interviews
Call It What It Is
by LaShyra Nolen
July 1, 2020
This interview with LaShyra Nolen, Harvard medical student, and the first Black woman to become class president, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | You've written and spoken about your experience within a dual reality – of being both a medical student at Harvard, and a person committed to your own identity and equity.
LN | The dual reality is you're training at the best medical school in the world, but there is so much suffering going on in your community. And whatever knowledge you gain still isn't going to necessarily translate to the improvement of the condition of Black people. For example, I could go on to become the best surgeon in the world. I could save the life of a Black patient. But they can go outside, drive home, get stopped by a police officer, move too fast, and get killed.
That is the dual reality. You're learning, but you're not necessarily getting to the root cause of the suffering of your people.
You always have to think about it from both of those perspectives, that of a student and that of a Black person in America.
In addition, you go into class and you are expected to maintain professionalism. You are expected to just talk about the science and to talk about the assignment at hand – when that same morning you watched yet another police lynching of a Black man. You're trying to deal with those emotions, and you have no idea how it's going to be taken if you say, "Hey guys, I'm really not doing that well. Another Black man was killed. Racism is pervasive in our country and we're all complicit in it." It is a challenge that all Black professionals have. You have to walk in and put on this face, even though internally you are dealing with the turmoil and hurt of your community.
What does this moment feel like at Harvard, as a student?
As a medical student, I feel like I can speak out more than my mentors or faculty members who are more ingrained into the system of medicine. Academic medicine is very hierarchical. The higher up you go, the more you have your hands tied, and you can't speak as much truth because you're trying to move up to an associate professor position so that you can finally start to use your voice. I know that there's a risk that comes with speaking up, but I, personally, can no longer just pretend like everything's okay, and allow people to continue to suffer in silence. Even the most brilliant people have been complicit in racism, and some of them genuinely have never even thought about it.
They've grown up in a bubble, their entire lives, and all this is happening and they're just like,
"Oh my gosh, I'm a good person. I'm not racist." And you kind of have to be like, "No, but you really are though."
These brilliant people who are excellent in their field, are just now realizing they're complicit in this system.
Again, I am happy that's occurring, but I'm always just like, look how much it took for us to get here. NASCAR is just now removing the Confederate flag. Suddenly now I have Juneteenth popping up on my Google calendar. I'm like, what?
My classmates and professors have really been amazing actually. We are all from different backgrounds. Some are fourth-generation physicians, and some grew up on reservations and are bringing medicine to indigenous folks. All of them realize that the system needs to change, and they have been so supportive. Beyond just talking the talk and posting the black box on Instagram, they've been reaching out to me saying, “Here are the notes from class today. I got this recording for you because I know you've been putting in work on the advocacy front.” That's true allyship to me. I've really been pleasantly surprised and happy to see the support that I've gotten from my classmates.
There has been a widespread acknowledgment that COVID is affecting communities and people of color at much higher rates. I am curious if you think there has been an appropriate conversation around why that’s the case?
I think that in order to understand that we have to look at our history, and at policy. The original ill was, of course, chattel slavery. This country has not valued Black lives. The policy reflects that, and policy ties into our healthcare. That history of systemic discrimination is important to look at to examine the current landscape of COVID-19.
Redlining decided where people live in this country, and which communities our government and our local city councils were going to invest in. Black communities were not invested in. As a result, Black communities have not had access to the basic resources that they need to survive and thrive. They don't have access to healthy food. They don't have access to safe places to exercise. They are exposed to environmental pollution. They have less access to education. I mean, then you look at who is more likely to be an essential worker - Black people are overrepresented.
It doesn't end there. Once people get into the clinic, they have to deal with the biases and systemic racism in the hospital system. There are studies that have shown there are medical students and residents who still think that Black people have a higher pain tolerance.
We can take maternal mortality as an example of treatment differences. Black women, at all income levels, are dying disproportionately compared to white women. When they get to the hospital, doctors don’t believe their pain. I mean, it happened to Serena Williams. It is safer for Black women to not engage with the healthcare system because of the violence and harm it causes.
How do you think mistrust of the medical system compounded the COVID crisis?
I think it all comes back to this conversation of access, right? When COVID-19 first hit, the testing centers were predominantly located in affluent communities, and a lot of Black communities were left without access to testing. The lack of Black physicians and Black health care professionals means that when Black patients come in and say they have COVID-19 symptoms, they are less likely to get treatment compared to white people.
If you know there are no testing centers in your neighborhood, you know there is no representation in the hospital, and you know that you are going to be discriminated against once you walk in that door, you know your life is being devalued. That knowledge prevents Black people from seeking care from our healthcare system. With anecdotes of horror coming from your community, of course you are going to be nervous to trust the healthcare system.
What does a better understanding of investment into public health look like to you?
I think we need to turn all of the conversations that we've been having into public health initiatives. Racism was declared a public health emergency in Boston. That is the direction I think we should be moving in.
We need to move beyond equality to think about equity. We need to recognize that not everyone is on the same playing field. We need to truly make sure everyone's specific situation is taken into consideration. We do that by investing in those communities, and by looking at how we make sure they have access to good education, access to health care, access to housing, access to good food. Improving the conditions where people live, work, pray, play will improve their healthcare outcomes and our healthcare system.
Of course, we need things like the physical exam, but often patients go into that physical exam with preexisting chronic diseases caused by disparate suffering. Going as upstream as possible will lead to better healthcare outcomes and in the long run, improve healthcare costs. Even if investing in public health didn't improve healthcare costs, I still think that it's the moral thing to do. I think we're too driven by what's going to save money in our country. We need to do what's right.
Everyone deserves to have the basic resources they need, to live out a viable, joyous life. Right now we are doing nothing to guarantee that.
Someone said to me once, we’re too focused on raising the ceiling and not at all focused on raising the floor in the American healthcare system. Do you feel like this starts as a medical student?
I can definitely speak to that culture. As a medical student, I'm really passionate about community activism. I am passionate about making sure that everyone has access to healthcare, and ensuring that we're teaching medical students anti-racism so that they don't go out and further harm communities. I can spend two years doing that – serving on committees, writing up reports, and changing curriculum at my institution. But my peers who are spending the same time publishing papers on very specific proteins and disease processes might have a better chance at residency.
In medicine, you're not incentivized to do work that you don't get credit for. You always want to be able to publish, and activism isn't always publishable.
It has been the responsibility of Black students, students of color, and indigenous folks to improve their institution. They do the work so that they can thrive and survive, and so the next generation can do the same. But at the same time, they still have to do everything they have to do as a medical student to get to the next level. I'm literally trying to improve the very environment that I'm suffocating in, while also trying to handle everything else that medical students are expected to.
There was a letter early on from public health officials advocating for protest as it’s needed to fight racism within the healthcare system. Does that feel new or was it already a part of the conversation?
I think it's always been a part of the conversation for those who have been oppressed.
But that is what is special about this moment. We literally had a global pandemic that exposed the disparate suffering of Black people across the country, across the globe. And then on top of that, you have back to back to back killings of Black people. It's heartbreaking that it took this much for us to start having these conversations, but we are having them, and people can’t run away from them.
There are no distractions. We're not going to get anywhere if people don't name systemic racism for what it is.
We need to say Ahmaud Arbery. We need to say Breonna Taylor. We need to say their names, and we need to name the issue at large.
Big-name organizations are just finally starting to realize that this is something that they need to get on board with. It’s hard to know if it's really genuine or not. I think that people don't want to be on the wrong side of history. Regardless, learning is still happening. I'm very happy that anti-racism is becoming the status quo and that we are having these conversations. We need to continue to push the envelope to get people things they need to live a good life.
interviews
We Tried Reform and it Failed
by Larry Smith
June 10, 2020
This interview with Larry Smith, an ex-police officer of 18 years, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
franknews | Could you start by telling us a little bit about your background?
Larry Smith | I was a police officer for 18 years in Baltimore, from 1999 until 2017. During those 18 years I worked in various functions - patrol units, as a gang liaison, as an internal affairs detective for three years.
What made you want to become a cop?
The question, “why did you become a cop,” is a question that I've never been able to give a clear answer to. I think the simplest answer is that I was 24 years old. I was pretty much directionless in life, and I couldn't afford college. To become a cop is in most states, you don't need much more than a high school diploma. I knew it was a job that paid well and had benefits and a retirement. So I applied.
What was the impetus for leaving?
I was in Baltimore city, which is a city that has suffered from systemic poverty, addiction and violence for decades. I don't know that I could compare my experience to somebody who's a cop in a small, middle America town, or even a smaller city, but I was just completely dumbfounded by the physical state of the city. The vacant homes, the blight. The fact that some neighborhoods like Roland Park had million dollar homes, clean streets, expansive lawns and trees, but two blocks to the east looked like a war zone.
There were a few years where I was really invested in the job and I really thought that my presence made a difference. I believed that I was arresting the bad guys, that I was keeping people safe and that I battling crime in the city. But over the years, I became really disenfranchised with the job.
You stand out because you did have this realization and then act on it, whereas a lot of people don't. What happened internally that brought you to the point where you made the choice to step away from doing that work?
Well, I mean, I don't want to give myself too much credit. When I initially came to the realization that what I was a part of was wrong and was harmful, the way I acted on it was to shut down. I still continued to go to work. I didn't quit, but I did basically the bare minimum.
I think the realization happened during 2006 and 2007. I was in a specialized unit in East Baltimore, and basically our job was to make as many arrests as possible to try to prevent violent crime - we were asked to recover guns, narcotics, things like that. But in reality most nights, especially during the summer, we ended up just harassing groups of black men who were either standing on a corner or hanging out in front of their house - there's not a lot to do in Baltimore, especially in neighborhoods that have been ignored for so long. We were basically forcing people off the street because our commanders felt that the fewer people that were out on the street, the less potential victims there were for violence or crime. We were just making very petty arrests - arrests for loitering, for drinking in public, for urinating in public or for trespassing if people were hanging out in front of vacant houses.
And I was like, what does that do? If I arrest 5 or 10 guys for drinking in public, what did that prevent? In the long term, how does that help? I'm potentially ruining somebody's life by taking them to jail over drinking in public. I had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I had the ability to really impact someone's life in a negative way for just such an absolutely ridiculous crime.
Did you vocalize these thoughts to people within your department, other police officers?
I definitely did, especially within my specialized unit, and I was eventually kicked out of it. I would tell my sergeant and my lieutenant that the approach was nonsense, that all we were doing was producing stats. They would give me a hard time about not having enough arrests for a month, and I would just argue what difference does it make?
I got kicked out of that in 2008 and was sent back to patrol. I did enjoy patrol a little bit more because you're answering 911 calls. You are a little bit more useful because people are calling you for help - you're not actively looking to interfere with somebody's life. But you're still a police officer, so there's still the potential that you could harm somebody either physically or by arresting them for something.
And how do you leave? What is that moment like for you?
Well, I had been contemplating quitting the department for a few years, I'd say around 2015, 2016, I really started giving serious consideration to quitting. I was in internal affairs at the time. I don't know how much you know about Baltimore, but we had a very corrupt unit of cops who were finally arrested and federally indicted in March of 2017. I had investigated some of them before they were arrested. Realizing that really bad cops were being allowed to remain employed and remain on the street really got to me. There were upper command level officers interfering in investigations or allowing these cops to continue to get away with things. The one moment that finally pushed me over the edge was when the sergeant of the unit waited for me after work and confronted me in the parking lot.
I just had had it. I couldn't deal with the department, I couldn't deal with the stress. I had had a hard reckoning with a lot of the things that I'd seen and done. I tried to kill myself. Eventually I ended up in a psychiatric facility for 10 days. I knew that if I didn't leave the police department then, it was going to kill me in one way or the other. That was how I left. As far as letting anybody know, my supervisor at the time knew I was in the hospital. When I was released, I called them and I said that I couldn't do it anymore. I quit. He came and collected my equipment in my apartment and I filed a resignation form. And that was it.
What have the last three years looked like for you?
I still think about what I was part of, and I still regret a lot of the things I did and took part in.
When I first left I really harbored a lot of ill will towards my police department in particular. I also knew that policing in general was bad. But, I guess I still thought that policing could get better. Over the last three years, however, I just realized that it's such an evil institution that there is no way it can be reformed. Reform has been tried, and it has failed. I just don't think there's any way to save it.
What do you think it says about what police departments believe in, if they haven’t been able to effectively reform?
Honestly, I am so confused as to what police departments believe in. I really don't know anymore. There was a big push for police reform in 2015, after you had high profile deaths like Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and, here in Baltimore, Freddie Gray. There were protests back then, and it led to reform on some level. But it didn’t work. I mean, the police got body cameras and still, they “forget” to turn them on.
Then and now, there is this conversation around community policing, which is supposed to build relationships between the police and the community. My question is, why do police departments need to create homeless outreach programs, youth programs, or give officers special training to respond to people in mental health crises? Why can't money be taken away from the police department and actually invested in hiring civilian social workers and counselors?
And we only talk about this in relation to poor black and brown communities. You don't go to the rich white suburbs and see cops parked on corners or walking on foot just constantly patrolling the neighborhoods. There's no police community interaction there, so why are we forcing people to have it in other communities?
What's baffling to me is when you look at cities around the country, like New York and Los Angeles, and here in Baltimore, the budgets for police are incredibly high. The New York City police budget is nearly $6 billion, but they will cut funding to other social services up to 80%. Here in Baltimore, the budget is $500 million and the school budget is about half of that. And what's the return on investment? In Baltimore we have had over 300 homicides in the last two years. So where is that money going? What is the police department doing?
What are they doing with money?
That's the question. They don't seem to be preventing violent crime. Police budgets is the one part of the municipality's budget that really seems to have no hard oversight. Most of the money in a police budget goes to paying officer's salaries. But then you look at a department like New York City, they have over 30,000 cops. Do you really need an army of 30,000 cops?
Politicians also seem so afraid of police and police unions. It's rare for city council, for instance, to vote against the police budget. There is very rarely pushback from city councils when it comes to police budgets. If crime goes down, the police will argue that they need the same or more this year to keep crime down. If crime goes up, the police will argue that they need more officers, better equipment, and better technology.
Can you explain some of the issues that come with police unions?
Police unions fight against transparency, and that's the bottom line. They will try to protect personnel records and internal affairs complaints from being released to the media and the public. The members of the police unions are the police officers. If the union doesn't even at least give the outward image that they're fighting for their members, they have no support. If you really look at the rhetoric that comes out of police unions across the country, it is almost like a script that all the unions follow. In any crisis, the union president will immediately get in front of the cameras and blame the mayor or the governor for whatever ills the police department is suffering. A perfect example is that Governor Cuomo criticized how the New York Police Department was acting during the protest the other night, and the Police Commissioner demanded an apology. Their union president is out in front of the cameras, screaming about that too. And the governor apologized.
Yeah. Cuomo walked that right back.
That's the kind of power they have. Police unions contribute financially to political campaigns. Every politician wants that endorsement and they want that donation. A lot of politicians walk a really fine line when it comes to criticizing police unions and police departments.
Unions seem liberal in principle. They protect laborers and workers. Do feel like police departments are entitled to these unions?
It's really hard to think of police as workers. They're not part of the means of production. Cops will tell you how dangerous their job is, but you look at the statistics, jobs like logging, garbage collectors, and taxi cab drivers are all more dangerous jobs than cops do. So, you know, I don't think cops are workers. They aren't producing anything. Most departments also have what is referred to as a Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights. So cops are afforded even more protection than normal citizens if they're accused of misconduct on the job. Any time that there's any sort of pushback against these Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, the union will be there to fight it.
I really don't think police unions serve any legitimate purpose, and I think that they are way too powerful.
What would your calls to action be?
Again, reform has been tried. There was a really big push reform after 2015. The ironic thing is that when you talk about something like restorative justice as an alternative to policing and incarceration, the “law and order types” scoff. But when the police department continuously screws up, the same people who scoff that restorative justice propose reform as the solution. And what's happening with reform? Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on reform. I mean, are we going to do this every five years? If the cops don't follow the reforms, then what's the point.
There are other ways than police. When you call to abolish the police, people say, "Well what about murder? What about violent crime?" The police don't prevent a lot now. And you don't need an armed agent of the state to investigate a murder after the fact. There are other ways to deal with violence. You need to address the root causes of violence to prevent it. A cop standing on every corner is not going to prevent a murder.
I really wish people, specifically white middle class people, would challenge themselves to think about their perception of the police. Imagine what it would be like to walk out your front door, literally every day, and see the police either on foot or on bike or in cars, as people of color do. And the question is not if they are going to stop me, but when are they going to stop me. Think about how some communities of color can't walk through their neighborhood on a daily basis without having an interaction with the police, and think about how inherently dangerous that is.
And then the question is, well, what do we need them for? Because if they're not in your white neighborhood, keeping you "safe," what are they here for? What are they doing? So I think people really need to challenge the perception of the police. People are hardwired into thinking that the police need to exist to enforce the law or to keep us safe. It's a fairytale that has been beaten into our heads.
I guess for an average, middle class, white person, the question is, if somebody breaks into my house, who do I call?
There are alternatives to armed police on who you can call. There are some communities who have unarmed security, there are block watchers, there are citizen patrols. I think the deeper question is why is that person breaking into the house? And if we had addressed the conditions of society much earlier in that person's life, maybe they wouldn't be breaking into my house now.
Do you feel like the political consequences of this moment might be different than ones prior?
As far as political consequences- yes, definitely. The current protests are way more widespread than they were in 2015. I think a lot of people are seeing now that police are an absolutely unhinged militaristic force, and that our elected leaders are sitting by while people are literally being gassed and beaten in the street.
These protests also seem like they're going to be around a lot longer. I don't think these are going away anytime soon. I think the big difference is that it is young people. There are young people out there who are not old enough to vote right now, but they are going to be old enough to vote soon. I think the writing is on the wall that there's going to be a massive change in this country as Boomers and Generation X starts to age out of politics. And I think that's a good thing. I think we need more leaders like Julia Salazar and Alexandria Cortez. We need younger politicians who have a more radical opinion of how to change things in this country.