Homeroom With Sal & Mayor Sam Liccardo - Wednesday, June 3

Hi everyone, welcome to the daily homeroom livestream. For those of you all who are wondering what this is, this is a series of conversations that we've started over the last few months. It was, I guess, catalyzed by COVID, but it's a way of staying in contact and having conversations about education, what's going on in the broader world. I'm super excited for the conversation we're going to have in a few minutes with a guest that when we scheduled it, we didn't realize how relevant it would be given what's going on in the world.

But before we jump into that conversation, I do want to give a special shout-out to several corporate partners who stepped up as soon as they realized that Khan Academy was already running into deficit pre-COVID. As our traffic has gone up by a factor of two, two point five, 3X, we've tried to accelerate more programs to support teachers, parents, and students, and they stepped up to help us close some of that gap. Special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, and Novartis, and the many other supporters of Khan Academy.

I just want to make it very clear, you know, every donation matters and we're still running at a deficit, so if you're in a position to do so, please think about making that donation. So with that said, I'm eager to introduce our guest for today, Mayor Sam Liccardo, Mayor of San Jose, a very large city, a major city here in Silicon Valley, the largest city that I am close to. I'm here in Mountain View, which is probably about six or seven miles away from San Jose, so I consider myself a constituent of sorts of Mayor Liccardo.

Mayor Liccardo, thanks so much for joining, especially considering I'm sure there are a lot of things going on in your life right now.

Mayor Liccardo: Yes, a challenging moment. But I should say, thank you for all that you and Khan Academy are doing for literally millions of kids in our country and throughout the world. We're so appreciative.

Interviewer: No, and maybe a good place to start, you know, when we, as I said, when we scheduled this, we thought we were going to talk about COVID and maybe the economy and how cities are thinking about school, you know, education. But obviously, given what's going on in the world around George Floyd and the protests, I guess I'd love your perspective as a mayor of a major American city. How are you processing it, and what levers do you think cities or state or federal government has to help us navigate this?

Mayor Liccardo: Well, I think, as you're saying, the action really is in the cities. That is certainly, you know, every police department is local. We're probably not going to get much national leadership on this given some of the comments that come out of the White House. So really, mayors are mightily challenged, along with police chiefs, to really see how we can meaningfully address the calls for reform that are out there. There's a righteous cry for change, and certainly, they are reflective of what is a decades, if not centuries, old problem we have had with race and equity in this country.

So, you know, the underlying challenges are going to take a lot more time to solve, and I think they're fundamentally racial and economic. But as we look at this manifestation that is with the use of force and police departments and so forth, you know, this is an opportunity for a lot of cities, I think, to step up in ways to be able to demonstrate that we're hearing clearly the cries for change. And to utilize more innovative approaches that have been used in the past.

Let me give you a quick example. Here in San Jose, we're by no means perfect; we are struggling mightily with this, as everyone else is. But we've been really trying to leverage data as much as possible, recording literally every single police stop, every detention, every arrest, every questioning, and the demographic information of each individual. Then we make that public and release it for outside experts to study. One of those reports just came out last week; they analyzed how we're using force relative to our arrest rates in each demographic and whether or not our use of force is getting more severe or less severe. Fortunately, it's becoming less severe, and it really helps us understand how we can change, how we can improve.

I think being able to be more transparent, more accountable, is really a critical first step, and that's something that most of these cities can do relatively quickly. Obviously, much bigger challenges address this fundamental challenge we have around race in our country, which we could have a very long conversation about.

Interviewer: Right, and just focusing on this one issue of use of force, which is obviously the catalyst or the center of all of this. And obviously, there's layers to that onion, as you refer to. How serious is this? How prevalent is this in police forces? What were mayors and sheriffs thinking about before this? Because obviously this isn't the first, you know, it seems like every few months there's a case. Some of them are with the police; some of them are a case of, you know, some vigilante doing something that was clear, you know, to many of us, seems race-based, but then it doesn't seem like justice is served.

So how can cities…what were cities doing before, and how do you think they should approach change in both, you know, the police-citizen interaction and then also in the criminal justice system beyond that?

Mayor Liccardo: I'm interested in your question. I think that there have been a lot of good changes in recent years in large cities despite the fact that what we're seeing, clearly in the media, this is still happening way too often. We know George Floyd sadly won't be the last, and we have seen this happen so often. We're desperately hoping that this will be the last, but we know that there is a fundamental issue of culture that needs to change in a lot of departments in terms of racist attitudes around use of force.

But I think what is particularly challenging, as we see the widespread demonstrations and protests, is how you police a large gathering where 99 percent of the participants are peacefully expressing their First Amendment rights. And this is true in virtually every city because I'm having these text exchanges with all my colleagues; mayors throughout the country, very progressive mayors, none of them want to see anything but dramatic change. But they are frustrated because in each city you have provocateurs, you know, folks who are instigating and provoking to try to get a police response.

Maybe it's throwing bottles or debris, maybe it's blowing up fireworks over the heads of the officers, maybe it's looting— a whole host of things—and the officers are really being put in an incredibly difficult position. How do you keep everybody safe? How do you protect the city, and at the same time, how do you do it constitutionally and fairly? So very difficult issues that an awful lot of folks are grappling with.

I am bullish on the ability of an awful lot of mayors and police chiefs to step up to this challenge in the long term, but the short term is much harder.

Interviewer: I mean, those are two really interesting things I would love to double-click. For anyone watching on Facebook or YouTube, please ask questions. I see some questions coming in already; I'll get them to the mayor as much as we have time for. But on the first question, you know, you say there's some culture; you know, there's some deep racism in certain pockets of various institutions, including law enforcement. How do you change culture? Because that feels like something you can't just, you know, change a policy. I mean, you can do things like body cams and things like that so you can monitor a better use of data, but how do you actually change culture? What are mayors, sheriffs, you know, what can the police force themselves do? What can the community do to help change that culture?

Mayor Liccardo: Yeah, and that's a really challenging question because it's not just police departments. Look, racism, white supremacy—this is a history that's been with us. It is in so many institutions, every institution really, in our country. It just so happens that when it's in a police department, the consequences are deadly.

So, you know, frankly, we all have to be a little more honest with ourselves about this reality. It is not just the cop that deserves scrutiny, but it's certainly the cop because we know they're the ones who are authorized to use deadly force in our community.

What departments like San Jose are doing? I mean, starting three or four years ago, yes, we were one of the first cities to deploy body-worn cameras, and lots of cities are doing that now and so forth. But I'm really trying to be intentional around bias-based policing. We now have training in it, and every officer here gets training around bias and hidden bias, around the escalation of violence, around what we call critical incident training, which is really focused on folks having mental health episodes because we know way too many of those encounters are resulting in deadly force.

We're trying to ensure we can de-escalate and get mental health professionals in there so that it's not somebody with a badge and a gun who's having that first encounter of somebody having a mental health episode. And, by the way, those are way too frequently in communities of color because of lack of access to mental health resources.

So, you know, there's a lot that needs to be done. Those are just three training modules that we've incorporated now for every single officer, in the academy and thereafter. It has to be a focus on continuous improvement because I like to believe we are one of the most progressive departments, if not the most in the country, and we've got our own failures, and so there has to be an attitude around and focus of we're not perfect, and we've just got to keep pushing.

Interviewer: And what levers are there? I mean, those all sound like very powerful ones. You know, I think one of the things that was disturbing about the George Floyd incident tragedy was that, you know, not only did you have the one officer, you know, kneeling on him, but then you have several other officers who kind of stand by and watch and kind of allow it to happen. How does that culture evolve over time so that it's not, you know, even the more neutral or the police officers who wouldn't have done those types of things on their own but they're either don't feel, you know, don't see the space to confront their peer or maybe they're afraid to for some reason. How do you—and I know these are very, very hard questions—but how do you get at the root of that type of culture?

Mayor Liccardo: You know, those are really important questions. But we expect police departments to be paramilitary organizations that will follow a chain of authority because when you put people into situations where they're under the risk of serious harm or death, as officers are way too often in our community—you know, we all live in a violent country, and this is what officers are subjected to. That means they have to follow orders and follow that chain of command.

At the same time, we expect and should expect them to step out of that chain and correct one another, admonish one another, and say, "Hey, get off!" when it appears that somebody's choking to death. Those may be conflicting tensions, and I can't say I'm an expert in policing, but I think we have to be honest about our expectations of the police, at the same time that we're certainly demanding more from them and expecting greater consequences as well.

Interviewer: You know, I could imagine many police officers and sheriffs are really struggling with, you know, where is that line? How do you stop looters but allow for the peaceful protest? You know, what about the in-between situations where people aren't looting or doing something illegal, but maybe they are very actively antagonizing, hoping for a reaction? What are those conversations like with your sheriff and with the police force right now? How are they processing it, I guess on both fronts? How are they internalizing some of the change that needs to happen, and then how are they trying to thread that needle of protecting the protest and also protecting property and keeping people safe?

Mayor Liccardo: Well, it is challenging. Our police chief here in San Jose, in a city of a little more than a million people—the tenth largest in the country—so we have big city challenges and tensions that are very diverse. Our police chief, Eddie Garcia, came to our city as a child not speaking English, so he has a certain grasp, certainly, of the intensity of feeling and concern that's coming from many corners of our community. At the same time, I can tell you he is being absolutely harshly criticized because we've got officers out there encountering protesters who are protesting abusive use of force by the police, at the same time that we are resorting to tear gas and, yes, rubber bullets.

I have my own very serious concern about the use of rubber bullets, for example, in crowd management, but that is used widely in virtually every big city in this country. These are really hard conversations; they take time, and they take an ability to reflect and ability for folks to take a breath. Unfortunately, that's not this moment right now. We've got a lot of folks reacting, and it's hard to have meaningful conversations about change at the same time that folks are reacting to the minute-to-minute stress right now.

Interviewer: There are some questions about that from YouTube. Adithya asks a really good question about how do you have changes? To your point, you know, right now, we're in a highly heightened emotional state; people are angry. You know, often, you know, it's kind of like they've been seeing patterns over multiple years now.

There's also a sense that for every one you see, how many hundreds might happen that you don't see that aren't captured on a phone camera? And then for every one of those, how many of those don't end up deadly but could still end up, you know, quite humiliating or dehumanizing? So, Adithya asks, "Hi, Mayor Liccardo, what do you think is the best way to voice change in our country? Is it protesting, petitions? I don't want violence, but I do want effective change." I think Adithya is kind of voicing what almost every American is thinking right now.

Mayor Liccardo: Well, you know, I hate to tread on familiar ground and sound a little too Pollyannish, but get out there and register to vote, and get other people to register to vote, and you know, get folks to register for the census and get engaged in the hard change. I think, look, there's no question that the demands for change are righteous, coming from protesters in this city and throughout the country. At the same time, the expectations that we're going to suddenly move and change major institutions overnight has never been the reality.

It takes hard work in a democracy, and it means people have to get engaged at the ballot box, engaged in their city councils, engaged in getting people who are good to go run for office who have the values that are consistent with theirs. You know, I hate to get too partisan here, but we do have a real challenge in national leadership in this country at this moment.

We can all imagine how this conversation might go differently if we had the prior president rather than this one. There's only one way we're going to change that, and that means we got to get a lot of people registered, because it's by no means a forsaken conclusion what this election is going to be.

Interviewer: And what's your sense of the protests themselves? You know, this is, you know, when you just think about it intellectually, like, okay, well, it shows solidarity; it shows a lot of people care about this. But what do you think is going to be the impact of the protests themselves? So maybe it does activate more people to vote but, but does it have an impact? Does it—do you feel, you know, you're in City Hall; you're talking to a lot of the players. Does it change thinking in your mind?

Mayor Liccardo: Yeah, I mean, I think it does. There's no question that it's opening eyes, in my conversations with my colleagues, mayors throughout the country, and my own police chief and others that I think people are understanding the depth of the pain in ways that perhaps we didn't before. But let me also be blatantly political for a moment and coldly calculating. I am very concerned about how this narrative plays out in perhaps those suburban communities that may not be as sympathetic, where there are those on one side essentially using this to demonstrate why we need a more harsh militaristic approach to law enforcement in this country to contain the looting and the violence.

All the other ramifications of having those folks who are out there provoking that kind of response within the crowd; it's obviously more than 99% of folks are there for the right reason. It's those 50 or 100 folks that are creating the huge challenge in every city, and I'm very concerned about the long-term implications of what this means for those suburban voters, particularly as we go into this next national election.

Interviewer: Yeah, no, it's a complex issue for sure. And you know, maybe we go one layer out because you know, when we first scheduled this conversation, obviously we didn't know that this was going to be the state of affairs in the world. And I think, you know, COVID is the underlying thing. One of the aspects of COVID is it's kind of heightened a lot of economic inequality. And to your point, a lot of what we're talking about, even with the protests and all of that surrounding it, there is an underlying—there's a race aspect, and then mingled with that is there's kind of an economic aspect of it.

How do you think, I guess, how do mayors like yourself think about this issue? How do you all, you know, what levers are there at your disposal for addressing economic inequality or even educational inequality, or maybe, you know, issues like racism generally?

Mayor Liccardo: You know, there's no question at the root of this, and you know, we are seeing the issue played out around use of force in police. But at the root of this are issues of racial equity and economics, and the fact that poverty in this country is too closely correlated to race, and I believe that is the root of much of what we're grappling with.

We saw that lay bare, as you said, Mike, COVID. We saw the disparities even more impactful in terms of health outcomes, a lot next populations, African American populations that are dying at higher rates, being infected at higher rates. I'm trying to see how we can use—not use—but find opportunity in this crisis. By the crisis, now I'm just referring to the pandemic for a moment.

As we think about the ability to use emergency orders to move more quickly to mobilize—for example, we've got a huge homelessness challenge here, as every city does in California, throughout the West Coast. We're using some of the emergency orders to be able to streamline construction of prefabricated modular housing at a relatively low cost, maybe $30,000 to $40,000 per unit, where it normally costs $700,000 to build a unit in a typical apartment building.

And we'll be able to build some of these projects now that we've got underway in four weeks, which normally takes four years. I'm going to get about 500 homeless people housed this way. You know, this is how we can find an opportunity in this crisis. We think about the digital divide that is so impactful; particularly, we want all the important work that Khan Academy is doing right now. Again, using the ability to push red tape out of the way to be able to more rapidly deploy free Wi-Fi. Right now we've got a lot of interesting projects going on in a very large school district on the east part of our city, where we have a very high population of families without internet access right here in the heart of Silicon Valley, sadly.

We just connected one community around James Lick High School, 6,000 families with free Wi-Fi, and in a few weeks we'll be able to do that with another community around another high school in East San Jose. We're now going to do it with three or four more in partnership with that school district. We're finding the resources, using a little bit of the federal money that's been released, and most importantly, getting the red tape out of the way and moving much faster.

So I'm hoping to be able to leverage this moment to be able to move more rapidly because we know, for example, every child is now learning online, Khan Academy, because they have connectivity. It is also a parent who is able to find a job online and as a grandparent is able to get health information. So we know this is critical. These are the kinds of disparities we have to attack aggressively.

Interviewer: And how do you think, you know, is COVID…do you see this? I mean, that I think in some dimensions it's obviously going to make things worse. It's disproportionately folks who work in service industries, things like that. How are you, I guess, in the short term? You know, I know you have this committee that I've been participating in, and many other leaders in the area around how do you think we do this? You know, with the restaurants struggling, and obviously that has following consequences with all the people who work and supply the restaurants. How should a city think about getting through COVID and then, I guess, beyond?

Mayor Liccardo: And in this recovery roundtable that we created here in Silicon Valley—and thanks for being a part of this— we're really focusing on how we can, most importantly, get a lot of folks back to work who may not be getting back to work otherwise for a year or two based on, for example, if they're in the hotel industry. That's going to be a long time for that industry to come back. So we know there are a lot of low-wage workers there who critically need skills, and Khan Academy can help with that.

We know they are now— and we want to use whatever tools we can to help folks get re-skilled and back working again. And, you know, part of this again will be around funding the opportunity in crisis as we think about the many businesses that can't do business the same way because of social distancing—they've got a small business and they can't get customers in and out the door at nearly fast enough rate. You know, we announced an alfresco initiative to see how we can get commerce to happen outside in a city with 300 days of sun a year—certainly more outside seating with restaurants, but getting yoga studios outside, and getting retail outside in a way filling up sidewalks and closing lanes of streets to be able to move our activity outside in a way that may actually be lasting and maybe something that’s welcoming to folks who increasingly are thinking about cities in different ways.

Interviewer: I love that last point, and I do hope it's permeated. I actually think even schools outside is something that I've always talked about, especially out here in California. But you mentioned 300 days, and I think even getting wet a little bit on the cold and rainy days does something for your character. So I think there's something to that, although I haven't heard people talk about schools outside yet, but I'll just seed you. I think that'll be great for the kids even if we weren't trying to socially distance.

Interviewer: There are more questions here. This is, you know, going back to the topic where we started. I think it's an interesting one from Facebook. Carol Smith-Capper asks, “Just wondering how you identify candidates for the police department to keep racists and people who want to join for the sense of power it gives them. Is there psychological testing that is done? What about as they progress in their careers?” And I'll just add a little bit to the question, which is, you know, this obviously was in Minneapolis, not San Jose. I know you're not the police chief, but you know, this was a situation where there were multiple complaints against this officer over the years. So why did not other officers there, you know, is it that same cultural problem? So yeah, I'd love, you know, anything you know about to answer Carol's question.

Mayor Liccardo: Yeah, a great question. So, as you can imagine, super hard to discern who's a racist and who's not, you know, when they're signing up for any job. There is psychological testing that's done in our department, as with most other big city departments, as part of the screening when folks are going through the process. It's a very long process; I can tell you typically we have fourteen to fifteen hundred people apply to be part of a police academy, and about thirty-five or forty actually get into the academy, so we're talking about a very low acceptance rate, and there's a lot of screening.

Now, that being said, I think the best thing police departments can do—since we're not as human beings able to discern—Malcolm Gladwell actually just wrote a book about this recently; we're not very good at discerning what strangers really think, what they're not telling us. So, it’s really about having a really effective system for identifying the yellow and red flags. What is the conduct that's problematic both with complaints and what people are seeing within the department?

So that the internal affairs offices are really clearly attuned to who is a challenge, who needs some training, who needs some really clear direction, and who needs to get out quick. And what is a real challenge, I think, in big cities throughout the country—and certainly in California—is we have this very erratic system for actually meeting out discipline and firing officers because let's face it, police unions are very powerful in every city in every big state.

In California, we have what's called a Peace Officers' Bill of Rights. We have contracts that are signed by each city that make it very difficult to immediately take action. We had an incident very recently: an officer who was involved in the demonstrations who engaged in the area was clearly improper, and folks are calling on me to fire him. I literally have no authority to fire the officer. Now, I'm not saying that's what is deserved in this case. I think we need to understand and investigate what happened; clearly discipline is required, but I don't have any authority.

In fact, even the police chief can't move at that pace because of the way is restricted by the contract and by state law. So to get better accountability, we need some real changes in those legal structures, and again, it doesn't happen overnight but it's got to start happening now.

Interviewer: Do you have a sense that especially with recent incidents that that might change? Because obviously, you know, the union is there to represent the interests of its members, and obviously these types of things that happen, the people—obviously, the people who are at the receiving end of the brutality, they suffer, but also other good police officers suffer incredibly. Their job becomes that much harder; they get exposed to more anger; people will trust them less. Do you sense that pressure from within the police force and within the unions to say, “Hey, look, we've got to take out these actors so that all of our jobs are going to be better?”

Mayor Liccardo: Well, I can say that look, nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop. And I think I really believe that based on my conversations—I used to be a criminal prosecutor and prosecuted sexual assault crimes—and had great relationships with a lot of officers, and I could tell you they despised hearing this stuff and seeing this stuff.

That being said, I think there are very—I'll use the word again—erotic political structures in place that need change. You know, I had this conversation with the governor and a lot of mayors just a couple of days ago, and there was a lot of pent-up interest among mayors to see this change. It's going to take a lot of pushing, and again, this is why I say people need to register, look—they need to get engaged; roll up their sleeves because this stuff isn't simple, and you don't get simple solutions to tough problems like this. It takes a lot of pushing.

Interviewer: Well, that's super helpful. And Mayor Liccardo, thanks so much. I know, you know, given the circumstances, thanks for even, you know, continuing to take this. I could imagine your life—as you were telling me right before—I don't think you slept much the last couple of days. So I really appreciate you taking the time out for myself and this community for us to learn about this. If you have any other, you know, kind of parting words, happy to share them.

Mayor Liccardo: Well, thanks, and thank you for the great work that you and your partners do. I think we're understanding certainly, as a result of COVID, through Khan Academy and distance learning, is so critically vital right now, and we know this is going to be the future. So thank you for what you're doing. Please continue to support Khan Academy if you're out there, and we look forward to working together to see how we can really solve a lot of our serious challenges around equity and race and injustice in our community through education.

Interviewer: Well, thanks once again for joining. I couldn't—I think I learned a lot, and I think there's some nuance in what you said that we're not hearing in the broader media right now. So thank you so much, Mayor Liccardo.

So, thanks everyone for joining. Hopefully, you found that as interesting as I did. You know, this is one of those situations where I am just—not an expert in any of this, but you know, at Khan Academy we try to pride ourselves in being curious, and this is going to be a learning process for all of us: How do we process all of this information, and what are the steps that we can collectively take to put one foot in front of the other so that we can hopefully move society forward?

So thanks everyone for joining, and we will continue tomorrow. Tomorrow will just be your standard ask me anything, and I look forward to having more guests like Mayor Liccardo in the weeks to come. Thanks everyone for joining!