would like to submit questions should do so by may 5th and your respo>> "washington journa" continues. host: rafael mangual is with us.

he's with the manhattan institute and with us this morning to talk about police reform efforts. good morning, welcome to "washington journal." guest: thanks for having me on. host: in the aftermath of the derek chauvin trial, the verdict this past week, the nation, still unsettled. even overnight. "the new york post" wrote about a protest last night where traffic was blocked and they included video where in the several days since the trial there have been reports of additional police shootings. what is your take on the state of the nation in the days after the show been verdict -- derek chauvin verdict? guest: we are in a precarious situation. specifically because one of the things that the s was it

retrenched the conversation about race reform in this toxic idea that police pose an existential threat to black americans. we are seeing data on this now, recent studies show that eight in 10 african americans believe that young black men are more likely to be killed by police then to diana in a car accident. of course the odds are 10 to one in the other direction. we are at this point in which chauvin the -- in which the chauvin incident set a narrative that reinforced a misperception about race in america and it's that misperception driving the reform conversation. pushback gets characterized as insensitive to the concern of certain communities. i think also the misperception feeds these overreactions to

other incidents. i'm thinking here of the mckay brian shooting where the facts were much more ambiguous than they were in the derek chauvin incident, yet we are still seeing those kinds of incidents drive protests. host: i will ask you about the response of police departments across the country. there are several incidents that we could talk about in the past couple of days, but in general how have, what is your perception of how police departments have responded to allegations of police shootings that have come up, not just allegations, but incidents that have come up in the past couple of days? guest: yeah, i think the responses are reflecting a sense that police are under fire, and they are, in this country. which is interesting, the police response in general to the chauvin verdict and incident was

actually pretty universal in its condemnation of derek chauvin's conduct on that day. i think what we are going to start to see is a split between departments that will start to support their officers involved in the incidents with more ambiguous facts or the opposite in that's one of the big worries of the rank and file. host: you are joining us this morning from new york, as we mentioned at the top of the segment. a conflict this morning with clash with cops on the brooklyn bridge last night in new york. just a little video from "the new york post" on that. [video clip] >> [yelling] [indiscernible]

>> all right, go, come on. [indiscernible] >> you got called out. >> you've got to come this way. host: you may not be seeing the video but what is clearly president is the evidence, the presence of phones and what a vital and central park they were to the derek chauvin trial. they are in new york city and what guidance have policeman given in handling situations like this, protests on matters like this? guest: i can't claim to be familiar with specific guidance that officers have been given but generally speaking the nypd does a pretty good job trying to keep traffic moving and keeping

protesters and communities safe. unfortunately, a lot more of these events are getting out of hand at higher rate and that's largely because of the anger that has been fomented within police critic circles. again, i think it is largely driven by misperception. unfortunately, and we can get into this during the conversation, but it is not a good place to be and one that i am somewhat, i guess i am surprised and more disappointed in us reaching. the reality is, there has been a lot of effort to move in the direction of reform over the last two years, here in new york and other parts of the country. governor cuomo cited 10 police reform bills about a month ago passing another package of police reforms, discounting the things that have been happening in new york, just incredible in terms of the d carson ration taking place.

the reductions in arrests and in police stops. the new imposition of restrictions on police. the diaphragm law pays -- places restrictions on grappling techniques that officers can use while making arrests, yet none of it seems to have appeased the police critic crowd. this needs to get us to a point where police supporters and departments stop engaging with reformers because they don't think giving an inch will be worth it because the reformers will then try to take 10 yards. host: i want to ask you about the legislation proposed in congress, the two of them. one of them passed, called the george floyd justice in policing act, it passed early on in the house and that measure waiting action in the senate would do

the following, prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement, banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, limit transfers of literary grade equipment, require body cameras, making it easier to prosecute officers and making it easier to recover damages in civil court and limit the use of qualified immunity as a defense in civil court. rafael mangual, your thoughts on that particular legislation? i will read the proposal on the senate side of things by tim scott. what are your thoughts on the house passed measure? guest: i think it goes way too far on a few things. we can talk in more depth about a couple of them and, if you like, but look, on the racial profiling point, the big question is how is that defined? if we are going to assume racial profiling based on a top line

disparity, that's extremely problematic. the reality is that different racial groups vary compared to those involved in violent criminality with how police deploy resources, affecting the rate at which they have encounters with people who have different demographic profiles. to assume that there should be an equal number of police interactions based on race across all racial groups is ignorant of the reality of crime in the united states, which is hyper concentrated in a very, very small number of geographical areas and deity -- geographically concentrated when you talk about violent crime in -- among young black men. there's no getting around it, if we want police to serve the communities that are most in need, that have the biggest violent crime problems, that's going to mean getting, having

those interactions that will disproportionately involve young black men. that's one part. i think the data portion of that is good. there are also a lot of good data requirements. as you mentioned, the blanket ban on chokeholds, for example, could turn out to be problematic and have some unintended consequences. obviously, neck restraint's can be particularly dangerous if they are overused or applied for too long, but the reality is that it is an effective grappling technique that could prevent suspects from resisting into devolving to a point where more serious force gets used. what i think will happen is if police officers cannot control suspects who resist, they will go more often to have opportunities escalating their resistance. and on the qualified immunity

point, both sides of this debate , qualified immunity based on the data does not seem to be a particularly common basis for claimants not being able to recover for damages. one study was done in the law journal showing that qualified immunity being the basis for dismissal or summary judgment is 3% to 4% of all police engagements. of course that doesn't mean that it doesn't get abused and i think it should get reformed. host: the other piece of legislation was introduced last year by tim scott of south carolina and was cosponsored in the house by a former police officer and it is called the justice act of 2000 20, increasing body cameras, emphasizing police departments

more closely resembling the communities they serve, restoring investment on community policing and refocusing on de-escalation techniques and a need to intervene. one of the things that became evident in the eric show in trial was that training techniques evolve over time and that various moves and procedures in terms of restraining a subject -- suspect have changed over time. what are your thoughts on that? guest: police training is probably one of the biggest issues in this country and if you asked every police executive across america, they would tell you they want more resources for training and not fewer. unfortunately that will be hard to achieve given the popularity of the defund movement, looking to take resources away from departments, which get less training and a lowered ability to attract high quality

candidates to the profession that will ultimately translate to worse results in the field. host: there was a piece published by "the denver news," colorado university, a new study on the way the police can reduce shooting errors. they did this research paper, published by "police quarterly," officers can significantly improve shoot no shoot decisions by simply lowering the position of the firearm. they looked at 313 law enforcement officers in a randomized control experiment and after it was completed it was proven that when officers had firearms in the low ready position below their navel they cut their chance of making a misdiagnosed shooting errors by more than half and it costs them 11 one hundredths of a second and they believe this time gives them a chance to check the swing and enables them to reassess what they see. guest: i'm not familiar with

that study. it does sound interesting and worth pursuing and seeing if it can be replicated on a larger scale in those departments. certainly worth it. again, i think it's also difficult to, you know, incorporate those things into the situations into which police draw their weapons, very fraught situations in which adrenaline and the level of fear is at its highest. the american public need to be more understanding about what police are experiencing in those moments as they try to put themselves in those shoes a little bit but that's an interesting result that ought to be explored more. host: rafael mangual is our guest, of the manhattan institute, we are talking about police reform efforts in the wake of the chauvin verdict. our lines are (202) 748-8001 for republicans, (202) 748-8000 free

democrats, and independents and all others, (202) 748-8002. rafael mangual, i want to play you the comments of the vice president from the night of the verdict. here's what she said at the white house. [video clip] >> today we feel a sigh of relief. syl -- still, it cannot take away the pain. a measure of justice is not the same as equal justice. this verdict brings us a step closer and the fact is we still have work to do. we must still reform the system. last summer, together with cory booker and karen bass, i introduced the george floyd justice for policing act. it would hold law enforcement accountable and help build trust between law enforcement and our communities.

this bill is part of george floyd's legacy. the president and i will continue to urge the senate to pass this legislation. not as a panacea for every problem, but as a start. this work is long overdue. america has a long history of systemic racism. black americans, black men in particular, have been treated throughout the course of our history as less than human. black men are fathers. brothers. sons. uncles. grandfathers. friends. neighbors. their lives must be valued. in our education system, in our health care system, in our housing system, in our economic system and are criminal justice system, in our nation.

. -- full stop. host: rafael mangual, the vice president talking about systemic racism. do you think that there is persistent racial bias in police departments in terms of how they treat potential suspects? guest: i do not, i do not, and i think it is he responsible for the vice president to use that kind of rhetoric. here is what we know. we know that violent crime is ultra-concentrated in the united states and demographically concentrated among black men. here in new york, black and latino makes up 95% of all shooting victims going back to at least 2008, every single year since the nypd started to document that. that's one thing we know. we know that policing has significant crime reduction effects there. the trove of studies documenting this go on and on. one of the things i find

problematic with rhetoric like this is that it drives the tension away from crime reduction and the effects of policing and the criminal justice system more broadly and focuses on reform and you lose sight of your mission to preventing the suffering of the people most vulnerable, places that already live in areas struggling with violent crime. it only looks at one side of the ledger, right? systemic racism focuses on disparities in enforcement outcomes. arrest rates and search rates, use of force rates, etc., but it never looks at the other side of the ledger, looking at who benefits when crime declines. as stated by those advocate the health of the system, we know that reductions disproportionately affect and

benefit black americans more than anything else. over the course of the 1990's the united states saw one of the most significant homicide declines in urban american history. if you look at who benefited from that, what you see is an extremely lopsided outcome. on the life expectancy of black men, it added a full year to that life expectancy number. it added .1 for years to white men. multiple times you had differential benefits. my question for someone like the vice president is how is it you can argue that a system that produced such a disproportionate benefits to low income minority communities especially can so easily be called systemically racist? of course this is a complicated question. there are problems with policing in america, with the criminal

justice system, inefficiencies and instance and these will you -- where you will find racially driven malevolence, but to characterize the whole system with this smear is irresponsible and not reflective of the data. host: we have calls waiting for rafael mangual. (202) 748-8003 is a line for those of you in law enforcement. let's get to the first call here from north alina. matthew, good morning. caller: how are you doing today? guest: doing caller: well, how are you? -- well, how are you? caller: i find it interesting. i totally think you are spot on and i wanted to say thanks for speaking out for the law enforcement in our country. i think they have been under the microscope for a while with the research institutes. if you notice, back when rank or -- rand core was talking about

police research into 20/20 and i know that myself being a previously retired military member, i used to do research and i worked with research institutes fellows. what we would do is target, you know, basically bad people in the military. looking for someone who maybe got a dui or something like that and was still on active duty and we would identify that this guy is no longer qualified. maybe a weinberg situation, may domestic violence. he can't carry a firearm. we got to kind of get rid of him . but i find it highly prejudicial when you have got such a senior member like the vice president, as you say, standing there talking using divisive language.

saying that, you know, our country is systemically racist and then they call for bills that say hey, we want, we don't want racial profiling, but we want to treat -- teach critical racial theories in your schools. how do you feel? how does that make you feel? you can understand that i understand just by talking to me , when you look at data, you can take a data and you can leverage that data to tell you anything you wanted to say. so, it seems like they are trying to either disrupt our policing efforts in our country and it's very discouraging. i just wanted to know what you felt about that. guest: yeah, i think that sense of discouragement is a natural consequence of the kind of rhetoric that the vice president

used, especially given all the progress that has been made not just in the context of law enforcement more broadly, but in the country generally. this is something that i brought up earlier with respect to all reform of you recent years -- of the recent years, when that happens i think that what you end up with incentivize's entrenchment. it's not good for anyone. particularly given the problems that can arise if bad cops stay on the force. what we don't want to do is diss incentivize that kind of, you know, sort of self policing by creating a sense of, i guess, one sidedness by loving these smears across institutions when

it is just driving bad apples. host: holly, good morning. caller: good morning, rafael. love what you are having to say. the one thing that i notice that none of us really get to hear except maybe at the trial for george floyd, which i think was right, my husband was in the federal court system and was one of the ones in the court with the u.s. chief justice, who he worked with, and the rest of the people in the courtroom. in 1994, somebody put a contract out on their lives. apparently someone not happy with their case. par for the course. anyway, one friday afternoon my husband had been out of town on another case. they had almost totally

forgotten about that. some man came to the front of our house and broke out the window and had a gun and he was climbing in. we had a german shepherd that thought everybody came over to see her and we didn't know if she would go into action or not, but she did. i just wonder, i truly do, i can't even remember it. i was pumping adrenaline so bad. what do the police do when they hear these 911 calls? the news doesn't tell people so that they can form an honest opinion. what do they do, you know? they are hearing one thing and now at their computers and such on board their vehicles, a lot of times they know that this person might have a long criminal record or whatever.

they don't really know what they are coming too. now, i know that there are some bad policemen out there and with the state federal system when you hire, it's very difficult to get rid of a bad employee. they have to have done things over and over to get rid of them. but for the most part i think the police are very honest, decent people that have a calling and go into this. host: thanks, holly. rafael mangual? guest: i think you are exactly right to say that police by and large are good people heating a call for public service, but you also brought up a good point, it does involve the discipline of bad public employees with police officers that means change because no one is helped on either side of the debate when bad cops are allowed to stay on the job. it shouldn't happen and one of the reasons it does right now is unfortunately a lot of municipalities have argued away

that power in exchange for lower pay. that's my assessment. you see a lot of provisions in collective bargaining agreements in which the police officer's job has been made extreme lead difficult in which transactions have been moderated away throughout -- beyond the point of reason. it's clearly a problem. it's clearly one that we ought to address more closely than perhaps others because police officers have powers that public employees don't have and ultimately in the end it will help supporters of law enforcement when it's easier to get rid of bad cops. host: let me ask you to your reaction to this comment on twitter. the big element in the room as the war on drugs and the desire to incarcerate. more arrests, leading to a lot

of arrests, leading to more probabilities of bad traffic stops. guest: i think it's a little misguided. if you look at the data on incarceration in the united states, drug and -- drug offenses don't play a particularly large role. they are less than 15% of the prison population. of course, within that 15% you have people who are serving time for drug offenses and other serious offenses or had other charges dropped in a plea bargain. so the only thing reflected is the drug offenses. one of the things you have to understand about the drug war in the united states is that it is often used as a pretext to attack more serious violent crime. you will see disparities in terms of drug enforcement levels depending on underlying violent crime rates in certain areas. you will see a lot more drug enforcement in violent crime areas because there is a pretty

significant overlap between the people involved in the drug trade and the people driving the more serious gun violence that you are dealing with. it's like that in baltimore, where in 2017, for example, seven out of 10 murder suspects had one drug prior. it's not that simple. it would be likely some unintended consequences if we were to end the drug war entirely. host: going next to shaker heights, ohio. caller: this is to the both of you, i want you both to respond to it, please. i believe strongly that the following two things should come into play nationwide in order to get out of the police academy, wherever it is that you are, you have to be part of a team driven civic minded problem-solving project that is firmly it -- firmly established in the curriculum of the cadet academy

in order to become a police officer. taxpayers have to accept that this will run up the costs of training police officers because it will turn -- extend time in the academy and in addition i believe that every fiscal quarter, police officers should have to also participate in a civic minded problem-solving project for seven to 14 days in order for them to maintain themselves as police officers. this should all be done in the area where they patrol or may patrol, reflecting back to what i said about the academy. i believe that this would tone down a lot of aggressiveness from police officers on duty because they would be working in the community to some degree and it would act as a repellent to a lot of people who have ambitions of being police officers but don't want to be a part of that, but i just described, to be clear, this would also drive up the costs of paying police officers because you have, you

are going to need more police officers on the street while these other officers are in these civic minded projects and it would drive up the costa pension, but this would be a starter for the community about what the police officer is supposed to do and the taxpayers would have to accept it. what do you guys think about this? host: thanks, todd. your thoughts, manwell? guest: there's a thread there that i agree with, producing better police officers involves investment. we have to decide as a country whether or not that is an investment we want to make. right now there is an emphasis on defunding departments across the country, straining their ability to attract and train officers and i think we all want people who are civic minded. we want people who have a strong desire to serve their community. i do think that the public

picture about how aggressive police officers are when they deal with the people that they serve is skewed in part because all that they see are the things that go viral, incidents that become newsworthy. there are dozens and dozens of conversations around great interactions police officers have on a daily basis in the community. that's problematic. one of the things that it does is that cell phones do is make -- one of the things that cell phones do is make things more transparent but it also has heightened this sensation. host: any evidence in the last year since the george floyd shooting that the efforts have been harder for local and state police departments? guest: certainly. lots of cities, minneapolis included, philadelphia, baltimore, new york city,

reporting significant recruitment challenges. this is a problem because it is compounding an issue that predated 2000 20, predating everything that happened with george floyd, building up the anti-police rhetoric that defined the more recent difficulties. 2019 a research firm published a report in september of that year on what they called a workforce crisis. just 12% of responding departments surveyed for the research conducted found that they hadn't had any trouble with recruitment or retention in the five years prior. a plurality said that the problem had gotten worse over the previous five years and nationally we have seen a decline in the number of officers on the beat and that is going to continue as a trend in part because of police rhetoric and one of the things that the biden administration forgets is

that president biden was involved in the 1994 crime bill and use to tout that as a success and i think it was in many ways and one of the things that it did was it gave money for the hiring of 100,000 new police officers across the country and those officers that came up in the mid-90's are eligible for retirement and are leaving the job, meaning that they are going to need another federal intervention to incentivize good people, good recruit to want to take this job and that's a challenge now more than ever. host: a look at the reforms passed across the last year in states across the country, keep police reforms since may of 2020, limiting officer immunity, four states have passed such laws. mandating or funding body cameras. and a particular neck restraint legislation, 16 states have passed legislation.

restricting no-knock warrants, five states. you made a comment about qualified immunity. ending that nationwide, correct me if i'm wrong, you said it's not an issue that comes up in a lot of incidents? guest: that's right, that's right. the majority of police litigation that didn't resolve itself by qualified immunity favored police officers. here in new york city the legal aid facet -- legal aid society published litigation on 2400 cases filed between 2016 and 2018 and just 74 of those cases were resolved in favor of police officers. even if they were all involved -- resolved in favor of the cops, that would represent a tiny slice. another study was done by a professor out of ucla that looked at a significant pool of police litigation across multiple jurisdictions in which

qualified immunity was the basis for a summary judgment. 3% to 4% of those cases could be waived and the cases that do get resolved in favor of police are resolved in favor of a number of police and again, it doesn't mean that there aren't instances that we can point to that are misused or misapplied, acquired in bad faith to protect officers who knew that what they were doing was wrong. i think that both sides overstate the case. the theory of why qualified immunity is so important to address, becoming more likely to misbehave, they know that they won't be held financially viable and they won't have to come out of pocket for the harm that results but getting rid of qualified immunity won't necessarily change that because it is so rarely used as a basis

-- as a basis for denying coverage -- denying recovery and they are indemnified because of a provision in collective bargaining or because for the vast majority of cops even if you got rid of qualified immunity, they still won't foot the bill. you might see a change in the infrastructure where departments start to fight notification clauses more often. assuming risk against that kind of liability, it's so rare. those programs will not be responsive to verdicts and settlements. host: next up is caroline, west plains, missouri. good morning. caller: hope you guys have a great day, today. good morning. i've been watching a lot of this

on police reform ever since george floyd was killed. i cried that day when he was killed, watching what that police officer did. i don't even want to repeat his name. but when i get down to it they keep talking about racial disparity and the kind of bothers me because of black lives matter steps in and calls it police brutality to black men . i was against it myself. but i want to know why the police can't do more in these inner cities to help the blacks. i don't see why some more can't be done because i think that would help the police department. i've got a couple of relatives who are officers and they literally say, they don't even want to respond to a call if

there are black people involved because they don't know what's going to happen to them. that's bad when they say this. my thing is, maybe they should have 911 calls ask people your race, that is what joe biden and kamala harris were pushing for. what's your race, black or hispanic? then they can send officers to take care of the problem. the racial brutality against these people, that's the only way i can see things. white officer sees a black person doing something in the road, call for a backup to make sure there is a black person there to help. host: rafael mangual, the issue seems to be more than just race as the officers involved in the derek chauvin incident were of several races and likewise seemed to be the same in other cases involving officer shootings.

guest: that's exactly right and we see the same kind of misconduct highlighted in cases involving black suspects happening to white people as well. thinking of what happened to george floyd, there's a case that didn't get a lot of media attention that involves a man named tony in dallas, who was held in the prone position with a knee on his back or neck for more -- for maybe 13 minutes before he died. those officers were not prosecuted and i'm not sure what happened to any civil litigation in that case. you know, the idea that only black men in particular who are suffering from police misconduct is misguided. i think it skews the conversation c-span2. >> "washington journal" continues. host: