Hey, Matt Rothschild here with another episode of the Wisconsin Forward Podcast on the Civic
Media Radio Network.
Today I'm pleased to have David Cooper back on the podcast.
I can think of no one better to speak at this eroing moment for our country.
David Cooper served for a couple decades as the innovative and progressive police chief
in Madison, Wisconsin, and then he's had a remarkable second career as an Episcopal
priest in southern Wisconsin.
But all along he's maintained his calling as an advocate of police reform.
He's written several books on policing, including arrested development of veteran police
chiefs, sounds off about protest, racism, corruption, and the seven steps necessary to improve
our nation's police.
These days he writes often on such issues on his improving police blog and on Facebook.
We're speaking just 48 hours after an ice officer in Minneapolis, gunned down, renowned
Nicole Good.
What was your action when you saw that video?
Well, shall we try with the outrage as the first and more milder response of that?
Yeah, I looked at those videos, I looked at that whole scene and it was a retired police
professional and a police leader.
What is this?
What is this mess, this chaos, ice agents going out to people who throw in snowballs and
blasting them in the face with that orange colored tear gas, just a bunch of masked people running
around, unaccountable, swaggering around, pushing people down, knocking them down, and then
this, you know, that car situation, I mean, let's talk about that.
Okay, okay, let's go back 40 years, okay, we worked on this 40 years ago, so this was
too dangerous.
Don't get yourself out in front of a car, a car's leaving, let the car go, don't shoot
at cars that are moving, and don't get in front of them and say you had to shoot this
person because you felt endangered under Graham V. Conner, which gives police a lot of wiggle
worm in use of jelly force, so it's sort of like, you know, I'd love to look at the personal
files of these ice gays, agent guys, I just love to go through them.
How many of them had gotten worked in police fields before and gotten fired?
How many of them, you know, what sort of training do they have?
You know, what's their, you know, what's their, what's their ethical thing?
I mean, policing has a strong code of ethics about fundamental duty to serve, to serve all
people.
Take an oath of office to protect the Constitution, so what is it that's not being understood
here?
So on the video itself, he said that cop should, that ice officer should not have gotten
in front of the vehicle, and then the vehicle, the driver, a renanical good, appeared to
be trying to flee the scene.
Well, what was their offense?
I mean, so you've got this chaos out here, somebody tells her to go ahead, I mean, I mean,
the traffic officers down, do they, do they want to check her driver's license?
I mean, what were they doing there, what, what sort of innovating police isn't killing
offense?
And then let's, let's just, you know, the lies coming from the White House, the lies coming
from Homeland Security had the lies coming from the head of the FBI, the lies coming from
the vice president.
I mean, where are we, where, what, who are we?
Well, let's just get into that, shady vans, describe renanical good as a deranged leftist,
Christy Knome, called her a domestic terrorist, that's, that's, that's reprehensible.
It's, it's not how decent human beings act, it is so outside the moral framework of what
we aspire to be as a country.
I'm also worried about the reaction by some of the macho mega folks, there's some sick
strutting around people thrown around the initials, F-A-F-O, which loosely translated
means fool around and find out, or you get what's come to you if you don't obey eyes.
And there's that one ice agent in Chicago.
I don't think it was fool around.
I think it was another.
No, it was another F word, but we can't say that one.
Okay.
Yeah.
There's another ice agent in Chicago who shot a woman named Marie Martinez and Bragg.
I fired five shots and had seven holes, put that in your book, boys, and this is the kind
of thing that is really poisonous, I believe.
What's your reaction?
Yeah.
It's like, I mean, I've recruited a lot of police, I, you know, somebody said, well, you know,
how do you, how do you look at police?
Well, I would like to get all the, all the applicants in the gym and say, look at, I want
you to think about one question.
Do you think people are basically all good or all bad?
Okay.
And if you think they're all good, would you stand over this side of the gym and think
of it a little bad and look over here to the other side of the gym, I will take the
first group and there are people I can work with.
I can't work with people who think everybody's bad.
So you, you've got to have a sense of compassion.
You've got to have basically emotional intelligence, you know, sure, we want, we want college
educated, I want smart cops and we got smart cops and smart cops make a big difference in
an organization.
You see it in Madison today.
It's just a lot easier to work with with cops that have been through some formal education.
Some people said the purpose of a formal education is to understand that there's other people
in the world and that's a damn good stunt.
Yeah.
And $100 million to recruit new ICE agents and where's the money going?
You have C people, oh, that's interesting, going to show people, oh, people that profess
great patriotism on the internet.
Well, those aren't my, I would not do that.
Madison would be a whole different talent if that was what we did during my 20 years.
We recruited people like that.
You know, we don't need cowboys and cowgirls, enforcing our nation's laws.
We need, we need ethical people, we understand the constitution, we understand morality, who
understands, you know, how, how this country works, are we, are we a perfect constitutional
democracy?
Oh, no, no, we got a lot of problems, but, but we aspire to be much better, aspiring
makes a big, big difference.
So what we saw in Minneapolis in this killing was, was this the natural consequence of
Trump's rhetoric calling people garbage and giving just free reign to ICE?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, you know, it was, you find, you find one thing, for example, some, some, some
fraud and, um, daycare, which I think is a problem for people say that, you know, the
system is, is also broken in how we go about and make your account for money.
But that doesn't mean that all people are garbage.
In fact, no one should go another person, garbage, it's just, it's just, we don't, we don't
do that.
We just don't do that.
So that makes a big difference.
And then so, then the, then all the pressure comes on and what was that, that, that young
kid to put together this video was saying, oh, Saudis are just exporting money to Ilshabab,
they're just the terrorists are coming to get us there, that's where all this money
is going.
Well, it may as to be seen.
But that, that, that was enough to make Tim Wall step down from another honest governor.
Yeah.
His response, I thought was very good.
Well, what's he going to do?
He's going to defend his, as was the mayor's too.
Yeah.
Well, what about JD Van Singh, the ice officer has absolute immunity?
What do you make of that?
Well, that's, that's how I see it.
He's not a lawyer and he's neither am I, or, I mean, he is a lawyer.
Yeah, he is.
Well, he should do better than that.
Yeah, law school.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, all right.
Yeah.
Well, he should do, do better.
Any time, if you, he will check, there is federal law, and I've checked in at any time.
Sure, federal agents do have some precedent in terms of how things are done.
But one thing they don't, they don't have any coverage for is if they step out the
scope of their employment.
And there's a number of cases in which states have charged federal officers who have stepped
outside the scope of employment.
And that's all I want local police to do is stand up and say, hey, if you guys operate
and break into homes without a judicial warrant, you know, we're going to charge you.
If you use unreasonable force on people outside the scope of your employment, we're going
to have you charge.
Now a lot of police today, we don't want to get a confrontation with police who are for
federal warrant police, federal agents.
Well, I say, okay, if you don't want a confrontation, document a report, report to the district
attorney, report to the US attorney, what you see, the evidence you have, because no
one should be able to go unchallenged in this society to use force on people that's illegal
or to break into people's homes, that's that's that's who we are.
Yeah, I mean, it's bad enough that Trump has absolute immunity.
Now we're going to give every federal armed officer absolute immunity.
And then what about this failure to cooperate with Minnesota's investigative office?
What do you make of that?
So when, so this goes back into, you know, my days, the ideas, okay, if we, if we have
a shooting, we're not going to investigate ourselves because people are not going to
accept our, have the county step in, have the state step in to investigate, okay?
So I think the other applies as well, if a federal officer commits offense, then certainly
the county police, so the state police should be able to step in.
If they want to do their own investigation, fine, do it in parallel, but don't lock the
state of Minnesota out in a bureau of criminal apprehension, with whom I worked when I
was a cop over years ago, and I was a street cop had been the apples for seven years.
So this thing that happened in Minneapolis must strike close to home?
Yeah, well, that's right.
That's right.
I grew up in that city and I worked seven years as a cop of that city, and I worked as
a suburb as a chief of police for four years before I came to Madison.
So yeah, there's a little, a little twinge that I feel so I for, for the chief there,
he's a difficult position.
I think, I think he said the right thing, and I, I sent him a letter and I certainly want
to give him my, my support that, because you know, there's this business about, about,
you know, reporting, you know, and if you, if you sit and don't do anything, it goes against
another thing that we've worked on for the last 40 years, and that is a duty to intervene.
A duty to intervene is, is actually, actually an act of kindness to a colleague, because
you don't stand back there and let a colleague do something stupid, say, hey, wait a second,
and even if that colleague is senior said, can I take over here?
Hey, maybe you need to take a breath.
Let me, let me help out here.
I mean, that didn't happen in the George Floyd murder, for instance.
Well, that's right.
Yeah, two officers stand by and watch George Floyd, say, that he's having problems breathing
and no one's saying, hey, can I step in here?
Let's let him out, take over, you know, you need a break.
You know, we got emotionally involved when we make arrests, okay, time to step back.
And I think that's, that's professionalism.
I find the duty to intervene is some study that, that number of years ago, it had to
do with medical people using checklists, and there's one physician who developed a system
for a checklist for putting in, in lines in the hospital.
If you follow these steps, the infection rate drops significantly and the patient thrives
much better.
So he put this together and, you know, his colleagues didn't want to follow that.
And so the, he didn't investigate, he found out, well, he would ask the nurses who were
there.
Did you see the doctor?
Well, yeah, but he's the doctor.
So he couldn't get the CEO of the hospital to axle.
He went to the insurance care here of the hospital and said, I've got a system here of a checklist
that will cut down infections and, and we'll save a lot of money and we'll have a lot
of happier patients.
And but what we need to do is, you know, the bosses of the hospital need to say to the nurses,
you need to step in if you don't see the checklist.
And when that happened, everything worked better.
And so you have a checklist for policing too.
Well, there should be, yeah, there's probably isn't one that we would write out and it's
difficult when you're out on the street, say, wait, you've been out to the checklist.
But if you have proper training, you know what the steps are, you know, you know what
de-escalation is, you know, you know, you know, you know, if you take your gun out, you're
going to, you might use it and you also have one hand, you can't grasp anymore.
So let's be careful about when we unholster and take our guns out, you know, that's certainly
the situation officer that agent should not have had a gun in his hand, a traffic situation.
I mean, you know, this was, but it will be, you know, the game is being played, you know,
that this person is, as officer was afraid of his life, you know, they even said that
he was hospitalized and had stitches, well, that was another case.
He was alright.
Somebody was run over by anyone with two eyes or anyone with one eye could see that he
was run over.
Well, that's right, that's right.
So we just don't, you know, professional policing doesn't shoot at moving cars and they don't
stand in front of vehicles.
Now they don't even let the, you talked about doctors, they didn't let that doctor who
was right there who wanted to give assistance, they want to let the doctor in to give assistance.
I heard that, you know, I saw, I heard it.
I saw the video of it too.
And how unusual is that when you have a doctor present, there's someone who's injured.
They sit step back.
We've got our own team coming or something.
Yeah, it's, you know, if this happened 10 years ago, this would be beyond our comprehension.
Yeah.
I mean, we wouldn't know how to relate this to, we'd say, well, what, no, no, that never
happens.
What are you talking about?
Only about your conversations with police here in Madison, you're trying to impress
upon them the need to do this resistance or reporting or stepping, stepping up if they
see a legal activity by federal officers.
Yeah.
How's that going?
So what kind of good trouble could I make?
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
My, you know, what, what, what, what we're trying to do is, is present, you know, a number
of areas that we'd like police to affirm, the importance of checking for judicial warrants
before any private home is entered, of, of saying that very clearly that, that the Constitution
protects all residents, not just citizens, and that they will step in to intervene, to
at least to report and document any questionable activities that they see with ICE officers
in our area.
It's my, my, my understanding and, and I do understand this that before this time, many
of our immigrant groups in Madison wanted, please, not to, not to speak out for fear,
for fear that ICE agents will come into our city.
I think we're, we're beyond that right now.
We're trying to develop a coalition of peace, justice, faith, and immigrant groups under
a general umbrella to be, be supportive and to encourage, quietly, please, in Dane County
and the sheriff to, to stand up and make these statements about, they are, are here to protect
all people.
Are you getting a receptive ear from anyone?
Well, we're, we're, we're pulling it together now slowly, slowly, and, and I've tried
to give a heads up to people I know over the years, there's, there's, there's not a lot
of energy around doing this, and I understand that silence is sometimes, you know, certainly
the safe, safe place, but I think the right now that, at least to me, silence is complicity.
So we have to step up and, and if that doesn't work, you know, one strategy to still everybody
knows what the strategy is, and for this coalition to come together and say, how did go and
talking to your local chiefs?
And find out, you know, who's on board and who isn't, and maybe to send a registered
letter and say, you know, do you support it or not support?
And then, but frankly, we're going to go public with this, and the idea would be to see,
look at, here's the police leaders in our county who are willing to endorse this.
And if you don't see your chief there, and you live in his or her town, go talk to them,
and go talk to the mayor, and go talk to the city council about why this is important.
Because, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't be nice, I mean, I, you know, what's, so what's
my dream, my dream is that we put billboards, placards all around the county and say, warning,
if you're a federal agent working in our area, this is what we expect of you.
I mean, we've certainly, be able to, anyone would, would want to say, look, we want anyone
who enforces the law in our society to at least to describe to the standards that our local
police have. So, so the situation is just changed from what it was in the 60s and 70s.
I mean, we had bad cops abusing people of color who, who, who wanted to end segregation.
The federal government step in, we had to nationalize the guard to, to allow black children
to get into schools. We, we had to put a rain on local policing because they, they were
not willing to respect the constitution. Now, what's the opposite? Now, now, now we've
got federal officers who are not respectful of the constitution. And, and if local police
don't step, who, who is, who will protect us? You know, when they decide, well, let's
see, what, what would be next? Well, you know, you've written some kind of on, we, we think
unpatriotic. And therefore, you're a terrorist. Well, we'll, we'll come for you. And we'll send
you off to El Salvador. Or we don't, we don't like, we don't like to religion you practice
or, or just plain, we just don't like you. I mean, I mean, I mean, it could go that way.
I think the next circle is, you know, anyone who's, who's out protesting against ISIS can
be subject to arrests. That's right. That's right. You also are calling. I saw a face, recent
Facebook post, David Cooper, you were calling for massive nonviolent resistance. Talk about
that a little bit. Yeah. Well, I think the problem now, what we've seen that I've not seen
a good, I have not seen a good orchestrated trained nonviolent resistance in our country.
We, we get out there because we're angry. And we start yelling at the ICE agent. They
yell at us. We throw snowballs. They shoot pepper spray in our face. Hmm, wait a second.
They've got the guns. We don't. What's going on? This does not work. But what does work?
If we look historically, on practice of organized, trained, nonviolent action around the
world, it works. And so it would be, and I tell people, don't try to resist these, these
agents because they'll hurt you. They'll willingly hurt you. And you have no, no redress.
You, you don't know who they are. You just know that some guy and a mask and some camouflage
and something that said, please, which also agers me. They're not police. Um, does this
to you? What do you do about that? Tough bounce. So I would see one way we could do that would
be say we have a thousand people trained in nonviolent. And we go back to the Woolworth
lunch callers back in the South. You know, those, those were not angry kids of color that
went in there. They, they were trained young men and women to take the crap that they took
for people spinning on them, yanking them off off their, their, their stools. So what would
happen if we got a train people there? And we have an ice action and we show up and we
just all sit down. Hundreds of us just sit down. Well, good luck. Processing all of us
can you know they can't do that. So, so they make it might get angry and they might try to
hurt us. And we need to record that. That, that we who are sitting here protesting what we see
is unconstitutional actions by our federal government are being hurt by that government. And
some of us may have to go to jail and we'll have a system to try to support that. It's going to
be difficult. But unless we do that, I, I don't think we have any redress, redress whatsoever. I
think it's going to unfold. You're going to see 10,000 more ice agents hired in this country. You're
going to see a federal cadre of law enforcers who in effect operate at the president's will.
I call them brown shirts. Yeah. And they'll be more people killed like Renee Nicole Good. That's
right. And your resistance can end in your death. Well, in your scenario, I mean you and the
other non-violent silent resistors might be arrested for and called a domestic terrorist.
Yeah. That's right. That's right. So, we're locally. We've got we've got men and nights and
quakers that have some experience there. Some of us have been to some training already that the
men and nights have given and encouraged people if that training is available to to get out.
They're there there will be more. And if if somebody has a better idea of what we have to do,
I'm more than willing to listen to it. But but I think the combination of being a cop for for
over 30 years and and being a trained clergy person and somewhat of a theologian brings me
together at this place in time and this strategy. How hopeful are you that we're going to make it
through this period? Well, I can't be a person without having to help. Even though it's the sort of
all care you got are you sure you know what's what's going on here? I am I am hopeful I just
I'm hopeful for the soul of America that that this is going to be about liberal and progressive
and conservative or it's not going to it's not going to be you know who is of what political party
but okay this this is enough you know our our immigration system is broken it's it
multiple presidency that's broken we have yet to fix it. So I would just like to see us fix
this system and and and I would would would support as I'm sure any police executive would any
police officer that if we have people who have broken our laws that are dangerous we need to get
them out of the country but they they also need some kind of hearing because justice isn't always
you know 100 percent so we need that we need to have a process for for that we need to do something
other than beating up 11 million people that's that's about that's about it is is if we keep on
like this we're going to and and when we get when we get 11 million people out of our country
um she was our our kids going to pick vegetables are they going to work in nursing homes
are they going to give elder care are they going to re-roaf your house
so I mean I've got two immigrants in my family I've got two two daughters who are adopted
immigrants to this country so it tends to get personal to me too and how are they feeling
right now I know just kind of shake their head and um now it's just not the country
we thought we were living in right now probably not what they thought we were but you know they've
been here for 35 years they're they're their mothers and um yeah I just I just I mean one of the
things I say to people well what do we go if we do nothing what are we going to say to our grandkids
you know grandpa grandma where were you when our country was being dismantled in our way of life
changed and our elections challenged and on top of all this not only did they the of the
shooting in Minneapolis but January 6th again right to watch on public television which I guess
close now we're not going to have public television anymore corporation for public broadcasting come on
to see people 1500 people show up at the Capitol just this past week and live the lie
to live the lie oh yeah this is George Horwell's 1984 for sure animal farm it is it's
sound willing two plus two is five black is white that's right all pigs are equal some pigs are more
equal than others right yeah that's where we're at right now um and I get annoyed I was listening
to some radio show not on the civic media radio network where two of the announcers were asking
each other well did you go to the new kings rally no I did it if it gets a little worse I'll go
where it's not the time to figure out how you can avoid going to a protest now is the time
to get out there and protest nonviolently and show some resistance to what's happened to our
country right now yeah and I can understand that because you know the whole public information
system has been distorted and we configured in terms of you know Trump's social media these other
avenues that immediately before anything happened the lie goes out there and say well and he was
that was you know I voted for that person I should try to support them I certainly don't want to be
a Democrat but gee whiz is this right is this right yeah we've got to get beyond just rooting for
your team you know it's like rooting for the bears or rooting for the packers that's not what
it's about right now to whether we have a democracy whether we have freedom here in this country
or whether we have authoritarianism or fascism yeah it says you know I continue to think about
Martin Nemuller he was a German pastor original supporter of the third Reich and then then changed
and ended up ended up in one of the concentration camps either Buchenwald or Doc and he survived
but he wrote this little piece afterwards you know that's yeah we didn't wouldn't forget that he
said you know first of all he said they they you know they came for those the the socialists
and the kindness well I I wasn't those and they they came came for we came for the homosexuals
and well I was no homosexual so I'm not going to be worried and then they you know came for the Jews
oh well I'm a Christian they certainly are going to bother me and then at the end of that little
essay wrote he said you know when they came for me there was nobody to say anything because I
didn't say anything so I think we need to say things we need to keep on saying things that this is not
this is not right whenever I say that I I think about Wanda Sykes
Wanda Sykes black comedian who by personally just loves us too she she's got a one hour show
that's based on the first administration who said hey this ain't normal and you know and I say
today this ain't normal the same normal for free society well thanks so much for being my guest
again on the Wisconsin Ford podcast I'll be back with another episode of the podcast still trying to
line up that interview with Mandela Barnes so keep an eye out for that one
