On Friday, Oakland lost its third police chief in nine days, amidst a mushrooming set of scandals over everything from racist text messages to sex trafficking. Now, the civil rights attorneys who’ve been trying to use court oversight to reform the department are proposing to take away the department’s control over its recruitment and retention programs–we speak to one of those attorneys. Plus: Matthew Desmond spent a year living in some of the poorest parts of Milwaukee to document how access to housing impacts poverty in America — we discuss his book, Evicted.
Guests:
- John Burris, civil rights attorney involved in a now 13-year-old Negotiated Settlement Agreement meant to reform the Oakland Police Department’s practices.
- Matthew Desmond, sociologist at Harvard, where he co-directs the Justice and Poverty Project. His new book is Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City