Fox Business guest says young Black people don’t know how to interact with the police
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik: “You want reforms? Reform the community, so that they know you can't combat the police"
Published
Citation From the June 8, 2020, edition of Fox Business’ Morning with Maria Bartiromo
DAGEN MCDOWELL (GUEST HOST): I want to bring up Minneapolis really quickly. Because I was reading, there was an editorial that was written by two law professors, about linking reports of disciplinary problems of police officers, that it's the worst 5% of officers in Chicago accounted for a third of all civilian complaints. And in Minneapolis, there was a 2016 investigation, so four years ago, that found that citizens were frequently turned away from police precincts or otherwise discouraged when trying to file complaints against officers. And that just begs the issue, is that something that could be fixed or reformed? Because clearly, people are desperately upset about the killing of George Floyd, but also in the way that they are treated by police officers.
BERNIE KERIK (FORMER NYPD COMMISSIONER): Yeah, but Dagen, I have to — I just, you know — in Minneapolis, you had a Black police chief, you had a Black mayor, you had a Black attorney general. They'll stand up there today and say, “This has been systematic.”
Really? It's been systematic, and you're telling us today that those are the problems that were systematic. What have you been doing? Why haven't you fixed them? If you knew about this, and they say they did, then why are weren't they fixed?
Everything is about reforming the police. How about reforming the community? How about teaching young Black men and women, in these communities of color, things like don't run from the police when you get stopped. Keep your hands on the steering wheel when you get stopped in a car stop. Don't make furtive moments, don't put your hands in your pockets, don't poke the police in the eye when he stops you, don't assault the police, don't resist. These are simple, simple things that could be taught in driving school when you're teaching kids how to get their license.
These are things that — you want reforms? Reform the community, so that they know you can't combat the police. It's not legal to assault the police. Because today —
MCDOWELL: You don't think — by the way, just really quickly, the current mayor of Minneapolis is not Black. Number two —
KERIK: No, no, OK, right, OK. Though —
MCDOWELL: Do you really think that young black men and women don't already know how to engage with the police?
KERIK: No — no, they don't. Because if they did, we wouldn't see half of the things that we see. We wouldn't see half that — you know, I think we've gotten away from parenting, we've gotten away from respect, we've gotten away from law and order.
It's just not — and I'm not — forget the Black community, every community. When I was a kid, that's what I was taught. That's what I was taught. Every kid should know that. Every kid growing up should know that. The bottom line — and the other thing is, George Floyd — what happened to George Floyd is tragic, horrendous, and one of the worst things I've ever seen in policing.
In fact, Judge Jeannine Pirro's — her focus on George Floyd in her opening of her show the other night, was the most compelling tribute to him out of anything I've seen so far. The bottom line is, what happened to him was bad — but, that's not systematic. That kind of stuff is not systematic.