Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Active Partnership (LEAP), discusses the uncertainties of today and how we should approach solutions. Ultimately, policing involves maintaining order during chaos. Achieving this through training, solid relationships, and the proper equipment assists police departments in their de-escalation and communication efforts. However, Neill also wants to redirect the police force away from civil infractions and minor drug crimes and back toward protecting citizens from danger and violence.

Currently, nothing brings more chaos than COVID-19. Neill addresses the logistical and ethical issues that are coming out of the woodwork and offers his common-sense perspective on where things are going wrong and what we can do to protect the most vulnerable of our population.

During this time, [the people who] are going to catch it on the chin are the people who live paycheck to paycheck. If we don’t come up with a comprehensive plan to address the financial situations of the poor—the food, the health, and the nutritional needs of the poor—that’s when things are going to get really bad. But if government can step forward and do that—and you worry about business only to the standpoint that they can hire people—but if government does that, then the people get confidence in their government and are less likely to rebel against their government.”

Transcript:

Seth Adler:
Neill Franklin returns. Welcome to Cannabis Economy, I'm your host Seth Adler. Download episodes on caneconomy.com or wherever you currently get your podcasts. First a word from our supporter, and then Neill Franklin.

I've known the family behind Medicine Man for the past eight years. Pioneers in Colorado, the family business helped set the path for global adult use cannabis. MG magazine has voted them top 50 cannabis companies to work for, two consecutive years running. Check out their website at medicinemandenver.com, or visit one of their locations in Denver, Aurora, Thornton or Longmont, the next time you're in Colorado to understand how one family has helped chart the course for the next great American industry.

Seth Adler:
All right. So, we've got Major Neill Franklin. Neill, it's good to see you as always.

Neill Franklin:
Always Seth.

Seth Adler:
Since the last time we spoke, things have changed. We don't need to go through the particulars. So, we already discussed before we started recording. You're good. I'm good. We're good.

Neill Franklin:
Yeah.

Seth Adler:
But we're going to try to tap into your peace keeping/law enforcement mind here. Because I'm seeing, we're short on food supply, we are long on unemployment and getting longer. And yes, generally as far as messaging is concerned, whether it be from our political leaders or from the media, there isn't a lot of calmness, and it doesn't feel like there's a lot of collaborative leadership. Sure, we passed a $2.3 trillion package, you and I are not going to talk about that. So, there was collaboration there, not much collaboration anywhere else. So, my question to you, long winded as it may be, is if you're Major Neill Franklin running the force right now, and you are sensing the possibility of a chaotic moment approaching, how do you prepare the force? How do you prepare the team? What do you put in place to make sure that we get ahead of what might become, like I said, a little chaotic?

Neill Franklin:
So, I think there are four basic categories of things to focus on here. Let me start with the worst case scenario of people getting somewhat out of control. And so we in policing, that's our job to maintain order when things get chaotic. So, definitely we got to make sure that we're prepared in that area. That not only do we have the equipment as a police agency to maintain order, to make sure that we have solid relationships and communication with other agencies, national guard and who have you, but we got to make sure that our men and women are properly trained.

And I don't mean trained in how to use force, I mean also trained in how to deescalate situations, how to communicate with people. How to help people move towards solving the problems they feel they have, because we're going to be that first line of defense in many cases. So, the best case scenario when it comes to chaos is how do we tamp it down? Communication, deescalation, helping people solve issues and problems. It's not so much the hand cuffs and the jails and all that stuff, that's last resort. So, that's one area to look at.

Seth Adler:
And if I can jump in there, if I'm remembering, it sounds like civilian principles at play right there.

Neill Franklin:
Civilian principals are all in this. Yes indeed, they are all in this. Another critical area to focus is moving toward a better case scenario, maybe this is an opportunity for policing to get to the business of what it's designed for, where we're supposed to be. And that is dealing with, unfortunately, the violent people we have in our communities. It is working under a philosophy that the people have established, so getting away from these small petty issues that policing has to deal with or has been dealing with unfortunately for the past few decades. So, if you're someone hurting someone else, we're talking crimes of violence, we're talking someone victimizing someone else, okay, we're there.

But I think we need to get away from this civil enforcement stuff, fining people, writing people tickets and citations for these civil infractions and that sort of thing. There are other ways to deal with it, and I believe that if we were to focus more on neighborhoods and families and communities, we will do a much better job of teaching people and encouraging people to do the right thing for their fellow man. So, behaving a little better so we don't need that sort of thing. But there are many things that we can pull back on policing, that includes these minor drug crimes too. We're seeing now that, "Whoa, this is a health issue. We, the police should not have been involved in this in the first place. Let's bring our nurses, our doctors, our clinicians, our counselors, our psychologists, bring them all to the front of this issue and let them deal with it."

In doing that Seth, now we get to a point where we can start reducing the numbers of police officers that we have among our ranks. Again, that saves money, critical funding that can go toward other places, education and some of those things that I mentioned, and health and so on. Things that truly make a community healthier, therefore functioning better. And I said four things at the beginning, but I wrapped some things together there, but mainly looking at those two areas. Worst case scenario, being prepared for that, being able to manage that right. But hopefully, if I'm able to accomplish the first or the latter thing that I spoke about, which is about shifting of resources, getting police to focus on other things, which also builds a greater and stronger relationship between police and community, which will help us in those times of chaos to communicate better with people within the community, within neighborhoods. And again, to deescalate and to help solve issues and keep calmness about people.

Unfortunately, I have peers who say that our job is to do one thing, enforce the law. And I disagree with that 100%. The reason I disagree with that 100% is because many times we are not only for some people, pretty much the only public official contact that citizens have, but like it says, first responder. We tend to be the ones that arrive first, whatever the issue is because we're out and about 24/7 anyway. So, we have to be capable of dealing with other issues too and helping people solve problems and issues, and at the very least, directing them to a place where they can get their questions answered and their issues solved and addressed.

Seth Adler:
If I have someone in a position of authority, law enforcement, a peacekeeper, helping me with the issue at hand, all of a sudden I can relax just a little bit because that authority has shared with me the way to solve my problem. That's peacekeeping. And then I think, because you and I have had many conversations about it, we used to be called peacekeepers, now we're called law enforcement. What I'm hearing is, well now I guess we're both. So, Nancy and Dave, they're trying to get groceries, we're going to help them out if they need us, if we're on the scene, and that's great. And then, if we got a problem as far as law enforcement, as far as violence, we're going to show up, we're going to make sure that that problem is solved, but we got to be able to do both. And then that way, the community can be as healthy as possible, no matter what's happening around them. Am I hearing you right?

Neill Franklin:
You're hearing me right. And thanks for mentioning the peacekeeper term there versus law enforcement. The average police officer actually does very little law enforcing throughout their average day, average week. Law enforcement, seeing someone violate the law, making the arrest, and then what happens after that? For the most part, you're bouncing from call to call, people have issues, people are trying to deal with something or someone, you arrive on the scene, and now you're trying to help mitigate things.

Again, keep the peace, whether it's a loud party, whether it's a neighbor whose dog keeps crapping on the other neighbor's lawn, and you're the one getting a call. Whether it's someone's son who didn't come home last night, and he's acting out and we got to get this kid on the right track, they call the police for this sort of thing. Most of the calls that we get do not involve enforcing the law and arresting someone, it's about mitigating circumstances and problems. And that's where we have to spend a lot of time teaching, and educating, and training our police officers how to do that kind of work.

Seth Adler:
So, if I'm seeing what you're saying, I'm seeing a peaceful society, I'm seeing peaceful communities all over the land. Let's just take the other side real quick to understand how bad things can get. And I think that in my lifetime, my at least somewhat adult lifetime, the worst it got was LA with Rodney King and those riots, that's what I remember. I don't remember the 1960s, 1968 in Chicago, I don't remember all that. So, for most folks listening I would imagine, that's the first moment. So, what did we do wrong there? There was the incident of course, but what did we do wrong in policing? What could have we done in retrospect, so that we can learn from that most recent moment, I guess?

Neill Franklin:
Well, so we're looking at, when we compare these two situations, two periods in time, now and then. So Rodney King, that was something that kicked off chaos all across the country because of police action, and also because of police inaction. If other police officers, as many of us know, and we knew back then that the beating of Rodney King was flat out, 120% wrong. If we in the policing community would have stepped forward and said, "No. That was wrong. We rebuke it. We're going to hold these officers accountable." We wouldn't have had this nonsense, and if we can get to the point where we do that with every internal police officer who oversteps their authority, if we the police step forward and do a better job at policing our own first before we police others, we won't have Rodney Kings, or Freddie Gray's, or that sort of thing happening.

Now, with this period in time we're dealing with a virus. We're dealing with a virus that is very contagious, that is causing our economic systems to shut down, that then translates into, like you were saying, a decline in food, people losing their jobs, people getting sick, people getting worried, they don't know what's what, lack of leadership at the top. Yes, the perfect storm for chaos to erupt if this continues. Now again, as a police officer, a police department critical having those relationships with people obviously. But if it kicks off, we have to be physically and strategically prepared to deal with it. Looking at it from a geographical standpoint, where would this potentially begin? Where could it potentially begin?

We have to have ears and eyes. We have to be paying attention to social media. We have to be paying attention to those tale tell signs or those things that will give us the information we need to get ahead and hopefully tamp things down and quiet things down before they even erupt. Because many times in the past, historically, if you do case studies on when these things have happened, we missed things.

Seth Adler:
What do you mean by that?

Neill Franklin:
Let me just talk about it for a second. One of the most recent ones here in Baltimore, with Freddie Gray. We saw the signs on social media. We even knew the location where there was going to be a little bit of challenge from school kids with authority, and we didn't do the right things in redirecting these school kids after the school session in a way that they could get home in different ways. We knew that they were all going to congregate at a key Metro and bus depot. A subway and bus depot right down the street from the school, and instead of putting other things in place to manage that, we failed. Even when it started to kick off, another major thing was they closed down that major center, which was key to kids going home, getting on the bus and Metro, and they gave no other options to these kids, no transportation to get home. So, the signals are there, we just have to pay attention. We have to develop that, and then we have to have plans in place to move forward.
S
eth Adler:
Anticipation, planning, execution, communication. Got it.
Neill Franklin:
Absolutely.
Seth Adler:
Now are there lessons that you might know from when you went through training about the great depression, about that moment in time in terms of policing? Do you [inaudible 00:15:19] I don't know about?

Neill Franklin:
Well, here's something that a lot of people don't think about, is that the police aren't this isolated entity that comes out of thin air when something goes wrong. We're members of the community, we're dealing with the very same issues. Think about this Coronavirus thing. Police officers are getting sick, family members are getting sick. Police officers are wondering, "Wow, is my mom okay? Is my dad okay? Are my brothers okay? Are my sisters okay? I need to check on them. I got kids. We got to eat too." And unlike some people think, the police don't always have access to things that everyone needs. So, we don't have people bringing food to our homes, to our family members, and to our mother who might be living alone. We don't have special people taking care of them. No. We have to figure out just like everybody else, how we take care of them. We have to figure out just like everybody else, how we keep ourselves safe as well.

And one thing we noticed in policing, as a police leader commander, how do we keep the members of the force healthy, so that we don't end up with 60, 70% of our police officers coming down with the virus in a time like this? There's a lot to think about in a time like this when we're dealing with a virus, versus a Rodney King scenario, police action kind of response. Because the police officers and civilian staff members in policing, we tend to forget about them as well. These are our radio operators who are key to us being able to do our jobs, these other mechanics that fix the cars, these are the folks that do all the work behind the scenes so that police officers can continue to provide a service. So, there's a lot to consider, a lot to think about, and it's going to have to be done not [inaudible 00:17:27]. A response is not in isolation with the police, but really figuring out a way how to work with and within the community if we get to a place of chaos because of this Corona Virus.

Seth Adler:
Yeah. So I mean, I don't know, definitely a very different country in the 1930s than it is in the-

Neill Franklin:
Oh, definitely. Even just looking at technology wise, I don't know, it could be very difficult to compare the two. Yes, there are some lessons that we can learn obviously in dealing with that, but I think again, the ultimate goal is to get ahead of it, and that's going to be a collaborative government response beginning right now. You mentioned earlier about the stimulus package because I got to continue to tell people that public safety, it's not first and foremost a police responsibility. Public safety is first and foremost the community neighborhood responsibility. And when I say community, I'm talking about government, I'm talking about the services that government provides, and the services that we expect government to provide.

So during this time, and it's been said over and over and over again that people are going to catch it on the chin Seth, are the poor. Are the people who live paycheck to paycheck. They're the ones. And if we don't come up with a comprehensive plan to address the financial situations of the poor, the food, the health, and the nutritional needs of the poor, that's when things are going to get really bad. But if government can step forward and do that, and you worry about business only to the standpoint that they can hire people. But if government does that, then the people get confidence in their government, and are less likely to rebel against their government.

Seth Adler:
That's it. I had the two trillion number before they finalized it, so I came up with my own plan. You want to hear it?

Neill Franklin:
I'm all ears.

Seth Adler:
All right. So, we got 331 million Americans, right? What you do is you give each one of those people $50,000, five zero, $50,000, all right. Now, they have that, tell them to make it last a year. There's no more coming. Don't spend it, make it last. There's your money. You got 30 million small businesses. However they calculate small businesses to give me the stat 30 million, that's who a small business is. There's 30 million of them. Each of those small businesses get $100,000. That's $2 trillion right there. Done.

Neill Franklin:
Done. Absolutely.

Seth Adler:
I just saved your $0.3 trillion. But you got to get the money into the people's hands, so that we don't have chaos on the streets. Is that a fair assumption on my part here?

Neill Franklin:
And I agree with you. Absolutely. But it is a little bit more complicated than that.

Seth Adler:
Of course, it is. Of course, I'm very much simplifying it but-

Neill Franklin:
So, for instance, I don't need it. Me and my family don't need it. Identifying the families and the people who don't need it is absolutely critical. Taking care of those that do. I need to mention this real quick. As we talk about this stimulus package, and they're talking about checks going out to people, and if I'm not mistaken, and you can correct me on this, I think those checks will go out based upon, for instance, 2018 tax filings, if I'm not mistaken. They have to have some sort of basis to determine how much money you make, and whether you get a check, or not, or whatever. 2018.

You know how many poor people do not file taxes? I would have never thought to ask this, but recently, over the years, how many homeless people do you think have filed taxes? Not only that, where are they going to get their check mailed to? There are so many people in cities like Baltimore, Chicago, New York, LA, who work their little, what I call hustle side jobs, legal or not, on a corner, maybe every day, making 50 bucks, making 40 bucks, selling their little odds and ends, they don't file taxes.

Seth Adler:
And they can't do that right now either, by the way. They can't be on the street corner selling anything.

Neill Franklin:
So, what happens? So, it's going to take a little bit more than a government just saying, "Okay, we're going to look at the 2018, maybe 2017 tax filing, we're going to send out the corresponding checks." No, you really got to drill this down to the community level through communication with state and local governments to find out... I mean, so for instance, looking at these communities, what are the grassroots organizations in those communities that provide food, that provide housing, that provide medical services, that provide all of these life sustaining things that people need, for the people that we don't even know exist.

Seth Adler:
Another interesting question would be to do the math, and I'm no mathematician, as you well know, on the percentage of cost that $1,200 is to the average American versus the percentage of cost that $48 billion is to the airline industry. I wonder where that balance is found, but that's a different conversation for other people, not you and me. So, thank you very much for this conversation. Obviously we will keep checking back with you because I always check back with you.

Neill Franklin:
Oh, yes.

Seth Adler:
Or do you want to give me a soundtrack song for this conversation, on the soundtrack of your life, one track, one song that's got to be on there?

Neill Franklin:
Marvin Gaye, What's Going On?

Seth Adler:
Oh, come on. That's literally the perfect song for this moment. You have nailed it, my friend.

Neill Franklin:
What's Going On?

Seth Adler:
Major Neill Franklin. Thank you so much. I'll see you down the line. All right?

Neill Franklin:
All right, Seth. Thanks a lot.

Seth Adler:
And there you have Neill Franklin, very much appreciate his time, very much. Appreciate your time. Stay tuned.

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