-
Not Synced
One summer afternoon in 2013,
-
Not Synced
D.C. police detained,
questioned and searched
-
Not Synced
a man who appeared suspicious
and potentially dangerous.
-
Not Synced
This wasn't what I was wearing
the day of the detention,
-
Not Synced
to be fair,
-
Not Synced
but I have a picture of that as well.
-
Not Synced
I know it's very frightening --
-
Not Synced
try to remain calm.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
At this time,
-
Not Synced
I was interning at the public
defender's office
-
Not Synced
in Washington DC,
-
Not Synced
and I was visiting a police
station for work.
-
Not Synced
I was on my way out,
-
Not Synced
and before I could make it to my car,
-
Not Synced
two police cars pulled up
to block my exit,
-
Not Synced
and an officer approached me from behind.
-
Not Synced
He told me to stop,
-
Not Synced
take my backpack off
-
Not Synced
and put my hands on the police car
parked next to us.
-
Not Synced
About a dozen officers
then gathered near us.
-
Not Synced
All of them had handguns,
-
Not Synced
some had assault rifles.
-
Not Synced
They rifled through my backpack,
-
Not Synced
they patted me down,
-
Not Synced
they took pictures of me
spread on the police car
-
Not Synced
and they laughed.
-
Not Synced
And as all this was happeneing,
-
Not Synced
as I was on the police car trying
to ignore the shaking in my legs,
-
Not Synced
trying to think clearly about
what I should do,
-
Not Synced
something stuck out to me as odd.
-
Not Synced
When I look at myself in this photo,
-
Not Synced
if I were to describe myself,
-
Not Synced
I think I'd say something like,
-
Not Synced
"19-year-old, Indian male,
-
Not Synced
bright T-Shirt,
-
Not Synced
wearing glasses."
-
Not Synced
But they weren't including any
of these details into their police radios
-
Not Synced
as they described me.
-
Not Synced
They kept saying, "Middle Eastern
male with a backpack.
-
Not Synced
Middle Eastern male with a backpack."
-
Not Synced
And this description carried on
into their police reports.
-
Not Synced
I never expected to be described
by my own government in these terms:
-
Not Synced
"lurking ...
-
Not Synced
nefarious ...
-
Not Synced
terrorist."
-
Not Synced
And the detention dragged on like this.
-
Not Synced
They sent dogs trying to smell explosives
to sweep the area I'd been in.
-
Not Synced
They called the federal government
to see if I was on any watch list.
-
Not Synced
They sent a couple of detectives
to cross examine me
-
Not Synced
on why if I claimed I had nothing to hide,
-
Not Synced
I wouldn't consent to search of my car.
-
Not Synced
And I could see they
weren't happy with me,
-
Not Synced
but I felt I had no way of knowing
what they'd want to do next.
-
Not Synced
At one point, the officer
who patted me down
-
Not Synced
scanned the side of the police station
to see where the security camera was --
-
Not Synced
to see how much of this
was being recorded.
-
Not Synced
And when he did that,
-
Not Synced
it really sank in how completely
I was at their mercy.
-
Not Synced
I think we're all normalized
from a young age
-
Not Synced
to the idea of police officers
and arrests and handcuffs,
-
Not Synced
so it's easy to forget how demeaning
and coercive at thing it is
-
Not Synced
to seize control over
another person's body.
-
Not Synced
I know it sounds like
the point of my story
-
Not Synced
is how badly treated I was
because of my race --
-
Not Synced
and yes, I don't think I would've been
detained if I were white --
-
Not Synced
but actually what I have in mind
today is something else.
-
Not Synced
What I have in mind
-
Not Synced
is how much worse things
might've been if I weren't affluent.
-
Not Synced
I mean, they thought I might be
trying to plant an explosive,
-
Not Synced
and they investigated that possibility
for an hour-and-a-half,
-
Not Synced
but I was never put in handcuffs,
-
Not Synced
I was never taken to a jail cell.
-
Not Synced
I think if I were from of Washington DC's
poor communities of color,
-
Not Synced
and they thought I was
endangering officers' lives,
-
Not Synced
things might have ended differently,
-
Not Synced
and in fact,
-
Not Synced
in our system I think it's better
to be an affluent person
-
Not Synced
suspected of trying
to blow up a police station
-
Not Synced
than it is to be a poor person who's
suspected of much, much less than this.
-
Not Synced
I want to give you an example
from my current work.
-
Not Synced
Right now, I'm working for
a civil rights organization in DC
-
Not Synced
called Equal Justice Under Law.
-
Not Synced
Let me start by asking you all a question.
-
Not Synced
How many of you have ever gotten
a parking ticket in your life?
-
Not Synced
Raise your hand.
-
Not Synced
Yeah, so have I.
-
Not Synced
And when I had to pay it,
-
Not Synced
it felt annoying and it felt bad,
-
Not Synced
but I paid it and I moved on.
-
Not Synced
I'm guessing most of you have paid
your tickets as well.
-
Not Synced
But what would happen if you couldn't
afford the amount on the ticket
-
Not Synced
and your family doesn't have
the money either?
-
Not Synced
What happens then?
-
Not Synced
Well, one thing that's not supposed
to happen under the law
-
Not Synced
is you're not supposed to be
arrested and jailed
-
Not Synced
simply because you can't afford to pay.
-
Not Synced
That's illegal under federal law,
-
Not Synced
but that's what local govenerments
across the country are doing
-
Not Synced
to people who are poor.
-
Not Synced
And so many of our lawsuits
at Equal Justice Under Law
-
Not Synced
target these modern-day debtor's prisons.
-
Not Synced
One of our cases is against
Ferguson, Missouri,
-
Not Synced
and I know when I say Ferguson,
-
Not Synced
many of you will think of police violence,
-
Not Synced
but today I want to talk about
a different aspect
-
Not Synced
of the relationship between
the police force and their citizens.
-
Not Synced
Ferguson was issuing an average
of over two arrest warrants per person,
-
Not Synced
per year,
-
Not Synced
mostly for unpaid debt for the courts.
-
Not Synced
When I imagine what that would feel like
if every time I left my house
-
Not Synced
there was a chance a police officer
would run my license plate,
-
Not Synced
see a warrant for unpaid debt,
-
Not Synced
seize my body they way the did in DC
-
Not Synced
and then take me to a jail cell,
-
Not Synced
I feel a little sick.
-
Not Synced
I've met many of the people in Ferguson
who have experienced this,
-
Not Synced
and I've heard some of their stories.
-
Not Synced
In Ferguson's jail,
-
Not Synced
in each small cell there's
a bunk bed and a toilet,
-
Not Synced
but they pack four people into each cell.
-
Not Synced
So there'd be two people on the bunks
and two people on the floor,
-
Not Synced
one with nowhere to go except
right next to the filthy toilet
-
Not Synced
which was never cleaned.
-
Not Synced
In fact the whole cell was never cleaned,
-
Not Synced
so the floor and the walls were lined
with blood and mucus.
-
Not Synced
No water to drink
-
Not Synced
except coming out of the spigot
connected to the toilet.
-
Not Synced
The water looked and tasted dirty,
-
Not Synced
there was never enough food,
-
Not Synced
never any showers.
-
Not Synced
Women menstruating without
any hygiene products --
-
Not Synced
no medical attention whatsoever.
-
Not Synced
When I asked a woman
about medical attention,
-
Not Synced
she laughed,
-
Not Synced
and she said, "Oh, no no.
-
Not Synced
The only attention you get
from the guards in there is sexual."
-
Not Synced
So, they'd take the debtors
to this place and they'd say,
-
Not Synced
"We're not letting you leave until
you make a payment on your debt."
-
Not Synced
And if you could --
-
Not Synced
if you could call a family member who
could somehow come up with some money,
-
Not Synced
then maybe you were out.
-
Not Synced
If it was enough money,
-
Not Synced
you were out.
-
Not Synced
But if it wasn't,
-
Not Synced
then you'd stay there for days or weeks,
-
Not Synced
and every day the guards
would come down to the cells
-
Not Synced
and haggle with the debtors about
the price of release that day.
-
Not Synced
You'd stay until at some point the jail
would be booked to capacity,
-
Not Synced
and they'd want to book someone new in,
-
Not Synced
and at that point they'd think,
-
Not Synced
OK, it's unlikely this person
can come up with the money,
-
Not Synced
it's more likely this new person will,
-
Not Synced
you're out, they're in,
-
Not Synced
and the machine kept moving like that.
-
Not Synced
I met a man who,
-
Not Synced
nine years ago,
-
Not Synced
was arrested for panhandling
in a Walgreens.
-
Not Synced
He couldn't afford his fines
and his court fees from that case.
-
Not Synced
When he was young he survived a house fire
-
Not Synced
only because he jumped out
a third-story window to escape.
-
Not Synced
But that fall left him
with damage to his brain
-
Not Synced
and several parts of this body,
-
Not Synced
including his leg.
-
Not Synced
So he can't work,
-
Not Synced
and he relies on social security
payments to survive.
-
Not Synced
When I met him in his apartment,
-
Not Synced
he had nothing of value there --
-
Not Synced
not even food in his fridge.
-
Not Synced
He was chronically hungry.
-
Not Synced
He had nothing of value in his apartment
except a small piece of cardboard
-
Not Synced
on which he'd written
the names of children.
-
Not Synced
He cherished this a lot,
-
Not Synced
he was happy to show it to me.
-
Not Synced
But he can't pay his fines and fees
because he has nothing to give.
-
Not Synced
In the last nine years,
-
Not Synced
he's been arrested 13 times,
-
Not Synced
and jailed for 130 days
on that panhandling case.
-
Not Synced
One of those stretches lasted 45 days.
-
Not Synced
Just imagine spending from right now
until sometime in June
-
Not Synced
in the place that I described to you
a few moments ago.
-
Not Synced
He told me about all the suicide attempts
he's seen in Ferguson's jail.
-
Not Synced
About the time a man found
a way to hang himself
-
Not Synced
out of reach of the other inmates,
-
Not Synced
so all they could do was yell
and yell and yell,
-
Not Synced
trying to get the guard's attention
-
Not Synced
so they could come down and cut him down.
-
Not Synced
And he told me that it took the guards
over five minutes to respond,
-
Not Synced
and when they came,
-
Not Synced
they man was unconcious,
-
Not Synced
so they called the paramedics
and the paramedics went to the cell.
-
Not Synced
They said, "He'll be OK,"
-
Not Synced
so they just left him there on the floor.
-
Not Synced
I heard many stories like this
and they shouldn't have surprised me,
-
Not Synced
because suicide is the single leading
cause of death in our local jails.
-
Not Synced
This is related to the lack
of mental healthcare in our jails.
-
Not Synced
I met a woman,
-
Not Synced
a single mother of three,
-
Not Synced
making seven dollars an hour.
-
Not Synced
She relies on food stamps to feed
herself and her children.
-
Not Synced
About a decade ago,
-
Not Synced
she got a couple of traffic tickets
and a minor theft charge,
-
Not Synced
and she can't afford her fines
and fees on those cases.
-
Not Synced
Since then, she's been jailed
about 10 times on those cases,
-
Not Synced
but she has schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder,
-
Not Synced
and she needs medication every day.
-
Not Synced
She doesn't have access to those
medications in Ferguson's jail
-
Not Synced
because no one has access
to their medications.
-
Not Synced
As she told me about what it was like
to spend two weeks in a cage,
-
Not Synced
hallucinating people and shadows
and hearing voices,
-
Not Synced
begging for the medication
that would make it all stop,
-
Not Synced
only to be ignored.
-
Not Synced
And this is anomalous either:
-
Not Synced
thirty percent of women in our local jails
have serious mental health needs
-
Not Synced
just like hers,
-
Not Synced
but only one in six receive mental
health care while in jail.
-
Not Synced
And so, I heard all these stories
about this grotesque dungeon
-
Not Synced
that Ferguson was operating
for its debtors,
-
Not Synced
and when it came time for me to actually
see it and to go visit Ferguson's jail,
-
Not Synced
I'm not sure what I was expecting to see,
-
Not Synced
but I wasn't expecting this.
-
Not Synced
It's an ordinary governement building,
-
Not Synced
it could be a Post office or a school.
-
Not Synced
It reminded me that these
illegal extortion schemes
-
Not Synced
aren't being run somewhere in the shadows,
-
Not Synced
they're being run out in the open
by our public officials.
-
Not Synced
They're a matter of public policy.
-
Not Synced
And this reminded me
that poverty jailing in general,
-
Not Synced
even outside the debtors prison context,
-
Not Synced
plays a very visible and central role
in our justice system.
-
Not Synced
What I have in mind is our policy of bail.
-
Not Synced
In our system,
-
Not Synced
whether you're detained or free,
-
Not Synced
pending trial,
-
Not Synced
is not a matter of how dangerous you are
or how much of a flight risk you pose,
-
Not Synced
it's a matter of whether you can afford
to post your bail amount.
-
Not Synced
So Bill Cosby,
-
Not Synced
whose bail was set a one million dollars,
-
Not Synced
immediately writes the check
-
Not Synced
and doesn't spend a second in a jail cell.
-
Not Synced
But Sandra Bland,
-
Not Synced
who died in jail,
-
Not Synced
was only there because her family
was unable to come up with 500 dollars.
-
Not Synced
In fact,
-
Not Synced
there are half a million Sandra Blands
across the country.
-
Not Synced
500,000 people who are in jail right now
-
Not Synced
only because they can't
afford their bail amount.
-
Not Synced
We're told that our jails
are places for criminals,
-
Not Synced
but statistically that's not the case:
-
Not Synced
three out of every five people
in jail right now
-
Not Synced
are there pre-trial.
-
Not Synced
They haven't been convicted of any crime,
-
Not Synced
they haven't plead guilty to any offense.
-
Not Synced
Right here in San Francisco,
-
Not Synced
85 percent of the inmates
in our jail in San Francisco
-
Not Synced
are pre-trial detainees.
-
Not Synced
This means San Francisco is spending
something like 80 million dollars
-
Not Synced
every year
-
Not Synced
to fund pre-trial detention.
-
Not Synced
Many of these people who are in jail
only because they can't post bail
-
Not Synced
are facing allegations to minor
-
Not Synced
that the amount of time it would take
for them to sit waiting for trial
-
Not Synced
is longer than the sentence they
would receive if convicted,
-
Not Synced
which means they're guaranteed
to get out faster
-
Not Synced
if they just plead guilty.
-
Not Synced
So now the choice is,
-
Not Synced
should I stay here in this horrible place,
-
Not Synced
away from my family
and my dependents,
-
Not Synced
almost guaranteed to lose my job,
-
Not Synced
and then fight charges,
-
Not Synced
or should I just plead guilty
to whatever the prosecutor wants
-
Not Synced
and get out?
-
Not Synced
And at this point
they're pre-trial detainees,
-
Not Synced
not criminals.
-
Not Synced
But once they take that plea deal,
-
Not Synced
we'll call them criminals,
-
Not Synced
even though an affluent person would
never have been in this situation,
-
Not Synced
because an affluent person would
have simply been bailed out.
-
Not Synced
At this point you might be wondering,
-
Not Synced
this guy's in the inspiration section,
-
Not Synced
what is he doing --
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
This is extremely depressing.
-
Not Synced
I want my money back.
-
Not Synced
(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
But in actuality,
-
Not Synced
I find talking about jailing much less
depressing than the alternative,
-
Not Synced
because I think if we don't
talk about these issues
-
Not Synced
and collectively change how
we think about jailing,
-
Not Synced
at the end of all of our lives,
-
Not Synced
we'll still have jails full of poor
people who don't belong there.
-
Not Synced
That really is depressing to me.
-
Not Synced
But what's exciting to me is the thought
-
Not Synced
that these stories can moves us to think
about jailing in different terms.
-
Not Synced
Not in sterile policy terms
like "mass incarceration,
-
Not Synced
or sentencing of non-violent offenders,"
-
Not Synced
but in human terms.
-
Not Synced
When we put a human being in a cage
for days, or weeks, or months
-
Not Synced
or even years,
-
Not Synced
what are we doing
to that person's mind and body?
-
Not Synced
Under what conditions are we
really willing to do that?
-
Not Synced
And so if starting with a few hundred
of us in this room
-
Not Synced
we can commit to thinking about
jailing in this different light,
-
Not Synced
if we can undo that normalization
I was referring to earlier.
-
Not Synced
So if I leave you with anything today,
-
Not Synced
I hope it's with the thought
-
Not Synced
that if want anything
to fundamentally change --
-
Not Synced
not just to reform our policies
on bail and fines and fees --
-
Not Synced
but also to make sure that whatever
new policies replace those
-
Not Synced
don't punish the poor and the margenalized
in their own new way.
-
Not Synced
If we want that kind of change,
-
Not Synced
then this shift in thinking
is required of each of us.
-
Not Synced
Thank you.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)