Former NYPD Detective To CBS News: 'It's Time To Reform Policing'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A former NYPD detective said Thursday that police culture needs to change in the wake of multiple fatal police shootings largely taking the lives of people of color.
Marq Claxton, now director of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, spoke with Maurice DuBois on the CBS Evening News Thursday night about why he thinks brutal police shootings continue to happen.
"It keeps happening because we failed to really learn lessons from history," Claxton said. "And I think what you're seeing now; witnessing now in the expressions of anger and frustration by the community and by the entire nation, across the nation, is because it's not just about these individual two cases now. It's about the history; the pattern of cases that have occurred over the last several decades involving fatal shootings by police officers of primarily young black men."
Claxton told CBS News to see real change, part of police culture needs to change, and that the role race has played in policing cannot be ignored. "We can no longer operate under this militarized, quota-driven, heavy-handed enforcement model."
"It's time to reform policing and incorporate some really serious public safety, public service, community-based models," he continued.
Claxton also weighed in on how police officers feel about their public perception, saying there is an expectation within the law enforcement community that requires "the outside appearance that we're all one, that we all believe the same thing."
"There are thousands of police officers across this country who are desperately hoping for comprehensive reform," he said.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday that it will monitor a state investigation in Minnesota in the aftermath of the police shooting that killed Philando Castile. The shooting's aftermath was streamed live on Facebook.
Diamond Reynolds started recording moments after police officers shot Castile, her boyfriend, during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, two officers were also placed on administrative leave in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after cellphone video captured the moment 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot outside of a convenience store.
