By YouTube Originals
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In partnership with YouTube Originals’ #BearWitnessTakeAction 2: Continuing The Movement.
DeRay McKesson tackles the criminal justice system and focuses on three distinct ways in which to improve it – from police violence, to the felony theft threshold, to no-knock raids.
We’ve marched. We’ve cried out for justice. We’ve raised our voices. What’s next? Join Common & Keke Palmer for #BearWitnessTakeAction 2: Continuing The Movement on December 5th. It’s time to raise the heat.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
I’m DeRay McKesson, civil rights activist,
00:05
and one of the cofounders of Campaign Zero.
00:07
I’m here to talk about three big ideas in criminal justice.
00:10
The first is police violence.
00:12
As of today, there are only 16 days
00:14
where a police officer did not kill someone in the United States.
00:17
The police kill 1,100 people a year,
00:19
disproportionately killing people of color.
00:21
Black people are three times more likely to be killed
00:24
by police than white people.
00:25
Members of the Latino community are two times more likely
00:28
to be killed by the police.
00:29
There are eight cities in the United States
00:31
where a black man is more likely to be killed by a police officer
00:34
than anyone is likely to be killed by anyone else.
00:37
11 officers have ever been convicted in one year for those killings,
00:42
and those officers aren’t even convicted for murder.
00:44
Imagine if you had a job where it was impossible to be fired.
00:47
It doesn’t matter how many cameras you put up
00:49
if they know it is impossible for there to be any accountability.
00:54
Felony theft thresholds.
00:56
There are a lot of misconceptions about what a felony is.
01:00
And one of the biggest ones for me has always been felony theft.
01:03
In the public imagination, when people hear “felony,”
01:07
they often hear “murder.” That is like a proxy for people.
01:09
And I think, you know, I blame much of the storytelling
01:12
that happens in Hollywood for that.
01:13
Here’s the rub. In New Jersey today,
01:16
theft over $200 is a felony.
01:19
In Kentucky, Illinois, and New Mexico,
01:21
the threshold is $500 for felony theft.
01:25
In New York today, theft over $1,000 is a felony.
01:29
Then imagine getting a decade long sentence
01:33
for stealing an iPhone.
01:35
There’s no world where that makes sense.
01:37
No-knock raids.
01:39
Most people know about no-knock raids
01:41
because of the killing of Breonna Taylor.
01:43
The Louisville Police Department killed Breonna Taylor
01:46
based on faulty information, shoddy policing,
01:49
and just a callousness towards people’s lives.
01:53
About 60,000 no-knock raids happen in a given year.
01:56
There’s research that shows that judges spend about three minutes
02:00
approving these warrants to just go into people’s homes and to search their property.
02:05
But what’s interesting is about 90% of them are assigned for drugs.
02:09
And this is much closer to people than they think.
02:12
There’s a case in Missouri where the police executed a search warrant,
02:17
a no-knock warrant for an unpaid utility bill.
02:20
Now, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know
02:23
you could get a search warrant for a unpaid utility bill.
02:25
That’s wild. And here’s really the thing.
02:27
The police will say that this is our tool to, like,
02:29
get drugs off the street, da-da-da.
02:31
The police actually don’t do raids of drug kingpins,
02:34
and you might be like, “Why wouldn’t the police do a no-knock raid
02:37
of, like, a drug kingpin’s house?”
02:38
They don’t do it ’cause they don’t think it’s safe.
02:40
They’re arresting drug kingpins at the corner store,
02:43
at church, at the parking lot.
02:45
So the police will tell you that they’re trying to do it
02:47
to take out these big quantities. They know that’s a lie.
02:50
There are 35 cities and states that are working to ban no-knock raids today.
02:53
About 59% of American voters say that we should just end no-knock raids.
02:57
And there is bipartisan support.
03:00
We gotta let this tactic go. It’ll save people’s lives.
03:03
We’ll be able to move that money to something else
03:05
that actually helps people out instead of harms them.
03:08
And we know that the war on drugs is racist.
03:11
And we should dismantle it every step of the way.
03:14
We have a chance to make sure
03:16
that we put an end to this practice once and for all.
03:18
Freedom is not only the absence of oppression,
03:21
but the presence of justice and joy.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
