Reforming Cop Culture: In Oakland and Nationwide
Sunday, May 7 | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PMResidence Inn Berkeley - Ballroom 1
- Current Affairs
Oakland is the edge case in American law enforcement and a microcosm of much that is wrong with cop culture nationwide. In The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-up in Oakland the Polk Award–winning investigative duo Darwin BondGraham and Ali Winston take a deep dive into one of the most horrendous law enforcement scandals to come to light in recent history. In this session they will be joined by long-time racial justice activist and current San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin, and Neil Gross (Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture), who once worked briefly as a Berkeley police officer and is now a professor of sociology at Colby College. Their frank and forthright discussion will be facilitated by the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Laura Wenus, host of the SFNext:Fixing Our City podcast. From the Panthers to the Riders and beyond, Oakland is ground zero for legitimately questioning the very fabric of policing—this session presents both local and national perspectives from folks who have thoroughly studied, reported on, and worked with populations affected by cop culture for decades, and have ideas about how to enact reform.
Book signing information: Sausalito Books by the Bay, at the venue