Journalist Compares Investigations Of Police Shootings, Plane Crashes

Tomorrow want marks one year since the death of Olango -- and unarmed African refugee. This was followed by protests and an outpouring of frustration and anger. We will broadcast from El Cajon tomorrow with a special program dedicated to this shooting and the aftermath. Earlier this summer the New York Times published an op-ed piece about police shootings and why they don't get examined more closely. Examined and investigated the way safety boards investigate airplane crashes. The article, titled why are police officers more dangerous than airplanes? It's by my guest writer, Pagan Kennedy who joins us via Skype.Welcome.Hello.Statistically speaking you make the case that many more Americans die at the hands of police and an airplane crashes. -- Then in airplane crashes.Part of the problem is, we don't know with great certainty how many people are killed as a result of officer violence. The number may be higher than 1000. Right now there a number of organizations trying to get the figures and verify them. This goes to the problem of lack of transparency. We don't even know with certainty how many people are killed.On the other hand, the situation is the opposite in aviation. We know exactly the numbers of deaths from aviation because they are tracked -- every accident that happened in aviation is tracked meticulously.So, we know that in commercial aviation with U.S. certified planes no civilian has died since 2009. Most years the death rate is zero.One reasons, you say, is because police shootings are not investigated the way that plane crashes are. How do you compare these two?In aviation and other fields there is a system called an external learning system whereby every accident is treated as a chance to learn about how to prevent the next accident. So, when a plane crashes all kinds of people are brought in immediately on the scene to investigate exactly what happened. They dig through the rubble and interview people and issue reports where they determine exactly what they believe to be the cause of the accident. Then, the next phase is to figure out how to redesign the system so that the accident never happened again.In a plane crash or a car accident that's investigated safety board, there is the possibility of equipment failure. But, in a police shooting incident isn't it more likely to be an individual's fault and is and that the reason there is resistance to the investigation?Just to backup, we know that racial bias is a huge problem and we also know that a huge problem is that officers involved in violence or in the death of a civilian are not held accountable by criminal court. Obviously, we need to change this problem.In addition, there are other problems that we aren't talking about as much that are sort of invisible. Those are the problems of horribly, terribly designed police procedures that put you and me and all of us in danger because they are is too much uncertainty. There is muddled thinking and guns are involved.The best example is the traffic stop. This is something that I dug into. There are about 20 million traffic stops per year in America. That is the procedure that's the most dangerous for the civilians.Went to look at how the traffic stop is designed, from about 100 years ago, it has not changed much. There are a number of ways to improve that -- the way the procedure is done -- to make it safer.When thing we know is that we don't have to have humans or guns involved in most traffic stops.For instance, in many cities these days if you rolled through a traffic light or stop sign you might receive a ticket in the mail a couple of weeks later. That is because a camera took your picture and issued the ticket.This is a method of giving -- performing a routine traffic stop with no humans involved and more importantly no guns involved. You can't end up dead.One thing that is clear is to think hard about whether we should be stopping people and holding them at gunpoint for something like a broken tail light.I'm interested to hear the response you got for your op-ed in the times.Every time I publish a piece in the Times I get an overwhelming amount of responses -- positive and negative. All over the map. This was a typical one. People in law enforcement field like this is a threat to them. I heard from some of those people. They were asking us to not question police procedure and that police officers have a hard enough job and now we are throwing more than.I will say that many people I talked to for this piece were involved in law enforcement and they believe in the idea of applying an external learning system to policing. In other words, people in law enforcement are looking at how they might learn from aviation to rethink safety protocol for civilians and police officers to make this more safer for everybody.I've been speaking with Pagan Kennedy. Her op-ed, like police officer's are more dangerous than airplanes appeared in August in the New York Times. Thank you so much.