this afternoon, president biden will talk about his infrastructure plan. watch live coverage at 4:45 -- 1:45 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org, or listen with the free c-span radio app. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television companies in 1979. today, we are brought to you by these television companies, who provide c-span2 viewers as a public service. -- c-span to viewers as a public service. >> former homeland security secretary janet napolitano talked with state election officials from key battleground states on ensuring the security of the next elections. from the university of california, berkeley, watch tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. 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 >> we will leave this here for remarks from president biden on his recovery plan. pres. biden: i announce my plan to rebuild what i referred to as the back bone of america through the american jobs plan. it is not a plan that tinkers around the edges, it is a once in a generation investment in america. since we built the interstate system and