A recent edition of PBS 39’s Community Conversations series featured a discussion on the recently trending topic of police misconduct and accountability. The program featured a panel of five local officials, along with PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who offered prerecorded comments. Joining host Monica Evans were Allentown Police Chief Glenn Granitz, Allentown criminal defense attorney Ettore Angelo, Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley, Executive Director of Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley Dr. Hasshan Batts and Pa. State Trooper John Scott.

Granitz, an Allentown native who graduated from the Allentown Police Academy in 2002 and has been chief since September 2019, was asked by Evans how the George Floyd video should have ended.”

“Obviously with Mr. Floyd alive,” Granitz replied, mentioning that chokeholds and pressure on the neck are against Allentown Police Department policy.

Granitz explained police should see themselves as “guardians, not warriors” and he expressed concern over “over-policing.” He said the amount of calls the APD receives which are mental health related are, in his words, “extremely high.

“We need to make sure that (community) services are ingrained” with the police, he said, as people are “used to” simply calling 911 for help with a number of issues, many of which wouldn’t necessarily require police involvement.

He also indicated changes are needed in many departments’ hiring practices and it is important departments share the reasons why they discharge personnel, as it would potentially keep others from hiring agitators and otherwise ineffective officers.

He also spoke on the topic of community policing. “It has to be something tangible that we actually do,” he said, continuing: “to do that in Allentown, we need to devote the personnel to that (so we can) help neighborhoods be able to resolve their own problems.” He also said communities need officers to reflect their population and it is preferable if officers live in or at least have a personal connection to the community.

Batts, who has been the executive director of Promise Neighborhoods since September 2017, said of the Floyd murder: “I’m a black male in America, so I’m used to (witnessing) those experiences … It wasn’t an isolated incident, it happens every day.” He said he was struck by the other responding officers’ unwillingness to intervene. “They have a duty to act,” Batts said, even if they were fairly new officers, as suggested by Evans.

When she asked about the ‘Defund the Police’ proposal shared by some racial justice activists, Batts said, “Budgets are value statements. It’s not about either/or,” he continued, saying, “it’s not about not having police.” Activists say the idea behind the slogan is to remove much of the funding for police departments and to interject that money into community-based initiatives based on topics like education, housing, mental health services and more.

“One in three black males are incarcerated in this country, I think that says it all,” Batts said, describing this as being caused in part by “too many police contacts,” or instances in which police respond to a problem that might be better addressed by a different type of professional. He stressed the need for alternative methods of problem solving and conflict resolution, as well as establishing trust between police departments and the communities they serve. Regarding his relationship with Granitz, he said, “I see Glenn as Glenn. (These issues) can be stopped by the top cops.” He asserted police departments “need to make a bold statement” of zero tolerance for improper conduct by officers.

Scott answered questions regarding his experiences as a police officer for over two decades. He said he received very little official training in de-escalation of volatile situations, characterizing it as mostly “on the job training.

“We were given plenty of training on escalation and how to use the weapons at our disposal,” he continued, saying he informally learned de-escalation practices from senior officers. These tools are meant to teach officers “how to talk to people and leave the situation better than they found it,” he said.

There was a culture of corruption among prior departments Scott has worked for, as he cited an incident in which his superior encouraged him to simply make an arrest in a domestic dispute, regardless of who was actually at fault, or if an arrest was even warranted. Between the couple, which was a man and woman, he arrested only the man. It later turned out that the woman was discovered to have been lying and the man was eventually released from custody, but the arrest ultimately “ruined the man’s life,” Scott said. The man lost his job due to being jailed and unable to afford bail.

Scott said that when he returned to his superior with the woman’s retracted statement, his supervisors told him not to bother charging her with falsifying a statement. It was “the first time I started seeing a disparity in how the law is implemented when it comes to race and class,” Scott said.

He described another situation which occurred a year into his career, in which a young woman working in a department store stole approximately $200 in merchandise in Delaware County. He said the woman, who had three kids and was HIV positive, admitted the crime. Scott characterized the district attorney at the time as “anxious to throw the book at her,” saying, “we can push this to the max (and) get jail time” from a conviction. Scott said the law was being used “as a sword against this young lady.” She was eventually granted probation, he said, but the law was “more punitive than it was trying to help (her).”

Scott expressed concern about the use of force among some of his fellow officers, saying he was taught that if police can’t influence somebody to do what they need them to do with their words, they should use their hands. Then, if (and only if) an officer’s hands don’t work, they should consider “more lethal” methods.

He said he has seen “multiple officers” unable to control someone with their hands, questioning their training. He said he has used his metal baton once in 25 years, to break a window to rescue someone and he has never used his Taser in the eight years he has carried one. He has seen “too many times” where an officer skips these methods and draws a firearm.

Scott also spoke of the unofficial ‘Thin Blue Line’ code which many say keeps ‘good cops’ from reporting their co-workers’ transgressions, saying, “the (officers) that don’t speak up, it’s for fear of retribution.” He said officers are worried that if qualified immunity - protecting police from lawsuits alleging that the officer violated a plaintiff’s rights - is abolished, they’ll be more easily held accountable.

“We should be held accountable!” Scott said.

Angelo, who has nearly four decades of experience and established Angelo Law Offices in Allentown in 1985, talked about the “numerous indignities” that happen to people of color.

“I’m concerned that (Floyd’s treatment) becomes the ‘bar’ for police activities,” he said. He echoed Batts’ points about reducing police contacts, particularly in poorer cities. Angelo said he lives in a white suburb and sees an officer on patrol “once in a blue moon,” while labeling areas such as the intersection of Sixth and Chew streets in Allentown as ‘high drug activity spots’ almost “gives (departments) a license” to have more intrusive policing.

He also spoke of similar issues in the courts, describing many young prosecutors as trying to establish themselves and taking “too militant an approach” at criminal hearings. He said the “DA has a much greater arsenal to do its job than public defenders … and poor people’s defense suffers as a result.”

He characterized a national database of officer wrongdoings as “absolutely necessary,” saying “(these) reforms are necessary to protect good cops.”

He said 80 percent of people who are in jail, aside from being poor, are in for nonviolent offenses. From 1920-1970, 200,000 Americans were behind bars, but since then there have been 2.2 million.

“It doesn’t work,” he said. “We’re wasting money!”

He said putting people in jail for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes simply makes their problems worse.

“Most people need a helping hand,” he said, “(not) handcuffs or a jail cell.” He added putting people in jail makes communities more dangerous, hardening people who simply made a mistake, characterizing prisons as like a “criminal university.”

Shapiro shared his thoughts with a couple of prerecorded statements addressing calls to ‘Defund the Police,’ first indicating a way in which that would be possible would be by “(reducing) their caseloads,” adding, “the best way to do that is invest more money into education, drug and alcohol counseling (and) mental health services” He characterized some calls to completely eschew police departments as “unrealistic” and called on departments to discontinue the use of no-knock warrants that “oftentimes lead to catastrophic outcomes” such as the murder of Breonna Taylor, a Georgia EMT who was shot in her own home by police conducting a narcotics raid.

Pinsley, who has recently been in the news for being at odds with Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin over criminal justice reform and transparency, talked mostly about fiscal and budgeting issues. He said the county actually collects a commission on prisoner phone calls.

“Is that how you want our community to run?” he asked.

He also spoke of the movement to end cash bail, which critics describe as being discriminatory against lower-income folks, saying, “law and order should be about democracy.”

Pinsley said he largely agrees with Shapiro regarding community investments. The deployment of the county’s 911 center needs to be looked at. He proposed instead of funneling all calls directly to police, the redirection of mental health-related calls might be a better approach. He said as of right now, ‘law and order’ accounts for 68 percent of Allentown’s budget for a total of $76 million, which includes courts, the DA’s salary and public defender costs. He said the disparity between money spent on the DA and public defenders is about $4.5 million, which illustrates the city’s priorities.