Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: February 10, 2017 Guest: Eddie Johnson, Andrea Zopp, Ameena Matthews, Lori Lightfoot, Camiella Williams
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: April Ryan whose new book is "Mama`s Knee" -- "At Mama`s Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White", what`s it like to be an American from a different perspective. And that`s Hardball for now. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes, I say, starts right now with his big town meeting from Chi-Town.
ANNOUNCER: America`s third largest city has been reduced to a sound bite.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violence in Chicago is on the rise.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 90 people were killed between Friday and Sunday.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today`s 700 homicides is unacceptable.
ANNOUNCER: But Chicago`s tragedies and triumphs are real human stories, not just talking points. From segregations, to jobs, to policing, to gun violence, finding solutions is more complicated than a president`s tweet.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What`s going on in Chicago?
ANNOUNCER: This is an MSNBC special Town Hall event. Chicago in the crosshairs. From the South Shore Cultural Center in Chicago, here is Chris Hayes.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Good evening from Chicago. I`m Chris Hayes, and I am absolutely thrilled to be here for a special Town Hall event in this incredible city. It`s America`s third largest city, and it`s special to me. But lately, as someone here put it, it`s become the poster child for violence in America. This is due in part to a real surge of violence here, but also imparts the perception of this city as expressed so loudly and frequently by the new President of the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: In Chicago, they`ve had thousands of shootings, thousands. And I`m saying, where is this? Is this a war-torned country? What are we doing? By the way, toughest gun laws in the world, Chicago, and people are shooting themselves all over the place, OK?
The problem is not that there are too many police. The problem is that they are not enough police.
It`s worse than some of the places that we -- that we read about in the Middle East. We have wars going on. It`s so sad, Chicago has become so sad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Last month, after apparently watching a news report about the surging crime here, new president took to Twitter, as he likes to do, to threaten if Chicago doesn`t fix the horrible carnage going on, I will send in the feds. The Chicago having become a presidential punching bag, frankly, wanted to come to the city and give officials and activists and others who actually live here a platform to respond to the president, to talk about the real problems here and the work toward real solutions.
Perhaps the president will see this because we have a lot of voices in this room that deserve to be heard. I want to introduce a few right now. Joining me now on stage, four of those voices, Andrea Zopp, who is the Deputy Mayor of Chicago. She`s also a former President and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. I have here with me Eddie Johnson, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. It`s good to have you here, sir.
EDDIE JOHNSON, CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT SUPERINTENDANT: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: Ameena Matthews, founder of Pause4Peace, and someone who have a lot of experience in trying to interrupt violence that has happened in -- here in Chicago. And, Lori Lightfoot, President of the Chicago Police Board, Chair of the Police Accountability Task Force. Good to have you here.
Deputy Mayor, maybe I`ll start with you. I understand that -- I understand why people in Chicago don`t want to get into like a tweet war with the President of the United States. Right? Or just -- and I think there`s a little kind of shrug off the shoulders of these invocations. But to people watching right now who have a very narrow sense of what Chicago is and what it`s experiencing right now, what do you want them to know, what do you want the President to know?
ANDREA ZOPP, CHICAGO DEPUTY MAYOR AND FORMER PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE CHICAGO URBAN LEAGUE: Well, I want the President to know -- first of all, this isn`t a topic really for tweeting. It`s a serious issue. We have challenges here as we have across the country, with rise in violence. What I want them to know is that we`re working to address that violence. We have a plan and plans in place that we`re doing, and we`re going to talk about that tonight.
What I want them to also know that this is a city that`s a lot more than just the gun violence. We have a lot of people who are committed to the city and to making it a better place to live. Many of them are here tonight in this room.
HAYES: Do you feel, Commissioner, like -- how do you feel, as the person who is tasked with police in this city and running a police department here? What is your response to invocations of violence in Chicago by folks? And not just the President, by people generally out there?
JOHNSON: Well, what I want people to know is that, listen, Chicago has its challenges. But let`s frame it properly. When you look at violent crime across America, Chicago is the only major city that saw an uptick. Per capita, we`re about in the middle of the pack in terms of violent crime. That`s the one thing that I want people to know. The second thing is ...
HAYES: So, do you feel like you`re under -- do you feel like Chicago, which I think is around 9 in the homicide rate right now in of the 25 major cities, do you feel like you`re being unfairly singled out?
JOHNSON: Well, yes, in some aspects because, you know, the violence in Chicago -- we have our challenges. You know, that`s no secret. But I want people to know that the city as whole is in pretty good shape. Five districts out of 22 police districts in this -- in this city actually drive the violence. And out of those five, three -- two on the west side and one on the south side, are the ones that drive most of our violent crime.
HAYES: Do people -- does that resonate with people in the room? Is that generally the feeling? You know, I mean, I was looking at -- I was looking at some maps. And one of the things about what`s happening in Chicago is an intensification of the inequality of violence. There are places, huge blocks of the city, that have homicide rates that are safe as basically anywhere in Canada. Right? And then there are parts that have unbelievably high rates. How do you understand that sort of inequality between neighborhoods?
AMEENA MATTHEWS, PAUSE4PEACE FOUNDER: Well, it`s hard for me to understand it, coming from a gentrified family. You know, I was the first black in a -- in an all-Lutheran school. You know, so I can`t understand the segregation in this city that is so beautiful and that has been historically just filled by us, African-American, Latinos, lower class, middle lower class, upper lower class, and then there`s those communities that you talked about that`s -- like Canada.
So, we need to come together, and I can`t understand what is the whole issue about if you don`t, we will. We have. We have taken care of our community, even off the record, even off the clock. We made sure that, yes, it`s -- the numbers are unacceptable. However, in our community, there`s people here that have done amazing work. And it has to be funded.
So, if you want to put funding in our community, make sure that each and every one of our community activists, our humanitarians, our police, our CPS, CPD, everything is funded. So, we can be able to maintain our own community.
HAYES: That gets to something, I think, about what the tenor of this is, is like, you know, when the President talks about one of those folks, it`s like, what are they doing? Like, everyone`s just sort of sitting around. And no one -- and you know, it hasn`t occurred to anyone here that the levels of violence are unacceptable. Right? And that no one here is doing anything about it. And how do you -- Lori, how does that -- how does that hit you when you here that?
LORI LIGHTFOOT, CHICAGO POLICE BOARD PRESIDENT AND CHAIR OF THE POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY TASK FORCE: Well, I think that what`s most important, is to really focus on what`s happening here, and engage in solutions to solve the problems. The back and forth, the Twitter war, that doesn`t mean anything to the most vulnerable people in some of the most crime-plagued neighborhoods, and also some of our most impoverished neighborhoods. What they look to leaders to do is to solve problems, not to paint them in two- dimensional figures, but to come in, roll up their sleeves, and do the hard work of moving forward in a -- in a productive way.
HAYES: I want to take a show of hands just on this question about solving problems. Right? And I want you to be honest, and I get a sense I think of where folks in this room will be. But when you hear the President say he`s going to send in the Feds, raise your hand if that sounds like a good idea to you.
MATTHEWS: To do what?
HAYES: And how -- raise your hand if -- when you hear "send in the Feds" you feel -- that feels ominous, that feels like a threat. All right. Well, if someone so-and-so needs to take over the police department. What`s your response to that?
JOHNSON: Well, you know what, listen, CPD, you know, we have our challenges and I would be the first to acknowledge we`ve done some things in the past that were inappropriate. But that was the past. You know, my challenge right now is to fix the issues. When I look out in the audience, a lot of these folks out here in the audience right now I`ve worked with since becoming Superintendent to make it better. You know, those things didn`t occur overnight, and they`re not going to be fixed overnight. But we have to acknowledge them and then move forward to correct the issue.
HAYES: I mean, I -- yes. Give a round of applause, guys. There`s a -- there`s a thing -- there`s a thing going on right now in American cities that`s bigger than just Chicago. OK? Newly-confirmed Attorney General Jeff Sessions talked about this today when he made his to the Department of Justice -- and I get where you guys are coming from, on this newly Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
We have seen in the last two years, 2015, 2016, we have seen homicide increases in many of the major cities in this country. And in some cases, it`s been stark, places like St. Louis and Baltimore, which I`ve covered from the very start. This is after a long period of historic decline. What is your -- Deputy Mayor, what is your understanding, what is your theory of the case of what is happening?
ZOPP: Well, if the question was that -- really that easy to answer, hopefully we would be further along. It`s a tough question. I don`t think there`s an easy answer. We`ve looked at the numbers. There -- I don`t think it came overnight, that`s the important thing. We have neighborhoods that have been disinvested in, we`ve had schools that have been disinvested in, we have lack of access to jobs and work. We`re seeing -- we`re paying for that over time. That didn`t happen yesterday or in the last five years.
Wait, let me just get -- so, I think we -- those are some of the things we have to focus on. I also just want to circle back through to that federal resources question that you asked about. Because there are federal resources that we could use here that would help. Just take for example, youth jobs. The feds have completely cut youth jobs. We have a huge youth job program that the city funds, but we don`t get any federal support, federal law enforcement support.
The U.S. Attorney`s office here has the lowest rate of gun prosecutions of any U.S. Attorney`s office in the country. And so, we could use -- there is significant level of federal support that we could use to partner with to address this issue. That`s what we`re looking for.
HAYES: Are you -- what do you say to people who say you`re evading responsibility by sort of pointing to the feds? And I`ve actually interviewed the Mayor himself, and he`s talked about -- he`s talked about federal gun laws and things like that. But ultimately, a lot of that has been consistent over the period of time that we`re talking, right? So what do you think is changing here in this city?
ZOPP: Well, actually, first of all, not true. For example, just on youth jobs, that`s been cut. But, we`re not evading the issue. We`re not waiting for the feds. We haven`t stopped doing work. We have a plan, we have a policing plan, we`ve invested in our officers, we`ve invested in technology, we`ve invested in training. The Superintendent can talk to some of the details of how they`re adjusting and changing policing to try and address these crimes.
We`re investing in mentoring for youth to disrupt our young people going into gangs. And we`re investing in neighborhoods, economic development and job creation for people to help address this lack of opportunity. So, we`re not waiting for the feds.
HAYES: All right. I want -- there`s some -- there are folks who -- I want to get to some of the folks in the room, and I know that you`ve been through the ringer on this. You`re looking at me with a sort of --
ZOPP: I`m waiting.
HAYES: -- anticipatory -- I can hear the murmurs in the room about investment. Let me talk to this gentleman over here.
Stand up for me, will you? Jedidiah Brown, right?
JEDIDIAH BROWN, YOUNG LEADERS ALLIANCE FOUNDER: Yes, sir.
HAYES: One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I saw a YouTube video of you. My -- I have a personal theory that part of the president`s beef with Chicago is that when he tried to come here and talk in the primary -- do you remember this?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes.
HAYES: They`re like, "Yes, damn right, we remember that."
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: That is not -- that is not necessarily the perception outside of Chicago, I should say. Yes, there was a protest, he ended up not speaking, there was -- it got pretty gnarly, actually, and there was -- there were some punches thrown on both sides as far as I can tell from the videotape.
You actually rushed the stage at that event. Why did you do that?
BROWN: Well, definitely, we saw what campaign -- what Donald Trump`s campaign was doing all across the country. We`ve seen black bodies being pushed around. We see -- we saw people getting punched in the face. And I didn`t shut down his rally, Chicago did.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, that.
BROWN: Because we were not --
(APPLAUSE)
BROWN: -- we were not -- we were not going to allow -- one thing that is proven is that not only -- Chicago does have its times, but Chicago is one tough city. And we was not going to allow Donald Trump`s campaign to come in our city and be unchallenged. And we stopped it.
HAYES: When you hear about what the deputy mayor is talking about in terms of investment, you were -- you were murmuring. I couldn`t tell whether that was assent or dissent.
BROWN: We -- there are a lot of people in this room that do a lot of great work on the ground that have the heartbeat of this neighborhood. And everything that the deputy mayor is saying, we have no clue about it, because the mayor`s office has -- the mayor`s office has not engaged the communities that are --
(APPLAUSE)
BROWN: The mayor`s office has not -- as a matter of fact, I`ll say it like this. The mayor`s office has stopped reaching out to black voices ever since he thought he would get cover for the cover-up of Laquan McDonald`s murder.
(APPLAUSE)
(CROSSTALK)
(APPLAUSE)
BROWN: And those reserves, we don`t know anything about it. We can`t back him up. We can`t tell you that it`s true, because it`s just not matriculating down to the everyday people.
HAYES: OK, I want to give -- I want to give the deputy mayor a chance to respond.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: And let me just say this. And I want to say this for the record and whomever watches this. There`s not a lot of cities that I could go to where the mayor would send anyone to this Town Hall. And I`m serious about that. Or the police commissioner. So I just want to be clear about the fact that like we are having this conversation in this room right now because they are at the table, all right?
LIGHTFOOT: So, look, you know, we don`t agree -- we don`t agree on all things, but the fact is, we`ve had conversations with Jedidiah and people that he represents. In fact, Jedidiah and I were in the streets marching to try and bring people together when we had a dispute in one of our neighborhoods around -- between our communities of color.
We sat in a room and talked with each other and with other people. He has been in my office to talk about some of these issues. Now, have we fixed everything? Absolutely not. Do we have a lot of work to do? Absolutely have. But the idea that we`re not talking to people in the community is -- I just disagree with.
HAYES: OK, there is a lot of -- one of the things that -- one of the things that Jedidiah brought up -- and I know people out there have a lot of opinions. One of the things Jedidiah brought up was Laquan McDonald. And I think in many ways -- in many ways, that hangs over everything that`s happening here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It just brought it to a head.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: That just brought it to a head.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of what`s been going on in here.
HAYES: So I want to -- I want to talk about that. I want to -- what I want to do is I want to take a quick break, when I come back, talk a little bit about the context that brought us here to this moment. Don`t go anywhere if you`re watching at home. We`ll be right back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To President Trump, come here to Chicago. See what all of these folks in this room, black, white, democrats, republicans, city officials, civic leaders, are doing in this city.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Our coverage of this special Town Hall (INAUDIBLE) Chicago continues. Here again is Chris Hayes.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: The City of Chicago has a long and rich history, particularly here on the South Side.
And here to talk a little bit more about that, my friend and colleague, Trymaine Lee. Trymaine, you spent some time on the South Side the last few days.
TRYMAINE LEE, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: I had the opportunity to spend some time with WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore. She wrote a fantastic book called "The South Side."
HAYES: Yes.
LEE: It`s really--
HAYES: Everybody, check out that book.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: Check out that book.
(APPLAUSE)
LEE: It`s a -- it`s a rich look into how segregation shaped, not just the South Side, but Chicago. We spent a lot of time talking about her neighborhood of Chatham, of the rich legacy of black Chicago, but also some of the struggles that isn`t limited to gun violence. It didn`t start with gun violence and didn`t end with gun violence. But let`s take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LEE: So this a beautiful block.
NATALIE MOORE, WBEZ REPORTER: Yes. This is where I grew up.
LEE: You know what, I don`t think people outside of Chicago get to see this Chicago. I think for so many people, it`s a war zone.
MOORE: Exactly.
LEE: It`s a shack, right?
MOORE: You know, there -- there`s an invisibility of the black middle class and black working class, I think, in this country. And this is not an anomaly. This is not a special neighborhood. There are so many neighborhoods that were once white in Chicago that turned over black, and they maintained a middle class identity.
LEE: Why do you think that gets lost?
MOORE: It`s not news.
LEE: It`s not sexy, no?
MOORE: It`s not sexy.
Hi, how are you?
Hi. Good to see you on (INAUDIBLE) today.
And the issues that we are dealing with in this city are not new. This -- something just didn`t magically happen in 2016. There`s always been this struggle.
LEE: When you think about the millions of people who fled the South, fleeing Jim Crow segregation to arrive in places like Chicago, to help shape it, not just the culture of this city, but the culture of America. On the other side of that coin, though, especially as of late, it`s become dominated by this idea of violence.
How do you reckon with the two visions of Chicago?
MOORE: We have to remember that that darker legacy didn`t just start with conversations about the so-called black-on-black violence. When black people got off those trains and arrived in Chicago a century ago, they were greeted by a host of policies and laws that kept them contained to black areas.
People call it Jim Crow of the North. You know, you couldn`t live in white areas. It was illegal to buy a home from somebody white that had a restrictive covenant. Black people were met with racial violence when they did integrate neighborhoods. There was red-lining. Banks didn`t want to give you a loan if you were in a black neighborhood.
And all these things are at the heart of residential segregation -- disinvestment, lack of resources is been something that black people have been contending with for a very long time.
LEE: Just last month in this block alone, seven people shot. At a vigil memorializing another gun violence victim, the mother shot, teenagers are shot. How did we get to this moment?
MOORE: Well, I think if we look around, like this block was a really stable block and this area was stable, but look how many boarded up homes are on this block. Look how many boarded up businesses are here.
And so, all of that is really connected. You know, there`s expression of America gets a cold, black America gets the flu. So the economic downturn is still being felt here. The housing crisis, you know, is still being felt here. These communities haven`t climbed out of it the way we think the rest of the country has.
LEE: How do we begin to even address all of that, or even climb out of it?
MOORE: Well, people say, "Oh, you know, these communities have to hook themselves up." I guarantee that there are block clubs all around here. And so, people are doing individual things, but these are larger structural issues.
You know, how do you recruit businesses? How do you do neighborhood improvement plans? And that`s when city officials, state, federal, all these different layers have to come in and help.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEE: Chris, so often, the headlines are dominated by the gun violence. But one thing that Natalie talked about and so many people -- some in this room I`ve talked to before say, the violence is spread beyond the gun. Poverty is violence, right?
(APPLAUSE)
LEE: Hunger is real violence.
(APPLAUSE)
LEE: The trauma that folks are seeing inside the home, but also the repeated exposure to violence in the streets, people are wound up and traumatized and all of that is violent, but we don`t address that kind of violence.
HAYES: You know, one of the things that struck me about that, I`d like to see a show of hands. One of the narratives that happened in this election, interestingly enough, in those places in America that voted overwhelmingly for the president, was about the same story that Natalie was telling us, the economic recovery has not actually recovered, that the devastation hit and it rippled, and it rippled, and it rippled, and you could look at top line economic numbers and you could say, "We`re back to full employment."
Do people feel like in their neighborhoods, things are back?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No.
HAYES: Do they feel like it has recovered?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No.
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: Yes. Here, let me -- let me -- let me talk to you. Let me talk to you, Camiella. Camiella, stand up for me. Tell me your name.
CAMIELLA WILLIAMS, GUN VIOLENCE ACTIVIST: Camiella Williams.
HAYES: You`re someone who has, I know, lost people that you loved and are close to you to violence.
WILLIAMS: 29 loved ones as of today.
HAYES: What do you feel about where the city is right now? Do you feel like it`s getting worse? Do you feel like it`s not in the right direction?
WILLIAMS: It`s not in the right direction. Our leadership is failing us. We can`t get the resources that we need.
(APPLAUSE)
WILLIAMS: We -- then again, we organizing, like Ameena said, we doing our part, but we just don`t have the support of our leadership behind.
HAYES: What would that mean, though? What does the support mean?
WILLIAMS: Resources. Giving organizations that`s doing stuff money, to continue to do what they need to do.
HAYES: How do you -- how do you understand why the violence is happening?
WILLIAMS: It`s a lot of -- there`s a lot of stuff. But to me, you know, just -- people just being hopeless right now. Like, they -- no other opportunities for them. No jobs, no mental health. I know I have PTSD. It`s just off the -- off the charts. And there`s just no help for us in the city.
HAYES: Have you ever gotten treatment for that?
WILLIAMS: No. University of Chicago did a study about PTSD, but they didn`t come into our community to help us.
HAYES: Do people in this room feel like they have PTSD, they personally feel trauma? Raise a hand if you feel like you`ve got trauma.
Let me talk to you, Rachel. Thank you. You`re wearing -- you`re wearing the button of someone on your -- on your ...
RACHEL: Yes. He was two -- of two people I`ve lost within a week span. Like, I grew up in Grove Heights, a little neighborhood, south side of Chicago, (INAUDIBLE) or you went to Chicago, stay across the train tracks. So, when we talk about divestment in the community, you have to look at two things, divestment in jobs, divestment in education, and wonder why the violence is so high.
(APPLAUSE)
So if you`re sitting up here looking at a neighborhood and saying like why is the crime rate high, why is this happening? But then you`re seeing no jobs, no education, but barely holding on, and then you see no -- when we talk about it, we talk about food just as well. All of those are major components that come into the violence that happens here.
HAYES: Do you guys -- thank you, Rachel, thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
Lori, how does that sound to you?
LIGHTFOOT: When people are hopeless, when they have unemployment that`s off the charts, 50 percent in some of our neighborhoods, where people have never had a job, have no prospects of getting a job, you lose your sense of self and hope and dignity.
HAYES: Hey -- OK. We`re going to take -- we`re going to take a break. I want to talk about policing more specifically. It`s obviously important here, it`s important across the country. And I know that people have extremely strong views about what`s happening in Chicago and policing. So, we`re going to take a quick break. When we come back, more on that. Don`t go anywhere.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: Listen, I`m not just a superintendent, I`m a black person that lives in Chicago. I raise kids here, I grew up here, and I have relatives here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: So we`re back here in Chicago talking about some of the context for what`s been going on in the city. Lori, you were taking about the state budget cuts which were quite severe.
LIGHTFOOT: Right.
HAYES: There`s a lot of -- the city has been both, sort of, fighting for resources and also has made its own cuts and you want to say something about it.
JEDIDIAH BROWN, FOUNDER, YOUNG LEADERS ALLIANCE: I just wanted to say that another thing that`s happened is that our leadership has left young people in a place of having to survive and fight for ourselves and those most pressing issues in our neighborhood we show -- whether it`s a person being shot, racial tensions, we have to fight for ourselves and there have been times where I`ve been willing to allow the city who shows up to engage but the city has never been proactive in providing resources and chances for individuals who are on the ground fighting to improve the quality of life here.
HAYES: What does it mean to you to say you feel like you`re on your own. When you`re talking about something like violence, for instance, how does that actually -- like -- operational-wise, what`s that on the ground in a lib reality where you feel like, we have to take care of this or no one will.
BROWN: In every facet of our life here the mayor`s office is completely shut out to individuals who are critical of what his administration has and has not done. And anybody who is not going to be a yes-man does not get the buddy (ph) hand out jobs. Now, this is what happens when you close down city schools as the mayor you become deputy mayor. What happens is people who are not gonna do the mayor`s bidding, they become blocked from accessing -- and we`re not trying to engage him, we`re trying to engage the office who has the resources to improve the quality of life but they are completely unacceptable to us and they`ve mastered their talking points to cover up and misrepresent everything that they`ve done.
HAYES: I want to talk for a second in a focused way about policing and the police. And I want to start with something that the mayor said about a theory that he had about why policing has gotten more difficult. Can we play that quote from the mayor?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAHM EMMANUEL, MAYOR OF CHICAGO: I met with officers from the 10th District. And one officer said explicitly, when I`m driving by I have to think about whethr I want to be on the news and what it means to my career. What happened post Baltimore, what happened post Ferguson is having an impact, and I gave the example of the 10th District.
Which is why all the other police offcers or police chiefs and mayors applauded at the moment. And I still believe that the recent events over the last year or 18 months have had an impact, and officers would tell you that.
HAYES: First of all, start with you, Superintendent. Do you think that`s true?
JOHNSON: Well, what I think we have is a situation where officers see what`s going on, you know, not just in Chicago, but nationally. And I`ll be the first to tell you, CPD has done some things inappropriately and incorrectly. You know, and our challenge is to make sure that that doesn`t happen.
You know, the majority of officers--
HAYES: I want to ask a specific question.
Do you feel it is the case that the increased scrutiny on police behavior through cell phones, through public publicity around Laquan McDonald particularly, do you think it has affected police behavior in such a way that they feel they can`t do their jobs?
JOHNSON: No. And I`ll give you a statistic to support that.
So in 2015, we had the Laquan McDonald, released the video. We had a change in leadership in the police department and we had a change of state laws.
So in 2016, we got off to a really rocky start. But what I can tell you is this. The one thing that police officers do everyday is arrest bad guys with guns. That`s the most dangerous thing we could do.
If you look at the statistics from 2015, we did -- we did a 9 percent over what we did in 2015. This year, we almost doubled in arresting bad guys with guns. So that tells me that our overall stops of citizens has plummeted. And it should because we`re doing it the right way.
We should be focused on arresting the right people for the right reasons at the right time.
HAYES: All right, so stop -- stop--
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: --go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: Lori, do you agree with that?
Stops in the city have plummeted, according to statistics?
LIGHTFOOT: Yes.
HAYES: Do people feel like they have lived that?
Do you feel like yourself that the stops have--
LIGHTFOOT: They`re down 80 percent. Investigatory stops are down 80 percent. Arrests are down. But the statistic that the superintendent has quoted, I think, is right, which is the officers still out there taking great risks to take guns off the streets.
I think this whole issue of -- and I think it`s been called the Ferguson effect--
HAYES: Right.
LIGHTFOOT: --really does officers a disservice. But more to the point, it does the people a disservice. We need the police to be proactive, to be respectful and engaged with the community. And we need them to do their job in a constitutional way.
This -- they are absolutely under a level of scrutiny that probably have never been seen before in policing. And that`s not going to go away.
What you hear in this conversation tonight is people who -- whose interest has been raised, who`s attention has been raised and who have a level of expectations about the quality of policing that they should be getting in every single neighborhood in the city. That`s not going to go away.
The challenge for policing and for the superintendent is to articulate a path forward for individual officers so they`re not afraid to do their jobs, because they`re afraid to be captured on video. That`s not going to change. They`ve got to figure out the path forward and leadership, I think, will point them in the right direction.
HAYES: I want to ask people in this room a question about how they feel about the police, how much they feel they can trust the police, right after we take this quick break.
Don`t go anywhere.
We`ll be right back.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody has really said it, but his name is Rahm Emmanuel. And this mayor that we have in the city of Chicago does not care about black people. And I`m going to put that on the record.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LORETTA LYNCH, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: The Department of Justice has concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Chicago Police Department engages in a pattern or a practice of use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
These are serious problems. And they bear serious consequences for all Chicagoans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: As former Attorney General Loretta Lynch announcing the consent decree that had been entered into by the city of Chicago`s police department and the Department of Justice after a patterns and practices look into the Department.
Now, the Chicago Police Department has had a long history of violations of civil rights. There was a torture center being run out of the South Side of Chicago for years by infamous Detective Jon Burge.
There has been report after report about theft, about abuses of power. This is just one little part of the the Department of Justice report.
CPD will take a young person to a rival gang neighborhood and either leave the person there or display the youth to rival members, immediately putting the life of that young person in jeopardy by suggesting he has provided information to the police.
This, of course, comes on top of the shooting of Laquan McDonald and the possible pending charges for five of those officers who filed false police reports that later were revealed to be false by the video.
And I want to talk a bit about how this department can police this city in the wake of that history that the superintendent has been talking about.
GREEN, how do you feel about whether or not this department in this moment can be trusted?
GREEN GREEN, ACTIVIST: So first of all, if you want to talk about the trust with the police and black people, there`s never been trust, all right?
So that`s number one.
Number two is that if you look at the numbers, 75 percent of murders go unsolved. So obviously they`re not doing their job--
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GREEN: And they haven`t been doing their job in years.
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GREEN: But hopefully, Superintendent Eddie Johnson can do something about the police culture.
But if we`re talking about violence, police isn`t the answer. You could put 100,000 police officers on the street. That will not reduce violence in the city of Chicago--
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GREEN: --because police are only there to react. They`re only there to react. You have the put money into prevention. And right now, a lot -- nobody has really said it, but his name is Rahm Emanuel. And this mayor that we have in the city of Chicago does not care about black people.
And I`m going to put that on the record.
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GREEN: When you can`t invest $100 million into the Pall Basketball Arena when they can practice at the United Center for free and $16.4 million into Uptown to build upscale apartments, when you can build these new bus stops we`ve got downtown but walk in our neighborhood and not a million is coming.
When you -- we`re walking past boarded up schools, boarded up houses, they knock it down with red Xs with no plan to redevelop, mental health facilities shut down, the job -- the unemployment rate is the highest in Chicago than it is around the country, When you want to talk about violence, you got to talk about the economics. Not police.
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HAYES: So there`s two things I want responses on. There are two things I`d like to hear responses on. I want to talk about something that Jamal said that I think is a really important thing for folks to recognize, which is -- which is the clearance rates. Right. There`s a sense in which people experience policing in a day to day -- stop and frisk, as it`s called in New York. Being pulled over, people feel like they`re being harassed. And then there`s the most serious thing that a -- most serious crime that a person can commit, which is taking another person`s life, right. This city`s clearance rate for homicides is--
JOHNSON: Somewhere now about 30 -- little over 30 percent.
HAYES: 30 percent, OK. What -- and folks in this room know that number because they feel like it`s an indictment of the department. What do you say to people that say that is an indictment of the department?
JOHNSON: Well you know what, the clearance rate is just not a CPD clearance rate. It`s the Chicago clearance rate. Because the simple fact is that Jamal is right about a lot of what he said needs to be investing in (ph). He`s correct about that. But the simple fact is, until we listen -- I`m not just a superintendent. I`m a black person that lives in Chicago. I raised my kids here. I grew up here. And I have relatives here. But the simple fact is this. CPD, we have to do a better job of facilitating that relationship and building that trust back. And to that end, I`ve been getting out there since I became superintendent to do that. Because without the trust in the community, CPD is only as good as the faith that the community has in it.
HAYES: Let me ask a question to this room. I want to -- show of hands. If you see something that`s happening in your neighborhood, criminal act -- maybe a theft, maybe something more, violence of some sort -- who here in this room feels comfortable picking up 911 and dialing the cops?
(CROSSTALK)
HAYES: Whoa, whoa. And how many people -- how many other people (ph) don`t feel comfortable?
Can I talk to you for a second? Tell me your name.
DMITRI ROBERTS, FRM. CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER: Dmitri Roberts (ph).
HAYES: And you were a Chicago police officer for a while?
ROBERTS: I was, many years.
HAYES: Now, I thought what Jamal said was interesting. One of the things that ends up happening when these conversations happen is, you watch the resources flow towards police departments, right. And I think, frankly, police departments that I`ve covered around the country are very good at getting those resources. The argument police departments make is, crime is low, we`ve been beating crime, give us resources that we can keep beating crime. Crime is up, we`re losing crime, give us resources so we can beat crime. Are you confident that policing -- that this is a policing problem or not?
ROBERTS: Well, before I answer that question, Chris, I have to acknowledge why there`s so much tension in this room. It`s because people are hurting. People -- by a show of hands, how many in this room have either been a victim of violence or know somebody that`s been a victim of violence in the city of Chicago? I know I have. So now we have to acknowledge that people are hurting in these communities.
And then, on behalf of the police, as somebody who wore a badge, but I also served my country in the military. But before that, I was a young black man who grew up not too far from here, and I saw the blood of my fellow peers spilled on 47th street. I saw the blood of my peers spilled on the streets of Iraq. And I saw the blood of my fellow police officers spilled in Inglewood. So can we all agree that at the end of the day, can we unify behind the fact that we all bleed the same color? At the end of the day? Can we all unify just behind that one point?
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ROBERTS: And regardless of what side of politics we come from, regardless of what hashtag we promote, regardless of what we come through, the better days are ahead of us. And as long as we in this room stand together and unify, Chris, that`s when we`re going to see some solutions. Now--
HAYES: What`s that mean? What does that mean?
ROBERTS: To your point, the folks in this room, regardless of whether your program has been resourced or not, people are going out every day, they`re continuing to put their lives on the line, and they`re continuing to fight for the sanctity and the dignity of the people and the violence to be reduced in the city of Chicago. So what can we do? We have to unify behind something. And if we can agree that we all want to see one Chicago unified, we can all leave here today feeling like when we go out tomorrow, we`re going to make Chicago better as a result of us being here today.
HAYES: OK. Let me ask this question. Can -- can unity -- can people feel like there can be unity or trust in -- unless there is accountability? Do people feel like the Chicago Police Department is an accountable department?
ROBERTS: So here`s the deal. Superintendent Eddie Johnson has come in, he`s diversified the command staff. But before all of this takes place, there needs to be an apology that happens to every single person in this room. And as somebody who swore oath both to my country and to my community, I can stand here with you today and I can apologize to you, each one of you, on national TV, and say I`m sorry that we have not fulfilled the oath that we swore to you. We have not protected our communities in the way that we should.
And further, to President Trump -- come here to Chicago. See what all of these folks in this room, black, white, Democrat, Republican, city officials, civic leaders, are doing in this city, and they need the resources of the federal government to ensure that there`s no more blood, not a police officer, not a community member, spilled another day in this city from this day moving forward.
HAYES: So I want to talk about -- I want to talk about what solutions here would look like if the sky was the limit, if there was a real commitment on the part of the national polity to help places like Chicago, help themselves, right after this break.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My challenge to Trump, that Trump bring your rump into the city of Chicago.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(APPLAUSE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Alright, we`re back here to talk a bit about solutions and I have with me Congressman Bobby Rush who is a legendary figure in many respects. He`s the only person to ever beat Barack Obama in an election. That`s a good piece of trivia.
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HAYES: And represents Southside. If you thought about this idea, if you took the idea to send in the feds in the broadest and most constructive sense, if you read that as a commitment by national leadership to do whatever it can to reduce trauma in the city of Chicago, increase the, sort of, flourishing and thriving, what would that look like?
REP. BOBBY RUSH (D), ILLINOIS: Well, first of all Chris, let me say this. I am a fan. I live here, I worship here, I love here and what I`m witnessing today is -- this is the way we do it in Chicago. There are a lot of strong opinions but most of them, the people here, they are empowered through their love of this city and their love of their community and they are just passionate about it. I don`t know what Trump means when he say bring in the feds. First of all, my challenge to Trump is, Trump, bring your rump into the city of Chicago.
(APPLAUSE)
RUSH: Go to these communities and deal with these people who are on the front lines day by day, see what they have to say about their community and their aspirations for their communities. I think that we need to take a moment to look beyond the violence and see what is occurring beyond the violence. If we look beyond the violence, we will not only see the schools that were closed, we will see a Chicago State that is being threatened to close, but we are seeing the fact that Chicago, at one time, had nine black owned banks and now were down to one. That`s a federal policy.
I`m saying that most of our problems that I`ve heard here today, and I`ve thought about over the years, be it housing, be it education, be it mass incarceration, all of these are federal policies and we have not yet, at this moment, including eight years of Obama, had someone in the White House who really cared about this city and about these problems here in the City of Chicago.
HAYES: Thank you, Congressman.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: Congresswoman, could I talk to you? Because -- I just want you to respond to what your colleague just said. He said, including the eight years of Barack Obama we have not had a president that actually cares about Chicago.
REP. ROBIN KELLY (D), ILLINOIS: Well, I`m not gonna say I altogether agree with what he`s saying. I look at it as -- like -- nothing stops the bullet like an opportunity. And we need to make sure we`re giving our young people and our citizens opportunities.
Yes, it`s government. When I think of bringing in the feds we need to bring in resources to help businesses, to help -- there`s a lot of people in this room that are doing good things like Diane Latiker, like Kelly Fair (Ph) or Carla Stubbles (ph). We need to scale up those programs. This young man here, with his program, if we could bring in money to scale up those programs so they could help more people but also it`s not just government. Let`s look at all the businesses that we support. Do they have businesses in our community?
When they come to D.C. and see me and want my help, I say, "do you have businesses South?" Not just Southside of Chicago, I represent the South Suburbs, too, and there`s some of the same retail red-lining going on there. So, we don`t have jobs and we don`t have the mentoring.
HAYES: Let me ask you this -- They`re talking about an infrastructure bill in Washington D.C., you know, and the idea behind a Washington D.C. infrastructure bill would be to, essentially, create construction jobs throughout the country. Right?
KELLY: Correct.
HAYES: Do you feel like -- would you have any faith that this would come to Chicago, that that money would come to Chicago?
AUDIENCE: No.
HAYES: The congresswoman -- the congresswoman talked about -- the congresswoman just talked about the work that you do. Tell me your name.
JAHMAL COLE: Jahmal Cole.
HAYES: And what kind of work do you do?
COLE: A lot of Chicago teenagers have never been downtown, they`ve never seen a lake. They order food through three-inch bulletproof glass windows, helicopters are landing on their houses at night. Their whole worldview is shaped by the infrastructure of their neighborhood. So, what I do is I take teenagers from these underresourced communities on educational field trips and we expose them to different cultures, different professions, and different cuisines.
So, if you asked a kid what do they want to be, they say they want to be a rapper or a basketball player.
But if I take them to Gatorade, and they talk about consumer engagement, the kids never knew that job existed prior to that educational field trip. So, that`s what we do.
(APPLAUSE)
COLE: And we do it -- we do it basically -- we do it by selling hoodies and t-shirts online. So that`s kind of what we do.
HAYES: Thank you, thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: Commissioner -- Commissioner Boykin, tell -- tell me your name.
BOYKIN: Richard Boykin, Cook County Commissioner.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: You got some -- you got some fans here. You know, so we`ve been talking about like there`s this legacy of isolation, right?
So -- so, there was -- there`s structural policies put in place, there was redlining, there was restricted covenants. There were ways in which capital was starved from places and that has been layered upon itself for decades.
It has produced sort of pockets of concentrated poverty that happen in the city of Chicago. What would it look like if the society, and I mean America, made a decision that that was simply an unacceptable thing to happen?
BOYKIN: Look, I think that we have to make that decision. Our babies are dying, our communities are dying.
The reality of it is -- is that we must focus on parenting. If the federal government made a commitment to invest in parenting, look -- work with the faith-based community, work with the organizations that do professional parenting, we could turn this thing around.
A lot of it begins -- everything begins at home. And so these -- and -- and what we have here is really black people killing black people in many instances.
I mean, 80 percent of the people killed in the month of January were African Americans, so 46 -- 56 people killed, 46 African American, of the other 10, eight Latino, two whites.
And so, we got a serious crisis in the city of Chicago; it is a virtual state of emergency. We need federal assistance; we need additional FBI agents, DEA agents, ATF...
AUDIENCE: What?
BOYKIN: Policing, though, we can`t police our way out of poverty. I agree with that, but we need them to help solve this clearance rate.
We need -- we need to -- we got recycled killers.
Look, one of the things that -- one of the things -- one of the things that I did recently is I introduced the Neighborhood Revitalization Act, that would provide free homes for police officers, teachers, fire fighters, and paramedics, to live in these communities that are in danger, for five years, if they will live and work in those communities.
It does several things. One, we got 80,000 vacant lots and abandoned buildings in the city of Chicago, things that are boarded up. We gotta put those back on the tax roles; we gotta put professionals back in the community.
We got to revitalize and rebuild these communities. And what else it does, is it requires developers to use 30 percent of at-risk youth, 16-24 in those communities to actually do the rehab and the redevelopment.
(APPLAUSE)
HAYES: All right, Commissioner, thank you very much. I wanna -- I wanna just -- at the beginning of this -- at the beginning of this town hall, we came out here -- I`ve lived in Chicago for a while, learned to be a reporter in this -- in this great city.
And the first thing I said to these folks here -- and if you`re watching at home was, we were going to do this hour and everyone was going to walk away frustrated because we didn`t get to 1/100th of what this very complex place is about.
But, I hope for the people that have been -- that are outside of Chicago, who have watched this city be talked about rather than talked with, that you learned a little more about what this city is about, what`re the challenges it faces.
And it is not alone, it is something every major city in the country is facing right and that -- those challenges are going to intensify.
So, I want to thank you to the people of Chicago, to the folks came here, Deputy Mayor, Superindendent, Ameena Matthews, and Lori Lightfoot, thank you very much.
Thank you to everyone who participated and to the great city of Chicago and the Southside Cultural Center. Thank you for having us.
END
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