Sharpton Calls for ‘Institutional Change’ in Policing to ‘Get the Racism Out of It’

MSNBC’s Al Sharpton on Thursday pushed for an “institutional change” within police departments  get rid of “racism.”

During a conversation with New York City Mayor Eric Adams on “Morning Joe,” Sharpton argued on that the New York Police Department wasn’t “throwing white kids on the Upper East Side against the wall” as part of the stop-and-frisk policy.

“[T]he resources must be given to people that set a police department that is going to be fair and equal to everyone,” Sharpton outlined. “Giving resources to the same thing won’t solve it. And I think that’s where the challenge is for [Mayor Eric Adams], who is equipped to do that, to deal with the institutional inside reform, because the things that bother many of us that’s been on the forefront of this fight, is when you end up — yes, police feel threatened, yes, they go in with their lives at stake, but it seems that the reaction is different based on who it is they’re going in. Why is it most of the no-knock killings happen in the black and brown community? So, you know how to go into white areas or wealthy areas and make sure everything checks, but you go in black areas with a different attitude.”

“[W]here are the commanders?” he added. “You’ve got to change from the inside. We’re not going to profile areas. That’s why stop-and-frisk didn’t work. They were stopping more blacks and browns, finding nothing. They weren’t throwing white kids on the Upper East Side against the wall. So if you get the racism out of it, which has to come from institutional change inside, where you set goals, monitor it and all of that. And who would know better how to do that than a black cop who was discriminated against in the NYPD? It comes from the top, and it rots all the way to the bottom. And then we end up marching on the patrolman rather than his boss that allowed that culture to happen.”

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