MSNBC’s Jason Johnson: ‘We Need to Abolish American Policing as It Currently Exists’

MSNBC’s Jason Johnson said Tuesday on “Deadline” that “we need to abolish American policing as it currently exists” in light of the deaths of George Floyd and Daunte Wright during police incidents.

Johnson said, “I’ve been saying we need to abolish American policing as it currently exists. It doesn’t work. And we don’t seem to have this sort of difficulty when we’re talking about any other government agency. I teach my class with Morgan State students before this, we were having this discussion with a bunch of 19 and 20-year-olds, and I pointed out to them, I said, what’s the graduation rate for high school kids in Baltimore? The Baltimore graduation rate is only about 80%.”

People are always screaming, oh my gosh, Baltimore public schools are terrible. They need to be taken over by the state. They need to be taken over by the government. Only 80% of these kids graduate. Do you know the average homicides that are actually solved by police departments? Only about 35%. You know the number of rapes and sexual assaults that are solved by police departments? Less than 60%. You know the percentage, likelihood of being shot unarmed as a black person is, like, five times as likely than a white person? Policing doesn’t work the way we’re doing it right now.”

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