Brooklyn Deep Third Rail

The shooting of Saheed Vassell by the NYPD on April 4th in Crown Heights re-ignited a chronic community safety debate: What kind of discretion should we use in calling the police when we know that it can result in a death sentence for an unsuspecting Black person?   Today, we investigate what runs through people’s mind when neighbors call cops on neighbors. Third Rail’s Mark Winston Griffith and guest co-host Shantae J. Edwards sit down with Malika Aaron-Bishop, the Membership Chair for GetOrganized BK and co-facilitator for one of its working groups, Racial Justice BK; and Tom Weinreich, who helps organize the deep canvassing team within the NYC chapter of Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ) . We also include excerpts from a telephone interview Mark conducted with Soraya Palmer, a member of Equality for Flatbush. Together, these three organizers offer an alternative framework for how to assess the necessity of calling the police and, in doing so, point towards a new community safety protocol in the midst