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If Chauvin is found not guilty, ‘there are still other levers that can be pulled in our justice system’: Ben Jealous

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, policing in America and the safety of Black Americans has become a hot topic. Ben Jealous, a civil rights leader and the president of People For the American Way, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers and Alexis Christoforous to discuss the details of the Derek Chauvin’s case and the implications of the case on violence against minority groups in the United States.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Welcome back to "A Time for Change." In the death of George Floyd, there is a lot on trial right now-- policing in America, the safety of Black and Brown people, and, of course, Derek Chauvin's actions on May 25, 2020. Whatever the verdict, it will be sure to go down in civil rights history.

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KRISTIN MYERS: And here to talk about the implications of the case is civil rights leader Ben Jealous. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today. You know, even as this trial was happening, there was the shooting of a 13-year-old boy, while his hands were raised in Chicago. In Minneapolis, there was the accidental shooting, as they are calling it, of Daunte Wright.

Do you think that this trial, that this moment, could be one where we see forward progress? Or do you think that we are going to report on this and in a couple more weeks or months there will be another trial, another case, another shooting that we are going to have to cover?

BEN JEALOUS: They both are likely. I don't think that George Floyd died in vain. There have been a lot of changes made, and there has been an-- really an upwelling of consensus that we, as a country, have to find our way forward. And I also don't think we're going to get there-- get far enough, fast enough, to stop this from happening again any time soon.

On day three of the trial, the city of Ithaca in New York voted to replace its police department with a civilian-led public safety department, and over time, to replace half of the officers with unarmed social workers. It's perhaps the boldest change that we've ever seen.

And it's likely the beginning of cities across the country really asking the question, the appropriate question in today's 21st century America, what should public safety look like? How do we make ourselves the most safe? Clearly, the connection to the past isn't serving us well. There is a certain inertia from slavery. There is a certain inertia from the Boston Red Coats or the Boston Massacre.

We have both the British military and American slavery to sort of thank, if you will, for the culture of our public safety forces over time. And I think the city of Ithaca is showing that, like Camden before them in some ways, that it's time for us to take a step back-- a step back and ask, given all the givens, what do we do now? How do we make all of us safer now?

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: When you look at it history, Ben, how can that inform what might happen here in this trial? I mean, of course the similarities have been made to Eric Garner who died in 2014, after a New York City police officer had him in a chokehold, wrestled him to the ground. All of that was caught on video. He also said, like George Floyd, "I can't breathe." He told the officer that 11 times. Yet, a grand jury decided not to indict the officer. How do you think things are different now, if at all?

BEN JEALOUS: What's different now is that, for the past 30 years, since the Rodney King incident, all of America has been forced to recognize-- by these incidents being caught on videotape or in cell phones, all of America has been forced to recognize what Black America, for 400 years, has not been allowed to forget, which is that we can be treated as disposable without consequence. And so I do think that, you know, the jury arrives, if you will, in a different historical context than juries of even 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.

In Minneapolis, folks are also aware that you're dealing with a dual problem of both racism and authoritarianism. Racism is what makes we, as Black people, much more susceptible to dying in this way. Authoritarianism-- talk to criminologist after criminologist, you look at the officers who are most likely to pull the trigger, what they may or may not have in common is racism, implicit bias. What they all seem to have in common is high levels of authoritarianism.

And in Minneapolis, we were reminded of that when a white woman was killed by a Black officer in between Philando Castile and George Floyd. And she was killed because she failed to comply with his orders, and he shot her through the window. Of course, later they discovered she was having an epileptic seizure. And so it's important, I think, to keep in mind that, as Black people, we are the canaries in the coal mine, if you will. And the problem of overly authoritarian policing is a threat, ultimately, to all of us.

Now, the scary moment's going to come when the verdict-- we're all told that the verdict is going to be handed down. If it goes one way, there's justice, and I think we can expect there will be calm. If it goes the other way, a lot of folks will come-- like myself, will come to the conclusion there's not been injustice, and then the question would be what to do next.

And that's why it's critical for us all to understand that there's still one more round of charges that should and can be brought, and those are federal charges. Cases like this, there are always really three sets of charges, if you will, that you deal with, or three-- three legal processes.

The first is the civil suit. The city has already settled that. They settled it for a very high number. It was a recognition that they understand that there is a preponderance of evidence-- of evidence here. A preponderance is, if you will, greater than 50% suggesting that something terrible wrong was done here.

The next will be the state criminal trial. That's what's going on now. That requires proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's a higher standard. And, of course, this is where we've seen racism and the tradition of how Black people have been treated in our society create problems in the past. And we pray, as President Biden has said, for a just outcome.

The third, though, are the federal charges, both civil and criminal. And frankly, that should be a focus here as-- as well. And anybody who's upset, if we, God forbid, get the wrong verdict, should keep in mind that there's still other levers that can be pulled in our justice system.

KRISTIN MYERS: So Ben, let's talk about that. What are the next steps? What should we do? Even beyond those federal charges that you mentioned could also, and should also, be brought, what else needs to happen no matter the verdict?

Because even if Derek Chauvin is essentially given jail time, there is still work, as you're highlighting, that needs to be done. So what steps do we, the people-- you know, not folks within politics, not folks working within the justice system-- but what do the average, everyday Americans need to start doing from here on out?

BEN JEALOUS: We need to be actively involved in making sure that all of our communities transform public safety, really go much further than we've ever gone. Two things every single jurisdiction should be focused on-- and keep in mind, we have 13,000 or more police agencies in our country, and they're basically allowed to all have their own standards for how they train people, et cetera. So one is that we have to change how officers are recruited.

City of Ithaca, years ago, decided that they would put in place a type of personality test that discerns how authoritarian a candidate is. And if a candidate's overly authoritarian, they won't hire them.

Over time, three out of four applicants who have met every other qualification-- the physical test, the traditional psychological fitness test, so forth, to become a police officer-- three out of four have failed that test, because policing tends to attract more authority-- more authoritarian types. And ultimately, that puts all of us at greater danger. So we have to change how we're recruiting to weed out people who are overly authoritarian. And that means using psychological tests differently.

We also have to change how we remove officers. If you imagine that Mr. Chauvin was a doctor, there'd be no question that if there was eight minutes and 46 seconds of tape of him torturing a patient in the way that he tortured and killed Mr. Floyd, that he would lose his medical license. Everybody would expect it. So when it comes to your license to serve as a police officer, it is much more difficult to lose than your medical license. That is a problem.

The expectation, when you have an abusive officer who's fired, is he will pop up or she will pop up as an officer somewhere else, and we have to stop that. So I would say those are the two conversations we should be having in every community across this country at a minimum is, how do we change how we recruit so we weed out the authoritarian officers before they become a problem? And how do we change how we remove people, so when we have abusive officers, we can get rid of them, and quite frankly work with other jurisdictions to make sure that they are not hired somewhere else?

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Ben, in the minute or so that we have left, I'd love to get your feedback on what we saw Congresswoman Maxine Waters say over the weekend in Minnesota at a Black Lives rally, where they were protesting the killing of Daunte Wright. She said, "If we don't get a guilty verdict in the Chauvin case, we cannot go away,"-- I'm quoting her now-- "We've got to stay on the street, we get more active, we've got to get more confrontational." Is that the right tact at this time?

BEN JEALOUS: Well, I think it's always a good time to be outraged about injustice. And I know Maxine Waters, and I know she was speaking of non-violence and direct action.

And let's be clear. This work to transform policing has gone on for a long time. The city of Danville, Virginia, in the 1880s, they elected an interracial-- excuse me, the 1870s-- they had an interracial city council after the Civil War. That interracial city council created the first interracial police department anybody knew of in the South. And what was the response? A race riot, in which dozens of Blacks were murdered and the law enforcement-- and the police department was purged of Black officers. So that's the history that we're up against.

And for 150 years, we've basically been comfortable, as a country, with maintaining more of the past than we should. And so it's always the right time to do the right thing. And it's always the right time to be outraged about injustice. And I would say impatience, at this moment, is justified. Impatience, at this moment, is justified.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, Ben Jealous, President for People for American Way, the former CEO and president, of course, of the NAACP. Thanks so much for joining us for this very important discussion.