Breathless media coverage of a purported ‘crime wave’ is galvanizing the right and prompting reactionary calls for expanding policing and the prison-industrial complex. Already, just two years after the historic nationwide protests in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, the pendulum has swung violently in the opposite direction, as exemplified in the right’s lionization of Kyle Rittenhouse, the recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and "centrist" Democrats' calls to "refund the police." At the same time, the failures of police in Uvalde, Texas, to protect the lives of innocent children poses serious questions about how effectively police actually prevent violence. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, New York City public defender Olayemi Olurin unpacks the relationship between white supremacy, the police, and the systematized cruelty of American society.

Olayemi Olurin is a public defender and staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society and an analyst at the Law & Crime Network and The Hill’s Rising.

Read the transcript of this podcast:

Pre-Production/Studio: Dwayne Gladden
Post-Production: Stephen Frank

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