Let's Talk UNLV

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Welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNLV on KUNV. You're with your co-host Keith and Renee. Renee, how was your weekend?

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It was good.

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Pretty relaxing. I did some travel to the DC area and I'm back now safe and sound.

0:00:24
What about you? I just sat home working on some DIY projects, ended up disassembling all my office, took all the furniture out, put new desk in, new shelves, went through all the drawers, just just a little busy stuff. And then my sister, who we've been sort of co-quarantining, she came over and we started binge watching a new show called Snowfall. So it's been very interesting. I've been staying up a little too late watching that show. It's hard to turn it off once you get once you get into it. So that's been a very entertaining show.

0:00:54
I know about snowfall.

0:00:57
Well, I know this segment is something that I've been very interested in. You know, we we this is a continuation series from a previous segment where we've been talking about hate. And one of the things we have another set of guests who's going to be talking about that, about this series to cover a range of topics, including the effects of racism on public health, indigenous and land injustice, the First Amendment and policing. So this segment, we're going to be talking exclusively about with a couple of guests. We have Dr. Roberta Savitt, who's the religious studies coordinator for campus and community partnerships, and also a visiting professor in the William Boyd School of Law. And we also have Dr. William Sosa, who's director of Center of Crime and Justice Policy and professor in the Department of Criminal Justice. Yes. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here. And what we would like to do is maybe do a brief introduction of each of the guests. You just maybe share a little bit about yourself. And we'll start with Dr. Sabbath, then followed by Sebastian, then Dr. Sousa. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Rene and Keith

0:02:10
for having us. The concept of hate uncycled developed from the Anti-Defamation League that has always, for about a century, done studies, tracked hate episodes around the world and began to see how important it was to begin to educate, offer education, offer allied building with college campuses. As a result, when we had that, I think it was October 16th of 2019 episode, when we had a hate episode, it just about closed the campus and it was time that we began a conversation in an organized fashion. So, we had a very small, I think it was in the student union with 22 students, and now we have this conversation going campus, community-wide, all virtual, and we'll be dealing with topics all the way from public health, which is February 3rd, to our own campus, what our campus is doing with student diversity, social justice, how various constituencies are affected by hate, whether it's women from our care center, Asian Americans. With Mark Padunpat, we have our student body president, and we have the president of our university who you may not know this, but has done well over two decades of research on African American American men and what they sustain in our country. And then our third episode is March the 3rd with Indigenous and Land Rights and our fourth Law Enforcement, Public Voice, and Security. And it's to these last two conversations that our wonderful guests are here today, Sebastian and Bill.

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Yeah, just to segue, you know, first I want to thank you, Renee and Keith for having us on to talk about our work today. And I also want to thank Dr. Stavis for giving us the platform to to speak about these issues that are important in our community. So I'm a law student. I'm a second year law student at the William S. Boyd School of Law. I'm the president of the Black Law Students Association at the school and also sit as a junior staffer for the UNLV Gaming Law Journal. And for this legislative session, I'm also going to be externing for Senator Dallas Terrence. And one thing that I'm really passionate about is my research project for Professor Fritt and Professor Nagai-Pindell, where we talk about the historically African-American

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neighborhood of Windsor Park. Could you tell us a little bit more, Sebastian, about what that means? That's a compelling topic.

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Oh, absolutely.

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Absolutely. And I'm definitely looking forward to going a little bit further in depth and to give you a little more context. But just a quick synopsis, Windsor Park, as I alluded to a little bit earlier, it is an historically African-American neighborhood in the city of North Las Vegas. And the ground was broken in the mid-1960s, and this was during a time when de facto segregation practices were being exercised in the Las Vegas Valley and the surrounding areas as well. And because of that de facto segregation, certain communities, such as our black community here, had to deal with adverse effects that's lasted for generations, quite frankly.

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Thank you for that, Sebastian. We certainly will get back to you to hear more about that project. And then, Dr. Sousa, could you share a little bit about yourself?

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Sure. And again, thank you, Keith and Renee, for having us on to talk about this. My name is Bill Sousa. And as Keith indicated earlier, I'm the director of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy, which is housed in the Department of Criminal Justice, and I'm also professor in the Department of Criminal Justice. I've been at UNLV now for a bit over, about 15 years now, and my research focuses on crime and disorder reduction policies as implemented by police agencies in the U.S. and in other places, NYPD, the Los Angeles Police, London Metropolitan Police. My projects really focus in on you know really the way that police can work with communities to reduce crime in in neighborhoods. And more recently, obviously since arriving here at UNLV, I've done a lot of work with local agencies, including Henderson Police and Las Vegas Metro Police. I've done a little bit of work on use of force, including use of tasers. And I've done quite a lot of work on the body-worn cameras on police. That is a relatively recent innovation in police. And yeah, and so that is essentially the work that I've been working on over the past decade or so.

0:07:22
So Sebastian, as a student, I'm curious to know what specific pieces you hope to bring to this conversation, and particularly, how does hate reveal itself, or how is it uncovered, particularly at a minority-serving institution. Do you find that it's different? Do you find that it's the same? What are your thoughts?

0:07:42
Well, I'll start with the first part of that question first. In terms of this conversation, one of the things that, you know, I would like to get out of it is just, you know, highlighting Las Vegas's rich black history, because it is a rich history, and it's also an expansive history that covers the span of decades. And when we take a look at Windsor Park, as I alluded to a little bit earlier, it was a neighborhood that was developed in the 1960s. And as time has gone on, the neighborhood and the upkeep of the neighborhood has, you know, figuratively fallen by the wayside. And as we, you know, just being an observer of just redevelopment, not only here in Nevada, but across the country, you're seeing a lot of gentrification in a lot of urban neighborhoods. And due to the gentrification, you're seeing a lot of longtime residents being forced or pushed out of the neighborhoods that they've raised families in and that they've grown up in. So, with that being the case, there's certainly developers that want to go into these older Las Vegas neighborhoods and gentrify it. And in the case of Windsor Park, there's so much history there that if it were to be gentrified, some of that history might be swept under the rug. So with this conversation, we definitely want to highlight the residents and the stories and the lives that they've had in this neighborhood. We wanna make sure that we can preserve this history in the best way possible or in the most efficient way possible because this is a story of resilience and the neighbors and the residents in this community definitely deserve to have their stories heard and to have their stories preserved as well. And in terms of hate, if we just take a look at, you know, if we look at Las Vegas in a historical context, earlier you were mentioning snowfall, which takes place in South Central Los Angeles. Take a look at Los Angeles. That is a very segregated city when it comes to neighborhoods. And Las Vegas had the same type of development in the 40s, in the 50s, in the 60s, and Windsor Park was a neighborhood that came as a result of segregation during the 60s, during that de facto segregation period. So some of these policies, some of these practices, one could argue were developed under this notion of hate. So in order for us to break down the walls of hate, we have to take a look at some of the unique differences our different communities have, and we have to embrace that.

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Thank you. This question is for Dr. Sousa. Could you share a little bit about your, about maybe some similarities and dissimilarities in your work with like the Los Angeles Police Department and the New York Police Department as well as the Las Vegas Police Department. What are some similarities or dissimilarities that you've seen in your work in terms of community partnerships to reduce crime?

0:10:49
Right. And so what I would say to that is that of course all three of those cities, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York are all very different. They're different politically, socially, culturally, and the relationship of citizens to police is different in those areas. New York being a very old city, and a very extraordinarily large city, what you find is that the relationship between police and citizens varies quite a lot from, even from precinct to precinct, where some places have very strong connections with police, and others there's a great deal of tension. I think you find that really across places where you have not just differences in cities, but even within cities, there are a lot of differences in terms of how citizens connect with police. Although, overall, what I would say is that, you know, one of the uh... things and we don't often see this uh... when it comes to uh... a lot of uh... of the media and a lot of the press that comes out uh... but overall uh... people have uh... and this is across demographics generally have uh... high confidence in police uh... or relatively high opinion of police uh... in those places uh... and in fact uh... you know uh... prefer to see more police than less police in them. And so one of the things that gets lost I think in a lot of the conversations that are currently going on around the country is just that there's a very large cross-section of the community who are very supportive of the police department. So Dr. Sabbath,

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talk to us about how does your background in terms of your position as faculty here, as well as your research interests, and your just overall passion for this work. How does that help you

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guide and shepherd this four-part series? Oddly enough, the person I have to give credit who came up with the four topics was Marion Fulton, who is the chief diversity chair, I believe she is called, of CSUN. And my focus was what are students concerned about? What do they see through their everyday lenses? And so I guess my devotion to the students, recognizing the many challenges that they are going through, really drives my passion for this project. Our students are first-generation. We, as you mentioned, Renee, a multi-ethnic task force, our work has to be across diverse identities, and it's such an amazing, rich opportunity to help me understand myself as an individual. When I teach Bible as Literature in the Quran, I understand each of those sacred texts better by the conversations that happen between all three. And in fact, I have a collection coming out called Troubling Topics, Sacred Texts, Readings in Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Quran, and each of these books, if looked at with fresh eyes, begin begin to open up possibilities of inclusivity for so many types of, so many different demographics that have really been erased. So I think the interest, I've got this brain that loves interesting, new, I want to learn, and I want to appreciate this amazing world we live in, not to mention our amazing campus. I found this incredibly inspirational. I spoke to each individual person on this, on these four panels, and there are, I don't know, at least two dozen. Each one has inspired me to continue to reach out and to find ways that I personally, and perhaps helping our campus, achieve a more equitable and inclusive environment to help our students and our faculty and administrators grow and develop.

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Dr. Souza, could you share a little bit about concerning police reform in the light of protests during 2020, some of the recommendations or proposals that have sort of come forward, and maybe locally or even regionally or nationally, and maybe some of the challenges to those proposals' implementation.

0:15:42
Right, yeah, and so some of the proposals that have come out of the events of the past year, we see a range of reforms, proposed reforms, from reforms to accountability, discipline, and use of force policies, to more radical proposals that involve the total abolishment of police departments. And then others call for defunding of the police, which can mean different things to different people, but essentially it is the idea of shifting some of police budgets to to other services such as education, social services, mental health, or youth programs. The idea of defunding especially holds some appeal in the current climate, but the idea is controversial because there can also be some potential consequences to it. First, there's no guarantee that by diverting funds to education and social programs that there'll be much or dramatic impact in terms of crime for one. And second, when you have reductions in police budgets that begin to impact personnel, what happens is police often fall into a very reactive mode of policing where where essentially all they're doing is bouncing from call to call to call. And we know, and the research is pretty solid on this, that that is not a very effective mode of policing. We know that when the police can be effective at managing crime and managing problems in communities, but they have to be very proactive. They have to be engaging in foot patrol, they have to be connecting with citizens, they have to be going to community meetings, these types of things. And it's often these things that suffer when you have decreases in police budgets. So there are a lot of proposed reforms that are out there, but we need to take them step by step because some of them can have consequences in terms of the way that police manage problems

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in communities.

0:18:00
And so I'm curious, in the same vein, what kind of strategies are specifically effective on a college campus that we need to look at? I know that the talk about defunding the police, even on campuses, has also gained some popularity. Thank you for sharing some of the pros and cons of that approach. What recommendations would you see specifically for UNLV as we know that safety and security and having a sense of belonging is so important to our student success but also faculty and staff?

0:18:28
Right, well and again, what I would say to that is we have to look at where police are

0:18:38
spending their time and what are the impacts of reducing those budgets? Does that mean that there'll be fewer police on patrol? Does that mean there'll be fewer police that are connecting with students? And what are the potential consequences to campus safety? What might that mean? And so it's, again, we tend to think that when there are problems in a jurisdiction, whether it's on a campus or in a larger city or wherever, when problems exist that we tend to say, well, the police must not be doing a very good job at it. The difficulty is we don't know how big the problem would be if the police weren't there. There's this kind of assumption that if the problems would go away, but that's not necessarily the case. We do know that there are things that police do, whether it be on a college campus or in a larger jurisdiction, where they are able to manage problems, not just necessarily crime problems, but also minor disorders, things like graffiti, things like trash and litter, things like these types of activities that police can handle informally or formally. But we know that these are the types of things that can help generate fear among students, among people who use a particular area, and if police, if they're not a police to manage those problems, then it can lead, it can have larger consequences down the line.

0:20:16
You know, our last guest talked about how COVID-19 has really exacerbated this problem, and so Dr. Sousa, I'm curious to know from your vantage point, how has COVID-19 particularly impacted our police services, those in uniform? Can you maybe talk about how that has played a role in the work that they do?

0:20:38
Right. So, you know, to the earlier point that we're hitting on, we may see a defunding of police by virtue of the fact that COVID has had an economic impact in a lot of places. And so again, if we see reductions in police budgets to the point that it begins impacting police personnel, then you may be seeing problems arise in communities because police will have less discretionary time to do proactive things that we know can be effective. So certainly COVID has had an economic impact, which impacts public budgets across the board, including police. So there's that impact. And then from the perspective of policing, because they are first-line responders, they are often, they come into greater contact with people who have COVID. And it has there have been cases where police departments have been hit pretty hard by their own personnel getting COVID. And so you have that because the first responders, but you also have the overall economic impact as well. Could you also talk a little bit about strategies or ways for police and citizens to work together to enhance community safety and security in particular among police and citizens in minority communities. Sure, and I think you know again to some of your earlier points, there are many jurisdictions across the U.S. that enjoy a very solid between police and citizens. And we do know that there are tactics that are effective, not just in terms of managing crime or managing problems in communities, but also in terms of enhancing relationships between police and citizens. We know, for example, foot patrol is a very effective way of allowing police to connect with citizens, often in a very positive way. Now foot patrol back east is sometimes easier because cities are built up. Here in the west, cities are built out and so you don't see a lot of foot patrol, but we can think of foot patrol as almost a metaphor for this idea of citizens, a citizen desire to work with police and to communicate with police and police can do this in a number of ways. You can have meetings at churches, you can have community meetings, you can have bike patrol, not just foot patrol, but all of these types of activities, it puts police in connection with citizens in a very positive way. We have to think, you know, when we have just calls for service, calls for service, police are arriving, and it's often the case that it's not, you know, for what it's a negative situation. Either someone's been a victim of a crime or they've been in an accident and or they're really hurt. And so it's not always necessarily a positive reason for that connection. But things like foot patrol, community meetings, connections, other ways to connect with citizens, these enhance the positive relationships and can have overall positive benefits. One of the very interesting things and something I emphasize quite a lot is the DARE program and a lot of people are down on DARE because DARE doesn't show to reduce drug use among youth and these types of things, but what a lot of people don't realize is that the DARE program significantly improves police-youth relations to the point that youth who are arrested later in life, you know, they ask to talk to their DARE officer because the DARE officer was the only person, only cop who ever communicated to them in a positive way. Now, that's a very powerful program for something that you get in the fourth or fifth grade to happen. Now, it might not have the intended impact on drug use, but it has a very important impact when it comes to police-unit relations. So anything that can be done to enhance communication in a positive way is something that can help really enhance that strong relationship between police and citizens.

0:25:11
What does D.A.R.E.

0:25:12
stand for, Dr. Sousa. Oh my gosh, putting that aside, there is a drug abuse resistance education, I believe, is the acronym.

0:25:25
Dr. Sabat, we want to get you out of here on this question. Could you just remind our listeners how do they connect to this Hate Uncycled desired outcomes as a result of hosting this series?

0:25:37
I discovered today, I just put in hate uncycled in the UNLV homepage search box and in the left-hand toolbar, the hyperlink came up with all of the three dates. We cover public health, we cover what our campus is doing, indigenous and land rights here in our own community, in the African-American community of Winter Park, and then law enforcement, First Amendment rights and security. Out of these conversations, we hope to educate, to heighten the level of awareness. We are building allies. We're fighting the attitude of cynicism. Each of us has not only responsibility, but also a desire to help make a change. And what I saw is that UNLV has individually by departments, colleges and so forth have rolled up their sleeves to help whether it's in this pandemic and even way before the pandemic. We have to point out that this spring our state legislature is meeting and perhaps this series will help showcase the fine work our campus has done. And I encourage folks to know that our legislators and our regents are listening to your voice. And again, thank you, Renee and Keith, so very much for having, giving us this opportunity to showcase this remarkable program.

0:27:03
Yes, definitely. Thank you for joining us and we appreciate all the insights and for the team coming together to put together such an important series that we know will yield benefits for the entire university community. And one of the takeaways for me has been just the importance of, you know, community partnerships in particular for policing. And then also really focusing on positive patrolling is something is, is a I think a important way to be able to improve those relationships and communication.

0:27:35
Renee, what about you? I'm really excited that part of this series is going to also cover not only black excellence, so the rich history of blacks that have been a part of this community, but also the link to how they were disenfranchised and how that can be linked to hate and how, if we don't do something like this, these people are going to be pushed out of their communities, which is unjust. But I'm also glad to see that we're going to have senior level Cabinet members a part of this conversation from our President to our Provost to our own Vice President for Police Services because we realize that attitude reflects leadership, and we're going to need strong leaders such as those positions to maintain and sustain the work. And so I'm really, really looking forward to this series. Congratulations to Dr. Sabat. She has done a wonderful job. I was part of the first time that she put this on and there may have been maybe, you know, 20 people in the room. I suspect that we're going to have a huge turnout and just all of the conversations and the presenters and their level of expertise and passion, I know we're on the right track. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12, on KUNV 91.5 Jazz and More.

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That's a wrap. That's a wrap.

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you

Transcribed with Cockatoo