 | By Lynsea Garrison |
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 | | Sgt. Scott Watson of Flint, Mich.Scott Watson |
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In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, there has been a lot of talk about police reform: Calls to defund and dismantle departments, or to train better and to recruit wider. |
I wanted to ask a Black officer: Do you think these efforts will lead to meaningful change? So for Monday’s show, I called Scott Watson, an officer from Flint, Mich., and in our conversation, he was unconvinced. |
Defunding, he argued, has essentially been underway in Flint. The city’s police department is often cited as one of the most underfunded, underresourced and understaffed in the nation. In his 23 years on the force, Scott said he had seen salaries slashed, officers laid off and the department put under emergency management. |
As far as better training, he felt the problems were deeper than what an unconscious bias training could fix. “This is not a training issue,” Scott said. “This is a mindset.” |
So how do you reform a mindset? |
Scott said he didn’t know, but he was trying to focus on using intimate, interpersonal moments to model new ways of working — and to facilitate meaningful cultural change. |
One of those moments happened recently. |
A few months ago, according to Scott, a man was shot in the head outside a residence in Flint. Scott and one of his younger white colleagues roped off the crime scene. Inside the residence were three Black toddlers, Scott said. They were sleeping inside when the gunshots rang out. |
When their grandmother came to pick them up, the young white officer led her through the crime scene on the street and into the house, so that she could carry them out. |
Scott saw a teaching moment here. |
He pulled the officer aside and told him that by taking the grandmother through the crime scene, the officer was communicating that he was afraid. If he had instead gone inside to pick up the children and bring them out to her on the street, it would’ve made the children feel safe, and it would’ve made “the grandmother feel like these officers care.” |
“That would’ve spoken volumes,” Scott said. |
For Scott, it’s not necessarily the policies around body cameras, standardized unconscious bias training or adjustments to budgets that will change policing. It’s the moments that can’t be codified into policy. Moments that require honest and hard conversations between people — about bias, racism and work culture. And it’s those conversations that can make change so difficult. |
Since the interview with Scott aired, he said he had received a range of responses from within his law enforcement community. Some thought that his message was divisive, while others called it spot on. |
Among the Black officers who reached out to Scott, many felt that his experience mirrored their own. |
“It’s like I read their minds,” he said. “These are the things that they were thinking. These are things that they were feeling. And these are things that happened to them.” |
One female officer told Scott that she was listening to the interview while driving, and she had to pull over. Then she broke down and cried. |
She told Scott that his interview captured “everything that basically we’ve been afraid to say.” |
Talk to Lynsea on Twitter: @lynsea. |
 | | A protester in Minsk, Belarus.EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Living through the Arab Spring, I witnessed the story of my people gradually become lost in layers of distortion as worldwide coverage of the protests expanded. Political turmoil affects lives and livelihoods in intimate, devastating and mundane ways. But, often, that lived reality is reduced to the dry recalling of facts: the statistics of people protesting, prisoners detained and, sometimes, dictators toppled. |
So when glimpses of the widespread protests in Belarus reached my laptop screen in New York City, thousands of miles away, I began questioning what had been lost from this story — how it had morphed by the time it reached me. |
As we started thinking about how to approach this story on Wednesday’s episode, I wanted to learn about it from someone witnessing it firsthand. So I called my colleague Ivan Nechepurenko who was in Minsk, Belarus. He was able to locate this moment within the historical context of the region, and therefore explain the impact of these protests. Would the voices of protesters loosen the grip of Europe’s last dictator? Or would they be drowned out by the bullies of global geopolitics? |
Ivan also understood the reasoning on both sides. By going to rallies for and against President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Ivan enriched his perspective through the direct experiences of the people he engaged. Through these conversations, and the tape he recorded, we were able to capture the historical context alongside its lived effects. |
Behind abstract headlines about political unrest in a far-off nation, we discovered a story that was in a way familiar to us: one of greed, power struggles, proxy intervention and empire building. |
Although the revolution has been televised, the buildup has been lost. And that’s what we hoped to capture in this episode. |
Monday: “I haven’t seen real change yet.” We speak to Scott Watson, a Black officer from Flint, Mich., about his experience policing his own community. |
Tuesday: President Trump has been wielding law-and-order arguments against Joe Biden, daring him to fracture his fragile coalition of white moderate and Black voters. Alexander Burns on Biden’s rebuttal in Pittsburgh. |
Wednesday: In recent weeks, thousands have taken to the streets of Belarus, calling for the resignation of President Aleksandr Lukashenko. We speak to Ivan Nechepurenko about the president’s rise to power and how he plans to hold onto it. |
Thursday: In August, Jimmy Lai, a media tycoon in Hong Kong, was arrested under the city’s new national security law. Austin Ramzy and Tiffany May speak to the 71-year-old about his life, arrest and campaign for democracy. |
Friday: When the pandemic hit America, shows across the country went dark. A production of “Godspell” in western Massachusetts is trying to bring theater back to life. |
That’s it for The Daily newsletter. See you next week. |
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