Name: Jack Rosen
Social Justice Group: War and Violence: How race affects conviction rates in NYC (B)
Date of Fieldwork: January 30, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Robert Gangi|Director of PROP
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
Today, my CAP partners and I interviewed Robert Gangi, the director of the Police Reform Organization Project. The interview provided us with insight into the significant impact of the police on the justice system, particularly regarding their brutality. His historical perspective on police brutality and prison conditions helped us understand the conditions of justice for a black person living in New York. To start, Robert Gangi shared with us why he became involved in prison reform after the loss of his father. He told us ” I couldn’t stop it. And so I think that instilled me a desire to do good, a desire to help other people; you know, sort of broadly speaking, the nature of our work essentially is to stop police practices that hurt people.” As Gangi worked as a court monitor for the organization he recorded that “anywhere from 85 to 100% of the cases we see on a given day involved in New Yorkers of color. And we um can’t New Yorkers of color as any non-white person. So it could also include Asians with the recent people.” Proving that our system has surfaced around a biased police force.
In our interview, Gangi referenced the impact of the media on police officers, displaying them as “the heroes.” Because of this, we have created a society where people “don’t care about people being locked up. I’m not so sure that’s totally true, but people know that prisons are bad places. Corruption happens. brutality happens.” He mentioned that the problem with police brutality reform is that there is no clear solution to how we can end this corruption, saying “Researchers show that none of that works. Training doesn’t improve things, and more diversity doesn’t improve things, because when you become a cop, you have to get with the program.” Since the system doesn’t have a clear problem, nobody knows where to start. Resulting in cops choosing to follow the lead of biases.
A story he told us about these biases happens in Yankee Stadium. He had a group of kids watching the game when one kid caused a bit of a disturbance, and the police came. “One of the kids uh, who was in the group is his name is George, and he was the total sweetheart, not like Charlie andolf. So what says, be cool. And one cop Jean of course made to attack George or apparently being like, you know, flip with disrespectful. And another cop jumps into me. And I’m like 22 years old, right? So I never seen anything like this. I thought the second cop was going to grab the first cop who was actually obviously no, but he starts standing on George.” This story was shocking because it shows that cops can act in legalized brutality, and nobody cares.
Robert Gangi taught us about how the placement of police affects communities, how their quotas will make them make outlandish arrests, and so much more. Thank you Robert for the amazing experience. We hope to do court monitoring with you soon.
