Police whistleblower Michael Wood says without civilian control, police abuse will continue to go unchecked
Story Transcript
Michael Wood: We have a culture that from the beginning has been just disproportionate and been oppressive towards persons of color and women and other minorities. I mean, we have a system in which criminal justice is an oxymoron and we have state sanctioned murder all over our country with a blue wall of silence and justice not being done, so I’m completely baffled by why anyone is surprised by this. Jaisal Noor: Wood says policing has never escaped its racist origins. Michael Wood: That’s why cops don’t realize that their beat … their actions are racist because they’re not feeling racist, but the system is throughout history builds off of, for instance, slave catching, and if that’s your root then everything that cascades from that is poisonous, but we’re taught that it’s true and that those are the ways we should do things, but we’re not stopping to think about what that means.
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