago, they really don't care about the community, and it's a job security thing. i don't think their goal is to solve crime, it's just to be there and maybe that is where the attitude of disrespect comes for the communities. that is another thing. i'm not evolving the community from their responsibility in controlling crime and i guess that is the basis for where the solutions should come from and that should be from the community. the community, the churches, the organizations that are in the community. host: is there something that

stands out that a community can engage in to help in this process? caller: yes. i believe spreading the idea of excellence and caring and respect for each other, and maybe that should come from the churches, the schools. when you have that in a community, you don't want to shoot your neighbor or steal from your neighbor. this thing about the guns in st. louis for example they change the gun law so children can get guns. they lowered the age and now -- you complain about kids and people killing each other. because now they have guns. this reporting of crime, i worked in crime area where i had to compile the crime statistics.

crime statistics throughout the country, from my understanding, they are compiled differently. he spoke to somebody who said they don't have much crime in their area. someone else said they don't report the crimes -- -- in the city specific crimes are reported more so -- there is a lot that goes on with this crime and that is why i see with civil and financial a lot of people do benefit, especially politicians, from crime, and then a lot of people benefit financially from fryman. >> how did you end up in a job collecting crime statistics? caller: i was the low man on the totem pole. you can see how important that

job was. host: that is jean giving us her perspective from a community sense and a statistic sense. she spent her time taking a look at this issue. conrad, philadelphia, pennsylvania you are next. caller: [indiscernible] -- to help the cities. [indiscernible] i'm 59, this stuff has been going on since i was 14. i think the problem is, [indiscernible] these guys is fighting on these corners over drugs. selling drugs, making more money, because they don't have any money. if you give a good paying job -- i guy that has three or four

kids can't work like that. -- [indiscernible] raising four kids, what do you expect the guide to do? he doesn't have a job, money, or income. so they go out and rob people. the first thing they have to do is raise the salary, the pay scale. we can't go to other countries and tell them what to do. we tell them what to do and what to say, don't do this or that. it's real easy. -- >> your signal is breaking up a bit. we got your perspective and thanks for calling in. james hopkins on facebook saying

a community means a city, charlotte statistics and violence/property crime is up. if it means neighborhoods, mine appears safe and i walk around and interact without trouble. i don't think they keep statistics on corporate crimes. apologies if i mispronounced your name, saying we live in a small community, we proudly advertise we have guns. this is albert, crime has definitely gone up where i live. what used to be a peaceful and quiet neighborhood recently had to shootings including a fatal one in less than a day. on facebook if you want to post on even after we are done discussing it you can do so at facebook.com, a conversation also takes place on our twitter feed. you can text us if you want to give your perspective there. nick in alton, illinois, thanks

for calling. you are next, go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. i heard a couple of callers, a color from georgia made me call in. i'm sorry. the idea that children are going around and getting legal guns and using legal ammunition on one another, that's about as asinine as i have ever heard. to just raise the minimum wage for people who are drug addicts. i'm an assistant manager for kroger. i work for kroger. there are a half-million people who work for kroger. all of our subsidiaries, we have a lot of people. we deal with a lot of drug addicts coming in. how is raising the minimum wage for drug addicted people who aren't working right now, how is raising the minimum wage going to change anything? host: give us a sense of what

crime is or the level of concern you have over crime there where you live area -- where you live? caller: you can take the guns away. take away all the ammunition. people are still going to find something to hurt somebody with if that is their intent. you can kill somebody with a cup , a plate, or a butter knife. what are we going to do? just move the plastics? host: if it's not an economic issue, what do you think is the resolve? caller: the problem is get the democrats out of control of the cities. st. louis has not had a republican mayor since 1949. you tell me. host: what does a person in a certain political party do to change that? caller: it's not a matter of a political party changing, it's a matter of the american people

changing themselves. they have voted consistently for a party who has done nothing for our communities, and is still saying they want to do more for our communities when they haven't done what they said when i was 10. host: that's nick in alton, illinois. we will go to james in high point, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. my thing is, all the things that are going on around the country. i think america is more divided now than i don't know how long and the time has come for us to see that the more divided we are, the worse we are. america used to be the light, but on january 6 america's light went out. i am calling now that we should

be on a nationwide prayer of repentance, because if we don't repent we have not seen anything yet. host: aside from the spiritual component you talk about what about the specific component as far as crime in high point? caller: it's -- it's not really out of whack, but you know occasionally there are things happening. even if it happens every six to seven months, that's too much. the crime around the country is because of sin. it doesn't matter what state you are in or what city you are in. it's all sin. >> that is james in high point. we hear next from linda and staten island, new york. caller: good morning, sir.

from my perspective it depends what we consider a crime. in new york we have many positions of police, public security officers, postal police, traffic police, etc.. i believe to curb these quality-of-life crimes that lead to violent crimes -- in my district i have seen term -- it turned from relatively civil especially with the sanitation and public policy. i'm not a violent person, but it's maddening when people leave garbage or trash at my doorstep. >> the covid-19 council on criminal justice points out this point if you want to look at it again you can. property and drug crime rates with the exception of motor vehicle theft fell significantly in 2020.

residential burglary decreased by 24% and nonresidential burglary -- drug offenses by 30%. motor vehicle theft rose by 13%. if you want to see more of that analysis, this is alex. alex in glendale, california. good morning. alex in glendale, california. caller: thank you, c-span. can you hear me? thank you. i want to comment on what people are saying about law enforcement and the needs of the communities involved. it's great to give children who come by through neighborhoods and harassed neighbors ice pops and talk to them, that's wonderful. host: are you there? i think alex dropped.

let's try tim, also from california. tim, go ahead. caller: -- my local area is pretty good. outside of that, i think all the -- the problems come from poverty and poor education. you look at schools in the area, we recently got a house and we are trying to find a place, as soon as you run into the baltimore county area the schools or trash. you bring up people in these poorer schools, they have less opportunity, and it just kind of cycles into poverty. we don't have much opportunity in the schools. that's what it builds off of. until you fix the education system, you can't fix it later by raising the minimum wage.

you have to give people skills and hope and maybe from then host: that's tim from california, talking about increases of crime. thank you for the perspective. we have been hosting political podcasters all week on "washington journal." up next, you meet a representative from the daily wire as he talks about his podcast, and news of the day. bowling green state university's terminology just -- university's will join us. that is coming up on " "washington journal" -- "washington journal." >> the trial for derek chauvin, the former minneapolis police officer charged in the death of george floyd, continues wednesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern.

watch live coverage of the trial on c-span two, or listen live on the free c-span rodeo app -- radio app. if you missed coverage, watch it at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2 or anytime on demand at c-span.org. >> the world bank president holds a news conference during the world bank group and international monetary fund 2021 spring meetings. watch live today beginning at 11:30 a.m. eastern, online at c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government, created by america's table television company -- cable television company. today, we provide c-span2 viewers as a public service. -- c-span to viewers as a public

service. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we have been featuring political podcasters and joining us now is michael noel, -- is michael knowles, host of "the michael knowles show." guest: increasingly, the distinction is blurry, especially after the president the presidency of donald trump. that distinction is blurry. we cover that angle, but russell kirk had an important observation, which is that culture is downstream of religion. we also hear of the patron saint of hollywood conservatives that says culture is downstream of religion and these questions are not two easily separated.

we like to go everywhere from the headline all the way down to the philosophical and theological premises that undergird those issues. host: do you have an example of a headline you're looking at in today's things that you are covering? what are the cultural underpinnings? guest: the clearest example is this transgender issue. you saw the governor from arkansas last night did not do a good job defending his position on television. he tried to make the argument it is somehow conservative to give little children cross ex hormones and puberty blockers. at the top of all, you see the headline that there are people and children specifically who have confusion about their sex, and boys feel like they are little girls and little girls for like -- feels like they are little boys. and then we have the cultural aspect where it goes to the lgbt events.

for most of the gay-rights movement, we are told we are born this way. if you have attraction to boys and you are boy, society should have more tolerant of these views. immediately after that, we are told that there is no such thing as biological sex and if you are a boy you can become a girl. those are premises that contradict one another. ultimately, there is a religious question, what is the nature of man? the traditional view of the west as man is hilum orphic, -- hilomorphic. according to the transgender movement, our bodies have nothing to do with who we are, so i can look like a man, have an adams apple, a deep voice, i can have all of the various appendages, but on a deeper metaphysical level, if i feel like a woman, than actually i am a woman. it is not even complicated. i am simply a woman and my body

has nothing to do with that, and that is called gnostic dualism. it has crept up repeatedly over the course of western civilization. if you want to learn more about that, it helps to see all of the layer's down so one can have a more informed view of it. host: when you talk about these issues, what you hear from people who support you and do you have an avenue -- guest: increasingly and our politics, one can use their faculties of reason and think through these things and come to a decision on how they feel about it. i have an avenue for people who disagree with me. i did not realize i had such an avenue but i look at my am box

every day for my emailing twitter feed, typically what i would hear from them is a more impassioned argument. i do not mean to caricature my political opponents, but usually what those criticisms involve are just comments that you are a racist or a bigot, or this or that, and i think that when our political opponents engage in the evidence-free vector it is a good bit of evidence that you have won the argument. host: if you want ask questions, (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats and then for independents, (202) 748-8002. what shapes how you believe politically? guest: i suppose my friends have sometimes described me as slight to the right of attila the hun. i think this is unfair because i think the right and left, first

of all they are terms that come out of the french revolution, so they are relatively modern terms in politics. i don't know they totally correspond to the way our politics works right now, and i think there are a lot of problems on the right. i would not call myself a leftist but there were issues on the right. right now, this is the topic of my upcoming book, speechless, controlling words and controlling minds, it really takes issue with the right because a self described conservatives have fallen for traps laid by that by political correctness or cancel culture, woken us, use whatever term you want. -- wokeness, use whatever term you want. the governor's performance last night on television arguing that they are to chemically castrate kids, that proves it very well. i would like there to be not just this where the left and right hold positions and yell at

one another, i would like to bring the conversation forward a little bit by taking the leftist intellectuals who have brought that side of the aisle to where it is right now. i want to take them seriously, i want to see if they know something that perhaps conservatives have unfairly dismissed or overlooked. i think they can. i think one of the conclusions i reach in my book is while the right likes to pride itself on this idea that we understand free speech so much better than the left is, they are just snowflakes that hate free speech . i think the left understands free speech and censorship far better than the right does and that is how they have been able to amass and wield political power so effectively through political correctness and it is derivative cancel culture. host: the major league baseball decision has come up in a week ago, considering this all-star game. this connects to voting laws and this is something of the president referenced yesterday

at the white house. i want to play what he had to say about the decision and get your response. >> [indiscernible] pres. biden: i think that is up to the masters. look, you know, it is reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new jim crow laws are just antithetical to who we are. there's another side to it. the other side is that when they in fact move out of georgia, the people who need the help the most, people who are making hourly wages, sometimes get hurt the most. i think it is a tough decision for corporation to make. or a group to make.

i respect them when they make that judgment, and i support whatever judgment they make. the best way to deal with this is for georgia, and other states, to smarten up. stop it. stop it. host: what is your reaction? guest: that's quite a change in tune. a few days ago, president biden was absolutely encouraging major-league baseball to move the all-star game out of georgia , which has led to an ironic consequence of mlb moving the all-star game to colorado. in the name of racial justice and voting rights, but of course colorado is a much whiter place than georgia, and colorado has more restrictive voting laws than georgia, even after this malign voter bill. that backfired. people of georgia, including georgia democrats, are ureas at president biden, so now he is trying to reverse course and say hold on, other sports, please don't move your games out of here.

the issue with joe biden, and i say this with all due respect, is i do not think joe biden has many beliefs of his own at all. i think he wakes up in the morning, licks his index finger, puts it in the air, and figures out which way the wind is blowing. he has been this way his entire political career. he will changes pulled -- his position based on the wins. when the practical effects of $100 million leaving georgia because of mlb, he realizes he has to reverse course. it raises this question on issues such as the woke corporations or immigration, or voter id. the democratic party right now, all the way up to the leadership, are pursuing a very unpopular policy. the majority of americans want a border that a secure, supporting voter id, the democratic party does not do that. why do they get away with that? i think the reason is that they

have waged for the last 100 years or so a war of position, to use the radical -- the term of a radical theorist. as a result, they are wielding the power now. we can talk until we are blue in the face, and the american people can respond to survey after survey saying we oppose this thing, but they lack the political power to effect those policies. i think probably they will recalibrate a little bit in the democratic party but will keep the radical lists. host: this is the democrats line for michael knowles. go ahead. you are on with our guest. caller: good morning pedro. good morning, mr. knowles. i'm not familiar with michael's show, but some comments on what i hear from conservative

columnists and conservative talk show hosts is that they seem to gravitate -- gravitate toward emotional wedge issues. your guests started -- guest started talking about sexual identity and what have you, also started to go toward the border. i am not saying these are not real issues, but i do not think they are ones of major import for most of us. a couple thousand kids at the border is certainly a serious situation, but it is not one that is changing our lives. lgbtq issues are men getting involved in women's sports or women using the wrong bathroom now that they have changed their sexual identity. there are generally things that don't impact us on a daily basis. my point is that these issues are being brought out to kind of

get people to act, get people on the right to act with somewhat of a cognizant dissidents and acting against their own best interest. serious issues in this country, like climate change, the way we respond to the pandemic, and not trusting science, the insurrection of the capital, and what that really means in terms of maintaining our democracy. host: mitchell, we will leave it there and let our guest respond. guest: i think mitchell sounds a lot like the republican governor of arkansas on television last night where he said we need to stop talking about these issues like immigration or the enforcement of our national border, or whether grown men should follow little girls into the changing rooms of the public pool. we need to talk about things

people actually care about like marginal tax rates. i have to tell you not only do i not wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night thinking about marginal tax rates, i don't think anyone else does either, these technocratic considerations people would rather us focus on carry with them a lot of political premise. i think what mitchell is implying here is we have already solved all the basic social questions and political questions, so now we are trying to make trade a little more efficient, trying to get that gdp up a little bit more, and ok, yeah, we are pumping kids full of hormone blockers and destroying their biochemistry, but that is just progress and will happen. we have to trust the science because the science works. this is the progressive vision of government. woodrow wilson, our most progressive president, laid this out well in an essay called " what is progress?" he said under the old

constitutional system of government, we lived under the laws of isaac newton with fixed laws of the universe and we have a fixed human nature and we need to have checks and balances to balance the power out and make deliberative decisions as of body politics, but that is all over. we are living in the age of darwin and nothing is fixed. we are evolving toward progress, so what the effect of this is is everything becomes political. chicken sandwiches are political, sneakers are political, coca-cola is political. everything is political except for politics. which woodrow wilson argued has to be outsourced to bureaucrats and administrators the on the scope of the gibbet -- of legitimate political debate. you see this with the rise of dr. fauci. he says i have never had a political view in my life, i'm just doing what works. in order for something to work, it has to have a purpose.

a lawnmower works when it cuts a lawn. you need to know where you are going, what you want to do. and that is certainly beyond the scope for someone like anthony fauci, or the public health apparatus. i think the premise in the comment from mitchell is we have already decided all of that. there is no fixed human nature. all of those things talking about earlier on whether or not a nation should be able to decide who comes into the country and who has the right to vote and access government services. that is just not for you to decide you puny little american people, you peasants. you don't have the right to your political process. we will outsource that to the experts, because they can run our lives better for us then we can run ourselves. i can't go along with that. i do not think those eggheads in washington have much of a sense of the american way of life. i don't think they are particularly philosophically

sophisticated, and a lot of the time, i do not think they have my best interest at heart. i would prefer we the people of the united states of america to exercise the political authority given to us in the constitution that a lot of people want to take away. host: let's hear from brick, new jersey, kevin, a republican line. caller: good morning. i'm a huge fan of yours, michael. been a long time viewer, and a daily wire subscriber. guest: thank you so much. caller: as a young conservative, what do you think -- how do you think we can take back our media and can day mia? i think those are the -- and academia? i think those are the two biggest problems in our country. do you recommend conservatives go into teaching? do you recommend they try to apply for cnn?

or work for harvard and go to teach there? or do you think we should start our own colleges and media? guest: i would not be so much of a sadist to suggest you should work for cnn, harvard, or something like that. it's a very important question and something i detail at great length in my upcoming book, speech list -- speechless. the left focuses on the media and especially academia. this is where you saw the rise of political correctness much earlier than other pulse of the culture -- parts of the culture. why? this is how you take a hold of the common sense. the radical theorist understood the reason marcus -- marxist revolution did not succeed is the allegedly oppressed class didn't feel that oppressed. the radicals had their theories, but the common people did not like those theories much.

so the left undertook a sophisticated and well thought out plan to take over academia and take over systems of mass communication. and they have done it rather effectively. we are starting from a real disadvantage. how do we do this? for a long time, you have heard conservatives say politics is downstream of culture, and therefore, forget the political questions. we have to go out there and make a good stuff, podcasts, our own companies. i think that is very important, we should absolutely do that. that is what i do for a living, so i think that is an important side of it. we also need to wield political power. we also need to -- and you are seeing some republicans waking up to this. easy ron desantis waking up to this, mitch mcconnell waking up to this saying we cannot let's welcome corporations and private industries undermine our culture. the reason conservatives have become allergic to wielding the political power the people give them under the constitution for

the last 20 to 30 years is because they have fallen for a trap that the radical left or political correctness leaves for them. political correctness is designed to undermine traditional standards. it is a purely negative campaign , engages in what marx would call the ruthless criticism of all that exists. from that, you saw the academic movement of critical theory and those in the news like critical race theory. it is just out to destroy the old order. conservatives traditionally react in one of two ways. you have the squishes who go along with it and say you will pump kids full of hormones, that's fine. we want to broaden the party after all, like the governor of arkansas. but even the more ornery, obstinate and conservatives will say i'm not going to go along with political correctness, because i'm a free speech absolutist or free-market

absolutist, or some other absolutism that only exists in the air and has never existed in the actual political tradition of the united states. as a result, they will issue standards altogether. the irony here, you either get into the left new standard or throw out standards altogether. either way, the left gets the obliteration of the old standards. the shorter answer, it is important for conservatives to go to teaching and media, but that is not sufficient. we also need to recognize these entities exist in a broader political landscape, a broader political framework, and we need to be willing and have the courage to wield a political power when we have it. president trump, i hope he lives a long life and i hope when he goes to his eternal rewards, he donates his body to science and his spine to the gop, because if they would only have courage,

the prerequisite for all of the other virtues, i think we could tackle this problem more effectively. host: it is much too early but i believe you will be asked or has been asked about if president trump should run for another term a president. guest: it is much too early, i would agree. i am a supporter of president trump and i thought he was a tremendous president, best president of my lifetime, but he himself said republicans have a deep bench of good candidates. to me, especially if it is president trump making that comment, that was signal he is probably not going to run. i'm not sure. but there are a lot of great candidates out there. i am parshall certainly to senator ted cruz, with whom i host a podcast, and i have encouraged him to run. i think ron desantis in florida looks like he is eyeing a run and doing a good job. you have other governors and senators around the country who seem to be interested in it. i will take president at his word. if there is a deep bench, he

could play a significant role in determining who will get the nomination. and he may end up running himself. he has a time of political support, but if you are to think , in 2013, who will the republican nominee be? i think few people would say donald trump would be the nominee. it is certainly too early at this point. we are all wish casting i think. host: here's michael in syracuse, new york on the democrats line. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: i would like to say dipshit donald was the worst thing to happen to this country and you are terrible for thinking every other way. guest: i have to tell you that was not the most persuasive arguments i've heard but -- host: you spent a lot of time on college campuses talking about these issues.

i understand you are hit by a water gun at one of these events. [laughter] guest: i was. i don't know what was in the water gun. it was not water, and fortunately it wasn't any particularly noxious substance. the only casualty was my blazer. i have a speaking tour. before covid, we spoke at 10 to 20 schools around the country. i called it the men are not women and other uncomfortable truths tour. it's the reason i answered your question earlier as to what is one of the most controversial issues that has deep philosophical premises. believe it or not, it is the idea that men are not women. i gave other speeches on the tour. i said babies are people, i said cancel culture is bad. various truths. the one that really got everybody was that men are not women. so i walked into this room at the university of missouri kansas city, and a third of the audience immediately were

eccentric looking young activists. they started street -- screaming at me at the top of their logs. you could not hear it on the video feed because my microphone was feeding directly into the camera, but in the room you could not hear the speech. i had prepared my speech anyway, even with what they were screaming i could continue to read it. eventually, they tuckered themselves out and when to leave. one of them went behind the podium, opened up a fire door, and some lunatic comes in and sprays me with some sort of chemicals. the police did a great job of taking that guy down. he seemed shocked he would face any consequences for his actions. eventually, everyone was led out of the room. what is really bizarre as the following day, the chancellor of the university wrote a letter apologizing, not to me but to the students, that i was invited in the first place, suggesting the idea that men are not women is not a value of the university

. it was through the looking glass. i really felt as though i was in wonderland. that is the usual response i get. there have been a handful of times on these campuses that there have been thoughtful leftist responses, which i love. that is what i wrote my recent book on, thoughtful leftists and taking ideas seriously, but unfortunately you do not get a lot of that. i think part of the reason why the conservatives on campus tend to be more thoughtful and -- if you are conservative on campus, the culture is against you. you're constantly having to defend and think through your beliefs, perhaps discard your beliefs and deepen others. if you are in the left these days, your ideas are rarely challenged, not challenged at work, school, in the broader culture, or political realm. i think they are at a real

disadvantage. if there are intellectual and articulate leftist's, i have speeches this year, so i look forward to seeing on campus. please don't ruin anymore my blazer's. host: this is michael knowles of "the michael knowles show." maria in new jersey, independent line. caller: good morning, pedro. your guest has a very elegant mind and i appreciate that. i would like to get back to something he said. i think it was jefferson who said eventually our country will be saved by the people, and i feel that we can't wait for all of these elections. most of our government are full on agents. there are petitions to recall of them right now. second, this $11 trillion shortfall at the pentagon that has not been accounted for, we are in secret wars all over the

world, and we have five eyes which gives written in the commonwealth all of our secrets. so it is nice to talk about party versus party, but it ought to be citizens of the united states against [indiscernible] i think the battle has to start and ernst -- in earnest now. guest: those are a bunch of great questions and comments. what a lot of people are going to say when they listen to you is maria, these are crazy conspiracy theories you're talking about. there's no way a foreign spy could ever influence the u.s. government. you might point them to alger has, a top ranking state department official who was working for the soviet union during the cold war, detailed in the excellent book witness, one of the books that moved ronald reagan from the liberal camp to the conservative camp. you mentioned the bureaucracy seems to be unaccountable to the american people. this is obviously the case.

i remember antonin scalia a, had the privilege of meeting him a couple times before he died, and he said the greatest threat to liberty and the united states is the administrative state because it had such a mission drift and has become so unaccountable as well to the american people. the degree to which these issues are affecting our day-to-day might be disputed, but certainly there are a lot of problems here. you mentioned these wars that seem to crop up all of the time. i remember the old joke in 2008 that they told me if i voted for john mccain that we would start a war in the middle east. and they were right. these problems are frustrating. the way that i think, the conservative way one would begin to address them, and frankly the way the left has a draft them to great effect, is through evolution, not revolution. i do not think we need to kick the doors in at some administrative agency and say you are all fired, get out of here.

one, it wouldn't work, and two, it probably would not have much of the political effects you are hoping for. you need to have incremental change, to be able to identify the republican officeholders who are not fulfilling their campaign promises, who are not pursuing a particularly conservative policy, and you need to get them out for the old-fashioned electoral process -- through the old-fashioned electoral process. when we have political power, you need to wield that power to fire bureaucrats undermining the administration. i'm not saying this is easy. president trump faced a lot of pushback at this. you consider one department in the government, the department of homeland security, i think the the department of homeland security -- i thing the department of homeland security, these are there issues. that is why you need the steady increments of change.

the left, for the last 100 years as i detail in my book speechless, for 100 years, they amassed that power, and it reminds me of ernest hemingway's description of going bankrupt. the question was how did you go bankrupt, and the answer was gradually and then suddenly. i think the left has amassed power gradually, and the exercise it rather suddenly. that is what is happening right now, and i think conservatives would do well to learn a lesson from the strategy. host: from new york, democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. mr. knowles, i find you offensive, your promised way. the conservative party has done nothing for america but divide us. your book, i probably would purchase it to read it. i don't agree with anything you're saying. check out history.

i am a history buff, and i read history, and i was an independent all of my life until 2008. i realized i sided more with some of the ideas of the democrats. you have conservatives. what about the conservative movement in 1953, pushing religion? rights? did you see the documentary, the family. guest: i have not seen a documentary. caller: i think you should watch it, because it is very telling. it tells you all about how a certain set of republicans, conservative, religious, which is in the constitution, no laws written, ok? freedom means freedom to practice your religion the way you want, if you want. freedom means if you are a

lesbian, gay, lgbtq, whatever you call it, that is your right. host: we will let our guests respond. guest: all interesting points. i appreciate your willingness to buy and read my book even if you suspect you won't agree with it. to your point on religion, you say that the united states does not have any religious underpinning and you should be free to have any religion you want. let's not forget that religion factors into the declaration of independence. the entire american revolution is premised on the idea that there is a god, our creator, who endows us with certain unalienable rights. that idea, which is a very christian idea, is the basis , the philosophical basis, of the entire country. if you would have a view that

would undermine that, that would seem incoherent. jan that, all governments and regimes have some kind of religious basis. this is inevitable. this is very misunderstood, but the first amendment was ratified and there was no established church at the national level. one of the regions -- reasons is that there were many established churches at the state level, and those persisted for decades after the ratification of the constitution. we have a state religion now, secular progressive, and we are now being told it is unacceptable in this culture to question the idea that a man can become a woman. that is in training in our law, the gnostic religious idea of dualist, that our bodies and souls have nothing to do with each other, and we really are our souls. to quote the great political philosopher bob dylan, everybody has got to serve somebody. then you raise this point on

freedom and liberty, which i think is so important because it is misunderstood not only on the left but on the right as well. there were two conceptions of liberty, a modern call it liberal idea of liberty, which is liberty is the ability to do whatever you want at any time and pursue your own desires, whatever they may be. this is an idea held by the left but by huge portion of the right as well. then, the classic idea of liberty, held by our founding fathers, by christianity, by the pre-christian philosophers. that ideas liberty is not the ability to do whatever you want at any time but it is the freedom to do whatever you ought to do. just to bring that to earth, what that means is, according to the modern idea of liberty, the heroin addict is the most free person in the world because no one -- especially in states where that drug is legal, because that person is not been told he can't do something. if he has the desire to shoot up heroin, he is going to do it, as

long as he got a couple bucks in his pocket. could you imagine a person anymore free? we know that guys not free at all, he is a slave to his base passions and appetites and sin. this is why in the traditional understanding of liberty, as christ says himself, the man who sins is a slave to sin. in the pre-christian philosophical greek understanding of liberty, the way we become free is by practicing the virtues, by cultivating our minds and disciplining our will. this is the purpose of liberal education. the idea of liberal education is we will come to make sense of our freedom and exercise it so we can tamp down the base passions we do not want to follow that compromise our will and intellect and pursue these higher things. that is what the founding fathers knew and why they wrote at great lengths about the difference between liberty and licentiousness. in the modern age today, the

left and right both seem to think liberty and licentiousness are the same thing. what our founding fathers do and what wise people throughout history have known is liberty and licentiousness are polar opposites. licentiousness totally undermines liberty. it is what you are seeing around us right now, and reminds us of john adams' warning that our country is built for religious. this is not some sunday school scolding he is getting, he is telling us a fact about liberty. we cannot tamp down our base passions and we will not be able to govern ourselves. host: there's a viewer who weighs in on the transgender topic. i may quote leftist who believes that -- as a person who receives a kidney transplant. i don't want the power in someone else's medical procedures. guest: it's often the people

that tell us to stay out of our medical procedures are also the people calling for greater government influence in the medical industry in the health care decisions, people who support socialized medicine for instance. this is not the case. i think republicans are as guilty of this misunderstanding as the left is. this idea that politics is this really narrow realm and the private sphere should be totally open. on the rights, they want to pretend politics has nothing to do with how the economy should work, so we should have a free market and i should be able to trade whatever i want and build whatever i want. on the left, they take this idea and apply to the social round, i should be able to sleep with whoever i want, mutilate my body however i want, and politics has nothing to say about this, but politics has a lot to say about this. at the most basic level, our political institutions should be able to protect vulnerable

people, protect most vulnerable people like children. so if a political regime says you are not permitted to mutilate children and chemically castrate them, that will be one kind of policy, and if the political regime says you have a right to chemically castrate children if they give their consent, which is a dubious concept in itself, because children are not able to give informed consent, which is why we have age of consent laws saying children are not able to engage in certain behaviors below the age of 17 or 18. those are different polities, and we can pretend those are questions that we should ignore or push to the side, but indecision is a certain kind of decision. it creates what you might call the person -- permissive society with horrible effects for constitutional government and these kids who are being mutilated because the fashionable ideologies of radicals. host: from new york, samuel, your next, republican line.

caller: hi. first of all, i want to say i'm a big fan. besides that, i would like to ask this question. in terms of the culture, there used to be like slavery, jim crow, but then -- host: could you step back a little bit from your phone? you are becoming muffled. could you try again? caller: i would like to ask a question in terms of the culture. we used to have slavery, all of these things that in the culture changed, the laws changed, like there is no real opposition to it that is significant and everyone agrees. i was wondering, if you think there will be a day where that becomes the case for say the whole transgender fight with stopping these kids, say in

arkansas? host: mr. knowles, if you wanted take anything from that, go ahead. guest: that's a great question and an even greater complement at the top of the question. what you're pointing out is in the past, things used to be bad, but in the present things seem to be better. this is true in some issues but not others. if we no longer have legal slavery in the united states, that is good and i'm totally for that. unfortunately, we kill one may be -- one million babies per year through abortion. so that is bad. some things got better and some got worse. what progressives will tell you is that the arc of history as long but it bends toward justice, and the past is always worse, and the present is always a crisis, and the future will always be terrific. this is why the left always needs to tear down statues, even of one's they liked.

the past -- the past is bad and he we -- and we in the present are standing on the shoulders of giants. have to get to the utopian future and it is utopian because it does not exist. that progressive view of history will not get anywhere. i think sometimes conservatives, criticism -- criticisms of the history are dishonest. i'm a catholic and i have a progressive view of history. to quote the creed, i think christ will come to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. i guess that is a progressive view of history but different than the ones espoused by people on the left. i think things will get a little bit worse in the meantime. there's a great line, a priest -- line a priest friend of mine uses, saying the difference between a scottish optimist and pessimist is a pessimist says things can get worse and optimist says they can. i think the same might be said

of conservative as well -- conservatives as well. in some ways, issues make it better, like slavery. in some ways, issues might get worse, like abortion. i hope that abortion issue does get better and people realize the more horror of what we as a society are doing. but i do not hold that it will all be kumbaya and the big rock candy mountain in the near future. i think we should have political humility and improve what we can improve with difference -- deference to the tradition we have inherited, but i don't think w should hold out hope for any type of utopia. host: michael knowles is joining us for the conversation. "the michael knowles show," themichaelknowles.com is where you can find it. guest: i will correct you slightly because there is a writer and actor who has michaelknowles.com and he never

forwards me my stuff. [laughter] i just don't want his inbox to be flooded. you can find my shout the daily wire and subscribe to the daily wire. my show goes up five days per week and you can watch my show the book club, verdict with ted cruz, and you can order my new book and my previous blank book, reason to vote for democrats, a copper of guide. you can find all of that at michaeljknowles.com. and please write in the social media and email. i do love speaking to call is around the country, so i appreciate the opportunity to come on today. host: thank you for your time today. he is part of our political podcast series. tomorrow at 8:00, we will have michael moore, the host of the rumble podcast. our next guest joins us and a

half-hour. until then, we repeat the question talking about crime, a rise in crime as some reports of seen. and the impact in your community and you can relate your own story to this as well. for those of you in the eastern central time zone, (202) 748-8000. for mountain and pacific, (202) 748-8001. perhaps you remember of lawn force -- you are a member of law enforcement, (202) 748-8002, the number to call. we will take those calls when washington general -- "washington journal" continues. >> here's a look at live coverage today on c-span. the white house covid-19 response team provides an update at 10:30 a.m. eastern. at 11:30, david malpass holds a news conference as the world bank group and international monetary fund to begin their annual spring meetings. that is followed by president biden in the afternoon, giving a speech on his infrastructure plan. at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span

two, democratic senator chris coons speaks to climate change and environmental policy. at 10:00 a.m., the trial continues for former minneapolis police officer derek chauvin who is charged in the death of george floyd. ♪ >> american history tv on c-span3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story, every weekend. saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, leon ellis talks about his time serving in the vietnam war and as a prisoner of war for five years. saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the civil war, a look at confederate boat burners on the mississippi during the last years of the civil war. saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, american history professor joseph campbell on the cronkite moments and its effect on public opinion and the vietnam war on

2:00 p.m. eastern. david better tailor reflex on his time serving as a clerk during the vietnam war. sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on the presidency, a look at newly elected president's first addresses to a joint congress. george w. bush in 2001 and president barack obama in 2009. exploring the american story. watch american history tv, this weekend, on c-span3. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we have showed you some statistics gathered by the major cities chiefs associations when it comes to the rising crime. they did a survey on the events of 2020 and came to this conclusion within the report. showing major american cities saw a 33% increase in homicide last year. a crime surge that continued into the first quarter of this year. 63 of the 66 largest police

jurisdictions saw increases in at least one category of violent crime in 2020 including the homicide, rape, and aggravated assault. if you go to their website, they highlight numbers they have put together when it comes to comparisons between 2019 and 2020. the homicide rate, in comparison to 2019, 6 thousand 87. -- 6087. also, the conclusion that some of the experts, when it comes to the causes of this also highlighted in the same story that features the statistics saying experts point to what they call a perfect storm of factors, economic collapse, social anxiety because of the pandemic, the abolition of police departments, some have called for that. and the release of criminal

defense before trials were completed. those are statistics and we are asking you to relate that to what you are seeing, perhaps in states or anything -- or if anything you could use a comparison to talk about the rising crime. (202) 748-8000 for the eastern and central time zones, (202) 748-8001 for mountain tempest for civil ash mountain and pacific time zones, and law enforcement, if you want to coin give your input, (202) 748-8002. you can also text us (202) 748-8003. we will start in new york. this is denise. go ahead. you are on. caller: thank you for taking my call. i will start by saying i am a mother of a police officer. i am also a lifelong democrat, so that will be changing soon. and what took place over the

course of the summer. i guess i was living under a rock, because i have no idea where we were moving politically, in terms of what was being done, in terms of the narrative against police. i am certainly seeing a rise in crime in new york and have seen it take place in many cities. i feel the criminals are involved, and i think when i hear what is happening in california and what has happened in new york as well, it seems there is more concern over the criminals and not over regular citizens. i think new york, having removed qualified immunity, is putting our police in great danger. i think the proactive policing that is taking place will change , and crime as a result will rise. host: being a mother of a police officer, has your son related to

you what his job is like, particularly what he sees and rises of crimes and changing attitudes towards police? guest: yes, he has. they feel very abandoned, and i think they are not feeling supported. it is very difficult for them -- they go out every day and put their lives on the line and don't get paid very much to do that. they are certainly in danger, every day, and they do think many of us would not. it is interesting to me that the very people that would be against them at this point are the first ones to call for assistance when they are in trouble. i think it is terrible, and i definitely do not support the party in this position. i think i was more appalled that over the summer they decided to

completely ignore everything taking place. host: ok. denise in new york relating her experience. tony in fort lauderdale, florida, go ahead. caller: good morning, pedro. it is hard to say what is happening to crime, because crime statistics tend to lag for about a year. as a black man, what i am concerned about is the jim crow aspect. we hear a lot about jim crow laws and the history of this. i'm concerned the most agree just and largest example of jim crowe is gun-control laws. gun-control laws were put upon us by the democrats, sorry to say it, but to keep black people unarmed so they could come into places like rosewood in florida and massacre us, drive through our communities and massacre us,

and i'm glad to see president biden has now reputed jim crow, and as a result, i expect he will speak more on gun rights as black people to protect our communities. have a good day. host: tony in fort lauderdale there. houston, texas, this is joseph. caller: good morning, pedro. i have two comments. one, is the military dumping into the police force causing a copycat behavior for the citizens of this country? that is my question. host: when you say military dumping into police force, what do you mean? guest: we train the military to kill, to defend our country, and my concern is, we are semi-at peace, so what do we do with them? they seemed pretty aggressive

when they do their policing. as a result, we see their example and we play out what we see on television and all kinds of stuff. pretty much that is my point. host: when you say they are aggressive, what do you mean by that? is that something you are seeing in houston? guest: i see it -- caller: i see it all over the country because i watch videos on youtube concerning first amendment auditors. what concerns me is i heard a phrase called speech judo where they have the ability to anger people and not diffuse the behavior, that it is not necessary. they find anything to create an arrest and i think it generates revenue for a lot of people. the point i'm trying to make is

that the military teaches these men and women to defend our country and kill if necessary, and this is where we have too many of them in the military that get out and come into the cities and become police officers, and they conduct themselves as military people against their own people. host: that is joseph there. kathy in ohio talking about the rise of crime as it concerns you where you live. hello. caller: hi. i'm a democrat, and i am not for defunding the police, and i don't think most democrats are. i think we need some type of reform. i am also for gun control, and the republicans are not even for background checks. how can we get this country under control if we just give out guns? host: when you said you talked

about reform, what do you mean by that? caller: i think we need to train . there is something lagging for checking a police officer, to see if they even are well mentally. i am definitely not for defunding. i don't believe in letting general america take over the policing. if we do not have bullies, who will do it? the proud boys? i don't know. it is ridiculous. host: from joel lewis off of our twitter feed, saying the pandemic sparked -- also on twitter, saying nothing in my town. the biggest concern remains the voter suppression laws being passed on widespread voter fraud. another says there are only

types of crime and on a per capita basis it is not noticeable enough for the average citizen. marginals for stakes do not provide justification for taking police budgets to other services. tracy says we have a huge drug problem in kentucky. most of our shootings come from domestic and family disputes. that is what is going on in places around the united states. if you turn to today's newspapers across the united states, starting with this, there had story, their lead story, why cops say they are leaving in droves. you can find more at their website. read a is in holiday, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. that woman who called from ozone park that set her son is a police officer, where was she out crying when they beat up the police on january 6? the republicans were all against the police, not one of them

spoke up for them. how could she say democrats are against defunding? they did not stick up for the police at all. i think she needs to get off of her fox. host: as far as crime there where you are and what do you think about the statistics? caller: i live in a small town in florida, so it is not that bad. our police officers here, if we call them, they come right away. we are working in cooperation with the police. if we see anything, we call them. it is a joint venture. we work with our police officers , but i think the gentleman that called that said a lot of the police departments are taking these military men in, i think that has become one of the largest issues we have. they do not de-escalate, they escalate, escalate, and escalate.

a lot of the good police officers do not call them out on it. so they get faced with the same issues that the bad police officers have. in my company, if i do something against my company, i am held liable, they are not. -- janice in colorado springs. go ahead. caller: i have a suggestion. a way to do away with a lot of the tension is to have black officers just other way. host: you are saying the policing in an area should represent the majority of residents in an area? i do not want to put words in your mouth. caller: yes, i think it is a good idea this way. if you have a different ethnic

neighborhoods that are predominantly one race or the other, i think it would really bring it down against the police. host: why do you think that is? caller: i don't know. i think it is a good idea. i had two brother-in-law's that were police. one was in boston, and one in philadelphia. i think it would be a great idea if it is mostly spanish or black or white, i don't care. or if it is a mixed neighborhood, have the same. i think it would bring down tensions. this way the black people would feel they were more recognized because of the race and same thing. i think this is a way, i -- i'm not sure -- it would solve a lot of problems about police. i just to get would be a great idea. host: janice there with her ideas as far as ways of reducing tensions amongst police and the communities they serve.

she is in colorado springs, colorado. you can add onto that or bring your own ideas to the table for the next 15 minutes or so. we will show you a little bit from a senate hearing that took place earlier this year. the topic was crime and violent crime. senator chuck grassley, republican of iowa, talked about this idea of defending the police and how it fits into the larger picture. here is some of it. [video clip] >> we cannot reduce violence in our communities without a professional, well-trained and fully funded police force. this includes gun violence. the rallying cry during the riots last summer was defund the police. cities that followed that advice saw a rapid spike in violent crimes. many were forced to refund the police. this happened in minneapolis and portland. maybe other cities, as well.

statistics show the murder rate in 2020 increased significantly in june when rioters were on the march and policy makers forced them to retreat. evidence strongly suggests that june 2020's spike in homicides and other gun related crimes is related to policing or de-policing. it may have translated to 1268 additional deaths in 2020. on the other hand, efforts to combat violent crime like bill barr's operation legend, he has offered an additional 6000 arrests nationwide, including nearly 500 for homicide and hundreds of illegal firearm seized. sadly, it does not appear the department of justice now intends to continue this successful initiative.

i hope that violent crime will be a top priority for our attorney general and president biden. host: that was chuck grassley, republican of iowa, senator of that state. you can see that at c-span.org if you're interested. the washington post highlights gun deaths looking at 2020, saying it was a record year for gun violence when a couple of people were killed. in 2019, 3980 and for 2021, a partial calculation of 4100 plus. injuries also in that year, 39,427 and when it comes to looking at 2021, 7200 plus gun injuries. joel is next in madison, wisconsin -- i'm guessing -- a member of law enforcement. caller: yes, thank you, pedro. retired but actively working in the area. thank you for having this forum

this morning. major city chiefs are usually a good indicator of what results will be like when the fbi reports statistics here in a couple of months, but there is a lot of commentary around police behavior, and in these two categories, aggravated assault, a lot of it is a result of firearm violence. it is the communities of color that are impacted most significantly in the major cities. i would really ask folks to focus our interventions, thoughts and strategies around that because it is really a lot of times when police respond to these parts of our community, the global cooperation that happens with law enforcement is minimal at best, and the things we have to do is double down our efforts to build relationships with these communities because

it is those intervention efforts that can stop the third or second follow-up shooting. you are spot on with where the problem is, but the conversation needs to be more focused on these communities where the violence is happening, and then we will really stabilize this, or given everything going on in the society, it is only going to get worse. host: a viewer brought up the idea of de-escalation and maybe there is more training from your experience, what kind of training goes on and is more needed? caller: first and foremost, it is how you build your police department. we are very fortunate that in madison, 87% of officers have a four-year degree and one third of our department is female. when you build a police department that represents what your community looks like and they have the skills with them to build relationships in the neighborhood, that is the

essence and backbone of policing in the country. if we get more chiefs focusing on that and how they build police departments and men and women who do the job every day, we will start to do a better job at policing neighborhoods. host: joel in madison, a retired member of law enforcement. if you are a member of law enforcement, you can give your input to (202)-748-8003. you heard from chuck grassley getting his thoughts on the issue of guns, the thought of the chair of the hearing that took place, senator dick durbin and here are some of his thoughts. [video clip] >> last weekend in chicago, which i am honored to represent, 20 people were shot. 20. dr. rogers, you know that well. you know what happens in our home town. four died. across the nation every day, we lose on average 109 american lives to gunfire. hundred nine suicides, domestic violence shootings, accidental

shootings, homicides, and another 200 americans are injured by guns. the numbers are sobering. and each number is an individual person, a loved one, a neighbor, a friend, a husband, a father, a son or daughter. we have seen too many desperate trips to the emergency room, too many funerals, families and communities scarred forever by gun violence. we have come to accept it as part of american life. disproportionately, this violence affects people of color , but nobody is immune. host: that hearing available at c-span.org. dave in atlanta, georgia. caller: hey, folks. thanks for having me. a couple things about policing in my opinion. the first thing, we have to stop arguing with defund the police.

it is about aggregating the services police provide. police should not be getting tactic down, chasing down dogs and people. we have to disaggregate those services. we have to put more funding and preventative services and capacity building services. we continue to use an old model to try to fix new problems, so we have to disaggregate police and get rid of these warrior policing that are killing 3.3 people per day. police are killing people faster than they are preventing crime. they are reporting crime in a way that isn't uniform, so when public sentiment is against police, police can easily go back and say, these do not look good this year and they use

obstruction of justice charges and they use all of these different charges. they are not in a position to oversee them. we have a ton of things we need to think about, but when we think about police lending over the last 40 years, that funding has gone strictly to pr campaigns, marketing, and getting police out in the public to be seen in the public eye but not to work in the public. i will stop there. host: dave there in atlanta, georgia. thank you. ivan is in indiana. hello. how are you? caller: i am fine as and 84-year-old guy. [laughter] anyway, i would like to say, read the second amendment with the main constitution, section or article one, section eight.

fact establishes a national militia. you would have controlled alarms exclusively because it says that congress has to make the laws regulating the militia. if we had a militia, we would have our neighbors trained because you start at 21. i would make it 14 for males and 12 for females. common law. i used to be a lawyer. anyway, that is all i would like to say for now. there is a lot more about that whole thing. host: thank you. let's hear from john, john, san diego, california. hi. caller: hi, good morning, everyone. i was thinking about the man that called earlier about the military looking at people who graduate and go in to policing. maybe there is some truth to that.

also, that kind of personality, maybe it is personality that gets into the policing and they have that power, and it comes down for me about respect, respect and how to treat people, and in my experience, i have run into people, officers that treat you like an equal because i feel like i am an equal, and they treat you nicely and like you are another citizen. it says on their cars that it is to protect and serve. i do not work for them, they work for me, but they treat you like you are in the military and they are higher than you with a certain power. but i would like to be treated with respect, no matter who you are. you know, i understand people's color has more of an issue with this, for sure, but it isn't just people of color.

i have my problem, too, with people who have this power in the police department and they use it to satisfy their quirk in their personality. they get that power and they treat people like dirt. host: are you saying that a certain type of temperament is needed if you going to policing? caller: yes, and not only that, but you cannot teach this stuff. there are police officers very good at what they do and part is knowing that balance between using that strong behavior and you need to deal with people who are breaking the law and treating people with respect that are just being citizens, you know? host: that is john in san diego, california, offering thoughts on the rising crime and what he sees in the community. diane off twitter says "my new jersey town hasn't seen a rise in crime but there has been a rise in hate groups infiltrating

certain counties." the antidefamation league puts jersey at the top of the list for hate speech bread. john moody off of facebook says, "i do think crime has increased in large cities. i am lucky to live in a world community were 90% of us have guns. increase except for petty crime, packages taken from porches. it does help i'm in texas. smaller cities are still tough on crime." from julianne odell from our facebook page, "home invasions and boutique store robberies surging in san francisco." andrea also off of facebook, "no issues in my community. it is a good mix of people. most of us are working, busy, nor for major crime." you can post on facebook and our twitter feed. from alexandria, minnesota, warren, hello. caller: good morning. crime, the problem with crime is parenting. we have gotten away from

families, single parents, bad parents and minneapolis, 13, 14, 15-year-olds hijacking cars, and they have a gun, and they shoot the driver. what is wrong with the parenting? it is all about parenting. there were 10 and my family. my mother and father taught us right, wrong, respect, values, and that is the whole problem today. there are way too many kids growing up without guidance, and guns are not the problem. that is the problem. host: thank you for the call. you are finishing us off on that topic. we will continue talking about police related matters and police misconduct. we will talk to philip stinson, a criminologist who has compiled research on matters of police misconduct. we will talk about police

findings when "washington journal." continues. >> c-span's long-running series is back as a podcast. book notes less. here compelling interviews with authors and historians. new episodes are available every tuesday. this week on the inaugural episode, find out which u.s. presidents were caught in sex scandals. the author joins us to share those stories from her book "sex with presidents." book notes plus, a new weekly podcast from c-span. subscriber you get your podcasts and get information at c-span.org/podcasts. c-span's shops.org is the new online shop store. go there today to order a copy of the congressional directory, a spiral-bound book with contact information for every member of

congress, including bios and committee assignments and contact person governors and the biden administration cabinet. order your copy at c-span shop.org. every purchase helps to support c-span's nonprofit operations. senator chris coons of delaware talks about combating climate change and reducing climate emissions at an event hosted by punch bowl news. watch that live today at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span [applause] come online at -- c-span2, online at c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> caller -- "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now as philip stinson, serves as a criminal justice professor at alder creek university. good morning. thanks for joining us. guest: good to be with you. host: talk about your background and your interest in looking at the topic of police misconduct. >> as a young man, i worked as a

police for several years and worked for a police department before that for 3.5 years when i was a college student in the washington, d.c., area with the police department, then i moved to new england and worked as a police officer for several years and practiced law for about a decade and decided i would live a lot longer if i was not practicing law and went back to grad school. it was during that time in much in the area collecting data on police misconduct and more specifically what i was interested in was police crime, crime committed by nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers across the country. i sat down to develop a methodology, looking outside the box on how i can collect data on the issue without relying on the agencies themselves? ultimately, i developed 48

google alerts that constantly probed the google news search engine, resulting over the last 17 years i've located more than 18,000 cases of police officers, deputy sheriffs, state troopers, across the country who had been arrested one or more times. host: when did you get a sense this was a problem and how did you get that sense? guest: well, it was something i thought about many years working in law enforcement and then as a lawyer, i certainly had colleagues, associates, and a few friends who had been arrested while they were working as police officers, either for on-duty or off duty crimes and really wanted to figure out ways i could work to improve policing and inform the public. that is the dual purpose of my research now. host: according to the research you got, since 2005, 139 officers charged when it comes

to murder or manslaughter charges, 44 convicted, 43 not convicted, 42 pending cases. fill in the blanks involving police and manslaughter charges. caller: those numbers you are citing -- guest: those numbers you are citing 2005 to 2021 is an outgrowth of the joint research project i did with the washington post in 2015. those cases are officers charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting. that is what we are looking at specifically there. we see in those cases that it is rare that an officer is actually charged with murder or manslaughter as a result of an on-duty shooting or any other on-duty incident or not shooting, as well. it is very rare. the reason for that is because in most instances where police officers use deadly force, officers found by prosecutors and investigators to be legally justified. the officer had reasonable

apprehension of serious bodily injury and the death imposed against the officer or someone else, so it is direct case about 11 times or 12 times a year where we see an officer charged with murder or manslaughter. when they are charged, it is difficult for prosecutors to obtain a conviction. and when they do get convicted, it is typically for a lesser offense. and shooting cases, we have seen seven instances the last 17 years or so where officers have been convicted of murder. the other cases it was for a lesser offense. host: correct me if i am wrong, but the level of evidence or the kind you have to produce in order to prove murder or manslaughter? guest: well, it is complicated. one of the issues we see is that jurors and trials and judges at a bench trial or without a jury are very reluctant to convict officers further split second

life or death decisions they make in a potentially violent street encounter. even with the prosecution doing a stellar job in presenting the case and legal standard and putting on expert testimony and testimony from other officers on the scene who do not receive any such threat, even when that is the case, and by the way, it is a standard of objective reasonableness, or what a police officer would have perceived and that situation and that is the benefit of hindsight. what we see in terms of jury trials is that it seems that especially if an officer or defendant or to take the witness stand in his or her own defense or trial, that some jurors, if not all jurors in a trial, are reluctant to convict the officer. they somehow listen to the officer's projected -- subjective perception, and even if it is unreasonable, are

reluctant to convict. frankly, in recent years, i thought we had seen more of the cases the last five years or six years with the ubiquity of video recordings but that isn't the case. what we have seen that has changed or what has become more pronounced is prosecutors contact me across the country talking about how difficult it has been for them to get a grand jury to return an indictment in the cases. basically cannot get true bills out of grand jury's and many of the cases. host: our guest philip stinson, from bowling green university, houston research on the policing topic. if you would like to ask a question, (202)-748-8000 for eastern time zones. (202)-748-8001 for mountain and pacific. if you are a member of law enforcement, (202)-748-8002. your database, how may people behind it and how do you find it? you talked -- fund it?

how do you gather your research? caller: a lot of our data comes from police crime database, and we have been fortunate over the last six years to have the funding from the wallace action fund, so henry a wallace was the 33rd vice president of the united states back in the 1940's, and advocate of an informed public and social justice cause. his friends son, randall wallace under his foundation, we have been extremely fortunate. i have a staff at bowling green state university of research assistants, all students and it varies each semester, anywhere from eight to 12 students. i have a chief research assistant how is a doctoral student and i have several research assistants who are master level students. and the backbone of our research

group is a core group of students we have that our undergraduates. i reach out to students with high gpas when they are sophomores typically, and invite them to apply for a job with us. it is based on the funding we have, and i hope those students stay with us for three years or four years while they continue their undergraduate and perhaps graduate education at bowling green. that is how it works. i have employed 65 students the last 12 years or so, and it is a big project with a lot of moving parts. the purpose of the henry a wallace police crime database is to inform the public. we encourage people to go there. you can click on a map of your state, the county where you live, and looked at police departments of instances we are aware of were officers were arrested. i should point out that the data we made publicly available buspar far years of data, 12,000

cases involving 10,000 officers employed by almost 4000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the country, but you can take a look at the data and look for yourself and see how bad the problems are, so we are constantly collecting data, currently logging in new arrest cases of officers in 2021 and following cases from all years and doing our cases of 2016 arrest cases, so we have each arrest case on 270 quantitative variables and will be adding 2016 data to our master data set and then coating the 2017 arrest cases, collecting data from the current times and following the cases for each year. host: our first call comes from anthony, a member of law enforcement, west palm beach, florida. go ahead. caller: good morning, pedro, good morning, mr. philip.

i am a retired police officer in washington, d.c., and i am in in palm beach now. thank you for this topic. it is important that when we talk about law enforcement that there are good and bad officers. i wore the uniform, i know this. i think when it comes to cases of law enforcement officers being held accountable, specifically when it comes to deadly force, mr. philip told us the definition of deadly force and it is only supposed to be used when your life is in danger or another or serious bodily harm, not including buddy knows or broken bones, so -- including a blood he knows or broken bones, so it only has to be with an imminent life of -- loss of life. now people are using it out of fear. the job is a job where you have to think at a moments notice and

you always have to be observing the way you stand, pay attention to who you are dealing with. and i have been in issues that the navy yard, so i've been through situations you have to make a decision on use of deadly force. we have some officers who go above and beyond, and i believe the federal government should take charge in these matters that anytime deadly force is used, it is just the federal government investigating and then going forward with it and making it an issue. host:host: anthony, we will let our guest respond. go ahead. guest: anthony raises good points. in terms of the federal government's involvement, keep in mind that most of the crimes, that potentially were committed by an officer in these types of fatal shooting cases are state crimes and typically starts with the local level investigation. you also have to remember that

there are more than 18,000 state and local law-enforcement agencies across the country and all policing is local. in many of these instances, there are federal investigations. they may not result in criminal charges, but another point related to what anthony says is in the cases where officers were involved in shootings where there were fatalities, it is important that outside agencies come in immediately to conduct the investigation so as to maintain assurances and impartiality in the investigations. host: when it comes to other conviction charges, according to information you compiled, since 2005, i will give you the numbers, seven when it comes to murder, 23 manslaughter, five homicide, one aggravated assault, one reckless discharge of a firearm, five criminal deprivation of civil rights, two for official misconduct.

those are the numbers. fill in the blanks. guest: again, typically what we see in these cases, it is rare that an officer is actually charged and even rarer and officers convicted in the cases with fatal shooting's, but what we see is the convictions are more likely than not to be for lesser offenses, but it is interesting that even with lesser offenses with manslaughter charges, we've seen some of the officers who have been convicted receive lengthier sentences for those than the officers who had been convicted in the murder cases, sort of interesting. host: how do you classify federal deprivation of civil rights? caller: that involve -- guest: that involves a conviction or conspiracy charge under c2 41. host: for people who don't expand the legal names, can you expand? caller: when is criminal deprivation of civil rights, and

it is a fairly rare case, but we see numerous instances a year where police officers are charged, frankly more often that officers are charged with an offense under 242 for cases that are not involving fidelity's. it is a variety of other things that we see there, and it is more rare that we see under 241 with conspiracy charge, conspiracy to engage in civil rights violations. host: in california, david, hello. caller: tanks. hi -- thanks. i had a question for the professor here. i believe congress tried to pass rulings about the immunity clause for police departments where they are immune from prosecutions. i think that bill failed in congress. i would like to have your input as to whether you think they

should reconsider and relook at that clause where a police officer violates certain laws, he is not immune to prosecution. i will take your answer off the air. host: thanks for calling, but i think he may be talking about the concept of qualified immunity. caller: right, he is referring to the doctor and on qualified immunity. that comes into play -- guest: right, he is referring to the doctorate on qualified immunity. so we are talking about a civil cause of action under 42 usc 1983. under the doctrine of qualified immunity, and certain circumstances, a certain officer is immune. in other words, in terms of these lawsuits are often about money judgments and the plaintiff is seeking a money judgment editor future

misconduct by a police officer and the municipality that employs that officer. i think that it is something that is important to consider in terms of the federal level and something to reduce or eliminate the doctorate of qualified immunity, what i can tell you myself being a former civil rights attorney, that most police officers frankly our judgment proof. it is difficult to collect on a money judgment or settlement against a police officer, so if an officer is found culpable in terms of civil cases and individual capacities, i am not sure that is the right answer, but i think it is a good start. host: if a police officer isn't convicted for an offense, what is the likelihood life goes back to normal as far as returning to work and everything that follows that? guest: it varies from case to case and state to state.

typically, a police officer was convicted of a felony cannot work as a police officer anywhere in the country. i did a joint research project with the wall street journal published in the journal of december 2016 where we looked at 3400 officers from my dataset, officers who had been arrested, convicted and/or lost their job, and the wall street journal of attorneys expensive at 1.5 years collecting lists of officers names from across the country. not an easy task to do because some states don't have lists or certification and decertification processes in a few states, so they ended up with over 800,000 names. when we ran those two data sets and looked at names that were on both, we found of the 3400 officers, exactly 10% of the officers, we hundred 40, we

found were working in law enforcement somewhere across the country, may be at the same agency but were likely than not somewhere else. some worked at several agencies. we found one person who had been a police officer in florida. we found her working as a deputy sheriff in the commonwealth of virginia, and much to the surprise of her former employing agency, the certification agencies and they were aghast when they learned this. host: from gonzalez, louisiana, lois, hello. caller: good morning, pedro. thanks for taking my call. i think we keep reverting back to the old model where we continue to blame the victim when most cases of violent and crime is directly related to poverty, especially poverty issues and drug use, so if we keep blaming the victim and

continue to try to solve the problem from the other end instead of looking at where this poverty issue and the drug use issue has stand from, then we have missed the boat. and my father was a police officer, and he actually was a real live anti-griffin. -- andy griffin. so we cannot keep blaming the victim when the systemic issues are based in poverty and drug use, which comes where we follow the money, where's the money? where do the opiates come from? we looked at the opioid epidemic, where did that come from? and we can look at the chinese opium wars for that model. until we look at where the systemic issues are in poverty and drugs, we cannot fix what is

going on. i will take -- host: we will let our guest respond. guest: i'm not sure who the victim is in that scenario of the question, i'm not sure what the question was, but i can say in terms of officers who were arrested for committing crimes, we do see that there are certain types of crimes where it seems that the officers who are openly arrested are predators, targeting vulnerable victims. we see this in certain sex crimes and in some crimes of violence, specifically in one example, we see it with officers who are convicted of criminal misuse of tasers and conductive energy devices. there is a subset of bad cops, if you will, who are predators and really sort of focusing on targeting vulnerable victims. i do want to point out obviously most cops are not bad cops. the problem is that there are

systemic problems that are common features, core elements of the police subculture, many more than 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the state. host: with cases are being built against the police officer, how easy is it to get information? what is the role of police unions as far as case development? guest: in terms of criminal cases? host: yes. guest: well, i think the role of their unions, and keep in mind, not every state has collective bargaining in the public sector, but where that is available, the role of the union is to ensure the collective bargaining agreement make sure the officers provided due process and they are treated fairly in the process. host: from mike in virginia, hello. caller: good morning, pedro. good morning, dr. phillips -- align host: stinson --

host: stinson. caller: i'm sorry, what the true problem is is that bad cops hide amongst the good cops, and until the unions have broken down where they have to take the bad cop out and prosecute him, make sure his pension is gone and make sure he or she cannot move to another jurisdiction to become a cop, this trap is going to go on -- crap is going to go on and on. when a bad cop cost the city $1 million and has the record as long as one person is armed, enough is enough. somebody should do something about that. the only thing i think that could be done is some organization trains some cadets, people of color, to be spread amongst the country and different police stations. that is the only thing that is going to equalize that situation

but if you cannot beat them, join them. i will take my answers off the air. host: go ahead. guest: i think mike raises interesting points. i think if you were to go to his local law enforcement agency, so i think he said ashburn, or any other police department in northern virginia or anywhere across the country, but most officers know who the bad cops are. they know who the officers are that are problem officers, and the supervisors tend to know this. what we see time and again to and what research shows is even agencies with good early morning intervention systems and risk management systems to identify problem behaviors and officers, and really the purpose is to identify the problems while they are small before they become big problems, so that there can be interventions to help improve

the officer's behavior, conduct, and whatever the area is. research shows even in areas with early intervention systems, they tend to ignore flags raised until there are huge problems and until an officer's conduct is so over-the-top that it becomes public and then an officer ends up being charged with crimes. host: there is a story today, as every day since the derek chauvin trial started, how do you think this trial has changed how people look at police misconduct and how police departments themselves look at it? guest: we've seen over the last five years to seven years, every year or so there has been show trials in the area, trials that have gained police officers who have gained considerable media attention, not just at the local or regional level but the international level. this trial reminds me more frankly of the officers charged with crimes in the rodney king incident 30 years ago or so, so

it takes on a different form in terms of the constant media attention it is getting in the trials, and that many media organizations are airing this live. you know, when i look at the data of officers who are arrested, we don't see changes from year to year. we see the same thing happens, it is ecstatic, but it is difficult to change the culture of policing and police behaviors, and we aren't seeing changes. what we have seen the difference in my view with the case of george floyd's killing on memorial day of 2020 is that people of all walks of life are now paying attention. people of all walks of life who really did not concern themselves or pay attention to police crime and misconduct. they have seen the videos enough now in these cases, somewhere

officers were not charged at all and a lot of people think they should have been, and then they realize their are problems. it not only makes news and suburban areas but rural areas across the country, and you see people of all colors, ages and religions protesting about police misconduct, so it seems it has really reached heightened awareness and public discourse, and that people are paying attention. what remains to be seen is not only if reforms can be legislated at the federal and state and local levels, but whether the culture of policing can change because unless we can change the behaviors and thought patterns of officers, you know, the process that they are socialized into this police

subculture, and unless we can bring about systemic change, one agency that can bring about significant changes i don't think a lot of the reforms that are being proposed will be meaningful in practice. host: how much impact do you think the growth of cell phone cameras have had on the issue? guest: huge in terms of public awareness. what we see with video evidence, we see two things, the first is that with videos, we see that often the written narratives and police reports of officers who were involved in these situations right are factually inconsistent with video evidence. we used to think a well-trained police officer in a stressful situation in a street encounter would act exactly the way they were trying to do. i have talked to several police chiefs of that specific case with video evidence in shooting cases, and they were stunned

that what they saw on the videos and what we all saw was that officers exhibited behaviors engaging in tactics, if you will that are completely inconsistent and outside the scope of training. that is something we really need to look at closely and do a lot more research and think about and police scholars really need to look into this. the second thing we see with video evidence is even in cases where i believe video evidence is overwhelming and prosecutors leave that, we have seen numerous instances where prosecutors failed to obtain a conviction. one that comes to mind is the state murder trial of michael slager, a former police officer from north charleston, south carolina. they are, i think it was quite obvious that -- and this is true with all cases in criminal justice systems, but also where officers are on trial -- you can never take race and racism out

of the equation. it is always present in the trials. i think that was in play in his case and ultimately he entered a guilty plea on federal charges and went to prison and was sentenced 20 years. host: here charlotte from tuscaloosa, alabama. caller: hello, mr. stinson. guest: good morning. caller: i have a question, and my question is, have you did any research at all through your agency in the state penal system , you know, with the police aggressiveness against inmates and harm against them physically or whatever? i will take your question off the air. thank you. guest: right, so when i started this research, i had to really think about how i was going to limit it because it is an overwhelming thing if we were to add too much into it. and other words, i don't include

in my research in my database officers who are charged by federal law enforcement agencies. likewise, we don't have correctional law enforcers in the state corrections. we do have some cases involving crimes committed by sheriff's deputies in jails, but that is when we had cases where we can identify deputies who were actually sworn officers with general powers of arrest, so if they are correctional officers, they are not included in my research. however, that is an important area of research. there are huge problems in terms of misconduct by correctional officers, so it is a wide open area of research, any potential graduate students who are thinking about dissertation topics, it is a wide open area and something much-needed of research. host: more research to share

with our guests from the police integrity research group, 28 of officers were acquitted at a jury trial, eight at a bench trial, five dismissed by a judge, 10 dismissed by a prosecutor, one had a deferred education, and one had no true bill returned from the grand jury. again, the police integrity research group is ready can find that information. our guest's website is available, as well. philip stinson from bowling green state university serves as a criminal justice professor and also the research that he does on police misconduct. kathy from lawrenceville, georgia. good morning. kathy from georgia, hello, you are on. caller: hello? host: go ahead. caller: i am the striving -- surviving widow of a federal agent who died in the line of duty he was also a veteran, and i am a little concerned that

veterans are being equated as not so good police officers because of the violence. i wanted to hear your comment on that, number one. number two, did i hear you correctly when you said race and racism can never be taken off the table when there are deaths involved in law enforcement officers? i would like to hear your answer off the air, thank you. guest: well, in terms of your second question, race is always an issue, so, for example, in terms of prospective jurors being excluded from jurors because of their race and because of their race solely, which the supreme court echo the 1980's said you cannot exclude a person from the jury because of their race, and that is always a play in these cases. it is interesting as to the

derek chauvin case, for example, where we normally think of those challenges being an issue where the prosecution is trying to exclude somebody because of their race from the jury, what we see in these types of cases, and this was more pronounced in the derek chauvin case, it is the defense we were concerned about and the prosecution was concerned as to whether the defense would try to exclude potential jurors because of the race. host: this is from bristol, virginia, alex, go ahead. caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. i was curious, you know, you talked about how some officers who engage in misconduct but are not convicted because it is so hard to get conviction or the other thing you talk about officers moving, maybe misconduct from one state to another, i wonder if you have seen research to show local review boards or accountability measures on a local or federal devil and if those are effective at reading those officers out?

thank you. guest: there are a lot of different models across the country for civilian oversight of police departments. it comes in many different forms , and some of those are very, very effective. generally, it is a good idea. there is some research in the area outside the scope of my work, so it is difficult for me to speak to that, but i can tell you you also asked about officers who are convicted, so we have limited our discussion here largely to talking about officers charged with crimes resulting in an incident or somebody was killed. we do see different patterns when we look at different types of crimes, there are some types of crimes that police officers are charged and more likely to be convicted. some things are so egregious that the courts will not overlook them. for example, certain sex crimes against children, we see a higher conviction rate in those

types of cases where those officers are charged then and use of force cases. frankly, with use of force cases, the most common charge we see against an officer, criminal, is assault, assault misdemeanors or aggravated assault, just felony assault. together, the assault cases makeup more than 20% of the arrest cases year-to-year in our database, so policing is violent and ugly in terms of violence, especially in this country, and even so, we have seen thousands of instances where officers have been charged with crimes of violence for on-duty crimes. we also see different ones in terms of the case outcome. host: when it comes to off-duty crimes, ascribed that. what is the difference? guest: well, we see some crimes, just a little bit different of the crimes committed off-duty.

two examples, when we see where we see bazaar violence, a phrase coined by a professor at john jay college of criminal justice many years ago and passed away a few decades ago. he looked at research, and my research supports this where we have seen hundreds of cases where police officers are charged with weapons offenses, off-duty criminal misuse of a weapon where they used more often in times there service weapon a bizarre way. for example, holding a gun to your 14-year-old stepdaughter's head she has not completed her math homework. that is bizarre behaviors and something we were not expecting anyone, certainly not a police officer sworn to uphold the law. we see certain types of weapons offenses. most police officers carry their guns 24/7. there is a good question i have and that the professor raised many years before me as to whether it is a good idea for

off-duty police officers to carry firearms while off-duty. that is a hot button question and i'm sure law enforcement officers would not agree with the conclusion of the professor on that, but we also see cases of officer involved in mystic violence area that is a big problem and very underreported. it is something i've studied extensively and needs more research. that is a big problem, and under the lautenberg amendment to the federal gun control act, anyone convicted of a qualified misdemeanor crime of domestic violence cannot possess their own firearms or ammunition, so if a police officer were to be convicted of misdemeanor assault in a domestic violence case under federal law, it is a crime for them to carry a weapon. they can't even serve as a police officer in this country because our officers, our sworn officers carry firearms. host: here's diane in tuckerton, new jersey.

caller: good morning. guest: morning. caller: i have an example i would like to give to you so you can give me a little advice. there was an officer in new jersey who left his service weapon at home while on vacation. his son stole it and shot people. so this officer, so he would not be sued, let them run rampage over the city, so they would not prosecute the girls and they ran into my children and attacked our cars twice and attacked my grandchildren and finally one of my granddaughters filmed it, and the officer who got there was the one whose gun was stolen, and the girls committing the crimes were doing it to my kids. so he grabbed my granddaughter, a frail little girl, cuffed her, and let this girl beat her in the head. i did everything within my power -- i am powerless because i'm

poor. basically, i think a lot of these crimes are committed against people who don't have the money to hire a lawyer. i even contacted the district attorney and i tried everything a poor woman could possibly do, and that even contacted the state attorney general, and they never got back to me. but this is something that he should look at and say, you know what? it is this particular officer, and the police department needs to have a closer look because when you let them get away with little things, it graduates to bigger things, right? host: that is diane, telling her story from new jersey. we will let our guest respond to that. guest: diane, i'm sorry you had to go through that. sounds like a horrific situation part i don't think it is appropriate in this forum for me to speak or comment on specific cases. i will point out one thing you mentioned early on in your

comment, we had numerous cases where officers had been charged with crimes when horrific things had happened and when a child has gotten hold of the officer's service weapon. that goes back to what we see in the variety of different contexts where sometimes officers act in different ways that are inconsistent with law enforcement training. i can assure you every police officer and deputy stage sheriff and any sworn nonfederal officer who carries a weapon as part of their job receives training on how to secure their weapon while they are off-duty and at home. it is a big problem and something we see in a variety of context in many agencies across the country. host: we will hear from joan in georgia. caller: good morning. yes, i do not have a story like your last caller. i am 84. i live in a county or i am active in my local democratic party but we are outnumbered,

like one democrat for every five republicans here in this little corner of where tennessee and north carolina come together on the top of georgia, but i wrote a letter to the editor that did not get published, many of mind to get published, asking what happened to the descendants of the plantation overseers? we know, or at least we know from film, documentary, documentaries and everything, that the overseers had to hire people where the plantation owners had to hire people who were approved sadistic and you enjoyed having power over other human beings, and it seems to me that many of the policeman or law enforcement people who act in this cruel manner have grown

up, that there descendants -- that they are descendants of these cruel overseers, the home guards during the civil war that was cruel to the people at home, and just wonder if it is not necessarily genetic, but generations of training and it seems that they have nothing else going for them other than they are proud of their european ancestry. host: we will let our guest respond to that. guest: yeah, thank you for the question and comment. this is something i talk about in my book, terminology explains case violence, published by university of california press, where we look at the issue of whether in terms of hiring police officers, the officers that get in trouble later, is it

because they were seeking out a certain type of behavioral profile when they hire them? or what i think a lot of this is more likely -- although i appreciate the caller's comments on this, is that officers at a young age early in their career are socialized into the police subculture and it is the behaviors that are developed that are a product of police subculture. host:host: this is our guest, philip stinson with bowling green state university. if people would like to find your website, where can they go? guest: you can go to police crime.bgsu.edu. host: thanks for your time this morning. guest: my pleasure. host: that is it for our program today and another edition of "washington journal" comes your way tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. we will see you then. ♪

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