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For many of us TONY BOUZA’S forever been an enigma. This erudite retired cop and former Minneapolis Police Chief has blown most of us away with his extraordinary command of the language and the kind of candor that makes most Minnesotans squirm. This is not a state given easily to the sort of directness Tony Bouza’s pretty much always brought to the table.

But, for some us, too, a cop is a cop – and our observations of the police culture, especially as lived inside the Minneapolis Department over these many decades has led to some serious distrust of that culture’s propensity for violence, deception and self-preservation, often at the cost of innocent lives. An entire organization dedicated to stopping police brutality thrives in Minneapolis  with no shortage of cases to protest almost every week.

At first blush, Bouza’s appointment by Mayor Don Fraser in 1980, it was thought that, together, the guys would either watch the Minneapolis cops clean themselves up or be cleansed by these two brilliant politicians. Neither happened, for the most part, and certainly not for long. The Minneapolis Police Department remains one of the most notorious nests of thumpers and liars and those who protect them by either covering up their crimes and misdemeanors (and felonies) or failing to report the transgressions they know are illegal. Bouza’s only one of several former cops to come forward with the ugly truths about policing.

Now comes a little tome in which now 84-year-old Tony Bouza, already an author of some note, has compiled a captivating series of essays on what he says have been Lessons Learned (Southside Pride, June, 2012). His opening piece on one of his most admired adversaries, the late anti-war activist, Marv Davidov, is similar to the eulogy he delivered at Marv’s life celebration to a packed house at St. Thomas University over a year ago, and the picture of them facing down each other through Honeywell’s Defense fences is a well-staged classic. Bouza’s wife Erica was on the other side of that fence with Davidov.

Bouza winds up this booklet of memories with a scathing denunciation of what he calls the out-of-control police culture in America, tracing his credibility to make such a judgment across his career and retirement years – just shy of 60 of them as this is written. We’ll explore his views on this subject in depth.

In between those bookends of columns are a bit under 100 pages of newsprint containing his observations on the passing scenes of life as he’s encountered it from his days as a rookie in New York City where his native Spanish language came in handy during a tale of real intrigue he recounts as an indictment of dictators everywhere through his stints in other cities, even a treatise on Minnesotans and Media and Picking Police Chiefs and Racial Profiling.

Well, you get the idea. It’s hard to say if anyone else’s stream of consciousness writing on such a variety of topics would fascinate as much as Tony’s does, but it’s an unlikely match at best.

I hope we can do justice to it by spending an hour with Tony Bouza this week on TruthToTell. In any event, TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI will try and over as many of the better bases in Bouza’s book as possible.

FORMER MINNEAPOLIS POLICE CHIEF TONY BOUZA

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The world's gone mad.

No, make that the United States of America. With nearly 14,000 people dying from gun-related killings every year in this country – and lately we've witnessed some blatantly public series of killings - too often than not by ex-military personnel - almost every week for months now, outspoken voices in almost every sector - but Washington - are calling for some - SOME – kind of control over the incredible arsenals being sold and acquired as in no other nation in the world.

Consider, as if you could forget:

There have been at least 60 mass killings in the last 30 years—and most of the killers got their guns legally.

In addition to the shootings occurring in cities across the US every day in pockets of urban poverty, where the law of desperate, resigned and survivalist reigns, demanding an eye for an eye in street terms, come these more visible realities that have thus far moved no one to action:

• Five-year-old Nizzel George was shot and killed through the wall while he slept on a couch in his grandmother's north Minneapolis home. Two teenagers have been charged with murder in connection with the shooting. Even now, the victim’s and accused’s families have been at each other’s throats inside and outside the courtroom.
• And recently, Malcolm Jackson, 16, was sent to prison for 25 years for the gun murder of Trequan Sykes, 16.
• An 8-year-old rural Dassel boy (condition unknown at this moment) was taken by ambulance to Meeker Memorial Hospital and later transported to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis on Thursday afternoon after he was accidentally shot in the head at his home with a black powder .44-caliber handgun by a sibling. The bullet had ricocheted off the ground and then hit the boy in the head.
• After work on Aug 14, Hamline University computer engineer student Aung Thu Bo and his girlfriend went to meet Steven Lewis, a convicted felon at a public location to buy a iPhone listed for sale on Craigslist, his mother said. Steven E. Lewis, 26, of Maplewood was charged in Ramsey County District Court with second-degree murder and aggravated robbery in connection.

• We still don't know precisely what led a radical right gunman to murder six people at a Sikh temple in Milwaukee slightly over a week ago. The murders were an assault on peace, and on a religion that values complete equality and non-confrontation and which gives women equal status.
• A disgruntled former apparel designer, 58-year-old Jeffrey Johnson, was killed August 24 in a hail of police gunfire in front of the Empire State Building after he shot and killed a co-worker and engaged in a gun battle with two officers. At least nine others were wounded in the incident as the officers unloaded 14 rounds at the gunman, who apparently turned his weapon against them in one of Manhattan's busiest neighborhoods.  The violence erupted just as visitors began to queue up to ascend the famous New York skyscraper.
• Just this past Thursday or Friday, three more people died after an employee at the Old Bridge, NJ, Pathmark store, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and an automatic pistol opened fire inside the store early this morning, killing two young store workers before turning one of the weapons on himself.
• James Holmes murders 12 moviegoers and wounds umpteen others in a Colorado movie theater showing a Batman film last month.

• The January 8, 2011, wounding of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson (not to mention the several bystanders – some children – who were killed).

• Then – all the school shootings and the McDonald’s massacre – over and over in many parts of the country. The mentally ill Army officer at Fort Hood, Texas. All over the last decade or so.

Deadly weapons – guns of every shape and character and capability – are amazingly simple to buy or acquire.

As one commentator extolled, the hate and intolerance in a nation built on the precepts of equality and diversity are an equal threat, and, by extension, to our very democracy itself.

And not a whimper from this President or any of the 435 Congressman cowering from the NRA as if giving license to more of the truly sick men settling grudges with one of the - get this now - 8,500,000 guns being made here or imported EVERY YEAR in this country. Japan - who kicked off the Pacific Theater of World War II with its very successful attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 now BANS firearms for its millions of citizens and there are TWO gun-related killings there per year.

More than 129,817 federally licensed firearms dealers peddle these weapons, according to the latest Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) numbers (Aug. 1) – almost as many dealers as there are grocery stores in the United States. Of those, 51,438 are retail gun stores, 7,356 are pawn shops and 61,562 are collectors (who buy and sell guns on a regular basis). This is not to mention the unlicensed and unregulated sales of weapons at gun shows, thousands sold without required background checks.

Needless to say, as so many observers have noted: gun murders – none of them in defense of hearth and home, as the conceal and carry bunch insist justifies the freedom to wield weapons of indiscriminate destruction – have become epidemic in the United States – the fourth highest rate of gun fatalities on the planet – and the highest among the top industrial nations by the thousands.

Public support for reform of gun laws seesaws back and forth – waxes and wanes – as one of the very public mass killings is first reported, then moves off the front page. Not so with those up for election this year – and that’s just about every office in the land, except some governors, including Minnesota’s. What might happen once the General Election is behind them – and us – is anyone’s guess. Will courage not present now suddenly surface after November 4^th?

But the sheer frequency of such episodes now seems to be taking hold of reason among the masses – likely, even, among supporters of the Second Amendment’s so-called right to bear arms. The question may be whether the NRA’s hammerlock on the nation’s elected officials and other policymakers has been loosened by the rapidly increasing carnage by possibly deranged young and not-so-young men (all of them thus far are men), most of whom seem to have served on the killing fields of one war or another and have come home in a deadly state of mind.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with two of those active and immersed in the area of gun ownership and misuse:

GUESTS:

HEATHER MARTENS – President, ProtectMinnesota (or Citizens for a Safer Minnesota).

STATE SEN. JOHN HARRINGTON – newly appointed Chief of the Metropolitan Transit Police; former Chief of Police for St. Paul, MN; and Founder/Board Chair, Ujamaa Place (for retrieving young African American men from a downward spiral and breeding success).

Remember – call and join the conversation – 612-341-0980 – or Tweet us @TTTAndyDriscoll or post on TruthToTell’s Facebook page.

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Do we have the slightest notion how deeply divided this country remains regarding race and, of course, class?

One wonders, when it costs so much to be racist and divisive and mean.

Do we at all understand what the criminal justice system has done to accommodate the bias, to feed the troll of the supremacy whites feel toward people of color – especially Blacks, Latinos and American Indians?

One wonders, when we watch those charged with serving and protecting all of us, the police in fact zero in on people of color for ticketing and arrests (think racial profiling, and “driving while Black” and the hundreds of captured Rodney King-style videos and documented stories of police abuses dating to the pre-Civil War days up to the present day), and those responsible for charging and prosecuting crime disproportionately seek greater punishment and fewer plea bargains for Black men, and judges responsible for the fair dispensation of punishment, send more men and women of color to prison than many whites who have committed similar crimes.

In this light, why would anyone wonder why so many young men of color, many without hope and the stability complete families and jobs and an equal education system should not eventually see how incarceration might well become a rite of passage, something to boast about, as so many do, and thus so willing to serve time when they belong in school or a job or certainly at home.

Then, when these inmates (mostly men) are finally freed, they’re stymied by stigma and a felony record from renting an apartment or home, from working a decent job that would keep them from returning.

Why would we question why they eventually go back in? Probably for a drug violation like the huge percentage of their brothers and sisters, usually using, and re-addicted.

As Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, and the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” writes:

“Convictions for non-violent crimes and relatively minor drug offenses — mostly possession, not sale — have accounted for the bulk of the increase in the prison population since the mid-1980s.

African-Americans are far more likely to get prison sentences for drug offenses than white offenders, even though studies have consistently shown that they are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites.”

Let us hasten to add here that laws were clearly written to inordinately penalize Blacks for their likely use of crack cocaine while penalties for the powdered version of cocaine more often favored by whites were one-tenth of those for crack in the certain knowledge that there is no discernible difference between the forms and that Blacks engaged in more crack use.

Those disparities are but one of many in the criminal justice system.

Since 1980, this nation’s total state and federal prison population has risen from roughly a half-million prisoners to well over 2.3 million as of 2008. That is 1 of every 100 Americans now behind bars, more than any other first-tier country. By age 23, about one third of young people will have been arrested for a crime greater than a traffic violation.

At least 40 percent of these inmates were black, 35 percent were white, and 20 percent were Hispanic (Harrison & Beck 2006). Sixty percent are Black or Latino. Blacks, in other words, comprise about 12 percent of the U.S. population but two-fifths of the prison population.

The disparities are even more dramatic for males, and particularly for males in their twenties and thirties. In 2005, 8.1 percent of all black males age 25 to 29 were in prison, compared to 2.6 percent of Hispanic males and 1.1 percent of white males. Although the absolute numbers are much smaller, the pattern for females is similar. (emphasis mine)*

Moreover, while in prison, inmates are expected to work for all but slave wages for corporations that contract with the prison system to manufacture various goods, among them furniture. This is another program entirely.

The numbers are there for all to see and it’s a shameful commentary on everything we’ve ever claimed to hold dear about our country’s stated commitment to both the common welfare and equality and justice under the law.

Hell, even Newt Gingrich and other conservatives are now decrying the rate of imprisonment and they, of course, see this as both a blot on the nation’s so-called commitment to a stable society, but also, of course, the inordinate costs that have grown out of a long-developed era of Republican “tough on crime” initiatives at the state and federal level. Their recommendations for change mirror those of progressive liberals.

Minnesota is no exception to this system, although some advancements have been made, thanks to the Second Chance Coalition, like removing check-offs from employment applications that force job seekers to admit that they’ve been convicted of a felony. This is often the insuperable barrier to that job.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with one-time law enforcement, incarceration and post-incarceration advocates and a psychologist about their take on these horrendous conditions, the toll they’re taking not just on the young men and the Black and other communities of color, but on society as a whole, and what we can possibly do about these disparities that often reflect the culture itself.

GUESTS:

STATE SEN. JOHN HARRINGTON (DFL-St. Paul) -Judiciary and Public Safety Committee; former St. Paul Police Chief

SARAH CATHERINE WALKER - COO, 180 Degrees; Cofounder/Chair, Second Chance Coalition

JESSE MASON, PhD - Psychologist; Psychology Professor and Director of the African American Male Education Empowerment (AME) Program and Coordinator of the Student African American Brotherhood Initiative at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC)

JONATHAN MAURER-JONES – Program Manager, Democracy & Justice 4 All, TakeAction/Minnesota

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* Brett E. Garland, Cassia Spohn, and Eric J. Wodahl: “Racial Disproportionality in the American Prison Population: Using the Blumstein Method to Address the Critical Race and Justice Issue of the 21st Century”, (Justice Policy Journal, Volume 5 – No. 2 – Fall 2008)

OTHER LINKS:

Remember – call and join the conversation – 612-341-0980 – or Tweet us @TTTAndyDriscoll or post on TruthToTell’s Facebook page.

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Back in the 1970s, a monumental landmark court case unlocked the doors of this country’s state hospitals and other institutions housing – more like warehousing – hundreds of thousands, perhaps a couple million mentally ill men and women on the strength of a new standard of commitment: that anyone not posing a danger to themselves or others could not be forced into what was essentially incarceration of people with mental illnesses. The court told the system to fix itself.

It never really did.

What the politicians failed to do was follow up on mandates calling for community-based housing and treatment facilities and services that could help treat and shelter people afflicted with such persistent illnesses as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder (once called manic depression), especially those that, under serious circumstances could result in erratic and dangerous behavior or outbursts – especially those who stopped the treatments that stabilized their brain chemistry.

Instead, many of those millions were often left homeless and/or unemployable, therefore unable to cope in an amorphous world where others avoided contact or responded violently to the unstable expressions of their illnesses. For whatever reason, many of those saddled with bi-polar disorder cease taking their meds when they start to feel “normal,” and find themselves back in the wide swings of mood that characterize bi-polar disorder. The manic phase can be intoxicating and the depressive phase often suicidal or violent. The mental illnesses most at risk (some may not seem dangerous)*:

All cases of schizophrenia (a psychotic disorder)

Severe cases of major depression and bipolar disorder (mood disorders)

Severe cases of panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (anxiety disorders)

Severe cases of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (typically, a childhood disorder)

Severe cases of anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder).

*(Timothy A. Kelly (2002) "A Policymaker’s Guide to Mental Illness.” Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation.)

 Such has been the case with several mentally ill citizens of communities across the country facing down police officers all too ready to react with fatal or deadly force. Some of this is contrived – a method of suicide by cop – i.e., intentional death by confrontation with police officers they know will shoot to kill if a weapon is brandished or they feel threatened by anyone advancing on them.

One case of the “quick-draw” killing of a mentally ill Minneapolis woman actually resulted in some serious retrospection by the officers involved and resulted in the formation of a foundation designed to stave off such fatal clashes between cops and the mentally ill they confront through training – Crisis Intervention Teams – or CIT. That foundation – the Barbara Schneider Foundation – born out of the death twelve years ago of an otherwise respected and active community person who died in the midst of a psychotic episode when police responded to complaints about excessive noise from an apartment and came face-to-face with a distraught Schneider wielding a knife. One of the cops involved, Minneapolis Police Sgt. William Palmer, remembered all too well 10 years later how he felt forced to respond with deadly force.

Police killings of mentally ill citizens (*EDP = emotionally disturbed person) continue to occur – and, of course, some cops can be killed in the process as well:

Ki Yang, 46, St. Paul  - shot, 2003. Suffered from schizophrenia and had a history of violent episodes

David Cornelius Smith, 28 – Bipolar - Tasered 2010 by Minneapolis police–died twice at scene, died 10 days later

James Ludwig, Vietnam vet, homeless and mentally ill (emotionally disturbed), surrounded and shot to death by St. Paul Police 1993

Officer Richard Francis – 27-yr veteran Chicago cop – shot while trying to subdue an EDP*

Andrew Hanlon, 20 – Irish immigrant – shot to death by Silverton, Ore. Cop claiming threat

Francisco Martes, 40 – homeless EDP – shot dead after wielding a knife around a cop

Kelly Thomas, 37 – homeless w/ schizophrenia - tasered and beaten to death by six Fullerton, CA cops

Craig Edward Prescott, 38 – bi-polar former sheriff’s deputy tasered, water-balled and crushed in his cell by 8 other deputies – April 2009

Pierre Abernathy – a mentally ill citizen of San Antonio, Texas – was tased and beaten to death by a group of at least six police officers on August 4, 2011

The list goes on. Mostly men, often homeless.

Questions persist about why the police, as an institution and culture cannot or will not make as part of their earliest training methods to subdue mentally ill and agitated men and women without killing. They have the armor and they have the firepower – why not the skill?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with two representatives of the Barbara Schneider Foundation in search of some answers.

Other Story Links:

James Ludwig Court Case

The Prison System as a Gulag for People with Serious Mental Illness

Center for Problem-Oriented Policing

Responses to the Problem of People with Mental Illness

Newsweek article: Cops and the Mentally Ill

GUESTS:

 MARK ANDERSON, Executive Director, Barbara Schneider Foundation

RENEE JENSON, Community Collaborations Coordinator, Barbara Schneider Foundation

WITHDRAWN: Representative of Hennepin County Community Corrections Dept.