>> next on kqed newsroom. >> we want justice! >> mounting tensions across the country and in the bay area as protests continue over racially charged cases in ferguson and new york. hundreds of san jose's homeless evicted from one of the largest encampments in the country. plus diversifying high tech. empowering girls of color to embrace science and technology. so it's important for girls to have a skill set to go into the industry to change their lives by utilizing text.

good evening. welcome to kqed newsroom. racial tensions have flaired from new york to the bay area over deadly encounters between white police officers and unarmed african-american males. separate grand juries weighed two of the most high-profile incidents in ferguson and new york, both did not indict the officers sparking on demonstrations and multiple cities across the u.s. include manager the by a area. civil rights advocates say thesications are igniting a national movement calling for nation. >> the grand jury systems on a state level are broken and seem to lack the capacity to deal with police. >> as demands for reform in the justice system and police training mount, president obama

and officials like new york city mayor bill de blasio are offering solutions. >> a full-scale retraining of this police force in this extraordinary facility is going to do a lot o improve the way our officers work with community members, improve the way they deal with each interaction. obviously work for a reduction in the use of excessive force. >> and joining me now with analysis are jack hart, senior consultant with blue courage and a san francisco police lieutenant. judge cordell, san jose's independent police auditor. and pastor michael mcbride, director for the lifelines for heeling campaign with the picot national network. you were in ferguson with other clergy reacting to the death of michael brown. the current wave of protests has spread well beyond that including incidents to new york and cleveland, one tonight in phoenix where there was a police shooting of an unarmed black man this week.

what is different this time around that has galvanize sod many people. >> well, thanks for having me here. i think largely we need to context churlize everything that's been happening. i think people need to appreciate that this isn't just about ferguson. if you understand the context and the history that even started with trayvon martin and jordan davis, many of the young people that we spend time with in ferguson from all over the country are actually coming into ferguson. so momentum, i believe, has now reached a tipping point across the country. the egregious nature of what we learned in ferguson and what we saw with our own eyes we're seeing now has created a moment where i don't think this is going to go away until massive structural reform is put in place and that's why i think many people are taking up the mantra that came out of ferguson. we're going to shut it down and we want no justice, no peace. i think people are tap into a sentiment that is not new, it's just now reached.

i think maturation, organization and now a tipple point across the country. >> you mentioned eric garner. eric garner, of course, is the gentleman who was in the choke hold in the new york case and officer pantaleo was not indicted by a grand jury. after ferguson and staten island, many people are suggesting these types of cases should not ever go to grand juries in the first place because they rarely indict police officers. what are your thoughts on that? >> well, half of the states in this country have criminal grand juries. the half that do need to get rid of them. my view that criminal grand juries provide political cover for prosecutors who either don't want to bring charges against a police officer or do want to. so if they do want to bring charges they get heat from police officers and police unions. and if they don't want to charge, then they get heat from the community. so what better way than you just

convene a criminal grand jury, go in secret. you're the only one in there, you can engineer all the facts however you want it and then put the blame on those individual who are grand jurors. the grand jury system, criminal grand jury system is not -- it's broken beyond repair. it does not serve the function for which criminal grand juries were originally created? >> if a case doesn't go to a grand jury, we should it go? >> grand jury determine probable cause. is there probable cause to believe the officer engaged in criminal conduct? well, preliminary examinations are what exist in all the state and that's what most prosecutors use. prosecutors use grand juries in high profile controversial cases like officer-involved shootings where they don't want to take the heat or responsibility for making the decision. >> i want to bring in lieutenant jack hart. what do you think? should these cases involving police excessive force or allegations of excessive force

go to grand juries? >> clearly transparency is important in these things. we've lost a lot of trust with our communities and the lack of trust in the systems. police officers have been enforcing laws for hundreds of years and we have been on the wrong side of history in decisions and enforcement actions we made. i went to the birthplace of martin luther king and in the gift shop of his house i saw a white police lieutenant taking fingerprints of rosa parks. at that moment, i couldn't imagine how we could have been more wrong in the actions we took even though we were enforcing what we thought at the time was just laws so we need to start building trust. we can't do that behind closed doors. >> transparency is important because preliminary examinations are public hearing. the grand jury is secret. the original purpose for secret grand juries was to protect people who were not inindictment sod they were brought before the grand jury, nobody knew about it and if they weren't indicted, there's no harm. but now they're are high profile

cases where the whole world knows. >> so you're san jose's independent police auditor. would you support legislation, for example, that suggest these types of cases go to an independent police auditor or a special review board? >> you bring up the other issue of conflict of interest. so you have prosecutors and police officers who work together to bring cases that are prosecuted. so when an officer is now involved, i believe there's a conflict of interest. so they're not at arm's length because they work so closely together. there should be independent prosecutors when there are officers that are coming before the court for criminal activity. so it should happen. i also think there should be legislation that says do away with criminal grand juries. if we want to start, start here in california. >> and i'd like to take that further. i this think many of us in this movement are advocating for independent prosecutors at the federal level to remove all of 2 kind of conflict of interest, the relationships that may exist

between law enforcement officers and how do we create distance that can create objectivity that allows for transparency and trust to be reinchute into a system that we think is deeply flawed and skewed toward afterpeople, latino, immigrants, people of color, et cetera,ette. >> i want to talk about officer training as well. lieutenant hart, you group blue courage focuses on officer training from a human development perspective. you're one of the trainers. what is the current state of training for officers and what else needs to be done? >> we have extensive police training and police academies throughout california. our peace officer standards and training has 43 different chapters or learning domains where it's very comprehensive training. where we're lacking is after police officers go in the field, they have to come back for retraining. that's focused 5% of the time on

the tools issues and the skills. so we're good at driving, shooting, force option options, but what we're not doing is talking about the heart set and mind-set of what it means to be a 21st century guardian of democracy. our training is great but needs an upgrate. >> so this is where we believe the content of training also needs to include trainings around implicit bias and unconscious racial anxiety. things that geniuses from stanford like rachel everhart who won a mcarthur genius award has been helping us in oakland to train officer there is. oak land by no stretch of the imagination is the panacea of policing but we have in oak land through these implicit bias trainings been able to go almost 18 months without an officer involved shooting because we do believe that it does teach officers to pause and to think about to humanize and take ownership of some of their own implicit biases that all of us

carry due to the way we've been shaped in a society that criminalizes black bodies and defaces our humanity in broad strokes. >> what you hear from police officers is they tend to be very defensive on the issue of race. they will say "i'm not a racist, i have friends who are people of color." that's not the point. that's not getting at what's going on. it's about perception. you cannot live in america, you can not live in america and not have biases the key is recognizing those biases and figure out how not to utilize them when you're engaging in policing. >> this is why we spend so much time talking about leadership materials, books, daniel pink's drive, we look at practical wisdom, plato and aristotle but tools like meditation, present moment awareness, respect, defining what that means, positive psychology for police officers and that's t actions of a police officer in an instant can affect a person for life and a community for generations. >> but you haven't mentioned race in all of that. you can be respectful and kind

but if your perception of a dark-skinned person, a male, is that this is a problem and if that's a what kix in you can have all the respect and training in the world, that won't zoll the problem. >> the deeper think we have to appreciate about race, this is why i think the country is responding with such animation. people are starting to nuance the conversation of race beyond interpersonal interactions and appreciate that we have racialized structures and the way that these structures are performing race in this country also need to have a better analysis. this is why i think our president, progressives who love to be the champions of people of color and poor people, all of us have to develop a very deeper nuanced analysis around race and the structure and this, i think, is the leadership and courageous opportunity in this moment. >> let me ask judge cordell very quickly that's one side of the equation. officer training. what about training for young people of color in how to deal

with police officers? very quickly. >> it's critical for survival. i teach young people the rule of "don't be a ref. you never run, you never argue and you never a touch police officer." you have responsibilities and rights. >> and we want to hear about it if off complaint. >> thank you all for being here with us today. lieutenant jack hart with blue courage and with san francisco police. pastor michael mcbride and la doris cordell, the independent police auditor in san jose. thank you all. >> thank you. >> well, this week the city of san jose cleared out hundreds of people from one of the largest homeless encampments in the country. it was known as the jungle just ten miles away from apple headquarters and not far from other symbols of silicon valley wealth. it had become an embarrassment in san jose. city agencies said they spend $4 million on affordable housing for the homeless but critics say

it's not enough. scott shaffer paid a visit to the jungle and has this report. >> the encompment known as the jungle has been home for 300 people. jungle residents built tremendous trie houses and arranged outdoor furniture across nearly 70 acres of land. this week the city of san jose warned residents of the judge toll get. >> there are 7,600 homeless people in santa clara county. the vast majority of them live in san jose and there's about 350 or 400 people living here in the jungle right now. >> eileen richard season is executive director of downtown streets team, a nonprofit working to move people out of the jungle and into subsidized housing. >> people are packing up and leaving. the encampment needs to be shut down. there's a lot of dangerous activity going on. there's pollution in the creeks.

so, yeah, the city is left with noise no choice. >> last year, the san jose city council set aside $4 million to find housing for homeless people. downtown streets team is one of several groups that have been working with the city in the month before the eviction. >> the city has given us money to have seven intensive case workers come down and house them t men and women that live down here. it's impressive when you think of the backgrounds and all that, what our case workers can do. >> after eight months here, kathleen claymore says the team helped her find a place to live. >> i'm about to get a place for me and my kids and we can all be together. they don't have to go home at night boar with my aunt. they can be me and i can take care of them. i've always worked. i've had good jobs. i have a lot of skills and so i'm willing to do whatever i can because these kids are my life. >> the city says so far 144 jungle residents have found

stable housing but now it's time to shut the encompment down. increasing crime, growing piles of garbage and human waste, all of it fuelling neighborhood complaints. this week's rains are also swelling the creek, threatening to flood the grounds. ray programson leads the city's homeless response unit. >> the city has been facing a challenge with homelessness for years and years. this site presents such an unsafe, unstable and unsanitary condition and way of living we're not going to allow in the our community again. we're committed to keeping the site patrolled with rangers. making sure that this sort of situation never occurs in our city again. >> city and county agencies have opened up additional shelter beds and are working to develop more affordable housing but it's a long process and the city can't go it alone says programson. >> more than anything else, the lack of affordable housing in our community. lack of that long-term stable housing where people can afford to stay in and be permanently housed and rejoin the community.

>> san jose is the third-largest any california and home to immense silicon valley wealth. for tech giants like apple, facebook and google are headquartered. many say the success of those company has driven up housing prices. according to the property listing service zillo, the median cost of a rental unit in san jose is nearly $3,000. >> this is a community problem and it requires the community solution. the community planned to end homelessness gives that venue to involve corporations, to involve governments, to involve the general public this group solution. we need consensus and we need to work zblogt in silicon valley as a whole we have what's called a jobs/housing imzblals sandy perry is a minister and add fordable housing advocate. how would you grade the city of san jose? >> i think it's failed. it's failed and this is an example of the failure that they have to bring in police and e victim and move people out. here we are in silicon valley, the center of technology and we

can't even keep people from freezing to death in the winter. >> perry thinks the city should provide legal campsites for those being forced out. on thursday morn, the garbage truck moved in. this story has gotten strong national coverage, in part due to the stark economic divide between residents of the jungle and the venture capitalist and tech titans of silicon valley. >> we work with tech and private sector to some degree there hasn't been anyone who stepped up and said they want to be champion. >> jennifer loving is executive director of destination home. a partnership focused on finding affordable housing. >> we have several thousand people on our streets every single night so even solving one encampment, 200, there's almost 300 so our problem is much larger than any one place. >> the jungle may be gone but san hoe a's homeless problem is

not. >> well, another issue in silicon valley is the lack of diversity in high tech, particularly when it comes to people of color and women. kimberly bryant has made it her business to bridge that gap shichlt's the founder of black girls code. the nonprofit exposes girls to the world of computer science and technology encouraging them to be innovators. she's a recipient of the first annual women who rule award given by google and the tory burr. foundation. i spoke with her earlier. congratulations on your latest award. you started black girls code in san francisco three years ago, what inspired you. >> i was inspired by girls like my daughter kai who was 12 at the time going into middle school and interested in technology but not understanding that she could create something with it as opposed to just using

it. and i was looking for something that could interest her and keep her engaged and encourage her to be more createive. >> how does your group go about encouraging african-american girls to study computer programming? >> we try to tap into the things that they like the most. so if that's doing computer games, robotics, if that's doing web design or even using their mobile phone, we try to build workshops around that. and show them how the take the things they're doing everyday on a day-to-day basis and be a technology innovator with that, from that particular angle. that's how we get them involved? >> and you're an electrical engineer by training. >> i am. >> you worked in biotech for a long time so off technical background. why do you think it's so critical for young girls, especially african-american girls, to have these skills. >> i think it's important for this generation to understand technology and become involved in the industry because the pace

of innovation is so fast. and the jobs that will be created are stem related so there will be some form of math, science, technology type of industry. so it's important for these girls to be able to have a skill set to go into the industry to be able to change their lives and their communities by utilizing tech. >> it's no secret that women are severely underrepresented in tech, in fact, men make up 60% to 70% of the staff at many tech companies, including some of the bay area's largest, google, facebook, yahoo! why are there so few women in tech? is it because they're not interested or is there discrimination in hiring or is it both? >> i think it's a bit of both. when i graduated at the end of the' 0s, that was the peak for women receiving degrees in computer science so there was about 30%. now it's less than 18%. so we've seen a drastic fall over the last several decades.

>> why the drop? >> i think for one we went into the computer boom right after i graduated and the face of the industry and the culture of the industry started to change drastically. when we're going through the web 2.0 stage just the industry as a whole started to change from a cultural standpoint and not be as welcoming to women. and i think that pushed a lot of women out and didn't help in terms of getting women to have mentors and role models as far as the new generation coming behind them. >> so based on what you've mean? your three years or so of workshops and classes. is there a particular age or grade where introduction to computers is most effective? >> it is really -- that's a hard question to answer. it really depends. we have toddlers and kids in pre-school utilizing games on an ipad so that is really a generation that we call digital

native. so they're coming almost out of the womb using a cell phone. so we try to start at that age where we can really teach content so we start at seven but it can start earlier than that. i think it's earliest by maybe even in four or three. we can utilize technology as a means to teach our students and teach our kids and then move them into gradually more progressively harder context from what we're doing in the classroom. >> are there tech women leaders in silicon valley that you hold up as examples to the girls in your camps? we have women like cheryl sandberg and marisa mier but they're both white women. they're accomplished but are there women of color already? >> there are very few women. i think there's some that everyone knows like may jamieson that has done a lot from the stand point of engineering and science but we're trying to create this next generation of innovators that can be mentors

to girls younger than themselves. >> some people have called the push for more diversity in tech the next step in the civil rights movement. do you agree with that? >> absolutely. absolutely. i think it's important for people of color and even women to really be a part of this innovative change that we're seeing. i really think this is the next industrial so the speak revolution is technology. so if we have over half of our population that's not participating, we are creating a permanent underclass. so i absolutely see it as a civil rights issue in terms of making sure tech is free and everyone has access to be able to utilize tech as creatives and not just as consumers. >> so what is next for black girls zmoed. >> for black girls code we're hoping to continue to grow the organization and reach more students. it's always about expanding our impact. so adding additional chapters and new cities and seeing our

program grow and touch girls all over the country and beyond. >> and you're already in seven u.s. cities as well as johannesburg, south africa. >> yes, and we're moving to uganda this year as well so we're expanding internationally and hoping to go into eight new cities in 2015. >> much luck to you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you for joining us. i know you're going to washington on monday to get your awa award. >> i am, looking forward to it. >> kimberly bryant, thank you. >> thank you. joining me now for a look at other news is scott shafer, high scoot. >> hi, thuy. >> we've been following the drought. we have lots of rain and more on the way. does it go far in having some kind of an impact on the travel? >> you hear people saying is the drought over? of course it isn't. it's helpful, the official end of the wildfire season.

the ground is getting saturated, which is good. but we've had such a huge deficit in rain over the last three years that it will take much, much more rain, of course, to really put a dent. the good news is now that the ground is wet, whatever rain we get this weekend and beyond will begin to refill says are voirs, that's great. but state water officials say we need 150% of normal this year to catch up. >> but the national weather expect ce experts are saying a different picture. >> they have a different measurement and they say we need as much as 18 to 21 inches which sounds better than 75 inches. but it depends on where you're measuring the rain. the message is the same. it's going to take storm after storm after storm to even begin to come close to ending this drought. in the meantime, conservation is really the only answer. >> it is pretty amazing. we were talking earlier about how there's a new report out by the american geophysical union journal that says this is the worst drought in 1200 years. >> at least. >> i wanted to talk to you about

a situation coming up next year which is starting next month, undocumented immigrants in california will be able to get driver's licenses and this week a new dmv office opened in san jose to help them do just that. >> it's one of four offices the dmv is opening around the state. they're expecting to serve a million people who will be eligible to take the driver's test. they're going to have touch screens in all kinds of languages. they're doing cultural diversity training. of course they have to pass the test but they expect a lot of traffic in there, people coming in and trying to get driver's licenses. >> and the mexican consulate in l.a. has been providing driver's education. >> yes, which is a good thing. if they're going to get licenses, we want them to be good drivers. but what they're finding is that a lot of people, like over 70%, were failing the test so they need to -- like all of us -- learn the rules of the road before they get the rye license. >> speaking of education, real quickly, the state legislature this week has a bipartisan bill that would take away uc's financial independence. how would that work?

>> this would have to be an constitutional amendment, so it would need two-thirds votes in the legislature then it would get to to the voters in 2016 and it would mean that the legislature would get control over things like salaries for chancellors and tuition likes. >> okay. i see a big battle brewing over that. >> oh, yeah, absolutely. >> for all of kqed news coverage, go to kqed.org. thank you for joining us. have a good night.

man: it's like holy mother of comfort food.ion. woman: throw it down. it's noodle crack. patel: you have to be ready for the heart attack on a platter. crowell: okay, i'm the bacon guy. man: oh, i just did a jig every time i dipped into it. man #2: it just completely blew my mind. woman: it felt like i had a mouthful of raw vegetables and dry dough. sbrocco: oh, please. i want the dessert first!! [ laughs ] i told him he had to wait.