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One summer afternoon in 2013,

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D.C. police detained,
questioned and searched

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a man who appeared suspicious
and potentially dangerous.

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This wasn't what I was wearing
the day of the detention,

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to be fair,

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but I have a picture of that as well.

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I know it's very frightening --

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try to remain calm.

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(Laughter)

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At this time,

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I was interning at the Public
Defender Service in Washington D.C.,

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and I was visiting a police
station for work.

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I was on my way out,

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and before I could make it to my car,

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two police cars pulled up
to block my exit,

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and an officer approached me from behind.

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He told me to stop,

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take my backpack off

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and put my hands on the police car
parked next to us.

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About a dozen officers
then gathered near us.

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All of them had handguns,

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some had assault rifles.

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They rifled through my backpack,

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they patted me down,

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they took pictures of me
spread on the police car

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and they laughed.

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And as all this was happening --

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as I was on the police car trying
to ignore the shaking in my legs,

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trying to think clearly
about what I should do --

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something stuck out to me as odd.

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When I look at myself in this photo,

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if I were to describe myself,

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I think I'd say something like,

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"19-year-old Indian male,

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bright T-shirt,

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wearing glasses."

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But they weren't including any
of these details into their police radios

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as they described me.

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They kept saying, "Middle Eastern
male with a backpack.

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Middle Eastern male with a backpack."

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And this description carried on
into their police reports.

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I never expected to be described
by my own government in these terms:

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"lurking ...

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nefarious ...

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terrorist."

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And the detention dragged on like this.

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They sent dogs trained to smell explosives
to sweep the area I'd been in.

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They called the federal government
to see if I was on any watch lists.

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They sent a couple of detectives
to cross-examine me on why,

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if I claimed I had nothing to hide,

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I wouldn't consent to a search of my car.

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And I could see they
weren't happy with me,

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but I felt I had no way of knowing
what they'd want to do next.

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At one point, the officer
who patted me down

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scanned the side of the police station
to see where the security camera was

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to see how much of this
was being recorded.

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And when he did that,

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it really sank in how completely
I was at their mercy.

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I think we're all normalized
from a young age

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to the idea of police officers
and arrests and handcuffs,

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so it's easy to forget how demeaning
and [coercive] a thing it is

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to seize control over
another person's body.

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I know it sounds like
the point of my story

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is how badly treated I was
because of my race --

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and yes, I don't think I would've been
detained if I were white --

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but actually what I have in mind
today is something else.

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What I have in mind is how
much worse things might've been

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if I weren't affluent.

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I mean, they thought I might be
trying to plant an explosive,

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and they investigated that possibility
for an hour-and-a-half,

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but I was never put in handcuffs,

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I was never taken to a jail cell.

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I think if I were from

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one of Washington D.C.'s
poor communities of color,

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and they thought I was
endangering officers' lives,

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things might've ended differently.

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And in fact,

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in our system,

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I think it's better
to be an affluent person

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suspected of trying
to blow up a police station

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than it is to be a poor person who's
suspected of much, much less than this.

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I want to give you an example
from my current work.

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Right now, I'm working for
a civil rights organization in D.C.

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called Equal Justice Under Law.

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Let me start by asking you all a question.

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How many of you have ever gotten
a parking ticket in your life?

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Raise your hand.

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Yeah, so have I.

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And when I had to pay it,

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it felt annoying and it felt bad,

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but I paid it and I moved on.

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I'm guessing most of you
have paid your tickets as well.

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But what would happen if you couldn't
afford the amount on the ticket

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and your family doesn't
have the money either?

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What happens then?

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Well, one thing that's not supposed
to happen under the law

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is you're not supposed to be
arrested and jailed

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simply because you can't afford to pay.

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That's illegal under federal law,

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but that's what local govenerments
across the country are doing

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to people who are poor.

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And so many of our lawsuits
at Equal Justice Under Law

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target these modern-day debtors' prisons.

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One of our cases is against
Ferguson, Missouri,

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and I know when I say Ferguson,

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many of you will think of police violence,

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but today I want to talk
about a different aspect

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of the relationship between
their police force and their citizens.

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Ferguson was issuing an average
of over two arrest warrants per person,

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per year,

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mostly for unpaid debt to the courts.

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When I imagine what that would feel like
if every time I left my house

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there was a chance a police officer
would run my license plate,

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see a warrant for unpaid debt,

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seize my body they way the did in D.C.

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and then take me to a jail cell,

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I feel a little sick.

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I've met many of the people in Ferguson
who have experienced this,

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and I've heard some of their stories.

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In Ferguson's jail,

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in each small cell there's
a bunk bed and a toilet,

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but they pack four people into each cell.

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So there'd be two people on the bunks
and two people on the floor,

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one with nowhere to go except
right next to the filthy toilet,

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which was never cleaned.

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In fact, the whole cell was never cleaned,

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so the floor and the walls were lined
with blood and mucus.

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No water to drink

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except coming out of a spigot
connected to the toilet.

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The water looked and tasted dirty,

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there was never enough food,

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never any showers.

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Women menstruating without
any hygiene products --

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no medical attention whatsoever.

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When I asked a woman
about medical attention,

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she laughed,

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and she said, "Oh, no no.

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The only attention you get 
from the guards in there is sexual."

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So, they'd take the debtors
to this place and they'd say,

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"We're not letting you leave until
you make a payment on your debt."

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And if you could --

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if you could call a family member who
could somehow come up with some money,

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then maybe you were out.

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If it was enough money,

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you were out.

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But if it wasn't,

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then you'd stay there for days or weeks,

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and every day the guards
would come down to the cells

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and haggle with the debtors about
the price of release that day.

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You'd stay until at some point the jail
would be booked to capacity,

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and they'd want to book someone new in,

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and at that point they'd think,

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OK, it's unlikely this person
can come up with the money,

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it's more likely this new person will,

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you're out, they're in,

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and the machine kept moving like that.

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I met a man who,

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nine years ago,

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was arrested for panhandling
in a Walgreens.

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He couldn't afford his fines
and his court fees from that case.

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When he was young he survived a house fire

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only because he jumped out
the third-story window to escape.

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But that fall left him
with damage to his brain

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and several parts of this body,

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including his leg.

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So he can't work,

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and he relies on social security
payments to survive.

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When I met him in his apartment,

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he had nothing of value there --

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not even food in his fridge.

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He's chronically hungry.

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He had nothing of value in his apartment
except a small piece of cardboard

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on which he'd written
the names of children.

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He cherished this a lot,

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he was happy to show it to me.

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But he can't pay his fines and fees
because he has nothing to give.

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In the last nine years,

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he's been arrested 13 times,

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and jailed for a total of 130 days
on that panhandling case.

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One of those stretches lasted 45 days.

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Just imagine spending from right now
until sometime in June

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in the place that I described to you
a few moments ago.

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He told me about all the suicide attempts
he's seen in Ferguson's jail.

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About the time a man found
a way to hang himself

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out of reach of the other inmates,

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so all they could do was yell
and yell and yell,

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trying to get the guards' attention

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so they could come down and cut him down.

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And he told me that it took the guards
over five minutes to respond,

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and when they came,

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the man was unconscious.

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So they called the paramedics
and the paramedics went to the cell.

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They said, "He'll be OK,"

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so they just left him there on the floor.

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I heard many stories like this
and they shouldn't have surprised me,

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because suicide is the single leading
cause of death in our local jails.

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This is related to the lack
of mental health care in our jails.

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I met a woman,

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single mother of three,

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making seven dollars an hour.

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She relies on food stamps
to feed herself and her children.

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About a decade ago,

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she got a couple of traffic tickets
and a minor theft charge,

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and she can't afford her fines
and fees on those cases.

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Since then, she's been jailed
about 10 times on those cases,

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but she has schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder,

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and she needs medication every day.

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She doesn't have access to those
medications in Ferguson's jail

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because no one has access
to their medications.

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She told me about what it was like
to spend two weeks in a cage,

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hallucinating people and shadows
and hearing voices,

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begging for the medication
that would make it all stop,

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only to be ignored.

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And this isn't anomalous either:

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thirty percent of women in our local jails
have serious mental health needs

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just like hers,

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but only one in six receive mental
health care while in jail.

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And so, I heard all these stories
about this grotesque dungeon

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that Ferguson was operating
for its debtors,

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and when it came time for me to actually
see it and to go visit Ferguson's jail,

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I'm not sure what I was expecting to see,

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00:08:51,928 --> 00:08:53,882
but I wasn't expecting this.

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It's an ordinary government building.

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It could be a post office or a school.

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It reminded me that these
illegal extortion schemes

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aren't being run somewhere in the shadows,

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they're being run out in the open
by our public officials.

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They're a matter of public policy.

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00:09:09,294 --> 00:09:12,156
And this reminded me
that poverty jailing in general,

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even outside the debtors' prison context,

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plays a very visible and central role
in our justice system.

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What I have in mind is our policy of bail.

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In our system,

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whether you're detained or free,

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pending trial,

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is not a matter of how dangerous you are,

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or how much of a flight risk you pose,

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it's a matter of whether you can afford
to post your bail amount.

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So Bill Cosby,

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whose bail was set a one million dollars,

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immediately writes the check

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and doesn't spend a second in a jail cell.

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But Sandra Bland,

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who died in jail,

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was only there because her family
was unable to come up with 500 dollars.

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In fact,

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there are half a million
Sandra Blands across the country.

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500,000 people who are in jail right now

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only because they can't
afford their bail amount.

250
00:09:51,678 --> 00:09:54,718
We're told that our jails
are places for criminals,

251
00:09:54,718 --> 00:09:56,754
but statistically that's not the case:

252
00:09:56,754 --> 00:10:01,078
three out of every five people
in jail right now are there pretrial.

253
00:10:01,078 --> 00:10:03,346
They haven't been convicted of any crime;

254
00:10:03,346 --> 00:10:05,857
they haven't pled guilty to any offense.

255
00:10:06,510 --> 00:10:07,877
Right here in San Francisco,

256
00:10:07,877 --> 00:10:11,290
85 percent of the inmates
in our jail in San Francisco

257
00:10:11,290 --> 00:10:13,057
are pretrial detainees.

258
00:10:13,057 --> 00:10:16,465
This means San Francisco is spending
something like 80 million dollars

259
00:10:16,465 --> 00:10:17,468
every year

260
00:10:17,468 --> 00:10:19,536
to fund pretrial detention.

261
00:10:22,058 --> 00:10:25,771
Many of these people who are in jail
only because they can't post bail

262
00:10:25,771 --> 00:10:28,087
are facing allegations so minor

263
00:10:28,087 --> 00:10:31,452
that the amount of time it would take
for them to sit waiting for trial

264
00:10:31,452 --> 00:10:34,394
is longer than the sentence
they would receive if convicted,

265
00:10:34,394 --> 00:10:36,645
which means they're guaranteed
to get out faster

266
00:10:36,645 --> 00:10:38,196
if they just plead guilty.

267
00:10:38,196 --> 00:10:39,778
So now the choice is,

268
00:10:39,778 --> 00:10:42,725
should I stay here in this horrible place,

269
00:10:42,725 --> 00:10:44,858
away from my family
and my dependents,

270
00:10:44,858 --> 00:10:47,358
almost guaranteed to lose my job,

271
00:10:47,358 --> 00:10:48,946
and then fight the charges,

272
00:10:48,946 --> 00:10:52,480
or should I just plead guilty to whatever
the prosecutor wants and get out?

273
00:10:52,480 --> 00:10:54,394
At this point they're
pretrial detainees,

274
00:10:54,394 --> 00:10:55,388
not criminals.

275
00:10:55,388 --> 00:10:57,005
But once they take that plea deal,

276
00:10:57,005 --> 00:10:58,257
we'll call them criminals,

277
00:10:58,257 --> 00:11:01,596
even though an affluent person
would never have been in this situation,

278
00:11:01,596 --> 00:11:04,465
because an affluent person
would have simply been bailed out.

279
00:11:04,465 --> 00:11:06,680
At this point you might be wondering,

280
00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:08,496
this guy's in the inspiration section,

281
00:11:08,496 --> 00:11:09,497
what is he doing --

282
00:11:09,497 --> 00:11:10,682
(Laughter)

283
00:11:10,682 --> 00:11:12,380
This is extremely depressing.

284
00:11:12,380 --> 00:11:13,792
I want my money back.

285
00:11:13,792 --> 00:11:14,795
(Laughter)

286
00:11:14,795 --> 00:11:17,165
But in actuality,

287
00:11:17,165 --> 00:11:21,690
I find talking about jailing much less
depressing than the alternative,

288
00:11:21,690 --> 00:11:24,076
because I think if we don't
talk about these issues

289
00:11:24,076 --> 00:11:26,518
and collectively change how
we think about jailing,

290
00:11:26,518 --> 00:11:27,992
at the end of all of our lives,

291
00:11:27,992 --> 00:11:31,088
we'll still have jails full of poor
people who don't belong there.

292
00:11:31,088 --> 00:11:32,620
That really is depressing to me.

293
00:11:32,620 --> 00:11:34,535
But what's exciting to me is the thought

294
00:11:34,535 --> 00:11:38,240
that these stories can moves us to think
about jailing in different terms.

295
00:11:38,240 --> 00:11:41,635
Not in sterile policy terms
like "mass incarceration,

296
00:11:41,635 --> 00:11:43,645
or sentencing of nonviolent offenders,"

297
00:11:43,645 --> 00:11:44,906
but in human terms.

298
00:11:44,906 --> 00:11:49,604
When we put a human being in a cage
for days, or weeks, or months,

299
00:11:49,604 --> 00:11:50,999
or even years,

300
00:11:50,999 --> 00:11:53,510
what are we doing
to that person's mind and body?

301
00:11:53,510 --> 00:11:56,268
Under what conditions are we
really willing to do that?

302
00:11:56,594 --> 00:11:59,450
And so if starting with a few
hundred of us in this room,

303
00:11:59,450 --> 00:12:02,466
we can commit to thinking about
jailing in this different light,

304
00:12:02,466 --> 00:12:05,713
then we can undo that normalization
I was referring to earlier.

305
00:12:06,050 --> 00:12:07,753
If I leave you with anything today,

306
00:12:07,753 --> 00:12:09,093
I hope it's with the thought

307
00:12:09,093 --> 00:12:11,358
that if want anything
to fundamentally change --

308
00:12:11,358 --> 00:12:14,993
not just to reform our policies
on bail and fines and fees --

309
00:12:14,993 --> 00:12:17,902
but also to make sure that whatever
new policies replace those

310
00:12:17,902 --> 00:12:20,908
don't punish the poor and the marginalized
in their own new way.

311
00:12:20,908 --> 00:12:22,801
If we want that kind of change,

312
00:12:22,801 --> 00:12:25,334
then this shift in thinking
is required of each of us.

313
00:12:25,334 --> 00:12:26,401
Thank you.

314
00:12:26,401 --> 00:12:27,561
(Applause)