EP57: Black Lives Matter: The Role of Social Work in Dismantling Structural Racism in the USA

NASW Social Work Talks Podcast | Let’s Talk Social Work

Announcer:
We're excited to share with you a special episode of Social Work Talks. This month, NASW Senior Policy Consultant, Mel Wilson was interviewed on Let's Talk Social Work, a podcast from the British Association of Social Workers, Northern Ireland. Many of our colleagues around the world had been following the news in the United States around racism and violence against black people. Mel shared what's been happening and what we're doing here to push for real change and social justice.

Andy McClenaghan:
Welcome to Let's Talk Social Work. My name is Andy McClenaghan. And this is the second of two episodes focusing on the role of social work and challenging systematic and institutional racism. In this episode, we are examining the situation in the USA, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Mel Wilson from the National Association of Social Workers in the States. Mel how are you doing?

Mel Wilson:
Oh, I'm hanging in there. There's a lot going on here in the United States. It's very, very complex and multiple issues are happening, but we're hanging in there.

Andy McClenaghan:
We've got a lot to talk about Mel. We've got lots to talk about. I'm going to introduce Mel to the listeners. Mel has worked for NASW since 2006, and he is the association's Senior Policy Consultant for social justice and human rights. In his role, he's in charge of developing and implementing activities related to criminal justice, juvenile justice, immigration reform, economic justice, environmental justice, and voting rights. I'm at home in Belfast in Northern Ireland and I'd like to extend a very special welcome to any listeners in the United States. Mel, do you want to tell us a bit about your work?

Mel Wilson:
Yeah. Again, I am Mel Wilson. I've worked, as Andy has said, with NASW for many years. It's been a very challenging and involved association. I do social justice, which is a big deal here in the United States. There are many, many coalitions out there that are working very hard on all of those issues that Andy outlined. And that's what my activities are. I work very much in the field and around policy issues. Very little practice, but certainly a lot around policy and legislation.

Andy McClenaghan:
And are you in D.C. right now, Mel?

Mel Wilson:
Physically our office — we're part of the national office. We are in Washington D.C. For your listeners NASW has chapters in every state. There are 50 states in United States, there are 50 chapters within the continental United States and physical United States. We have chapters in a couple of territories, I believe it's about total of 54, 53 or 54 chapters — but our national office is in Washington D.C.

Andy McClenaghan:
Great. It's a big organization. Mel, on this side of the Atlantic, we are still feeling the effects of COVID-19 and we're very far from returning to normal. But I'm aware that the U.S. remains very tightly within the grip of the pandemic. And it was in the context of the coronavirus outbreak on the 25th of May, the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer.

George Floyd was a black man, the officer is white. And the brutality and callousness of the act was truly shocking. The murder spurred protests across the globe, but the epicenter was of course in various cities across the USA. For our listeners here in the UK, can you tell me what the past month and a half have been like where you are in the States?

Mel Wilson:
Well, it really has been intense, but probably more than that it's been almost surprisingly transforming. One of the things that happened with Mr. Floyd's murder was that perhaps for the first time — and there have been many years and many incidents of excessive force and lethal force by police that frankly was racist. This murder, because it was so, so much seen across the world and visual to what happened. Many folks, including white folks and folks from Hispanic community and of course, African Americans and folks internationally, saw that the concerns that African American community has had for years were true — that there was systemic clearly systemic racism.

It triggered deeper thought. It went beyond just Mr. Floyd's murder. He went through the whole notion of racism in the United States and racism in the world. And this time, that said, there is not only concrete action being done about that. There's a need for an understanding from all cultures about the implication of racism. The fact that if there's racism against African American communities, it's not isolated to the African American community; it affects everybody.

And in my mind, seeing the protests and some of the protests are still going on. It was very heartening to see how diverse the protests were. It went into very small communities where there is a small percentage of African Americans in those communities, yet there were protests in support of Mr. Floyd. And it changed; there's a transformation. We hope that it's a long-term transformation, but we feel that this is the beginning of a real important transformation in dealing with the issue of race and also the issue of excessive force by the police.

Andy McClenaghan:
Watching the video of that murder it was a real clear indication of the institutional racism in policing. The white police officer, he was deliberate in what he was doing. It was clear what he was doing, but the fact that he did it, he must have known or he must've expected to get away with it. What does that tell you about a culture of institutionalized racism in that police force? And when you have that and it's demonstrated not just in that murder, but in the way that the protests in the wake of the murder of being policed, the violence that's being meted out against protesters.

The violence that's been directed against journalists covering the events has been really disturbing, to see what's happening in the States. It's not happening in, well, I was going to say it's not happening a country, which you would associate with having a despotic leader, but it's happening in the States under the current President. In that context Mel, what do you think needs to happen to change the institutional racism in law enforcement? And I'm keen to know; I think you touched on this before, the institutional racism in law enforcement. It's not an isolated problem. I'm guessing that's a symptom of a much deeper structural racism throughout American society.

Mel Wilson:
Exactly. You use a word that's an important word. You said culture and it is the culture of racism within law enforcement that goes back many years, more like centuries. Where there has been over that time a value within law enforcement that looked at communities of color, especially black communities, as being first of all dangerous, hostile, but less-than. And the important piece here is less-than, treating someone like a subhuman. And that culture has to change that culture. Nothing's going to change unless the culture of racism within law enforcement does change.

And there are like 18,000 individual law enforcement agencies in the United States that goes from federal down to local small town, rural, urban. And we're asking, not asking, demanding that all of those departments look at itself and recognize, first acknowledge that racism has existed within policing. And do that commitment to change and that change isn't easy because you can have the leaders and the chiefs and commissioners say that, "Okay, we're going to end this." But it has to get down to the rank and file police officer, the police officer on the street.

One of the things that we always are concerned about in that culture is that police encountered the same thing that Mr. Floyd went through. Here wasn't an encounter that the encounter was over a counterfeit $20 bill, not even proven that he had done anything, and clearly it escalated to his death. And you made a really good point that the callousness, that that police officer was totally not concerned. Clearly not concerned that any consequences kind of will come upon him for what he was doing. His fellow police officers weren't as concerned even though they may have said something, they didn't demonstrate any willingness to stop that from happening. And that's the ingrained culture that we have to work on.

Andy McClenaghan:
I can guarantee if I had a counterfeit 20-pound note, that I went to a shop to buy cigarettes here, and I passed up to the cashier and the cops were called, I wouldn't be dead as a result of that situation.

Mel Wilson:
Exactly.

Andy McClenaghan:
In terms of the structural racism manifest in the USA, it's not just restricted to policing. I'm thinking of poverty, housing, education, and health care. I saw a statistic today from the 2018 U.S. Census and it shows that the highest poverty rate by race which actually find among native Americans 25.4 percent. But African Americans are second at 20.8 percent, whereas whites have a poverty rate of 10.1 percent. Looking at those issues Mel, housing, poverty, education, health care, what is the role of social work in challenging institutional racism in those spheres?

Mel Wilson:
I mentioned when we talked earlier before the recording is about the fact that NASW has what we call social justice priorities. And among those priorities is economic justice issues or political justice issues, environmental justice, criminal justice, and the like. And we see our role as being leaders and working. And really critical when you just say that it isn't any NASW that's going to change this by itself.

We have to and must work with other organizations other in coalition. The coalition model works effectively because it's constant pressure that you have to apply. A political pressure that you had to apply to bring about those kinds of changes because you did outline the fact that clearly there's disparities across the board, health disparities, economic justice disparities that again, go back centuries.

We've had fits and starts seeing the United States in terms of civil rights bills and voting rights bills had some effect, but certainly hadn't done what they were designed to do. As social workers and as the largest social work organization in United States, we have an obligation to commit and not just verbalized, but become part of the activities, part of the action. We work very closely with these coalitions.

I give you an example, you mentioned housing and discrimination in housing, which has a historical racist background on it. NASW is a part of a national coalition that is called Opportunity Starts at Home. We're on the steering committee and I serve on, we just formed a racial justice subgroup and I serve on the subgroup.

And we had a long discussion about discrimination and housing and what we need to do. And this is a collaborative effort, but these efforts are not again, just advocacy. It implies and insist upon rather action. We have to as social workers individually and as NASW, we have to be committed to actions that bring about change. May take a while, some may be done quicker than others, but it has to be around that notion of a social action and a plan for action.

Andy McClenaghan:
And Mel, I was going to actually ask this question later, but I'll bring it in now. Core to NASW social justice work is encouraging people to vote and addressing barriers to voting. Mel, can you tell me a bit about what that work involves?

Mel Wilson:
Yeah. That's one of our priority commitments. I give a little background to and then I'll draw on the notion of coalition. When the Democrats first regain power in the House under Nancy Pelosi, the first bill that they passed was a bill dealing with voting rights, a very comprehensive bill that dealt with the voting rights. It called together the nation to focus on the issue of voting discrimination, moving to voter for democracy. Which is a national coalition about 200 or so organization, including NASW that we are committed to eliminate it as best possible all barriers to voting. And it does focus very much on the 2020 election.

One of the things that's been asked for actually is some voter protection for the 2020 elections. The concern again, is election tampering going back to what Russia is doing with the last election, but having those kinds of protections and integrity. There's a request as it's tied to COVID, legislation for something like $4.3 billion, I believe I have the number right. $4.3 billion to ensure that the upcoming elections is secured, but it gets much bigger than that.

We are involved with working with other groups around voter mobilization. We do a lot about education. We're partnering with, for instance, Voto Latino for the Latino community. There's other organizations that are involved with voting that we're partnering with. And from this point, actually the intensity of those words is pretty much from this point, all we have up to November where we just push out information, be a part of webinars and just be constantly informed not only our members, but the broader community about the critical nature of this upcoming election.

And before we leave this, I just can't underemphasize how critical the 2020 election is to folks who believe in social justice. We are adamant that if Mr. Trump is reelected, we are in for a very, very rough road and that just something that we just can't let happen. There's a lot of energy building up saying, "This is critical." Everything that we talk about ... suggests one way or another tie through the outcome of the 2020 election. That's a major priority for us.

Andy McClenaghan:
And Mel, do you think Trump's election was a reaction to years of Obama's administration? Was it reaction to having heard a Black president? Is that too simple analysis or is that the situation that you see?

Mel Wilson:
It was a mixed bag. I think it certainly was a reaction. A lot of discussion goes to the reaction to change in this country in terms of diversity. And President Obama was representative of that. It scared the hell out of many, many white Americans who are very concerned, angry if you will about the fact that this country will be a minority country within, I think about 10 years. And that's real, that's not going to change. That's not going to go backwards.

And I think there's a realization that the issue of white dominance is pretty much over now. There is going to be white supremacy. There's going to be movement towards trying to reverse that. But the fear I believe within the members of the white community is that will change forever all the things they believe in terms of dominant superiority and the like. I think Trump is more of a symptom of that, but unfortunately has represented their view so strongly that we definitely know that not only is affiliating with them, he adheres to their values also.

Andy McClenaghan:
Because I suppose in the two years between Trump announcing his candidacy to winning the election he didn't create, he may have capitalized on racism within the country. He didn't suddenly make America racist by himself.

Mel Wilson:
Exactly.

Andy McClenaghan:
But I do remember watching Obama's inauguration with my wife. Seems like a long, long time ago now. And just how positive, how inspiring it was. I remember being really, really excited and it's one of those things I'm here in Ireland, I'm not American, but America has the rule that has in the world. And Obama was kind of figurehead, I suppose, for progress and inequality. Compare that to when Trump was given his inauguration speech, it was miserable. I remember finding the whole thing oppressive and quite scary. And I really hope we don't see another four years of that.

Mel Wilson:
Yeah.

Andy McClenaghan:
And as significant as the presidential election is going to be in terms of shaping the future of the country. A lot of the decisions which affect the lives of citizens are made at a local level, state and local level. And we do know that turnout is often really low for local elections in particular. Where turnout is low, participation is then typically unrepresentative of the wider electorate because there's disproportionately high representation from white voters, more affluent voters and older voters.

Then the result is that the interests of minority communities aren't represented by those who are elected and public spending is allocated accordingly. Not just focusing on the 2020 presidential election Mel, is there a focus on those state elections and local elections where decisions that really impact lives are made as well?

Mel Wilson:
Yeah. The focus has to be at the local level and the outreach mobilization all those things trying to get folks to the polls in November has to happen at that local level. Always the African American community didn't turn out well for Hillary Clinton in the last election. And one of the things that's been looked at is what's the mobilization, how do we mobilize the African American community? Can Joe Biden really mobilize that community so that they in fact, turn out to the polls. The same thing with a younger because there's a lot of emphasis on young people and young people are energized, but is that energy translate into folks actually getting to the polls.

There's fear that some of that that may not happen, but my sense of it is that there's been a bit of a change in where these groups stand in terms of being willing to go out and actually vote. And I think that because of the issue of racism, the issue of Black Lives Matter, all those things. I think are mobilizing people, re energizing folks and Biden doesn't become the sort of central PC. He's respected, his people like him, but it isn't everything is thrown into his bucket is basically saying, "We need a change. We need not to have Trump come back."

And that's the message that that has to be gotten, but it's very much that messages has to be carried at the local level. And to that point on local, we're talking about not just the White House, we're talking about regaining the Senate that may be in some way more important, almost totally more important, but very close to changing things. We're at a point where Mr. Trump being the President has changed an awful lot in this country, is not going to be easy to reverse some of them.

To have the Senate to regain the Senate is a target that we just can't lose sight of. And that goes back to states really, really we deal with the electoral college and having to win that electoral college vote that happens at the state level. That energy does happen really focused very much at that state and local level.

Andy McClenaghan:
And Kanye West has announced his candidacy, hasn't he?

Mel Wilson:
Say again, I'm sorry.

Andy McClenaghan:
Kenya West has announced his candidacy.

Mel Wilson:
Oh, okay. Sorry I didn't hear that. [laughs]

Andy McClenaghan:
That's not a joke he has, hasn't he?

Mel Wilson:
Yes, yes.

Andy McClenaghan:
I started to doubt myself for a while.

Mel Wilson:
Yeah, he did. But that is. Well, I laugh, but we can't afford that.

Andy McClenaghan:
Yeah.

Mel Wilson:
We can't afford someone to stays in election and siphons off any vote.

Andy McClenaghan:
Well, that was actually, that's what I was thinking. Though, I don't buy in first conspiracy theories at all. But going back a couple of years Kanye West was in the Oval Office, he was best friends with Trump. And I was wondering, could this be a ridiculously cynical ploy to try to because I know Joe Biden falls very well amongst the African American community. Could this be a really cynical ploy to try to pull black votes away from Biden? I don't think there's anything enough, but it was the first thing I thought of.

Mel Wilson:
But it doesn't necessarily have to be conspiracy. I think that you can do a subtly by some folks nudging him. And I just wouldn't be surprised if someone within the Trump's circle, if they have a communication with Kanye that they say, "Yeah, why don't you go ahead and run; that'd be cool." It's just trying to get him to do it. They're going to do, it's not just Kanye, they going to try to get a third party.

The Green Party that I've forgotten her name who ran for Green Party last election. I think she got something like five or 6 percent of the vote, which could have made a huge difference. And there was a sense she had a communication with the Russians, actually with that one picture where she was with Putin.

That these kinds of things and it's not that there was this real conspiracy, yes. You could do it subtly and nudge people in a direction to bring somebody else into this election. I'm sure that's going to happen before the end of before November.

Andy McClenaghan:
Mel, you were speaking about the importance of Democrats winning the Senate. They currently control the House and how that will be really significant. Just recently the House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, it was on June 25th. The legislation was introduced by social worker Representative Karen Bass. She's a Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

And it was marked by NASW as I'm going to quote from the press release. A crucial step forward in police reform and dismantling the structural inequality left from legacies of discrimination and white supremacy. The root cause of aggressive, brutal and on the kind of policing.

What are your hopes for that piece of legislation? It's going to face a real challenge as it enters the Senate. Is the legislation in itself if it is passed, is it enough? Is it going to deliver? And what challenges do you foresee actually seeing that legislation enacted?

Mel Wilson:
There's a lot of discussion around the Police and Justice Act. Well, let me first say what we favored in that act. There were about eight points made in there. One had to deal with coming up with national standards for use of force. The other one had to deal with really moving forward our racial profile and that's a station that had been languishing for a number of years in the militarization of policing. One had to deal with the no not ending, no not warrants, which caused the death of the young lady in Louisville, Kentucky. When the police went in without a warrant and she was shot eight times.

And also there's an important piece to that allows for data collection around police officers who are convicted of use of force and having a data bank or database so that they will not be able to move from town to town to get jobs in different police force. That's a number of things in that, that we do and did support. Status of the bill it passed the House. Once it got passed the House because it's up to the Senate. Representative Scott from South Carolina introduced the Justice Act, which is the Republican version of the Police and Justice Act.

It was through a vote in the Senate it got defeated. Now it's up to the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, whether or not there would be a negotiation between the Democrats and Republicans over the House's bill. The hope was that there would be, and usually that happens when you get two competing bills. If there's any energy behind reform, then the parties sit down and they just do a negotiation and come up with a compromise bill.

I was on a call yesterday, part of a call yesterday where this was discussing and not a lot of optimism that McConnell will bring up his belt or is willing to get into a negotiation over the George Floyd Bill. I was on another call a couple of days ago where the presenter was saying that the expectation likelihood that nothing's going to pass before November, there will not be a police reform bill November.

And going back to what we said earlier, everything is hinging on the outcome of the next election. It seems right now that getting a police reform bill signed and on the President's desk is not likely to happen and get into signed by a President is not likely to happen until there is a change in the presidency, we're talking after November.

Andy McClenaghan:
And in that press release where you welcomed the bill and you list the positive aspects of the bill. It also that NASW calls on Congress state, county and local governments to reallocate and reinvest resources from law enforcement into mental health, living wage jobs, affordable housing and alternatives for anti racist public safety services. And then it continues that these investments will lead to decriminalization of poverty, homelessness, and emergency mental health and help dismantle discriminatory and oppressive police practices that perpetuate white supremacist ideologies.

Now there's been a lot of discussion publicly concerning Black Lives Matters on the call to defund the police. Is that the same message, Mel? My understanding is that some commentators and some on the right are seeking to discredit the Black Lives Matter call to defund the police and reallocate funding. They're trying to paint as abolish the place entirely and that's not my understanding of the message from Black Lives Matters. Could you comment on that?

Mel Wilson:
Yeah. You're right. First of all, you're right that there are these demographic distractors, who are purposely misinterpreting that term defund the police. I can only answer to where I think the progressive community and the police reform community is going with that term. It certainly does not define it as literally defund the police. It really talks about re imagining and that's the term we use, is re imagining law enforcement or re imagining policing. It premises that there are functions out there.

Mel Wilson:
And this is not just a premise from the president it's from conservatives to that the police are doing functions that probably could be better done by social workers. And there's movement within cities to actually move in that direction where they're examining their budgets their law enforcement budgets and designating X amount of dollars that will go into social services kinds of programs, mental health kinds of programs. I think you touched on one really important one is looking at the emergency crisis system in so called 911 systems.

Andy McClenaghan:
And this is an Albuquerque, isn't it? The proposal of New Mexico.

Mel Wilson:
That's Albuquerque motto. And the City of Albuquerque policy-wise committed to creating a function within their government social work function that made social workers as the first responders to a crisis call. A little bit of background I don't know if you guys have crisis lines in Great Britain.

Andy McClenaghan:
Yeah, sure.

Mel Wilson:
But what a crisis line, national crisis line is that 911, someone calls 911 and says, it goes to the police and says, "We have a crisis." That crisis could be a legitimate threat of someone's life from a crime. Oftentimes it's a mental health kind of crisis or it may be a domestic crisis. And police are the ones who go out and respond to those calls. The argument, which is legitimate is that the police aren't trained to do crisis intervention, honestly.

And going back to the notion of the police culture you create then this encounter between police and a person who may be, if they go into a mental health crisis has behaviors that seem threatening. The clear concern is that in those circumstances that threat is interpreted by the police as a threat to them. And then you have all the possibilities of some kind of physical encounter and often a lethal encounter.

I forget the numbers, but there's a statistic out there of the number of lethal encounters and physical encounters by police against persons living with mental illness is really significant very, very high. The notion of having a social work is used in Albuquerque model is that the first respondent in no situation would be a social worker who purpose is to deescalate and then to refer.

Andy McClenaghan:
Yeah. And as NASW, do you see that as a positive step forward?

Mel Wilson:
Oh, we absolutely do. What we're developing what we call Social Justice Brief, is actually in the editing stage now. And the focus of that brief is to look at re imagining police, but looking at alternatives of models that move away from police towards social worker. It's not just thoughts about not only social workers, but mental health professionals and the like. We have definitely bought into that concept, I believed that it is a positive step.

We speak a lot about the 911 transformation and recommending that cities began to move in that direction and began to use community based organizations to respond again like Albuquerque. There's another model by the way out there called cahoots, C-A-H-O-O-T-S originated in the state of Oregon has being replicated throughout the country. And it also has a raised social work focus, but it's defined purpose is to become that entity where those 911 calls will go to them and not to police.

Now, one of the structures in that is that if there's a situation with clearly, there is someone out there firing the weapon or doing something that's clearly a huge public safety concern and you bring the police in. But there's that assessment and the argument is that we buy into that argument, that first step should be having social workers and other mental health workers be the first responders on that.

Andy McClenaghan:
My presumption would be that if there's a person who has mental health and if they are distressed maybe they're manifesting psychosis, the presence of armed police officers probably isn't going to deescalate that situation in a way that trained social workers would be able to.

Mel Wilson:
Or it may exacerbate the situation.

Andy McClenaghan:
Sure. Do you have any, have you had any engagement with any representatives from police forces? Is that something you think they would welcome or do you think it's something that they would actually resist?

Mel Wilson:
I think they by and large they will welcome. And that there's a caveat here. It goes back to your original question this notion of defund the police. And this is just me talking about this. I think that's there some of the police departments that will use that misinterpretation as a way of preserving their budgets. They may resist these kinds of changes that I'm talking about because they are afraid that their budgets will be greatly reduced to fund these community programs. That's my cynical voice on that.

Now my non cynical voice on it, going back to Albuquerque and going back to Oregon and other states and jurisdiction in Minnesota, that there is I believe that there are a number of police departments who understand that their offices are doing things that they shouldn't they're not qualified, they don't have the training to do. And that there is wisdom, take pressure off of them to work with the community around and form a collaborative with social workers or others in the community with the police departments to deal with the issue of folks with mental illness and domestic violence situations and just work in collaboration.

I got mixed messages. I'm sending there's a bit of, there's a possibility that some police departments may want to hold onto their budgets and buy into a worst case interpretation. But I do think that there are other police departments that would welcome that collaboration.

Andy McClenaghan:
I suppose. There's also the other argument that instead of spending public money for police forces on military grade equipment, that money could be redirected to properly training police officers. If there was an argument to keep it within police forces surely have police officers properly trained in deescalation. Now I know this has happened. I know there's the example in Seattle where Seattle Police Force had been trained in deescalation.

Andy McClenaghan:
And I think the example was that the pregnant mother Charleena Lyles, she was shot in her home by officers that had received the escalation training, but there were two white officers and she was a black woman. And I understand that in that sort of context and what's really radical reform of policing does get called for.

Minneapolis City Council has committed to disband the City's Police Department to be replaced by a new system of public safety that of the Albuquerque model. It'll certainly be interesting to see how those work out in terms of levels of crime and also wellbeing. And those two settings there are going to be two case studies, I suppose.

Mel Wilson:
Yeah. That goes back to the title re imagining policing. And I think about Minneapolis, I think that was misinterpreted a little bit because people assume that they dismantled their police. What they did was basically go to re imagining how they do public safety. It doesn't get rid of the police. It doesn't expose the community to unsafe conditions, but it does look at ways that they can change. And I think one of the things that they are proposing to is reinvesting in other kinds of services.

Andy McClenaghan:
And in terms of positive discrimination and recruitment to police departments to ensure there is a more balanced makeup in terms of officers from black and ethnic minority communities. Mel, does that work? Is that something NASW would be in supportive?

Mel Wilson:
Yeah. Well, in generally, the argument again is that if you have police officers from the community in which they serve it's going to be a better police force. This goes to the notion of community policing, nothing's a panacea. But you suddenly would want maybe Ferguson is a really good example where Missouri, it was a majority polite black community and with the majority of white police force, that kind of ratio should not be.

The other piece that happens with that, if you have white police officers that don't live in that community. Not only are they white police officers they're coming from a community that they either if they're not hustle to they are not necessarily protective of that community. If you have a requirement black or white that they live in their community, then I think that goes a long way.

But certainly they have to look at diversity their police forces and look at the level of diversity they have, and not just the diversity in the street or patrolman, but diversity in leadership too of the police departments. I do think that's important.

Andy McClenaghan:
Sure. In Northern Ireland where I live, there's been significant police reform going back about 20 years. We formally had a police force called the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and it was predominantly staffed by Protestant police officers. Even though the Northern Ireland population was roughly, there was I think it was about 55% Protestant, 45% Catholic at that stage, only 8% of the police officers where from a Catholic background. And the result was there was significant anti Catholic bias among parts of RUC.

Their response to that was a reformation of the police force. The RUC was replaced by the police service of Northern Ireland. There was a program of 50, 50 recruitment for 10 years, so that for every one Protestant officer that was recruited one Catholic officer was recruited. And the outcome of that was admitted up to, I think it's 32% of the police force is not Catholic.

It hasn't reached a balance yet. There has been a positive steps forward, it was heavily criticized by political parties from Protestant unionists backgrounds. But I think it was a necessary step to have a more representative police force. There are you know-

Mel Wilson:
There's a good amount.

Andy McClenaghan:
Well, Mel, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Is there anything else you would like to, is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?

Mel Wilson:
Well, first I want to thank you, Andy. This has really been a good conversation and I appreciate it that if you outreach to NAWS sort of getting insight about what's happening here. I'm sure there's a lot of folks in the UK who are curious about what some of our positions are and some of the things that we are concerned about. I appreciate that, just thanks.

Andy McClenaghan:
It's been a pleasure. It's not been our first transatlantic episode, but I would say it's been our best transatlantic episode now.

Mel Wilson:
All right. I like that.

Andy McClenaghan:
Thank you very much for taking part. Take care.

Mel Wilson:
Okay. Andy. All right. Take care now.