Fmr NYPD Captain: We Have to Train Our Police Officers to Leave Their Racial Baggage Behind

COOPER: "Mr. Adams, let me start out with you. You and I have talked about this before. You served on the police force here in New York. You're now borough president in Brooklyn. A lot of people I talked to in Baltimore said this isn't necessarily a problem of black and white, this is a problem of blue and how blue, the blue line, interacts in communities of color. I'm wondering what's your perception, what needs to change, if anything?"
ADAMS: "Well, I agree. I recall when Trayvon was killed and my colleagues and I, we wore hoods on the Senate floor to symbolize that America needs to take a real look at how we are using this gun culture, number one. But number two, how our police officers are policing our communities. And I think you were right for starting out in the beginning of the program, this is not anti-public safety. I want to live in a safe environment, I want to raise my son in a safe environment. But clearly across America, we have had two methodologies of policing and using the tools of policing. In some communities when a police officer leaves the precinct or his station house, he brings out a toolbox of methods of correcting conditions. In one community he uses only the hammer. In another community he uses all the tools, conflict resolution, making sure that you are safe, that your partner is safe the citizens are safe. That is the real problem at the heart of what's taking place in policing."
COOPER: "Essentially you're saying the police police differently in an inner city community than they do in a predominantly white or well-off community?"
ADAMS: "Yes. And because the big problem was our training for the most part, we like to say in policing that we don't see color, we don't see race, we don't see gender and that is not honest and that is not true. You can't continue to have this intoxicated training method and you're waking up drunk and say you don't have a drinking problem. We are intoxicated with ineffective policing in America. Recognize your frailties. Recognize that you come to the police department, you come from a society where race and gender plays a role in what we do. Now let's train our police officers to leave that baggage behind and how to police effectively and not based on the baggage you are coming to the police department with."