Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Courageous Leadership with Dr. Travis Yates Podcast examines what it means to be a Courageous Police Leader. Join us weekly as the concepts of Courageous Leadership are detailed along with interviews with influencers that are committed to leading with courage. You can find out more about Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates at: www.TravisYates.org
Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Challenging Police Reform Narratives with Daniel Carr
Retired Albuquerque Police Department officer Daniel Carr is stepping into the limelight to discuss the murky waters of police reform and accountability. With his platform, Police Law News on TikTok and Substack, Daniel fearlessly addresses the intricacies of policing. His candid analysis promises to offer a refreshing dose of truthfulness amidst a landscape cluttered with extreme narratives. Alongside Daniel, we challenge the status quo, scrutinizing the roles of public figures and police chiefs in perpetuating or dismantling misinformation.
In our conversation, we navigate the controversial discourse surrounding systematic racism in law enforcement. We question the efficacy of police reforms since 2014, particularly when faced with persistent trends in fatal police shootings. Daniel shares his perspective on the unintended consequences of defunding police departments, revealing how crime statistics fuel public perceptions of systemic racism. Through his firsthand experiences, he sheds light on the lesser-discussed role of Department of Justice interventions, weighing their impact on communities like Albuquerque, which has witnessed a significant rise in violent crime despite such oversight.
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you're spending a few minutes with us here today and I'm excited about today's guest. It's been almost two years since we had him on the show. He's one of the most fascinating guests we've had. We've gotten lots of requests to have him back On today's show. It's my honor to have Daniel Carr with us. Daniel retired in 2024 after two decades with the Albuquerque Police Department. During his tenure at the department, he earned a master's degree in criminal justice and a law degree Certainly difficult to do. A few years ago he started Police Law News on TikTok and to break down use of force incidents, the channel grew, as well as his content, into a sub stack called the Police Law Newsletter. You can locate that at policelawnewssubstackcom. The content is free, but I highly recommend spending just $50 a year to get in the mind of Daniel Carr each and every day. Daniel Carr, how are you doing?
Daniel Carr:I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me back on.
Travis Yates:Well, man, I know you've retired almost a year ago, and the last time we spoke none of us were retired, and now we're both retired. How's that been for you? I know your content has accelerated, and it's certainly. I recommend it everywhere, and so does that help you in retirement to be able to kind of lean into more of this content.
Daniel Carr:Yeah, thank you so much for all those kind words and yeah, that's one of the things I'm doing more since I retired just about a year ago is definitely writing more articles on the police law news sub stack and really just doing more content in general on the police law news sub stack and really just doing more content in general. That's that's what I've been doing a lot of in retirement and it's been nice to have the time freedom to really be able to dedicate to that.
Travis Yates:Well, you speak about the time freedom and I noticed on today's bio I could talk about you worked at Albuquerque. Last time we were sort of shying away from that because you were on the job.
Daniel Carr:Do you feel a little more just freedom of expression now that you're away from a job? Absolutely, I feel like I'm not only so. When I was with the Albuquerque Police Department I think a lot of officers who are active kind of feel this way as well is that you know you have the freedom to talk about national issues, but things that are happily happening locally in your own department. A lot of times people stay away from that, which is probably the right thing to do. So yes, I definitely feel like I have the freedom to talk about issues that are going on in the city I live in.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I don't know if you experienced this, but you know I was in the media a lot on the job and but I almost felt like a weight was lifted off, uh, after I retired, because it always seemed like someone was sort of looking over my shoulder and reviewing what I was doing. Of course, I was always like you, just tell me to stop. Like in policy, you can tell me to stop talking to the media. Why are you letting me talk to media if it makes you so nervous? And certainly they used it to beat me up a few times.
Travis Yates:But I felt it was important because I was speaking the truth and that's the interesting thing about you, daniel, it's why I recommend you so much is you sort of come at this from a down the middle angle, Right, you will. You will talk bad about a police incident, just like to talk good about a police incident. You're very critical on the kind of the anti police agitators that never find anything good in police, and it's really refreshing, but I wonder why you're one of just a few people that do that. Uh, I'm just going to get your thoughts on it because I have a few opinions of myself. So you, you come at it from a straight straight from uh, you know, here's the truth, here's the facts. Despite all the noise, why are you? Why are there is only one, daniel Card, only a few other cousins of you.
Daniel Carr:That's a great question and I think there are a few other people who do this. But one of the reasons that I do it is because my purpose is to really have an honest conversation. It's because I I believe that policing is so important that if a police officer makes an error, I think it's really important to know exactly what that error is. So, was it an individual police officer who did something wrong? Was it the policy? Was it the training that they had? Because, Travis, if we can't have an honest conversation about what went wrong, then we're never going to be able to make policing better. And you know, I try to come at this from that perspective because, you know, just like a reflex, always supporting the police officer or always being against the police officer To me that kind of criticism it's not interesting and it's just lazy, and that is not what I'm trying to do.
Travis Yates:Well, man, you just nailed it right there. I mean, and you're right, it's from both sides. You'll have the pro police side, even internal police, that everything we do there's a reason for it and you'll have the anti-police side. That is just crazy. And they're both playing to similar audiences, right? I don't know how maybe there's 10% on one side and 20% on the other. There's similar audiences they're playing to and the truth is it's just so rare.
Travis Yates:I mean, I'm not going to go into where the media has been in the last decade and and and all the crazy stuff that's happened, but I think I feel a sense and a shift in America to where they're kind of let me let me just, you know, caution, my audience, because this, you know, I don't like to cuss, but they're kind of tired of the bullshit, right, daniel?
Travis Yates:They're kind of tired of being lied to. And that's where you come in. And when I think about police leaders, this has been a complaint of mine for many years because law enforcement has just taken it and been beaten down by really a lot of lies. Some things we earned, but a lot of it has been lies. The vast majority has been lies, and our police leaders have been just deathly silent. Our police organizations have been silent, sometimes going along with the false narrative. And here you come along and I'm thinking to myself hey, no offense to Daniel Carr, you're a smart, intelligent guy, but do we not have any police leaders in America that can at least match what Daniel's doing? What do you think is going on there?
Daniel Carr:What I think is going on there is that there just isn't any incentive for a lot of times for police leaders to be honest, because, kind of like we talked about the last time, if you're a chief of police, you could have great ideas, you could be, want to be the best leader possible and have all these great ideas for your department, but the mayor or the city council, if you don't do what they want, through no fault of your own, that's just the job. They're going to replace you and find someone else who does. So it's like there almost isn't an incentive. And the example that I want to give real quick is you know, in the Roger Fortson case so this was the officer-involved shooting of the airman in Florida.
Daniel Carr:So Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney, before the body cam footage became publicly available, ben Crump said three things in the media. He said police officers went to the wrong address. He said they didn't announce themselves and he said that they forced entry into the apartment. He said those things in the media. As soon as he said that, without seeing any of the body camera video, I made a TikTok immediately and I said this doesn't sound right. And then we see the body camera video a couple of days later. Every single one of those was objectively incorrect. So the leaders in that city not just the chief or the sheriff, but why aren't other city leaders at least coming out and saying that, because you know so well that still thinks that Breonna Taylor was sleeping in her bed when, when she was shot. And we know that isn't true. But the first thing that people hear. It's really difficult to get that out of their out of their minds and I wish I had a better answer for why police leaders don't want to go and correct those objectively false narratives. Well, it's.
Travis Yates:I don't see this in many other professions and it's certainly unique to law enforcement. It's bothered me to the core because it has hurt the profession so much. I mean, we could spend days talking about incidents that were just fabricated lies, that police leaders knew the answer within seconds. You know, you think of the I believe it was Kenosha where, oh, he shot him in the back and he was a peacekeeper. And literally the minute the police leader showed up and said what happened, they knew exactly the truth. But it was eight days after the incident before, not the police leader told the truth, the police union guy told the truth eight days later. And then the DA came out, I don't know, a month or two later, and tried to tell the truth, but nobody listened. Right, and what we got out of that, daniel, was riots, right, and we could, we could talk about riots in America. That was happened because of lies, and I think you're right, I think you know.
Travis Yates:Let's just, let's just break it down to what it is Police leaders. They're weak, they're cowards, they're anyone that refuses to tell the truth. You can't put leader in the same sentence, right? We're not asking them to come out and bad mouth people or bad mouth, breonna Taylor, or bad mouth. People Just tell the truth, and I think that's what's so refreshing about your content is you just tell the truth. And I want to ask you, what kind of pushback do you get just by telling the truth?
Daniel Carr:So the pushback that I get just by telling the truth. So the pushback that I typically get from telling the truth is really from both sides. So a lot of times I'll write an article and anti-police activists. They're always going to get mad at me if I say that an officer-involved shooting is objectively reasonable. But there are cases as well where if I think that an officer-involved shooting is not objectively reasonable, or I think that a police officer violated law or policy, that individuals who are pro-police which I'm pro-police too that if people who are pro-police, they also get mad at me on that side too, and it's okay to disagree. That's the thing. If a police officer, if you don't like something that a police officer does, that's fine, let's have the discussion. But, travis, here's what I'm asking. I'm asking for you to say exactly tell me exactly what the officer did that you don't like, and then back up what you don't like by citing law, policy or training. Tell me what the officer violated, and then we can go from there and have an honest discussion.
Travis Yates:Well, and the other question I love to ask is okay, what would you have done? You don't like this outcome. How would you have handled the crazed maniac with no shirt and wielding a knife, Like, how would you have handled it? They don't really like that question, but I love how you come at it, Daniel, and you mentioned being crump, I don't know, three or four times a day. That's maybe an exaggeration, but how does someone like that and I've got some inside baseball on Mr Crumpy he doesn't go to court, he doesn't go to trial, he doesn't litigate. Uh, you can just ponder why that is. He's just doesn't. It's all about a uh public show and and and a narrative, and you have clearly shown so many times how I mean. Obviously people know that. Pay attention that he both face lies. He's become a multimillionaire by doing this. What does that say about our country, Right? What does that say about, by the way, our leaders that when they hear Ben Crump, get scared and settle lawsuits? I mean because the truth is rarely on his side.
Travis Yates:The odd thing about Mr Crump which I'd love to ask him one day In fact, we were in the same airport, but I couldn't catch up to him was how come, when these cases are actually bad? Because there are bad ones, Daniel, You've talked about them. I don't see you. I only see you in the cases where you seem to be fabricating information. That's always struck me like this I'm getting off on a tangent, but this correction video, that is just horrendous. I don't see the outrage for that one right, which is wild to me. Like, okay, that's one you can get outraged about. There is not any level of the outrage I've seen on cases where there shouldn't have been outrage. Why do you think that is?
Daniel Carr:Well, you know when it comes to Ben Crump, I think it's really important to understand what he is, because it's very easy to just criticize him and demonize him and I think we should criticize his ideas but it's really important to just kind of put it in the context of what he is. He's a civil rights attorney. His job is to get as much money as possible for the person that he's representing. That's his job. It's not for justice, it's not not like my job. What I see I do is my job is to have an objective and honest conversation about important issues in policing. That's my job. That's not his job.
Daniel Carr:And the mistake would be to think that he's playing the same game. He's not. So he's playing the game of, and it's his job to try to get as much money as possible. That's what he's doing. So I think if we look at it from that that uh perspective, I think it's it's more, it's more honest to be able to see exactly what he's doing and kind of like you said me when you talked about the riots, you know I wrote an article a while back and I basically said you know there's what ben crump does. Just like you said, he doesn't go to court, but he basically has developed this brilliant three-step process lie, riot, riot, extort, and that's what he does.
Travis Yates:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I got a theory. I don't think many people have done this, but I think if Ben Crump comes to a town and he lies clearly lies about a police incident, I think if a police chief went in front of a microphone and said this is not the truth, here's the video, here's the truth I actually think he just goes back to florida, I I think I think that's what actually happens, but very few people will do that to him, right, for some strange reason, and uh, we'll move on. But I think that's very interesting and I agree we should not be focusing so much on him, because that is who he is. We should be focusing on the police leaders that are just refusing to be honest, which is more troubling to me than Ben Crump not being honest.
Daniel Carr:And if I could say one more thing on that.
Daniel Carr:So what I do in my videos a lot of the time, and some of the videos that I put up on TikTok that have gone viral I think one of them has eight million views or something like that where it's a case where Ben Crump tells objective lies and I get on there and I say, OK, this is what Ben Crump said, and the involved police officers, they aren't allowed to publicly defend themselves. That's where I come in and then I go and I correct the record and I play the body camera footage and it's content like that. The reason that those videos have gone viral, it's because people want the truth and as many videos of those as I can do. That's one of my goals. But the thing is, you're right, I shouldn't be one of the only ones doing it. That is the job of the police chief or the sheriff or the city leaders Not to lie, not to demonize people, not to talk bad about people who just lost a loved one, but just to be honest about what happened with their police officers.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I want to talk about one of your recent articles. By the way, if you're just now joining us, this is Daniel Carr You've got to subscribe to the police law newsletter. It's policelawnewssubstackcom. He's talked about TikTok on here. If you swing that way, go to TikTok. Daniel is obviously very popular on TikTok so popular they banned his TikTok when it blew up, but he's built another one, so check that out.
Travis Yates:But I'm an educated man, daniel, so I like to read your lengthy articles versus your 12-year-old videos. But people love the videos. But I want to talk about one of your latest articles called 2024 by the numbers, and I want to just kind of give our people watching or people listening what this said. You need to go to his website, pay the 50 bucks. Don't be cheap, support this guy. But here's what you said. You say, hey, there's approximately 54 million police citizen contacts. There's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million arrests per year.
Travis Yates:Here is fatal police shootings for 2024. Eleven hundred and thirty three people were fatally shot. Ten sixty eight were fatally shot by police. Were men OK, 94 percent were men. Twenty point nine percent were black. Thirty point eight percent were white. You go on and on and I love what you said at the end of it. You say the insane notion that police officers are engaging in wild shootouts with acorns on a daily basis is simply not based in reality.
Travis Yates:But what struck me with this data, daniel, is I have followed this data for many, many years and this data has been around 950, 1050, 1100. I would say between 950 and 1200. Ever since I followed the data, all of the police reforms in the last decade, all of the claims of systematic racism and I'll tell you why they say this and we talked about talking to me earlier. I've been beaten up for saying this, but here's why it's always been said uh, 20.9 percent of black men were fatally shot by police, and then what they say about systematic racism is but there's only 13 percent of black men in america, so that obviously means it's systematic racism. Obviously, we can talk about that in a second on why that is crazy.
Travis Yates:But, um, what I have since, daniel? This data has not changed. I got two questions, actually more than two. This data hasn't changed since all the reforms have happened and people need to kind of go back and turn their time machine back to 2014, 2013. This is why we made all the changes in policing because of all these so-called shootings of unarmed people. Why hasn't this changed? Why hasn't the reforms changed the data? And to pair with that question, is anybody looking at the reforms? That didn't change the data on whether reforms actually helped.
Daniel Carr:That's a great question and I'd like to talk about reforms. I think we're going to get into that later, but the reason that the data hasn't changed and the reason that the data is not going to change is because the reform in order to lower the amount of officer-involved shootings is not on the part of police officers, Because police officers if someone comes at a police officer with a knife or a gun or threatens a police officer with deadly force, there's no reform possible that is going to change the situation, where a police officer is not going to defend themselves in a situation like that. So I think that police reform is this giant industry and it's sold as that it's going to lower police shootings and things like that, and the reality is is that it's not. Now there are some good things that police reform can do, but the notion that it's going to lower the amount of police shootings is false.
Travis Yates:Well, I think it's preliminary, but I think the case can be made that it's possibly increased police shootings because, as crime goes up in communities, many reforms in many of these urban cities have caused a increase in violent crime. We can debate on why that is probably less police activity, less police officers, all that as crime goes up, police use of force goes up, because that's what use of force is used on is criminals. And uh, and what's your take on that? That the reforms possibly could have created an increase, because this is an increase. This number is higher than, if you on average, the last 10 years. This is on the higher end.
Daniel Carr:Yeah, so I think that's. I think that you're correct when you say that. So a lot of the results of the police officers leave those cities because they don't want to be in that environment of a lot of people don't don't support police. So so when you have, so really, just like what I said, when you have cities who defund police, instead of three or four officers going to a call where someone's armed with a knife or maybe they they can go with a force array where one officer has a taser, one has a beanbag shotgun, and now you have two or three officers with less lethal options, well now you've defunded that police department. What that means there's less officers on the street. So now you're sending two officers there. So the idea that a police officer is going to be able to use less lethal force, that option, becomes less, and so, yeah, I think that absolutely can happen. I don't think that's the intent of a lot of the academics who run these police reform agencies, but I think that's the realistic result of what happens.
Travis Yates:Yeah, there is a big disconnect between what academia says and what reality says, and we'll get into consent decrees a little bit later. That would be a fun conversation. But one thing that I always saw over the last decade is I would talk a lot about this myth of systematic racism. I will have a one-on-one debate with anybody any day about that, because I've studied the data and a lot of you know Roland Fryer and Heather McDonald. A lot of esteemed statisticians and researchers have studied the data and they agree with me. But, man, I've been beaten up through the years whenever I mentioned it. But this is what we're talking about.
Travis Yates:To say to say that because police shootings should be exactly along, you know, the racial lines in America is saying that crime should be committed along racial lines. And I would submit to you that if crime was dead, even among all ethnicities and races, well yeah, our use of force should be dead, even among all ethnicities or races, because that's how force happens. Force is directly correlated to who's committing violent crime. I think that is common sense to people that can get out of their own way. So when you look at the difference and disparity there, you can't just look at it like the number you just said. Oh, it's 20.9. Oh my gosh, it's 13%. You have to then look at, well, what percentage is committing violent crime, and that triggers a lot of people where it has in the past by trying to just kind of speak that common sense.
Travis Yates:But this idea of systematic racism has done a lot of damage in law enforcement because once again, police leaders have not spoken about it, because I for one, if I'm a police leader, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that's not happening. I'm going to be running my own internal data. I'm going to be putting that out to the public. I did that in certain parts when I worked on the department and that upset people when I was, when I pulled the robbery data and said, well, here's who's committing robberies and here's the use of force on robberies and whoa. They look very similar. That upset even people inside the police department, oddly enough. So that's obviously not being done.
Travis Yates:But what I have noticed, daniel and it's one of my point I want to get to is I haven't noticed this pitch of systematic racism at the height that I used to. Maybe I'm wrong, but I mean I used to be getting beat up about it all the time. I haven't been beaten up about it in a long time. I don't hear this a lot. At one time Congress had mentioned this word systematic race system over eleven hundred times in proposed bills's been lowered. What do you think's going on there? Why? Why do you? I don't think it's gone away. Why do you think the noise and, quite frankly, the myth has kind of dissipated for a time?
Daniel Carr:yeah, great question. So I don't think the answer is is that we, we objectively and honestly won the argument and now they just agree with us that there isn't any?
Travis Yates:I agree with that wholeheartedly, yeah.
Daniel Carr:I wouldn't take the victory on that.
Daniel Carr:What I think is that it's not politically popular. Defund the police was such a massive failure Even in places like San Francisco. They've gotten rid of these pro-criminal DAs there, so it's not politically popular anymore. It doesn't do them any good. That's why they're not talking about it.
Daniel Carr:And just to add on to what you said a second ago, is you know when we were in the whole, when it was really in the thick of the systematic racism debate, and you know the best way that I can explain it and I wrote to my article, and not the only one to talk about is you know what I come back with is just I try to use logic as much as possible. I say you know, men are 50 percent of the population, but they are 94 percent of people who are shot and killed by police. And then I ask people why do you think that is? I say, do you think that police officers are systematically sexist against men? And of course not.
Daniel Carr:So the obvious answer is well, men commit over 90% of the violent crime. Therefore they have more negative interactions with police officers. If you can get people to buy in there, because most people will, then it's very easy to say you have to take that same logic when it comes to race and age, there's a reason that the vast majority of people who are shot and killed by police officers are under 45 years old. Police officers aren't, aren't, aren't ageist against young people. It's that's who's putting themselves in situations and committing crime and using that logic. And then if you get people to buy in there, which almost everybody does, it's just one step further to say well, the same is true with race.
Travis Yates:I'm glad you said that, Dan, because that was actually my next comment. Don't think that because it hasn't been a big topic in the media or the activists, that it somehow has disappeared. Law enforcement agencies need to protect themselves against this in the future. And it's so simple, but I only know of about three departments doing it, and this is the simplicity of it. You take your part one crime data, Daniel, and you break it down by race, because we don't make that up. Those are real victims that call the police and describe a suspect right, it's rape, robbery, murder, homicide, aggravated assault, arson and you break that down by race. And then you break down use of force by race and you put them side by side and you just put it out on your public website. You don't have to make a comment about it, you don't have to opine about it, you just put it out there and people can look for themselves at the direct comparison and make their own judgment. But hardly no one does this, which is strange to me, because that data is readily available by a few clicks of a button, as you know, and I don't understand that. But that needs to be done, because you're not pointing fingers, You're just being given people, as you talk about Daniel, the truth. And so if you want to sit here and claim that a seven percent disparity in shootings means some systemized racism, Well let's look at all the data and then just stick it side by side.
Travis Yates:I talk about this in my seminars and people kind of I had this chief. He'd been a chief for 30 years ago. I'd never thought of that. I'm like, what is going on here? You'll sit here and listen to MSNBC, call you every name in the book, including white supremacists and everything else, but you have not thought about just presenting the data. Because I think you're right. I think most of your community, regardless of where you are in America, most communities, they're going to look at this logically. They're not political animals always pointing fingers, they're just going to look at it logically and they want to know the information. But if all you hear all day, every day, is racism, racism, racism, that's going to be your default. So it's very simple to do Just so. Few people do it, and that leads me into consent decrees, because this narrative has driven consent decrees across America, and people listening to me know where I stand on this because I look at the data. I look at what happens before a consent decree happens in a department. I look at what happens after a consent decree happens in a department. Daniel, you were in a department before a consent decree and you're in a department near the tail end of a consent decree. I'm going to open it up to you because I think you can speak freely about this now and just to let our audience know consent decree is.
Travis Yates:The Department of Justice comes into a department. They say there's allegations against you. Typically those allegations are coming from a few of the activist groups and that spurs the DLJ. It's very political. They pick and choose which city they go to. Mainly it's a liberal city because it's usually a friendly environment for the DLJ. The city usually finances the investigation. Phoenix, for example, has spent well over $10 million on an investigation for the DLJ, which seems crazy to me, and I'm sure Albuquerque spent millions and millions of dollars to help the DLJ say these horrible things about Albuquerque and the DLJ.
Travis Yates:This shocker finds these things that they call a pattern and practice of civil rights violations, constitutional violations and they put out a summary document and then they either get the department to agree to let the DLJ impose a consent decree, federally monitored on the department. That basically runs the department. In a nutshell, Policies training it basically starts running the department. Or if the city says we don't agree with it, the DOJ has the option to take it to court and to actually have to present evidence. Now, very few, if any.
Travis Yates:I think one department has taken them to court. Doj has never won one of these in court to my knowledge. So most departments for some reason will just say, okay, we'll do it. But in recent years there's been a lot pointed out about these and I'm just interested about your, since you have an intimate knowledge about it, Daniel. There's probably only about 100 people in America that have worked day in and day out with consent decrees inside a police department. Give us your thoughts on Albuquerque kind of the impact it had, and is Albuquerque better off today than they were a decade ago before a consent decree?
Daniel Carr:So those are a couple of different questions. So the first one is is Albuquerque better off now than they were before? And I'm going to be mixed on that. So one of the reasons is that the Department of Justice, like you said, came into the city of Albuquerque in 2014. They said there was a pattern in practice of violation of civil rights and excessive force. We had 30 homicides in Albuquerque in 2014. The DOJ was in Albuquerque for 10 years. They just left earlier this year. This year, we had 134 homicides. Now I get crime went up everywhere. I'm not saying that this caused an extra 100 homicides, but that is unbelievable in 10 years to jump 100 homicides. Also, we had, I think, the year that the DOJ came in, I think we had 15 officer-involved shootings. Of those 15 officer-involved shootings, none of those shootings were ruled illegal or unconstitutional. Remember that this year, 10 years later, I think, we had 15 officer-involved shootings. The same thing None of these shootings were ruled unconstitutional. So what did the city gain? 10 years? Tens of millions of dollars. What did the city gain?
Daniel Carr:And I can tell you what the city of Albuquerque gained from my point of view and just to be transparent the last four years I was with the department. I worked in Internal Affairs Force Division, where I was a use of force investigator and I worked in compliance. I was the detective for the force review board, where basically, I did the presentations for department and city leaders about use of force cases. So my last four years I really got to see up close this reform process when it comes to use of force and what I could say is that the practices and procedures that the department now utilizes for investigating use of force is top notch. It's incredible, and if there is a way to get that system that we use to investigate force and how thorough it is because it should be thorough how do we get there? Is there a way to get there without the 10 years and the tens of millions of dollars? So the last thing I'm going to say about this, or just one other example, travis is that the Department of Justice came in in 2014.
Daniel Carr:It wasn't until summer of 2021 that the Albuquerque Police Department had not only a use of force policy that the feds and the DOJ were good with, but that we had a system and investigators to investigate use of force how the DOJ wanted. It was essentially a guessing game for seven and a half years. So cities who are going through it now, like Minneapolis and Phoenix and Louisville, I think. So what these departments are doing and what they should be doing is they should be going to department leaders over at Albuquerque Police and Seattle, some of these other places, and say, hey, what were some of the policies, reforms that worked, what can we do? So there's not this guessing game about what the feds want.
Daniel Carr:And again, we can argue about consent decrees, but for cities and police leaders that are stuck, I think right now there is a way to go from the 10 years that we did down to maybe two or three years. And if I were a police leader and again, what happens in the city is way above a commander or even above what a police chief can do If you're stuck in this, you have to be thinking, okay, how can we make this as quick and painless as possible? Because again, I'll be honest, some of the policies not all of them, but some of the policies and mostly procedures they haven't been all bad, they've been good. One other last example I give is we were the first major department in the country to give body cameras to every single patrol police officer, which I love. That was a great thing, but there is a way to do it without 10 years and tens of millions of dollars.
Travis Yates:There's certainly a way to do it without the DOJ. I mean, you could just do it. It's what leadership's about Right, leadership's about right, and I'm not going to go into it too deep, but I'm at the tail end of a multi-month investigation on Phoenix's investigation. Now Phoenix has not agreed with the DLJ and they have not signed up for a consent decree yet. But one of the problems Phoenix found was a lot of the things that DLJ said simply wasn't true in a summary report, which is really shocking. And so Phoenix did something interesting. I'm sure you're aware of it, daniel, is DOJ usually comes out with a summary report and they just kind of give you a paragraph on each of these examples, right, and say, oh, this is wrong, this is wrong. For instance, in Albuquerque they said that all these police shootings were unconstitutional and that wasn't true. You just told me that wasn't true and the police shootings actually increased during the consent decree because your violence increased during a consent decree. It's like we're coming full circle. They're talking about that, but what Phoenix did was really interesting is they went and found these examples. I think there was 132 examples that the DOJ said Phoenix was a pattern in practice. Now, let's just stop right there. One hundred and thirty two Phoenix police goes to two million calls a year. The DOJ studied six years. We're talking tens of millions of citizen contacts. They found 134 incidents that were constitutional violations, according to them, and I think Phoenix identified about one hundred twenty two of those and they put out a Web site that listed not to paragraph, it listed body camera footage, administrative documents. So that's what I have been working on and going through because to me it's so fascinating. And I got to admit to you I did not think I would find what I found. I thought there were some shady things, probably with consent decrees, because I've watched these through the years, but I found out of 122 incidents we could identify, I found four accurate incidents. The DOJ described four of them accurately.
Travis Yates:Why can I say that and not be biased? I watched the body camera footage and read the reports the same body camera footage and the same reports the DOJ had access to. But they did a lot of things in those to make them seem bad that weren't bad and I got to tell you I and I'm surprised. I mean I don't think the Civil Rights Division of the DLJ is probably the best experts in police activity. But a first year criminal justice student could have analyzed these cases and come to a similar conclusion is what I found, because you just watch the body camera and you read the reports. It's just the truth.
Travis Yates:Here's what happened. I mean, I'm talking crazy things, daniel. There's an incident where they said the guy didn't have a knife in his hand. He had a knife in his hand. I mean, just, I'm talking wild stuff. And why do you think the DLJ thought they could? Because they had to have known. There's no way.
Travis Yates:And we talk about bias and I think it's coming from. I agree with you, I don't think they are. They have this intent to just be crazy like this. But I think it comes from an academic bias, because we don't know who writes these DOJ reports. We don't know who investigates them, because if you don't take them to court, they don't reveal them. It's just a generic report, so I don't know who's behind it, but it reads to me like some academic people that have never, ever, you know, been in a police car, because it's just so strange the way it's written.
Travis Yates:I can't I mean I won't even go into the other things I found, but it's wild, I feel. I did a few videos on it. But uh, why did you think the dlj thought that this could happen? Because I'm going to be honest with you, phoenix police is a large department and millions and millions of calls. There probably was 100 or so incidents that were bad. There probably was. That's not the instance the DLJ picked, and so I'm really confused by it. I just want to hear your thoughts and we'll move on.
Daniel Carr:Yeah, I think it's. I think one of the reasons that they do it is, first of all, I think it's because they they don't necessarily know. So I don't think that the civil rights division, so just really quick, what you said is in a police department, that's that big, the idea that there's not a hundred use of force, problematic incidents a year at least violations of policy we know that there are because it would be, impossible for there not to be.
Daniel Carr:So I don't think that the civil rights division is sitting there and saying you know what we have, these hundred cases that we know are problematic, but we're actually going to talk about these instead. I don't think they're doing that. So I don't think they know. They don't have a Travis Yates or a Daniel Carr on their staff to really kind of do like a final review of these cases. I think that's part of it, and one of the ways that I can say is that they just don't know is an example I can use for my agency, which actually happened, and when it happened, all of us in the use of force division were just screaming how crazy this was. They said that we were not only shooting too many people, even though all the shootings were legal. Not only were we shooting too many people, but we were using the taser too much. So they made the taser policy more restrictive. They made it more which causes more shootings they made it travis.
Daniel Carr:they made it more difficult by policy for police officers to utilize tasers. And we're sitting there in that use of force office and we had two officer-involved shootings come through where these should have been tasings. It should have been tasings and the reason that they weren't tasings is because had the officer utilized a taser, it would have been against policy and the officers looking at days off.
Travis Yates:So again, they don't have bad intent, but they have bad ideas, and some of their bad ideas by saying that officers shouldn't utilize tasers as much either. That causes more officer-involved shootings. I have specific examples of that and I think that's what it is. Yeah, I kind of came to the conclusion that I was dealing with. You know that these people didn't have bad intent. They were just not smart in this area.
Travis Yates:When I continue to see them abuse what Miranda was or wasn't, they kept saying that they were violating Miranda rights, when that's about as clear case law as you can get custodial interrogation. And they were talking about people that weren't in custody, that were. Know, are you watching tv movies? What's going on here? How do you not do a google search on what miranda is? And so they just clearly didn't understand that. And the fourth minute was a whole nother debacle.
Travis Yates:So I think I'm with you, daniel. I would love to help them if they're, if they can be helped, but at this point the the odd thing is about the dlj. Is is is in of DLJ. They actually can do a pretty good job of looking at police departments. You know the civil rights division clearly, when I read some of these reports uh, cause. It's not just Phoenix. Louisville chief is on record saying none of this was true, which is which is wild to me, right? So anyway, man, I appreciate your insight into that. Very few people that have been inside uh are willing to speak about it, but I think we all want better professional police. If the DLJ Civil Rights Division had the answer, we'd be singing their praises, but I think clearly the data is out. There has to be a different way. I personally would love police leaders to lead and to make departments great, and I think you probably feel the same way, daniel.
Travis Yates:So a couple more questions. Man, I appreciate you. The first time we talked I'm trying to remember, but the obviously the Chauvin trial was either just wrapping up or had been done, or anyway we had certain information on the Derek Chauvin and the Minneapolis deal. A lot of information has come out since the trial, which is crazy to me. How come this information wasn't out for a man's trial right? Have you wavered at all on what happened there? I don't want to relitigate all of this, but it's certainly troubling to me that a lot of this information seemed to have been hidden from the public and from the jury when that trial happened. What's your thoughts on that?
Daniel Carr:Yeah.
Daniel Carr:So my thoughts on that are I think they have evolved over the years, the more information that came out and I've been at this stage for a while is that the three officers who let's start with them, the three officers who weren't Derek Chauvin the idea that they were prosecuted or charged with anything is absolutely insane.
Daniel Carr:I do not think any of those officers committed a crime. Also, derek Chauvin, you know what I can't get past on that and I see a pathway to, maybe, where I can. What I still can't get past is that when you have someone who is obviously in medical distress which George Floyd obviously, was the idea that you're going to have him on his handcuffed, his stomach and putting any weight on his back or shoulder, any weight for that period of time for lack of a better term that's a bad idea. So I don't know when Minneapolis got that training. I know when I got that training, probably around 2010. So the idea that officer Chauvin didn't know that, that seems, that seems that seems strange to me. I don't think that he intended to harm George Floyd. My guess is that he used this move, this kind of keeping his knee bladed across the back.
Travis Yates:Yeah, they call it the maximal restraint, technique MRT.
Daniel Carr:He probably used that dozens of times and the result was everyone was fine. So I don't think that there was any bad intent on his part. So my question is really about the training and what I've learned since then. I actually attended a seminar in my last year where Derek Chauvin's defense attorney, eric Nelson he was one of the speakers and one of the things that he talked about. He says what Derek Chauvin did in that case having his knee in that way that was trained. That was true, they actually trained him to do that and that wasn't allowed- yeah, what's crazy is they have photographs of the training.
Travis Yates:Yes, right, they have photographs of this being trained.
Daniel Carr:Yeah. So even if, even if he was trained to do that, I get it. I'm just going to be and again, I know that a lot of people who are are pro police don't necessarily agree, but no matter what the training is and I get that he had him in that position because he was waiting for someone to come with with legles, because he was, I get all that. The idea that you're going to hold someone back in 2020, hold someone in that position for that long doesn't make any sense. So I guess I would need the answer to the question of why that decision was made. Why didn't you roll him over on his side or sit him up? Now, again, I can tell you, I don't think that was the correct thing. So that's probably a violation of policy. Do I think that's criminal? I think it's up in the air whether or not that's criminal. Is a 20 years in jail criminal? Absolutely not. And I do not think that Derek Chauvin got a fair trial.
Travis Yates:Yeah, and that's why I love you, daniel, because you just come straight down the middle with all the information and you're right. I mean, if you have to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, you just threw about 15 things out there that causes people to kind of pause one way or the other, and I'm not sure the jury got that same information so, which is really insane, and it may or may not come back and bite you know the state of minneapolis or minnesota, uh, that presented that case, because obviously some information's come out that's very, very troubling. One more thing, daniel, and I love what you said about this, is the contrast between the Daniel Penny case and then the subway fire case that just occurred. I think we live in this day and time where it doesn't take long for things to come around. What's your thoughts on that?
Daniel Carr:Yeah. So my thoughts on that are that Daniel Penny obviously he never should have been charged. When this happened, I said you know, this is really a barometer to see where society is, that are we going to go with prosecuting someone like Daniel Penny, who was just objectively trying to save people and protect people from being murdered or harmed by someone like Jordan Neely? And that was kind of a barometer of where society is. And the fact that he was found not guilty, I think we won on that one. Now he never should have been prosecuted in the first place.
Daniel Carr:And then, when it comes to that subway fire case, this is one of the things where I have disagreement with people, especially people who are pro-police, because they think that police officers should have done more. And here's the thing. I'm not disagreeing that the officers should have done more. I'm just saying that it's my opinion that if you want police officers to do more, or if you let me just frame it the way I did before If you don't like something that a police officer did and we all saw the video of the police officer standing there on his radio while the woman is burning alive If you don't like what the police officer did, then fine, let's have the discussion.
Daniel Carr:Point to law policy or training that the officer violated. Because if you look at it under that, if you look at it under that, um, under that view, the chief of police said the officers did everything they were supposed to do. They got on the radio and they got fire extinguishers and that's how they put her out. So if we want police officers to do something different, great, we have to give them training and equipment to be able to do it. Because a lot of times Travis, when we have a situation where we can objectively say, hey, I don't like what the cop did, but the cop didn't violate law policy or training, if that's where you find yourself, very often the problem is much higher on the food chain.
Travis Yates:Yeah, yeah, excellent, take, daniel. I can't thank you enough, man. Where can people find you? Where can they reach out to you? I would also remind people go to policelawnewssubsectcom and subscribe and give this man $50 a year. It's not a lot for the work he's putting in. I just did that today and I want to encourage everybody else to do that. So, daniel, where can they find you at?
Daniel Carr:Well, first of all, it was an honor to be on. Thank you so much for the kind words, and you can find me. I'm on X YouTube, just about every other social media channel. You can find me everywhere at Police Law News.
Travis Yates:Daniel Carr, it's been an honor, it's been a privilege. Thank you for being here and if you've been watching and you've been listening, just remember, lead on and stay courageous.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.
