Today we met with Robert Gangi of PROP (Police Reform Organizing Project). He is the head of an organization that is working to alert the public of the brutality and injustices the police force conducts and we as a nation endure. We met him at his apartment that was also his office. He had a lot to say and we were prepared with many questions about police brutality. He actually disliked the term police brutality, he preferred day-to-day police discrimination. He was talking about broken windows policing. A form of policing that occurs in poor neighborhoods, that often have lots of people of color. This is a tactic used by police officers because they have a quota to fill. The police officers have to get a certain amount of arrests before the end of the month or else they will get demoted. I told him how my mom was taken off the train for putting her leg on the seat to stretch. He though this was unusual that they took her off the train. He said that the police have quotas for the month and they have to fill with them with petty things like this that would be better resolved with a warning, not through jailing someone. This is the reason that they stopped her instead of just giving her a warning. They were trying to fill their quota so they wouldn’t lose their job. He was super helpful and we are staying in contact with him because he may want to do something for the high school. In fact we have a meeting with him on Friday, 12/18 to follow up on our conversation.
