Featured Guests:

• RaShall Brackney - Chief of Police for Charlottesville, Va
• Brandon del Pozo - Retired Chief of Police for Burlington, VT; Former Precinct Chief NYPD; Currently a drug policy and substance abuse researcher at Brown University.
• Julius Lewis - Active Police officer in Northern California

On the heels of the disappointing (and expected) miscarriage of justice for Breonna Taylor, and our ongoing racial justice movement, calls to defund the police and acknowledge the white supremacy inherent in law enforcement are deafening and deserved. It is impossible to imagine how we can move meaningfully toward a more just and safe reality for Black people in this country without major reform and perhaps wholesale disestablishment of our criminal justice system. This should start with the police who are responsible for so much terror and death in Black and underserved communities and yet so rarely face true accountability.

One of the most unproductive parts of this conversation has been the refusal of law enforcement to take responsibility for their shortcomings, and to lead the call to hold bad police accountable. It is imperative that reform-minded police advocate for desperately needed reforms if we are to repair the relationship between communities of color and law enforcement. The distrust runs so deep that it is hard to envision a different dynamic, but we wanted to have a conversation that would point toward a hopeful future and to do that we invited three reform-minded police officers, two of them a current and retired Chief, to speak about their ideas for how law enforcement needs to change. The conversation was provocative and insightful, and conveys a least a shred of hope that there are people inside this corrupted system that are earnestly striving for change and genuinely want to serve their communities.

We spoke to the current Chief of Charlottesville, VA (a Black woman), the former chief of Burlington, VT (a white man who was also a precinct chief in the NYPD) and a police officer in Northern California (a Black man). Their perspectives and insights into the problems in law enforcement were a welcome reprieve from the hostile and delusional sentiments we are used to hearing from law enforcement representatives and the politicians who give them cover. It is so easy, and justified, to feel enraged at people who wear and stand by the badge, but it is also important to give space to those who do so while sincerely advocating for the changes we are calling for. Please take a listen and thank you to Chief Brackney, Brandon del Pozo and Julius Lewis for speaking so candidly and honestly. It is appreciated.