hi everyone and welcome to the very first day of our class police and society i'm really excited to be doing this my name is dr ramire mustagam i'm going to be your professor or sister i'm sorry that we're not in a classroom together but hopefully we get to chat with each other over zoom or google meet or whatever the new thing is going to be in the next week or two when we start our classes well i'll tell you a little bit about myself on the critical criminologist i'm a critical sociologist by training i've spent
the last about 10 15 years 17 years studying these type of things i started my university career at mcmaster university in 2002 uh did a sociology degree there then i did my master's i did my phd and through it all i have had one interest and one interest only and that's to understand to analyze to criticize and to better the world that is around us now there is no difference between you and i is there the only the single difference that exists between you and i is i'm a few years older than some of you
guys most of you guys probably i've had the opportunity to spend these years reading some interesting books reading some interesting papers talking to some interesting people and thinking about some interesting thoughts my job here is not to make you think like me my job here is to well to encourage you to think about some of these things to read some of these works to talk to some of these people that's pretty much my job my job is to introduce you to all that is out there and they'll let you discover it for yourself now this
class well first of all before we get going you'll see zoe in a lot of my lectures she likes to hang around in the background once in a while she'll move around and uh i feel like she has done this enough to be able to teach the course at this point she sometimes shows up with me to class when we do in classes stuff so i figured it's nice for you guys to have her around she'll more or less hang around back there welcome to our tv room it is an age of kobe but this
is the funnest room i have in the house it's the most brightest room and it has the most fun things i have the most amount of fun here because this is where i sit down and do my readings i play my video games i watch my netflix i hang around with zoe my partner and i eat our food sometime here so i think i'll invite you guys to the funnest house in the room funnest room in the house there you go honest room in the house maybe it'll make the whole thing a little bit more
fun so excuse the background mess once in a while you'll see some mess back there that's just the way things are as you'll notice i'll tell you something about my videos i guess i never really talk about these things in class because i never record videos i'm very sort of no frills type of prof but let me tell you a little bit about my lecturing style and the way that i've decided to do this see i usually do three hour lectures but i figured you guys don't want to sit around and hear me talk for
three hours ah that seems boring to me now i can get your attention when you're sitting in classroom i can keep your attention i can tell you some fun story we'll make it through the three hours together behind the computer i mean some of the greatest directors in the world with billions of dollars worth of sort of a cgi and all these things i can hardly get you to see in a theater for three hours never mind me and continuously for nine modules so i don't know if that's actually gonna work out so what i've
decided to do is instead i tried to keep my lectures to about an hour each this one's gonna be much much shorter hopefully but i'm trying to keep my lectures about an hour each i think the longest lecture that i've done is about an hour and 20 minutes and then i found some really interesting people type of people that i would have loved to bring to classroom and get them to talk in front of you but i just couldn't because of the time and space and you know dragging people from all over the country to
come here just to talk to a class seems impossible but now i was able to get them to behind the computer i was able to interview them i was able to talk to some of them and it's very interesting you know these people are people like police officers chiefs of police community activists and organizers legal challengers people who run uh sort of um ngos that that legally challenge and provide services for those who have been wronged by the system uh police whistleblowers we talked to a lawyer who has had the opportunity to not only represent
police officers in the courtroom but also fight police corruption in courtrooms having led to dismantling of a police force in ontario we talked to for example john clark who's been running ontario coalition has poverty since 1990 and has been a huge activist in the city these are interesting fun people to talk to i really hope you guys enjoy the interviews it took me a lot of effort it took me a lot of time to get these people in you know law professors from all's good professors from our own university took me a very long time
to convince them to do this they've done a wonderful job they've been extremely gracious in doing this so i really hope you enjoy it we're gonna have uh uh in addition to it each of them we're gonna have addition in each interview i have a documentary up i've tried to find free documentaries that i can just post and you guys can just click and watch it these are things that are meant to sort of they're not very academic they're mostly meant to add a personal story to the uh things that we discuss in class right
let me discuss in modules usually in class when i do my lectures i tell the stories of yes people that i've done research with people i've hung around with people i know from here and then maybe some of my own stories i try to share those stories as a way of putting a human face to that sort of academic discussions that we have since they didn't want to do that in this kind of environment it seems kind of inorganic to get you to sit there for three hours listening to some stories i have to figure
what's a better way to do it than giving you a documentary to watch sort of what these people actually have to say for themselves i'm a very big fan of representing the ideas of people from their own mouths then obviously we are doing academic work here so there is there are a couple of readings involved with each uh week read through those and then you gotta have a opportunity to participate in every discussion and that to me kind of and then you know there is an assignment well we talked about that sort of in the
previous video but that to me is sort of what the classroom setting used to be for me right a place in which i could lecture i could share some interesting ideas uh i could share some personal anecdotes or stories of people that i know and it could provide atmosphere for you to discuss so that's how i've set up the modules in this class so that i can address each one of these things and you know you can decide kind of how involved you want to be in each one of those maybe you want to not
pay very close attention to the lectures skip over the readings or maybe your type person goes you know what the documentary i'll just sort of listen to it but the reading is what i'm gonna focus my attention on that's fine you know whatever way you learn well make sure you watch all of them because you're gonna need all of them to answer the weekly sort of questions we've talked about these things before but this was just a reminder well let me tell you a little bit about sort of how i'm going to approach this class
right how i approach this class this is my sixth year so you know 18th time 20th time actually teaching this class now and over the years my sort of approach to the class has evolved a little bit but the ideas remain the same so let me start from the beginning you see i was trained as a social constructionist what that means is that we social construction is doing that everything in society is socially constructed there is no such thing as an absolute truth or with the big t you know there is no such a thing
as saying this is just the way things have to be oh rather for us social construction is all human behavior is negotiated it's constructed by individuals and those of you who come from different cultures who have traveled who have seen the world you know what i'm talking about kind of with this notion that well there's a particular way that everyone does things and they think that's just the way things have to be there are other people who do it differently and they also think that's just the way it has to be so maybe there's no
right or wrong but it's more of a construction it's more of a kind of okay meanings are negotiated between individuals you might say oh man that sounds good and fun so what you know but that's what i'm difference my way makes one big difference it allows you to be critical of every single thing that you run into in society i don't mean it makes you like it could make you a you know a board a party but it doesn't have to critical doesn't mean you're not just sort of frowning and just being pessimistic let me
go to looking at something and going well can it be better can we do better than this right that's what's so interesting here that's so so fun about sort of approaching the world with this kind of view understanding human behavior understanding human interaction walking down the street and looking around and going i can analyze what's going on around me this is what one of my favorite sociologists in the world see right now this is what i see right now calls sociological imagination and that's what this week's sort of little short video documentary whatever it's about
it's not really a documentary you see c like mill said that we should be able to see the general and the particular we should be able to see societal problems in individual problems and see individual problems and societal problems so now for us crime is no longer just a personal moral failure but rather a societal issue you see what i mean so to us as critical sociologists a social constructionist crime the way police is the way the government is run they're all interconnected the same people who control the school system control the prison system and
the you know police system and the welfare system and the healthcare system and all of these things and i'm gonna repeat this two or three or four times throughout this year because this is key to understand so the way i'm going to approach this class is this we're going to look at police as an institution within society now let me be very frank some of these conversations some of these discussions are going to be uncomfortable either they're going to be uncomfortable because you will feel a sense of uh defense for the police they might be
uncomfortable because you are faced with experiences that you might have experienced yourself being on the other side of police's use of force they are uncomfortable because they might raise some areas of ignorance that existed that now you know they exist so that bliss of ignorance might be gone it might be uncomfortable because you might have family members or police officers you might want to become a police officer yourself but you see that's okay that's okay on two front number one any criticism that we levy against police is a criticism against police as an institution not
individual police officers i'm not a big fan of making criticism of individuals sure i can say that a police officer who stepped on someone's neck as they pleaded i cannot breathe is a murderer and a horrible human being i could say that but then i could say wait a second this police officer would he have done that if he didn't have a uniform would he have done that had he not been raised in a society in an institution which otherwise certain group of people make them into us and them see as a sociologist i see
that person as a victim of the system as well as a sociologist toxic masculinity is not only toxic to women it's also toxic to men it's toxic to the very men who are practicing you see that's that's what's so interesting about this sort of idea of sociological imagination about being critical about something they go listen i'm not interested in discussing individual police officers at all in fact i will grant you the assumption that the individual police officer is as good as an average human being in fact maybe they're a little bit better i'm even good
with that some of you guys have had me at the statistics problem so you know that i'm very good with being aesthetician i'm very good with the student again obviously a very good 50 of police are more moral than the lower 50 of society sure but that's not the point the point that i'm making is that even the best people in the world placed within an institution that has inherent problems will be powerless will be victims of what paper called the gilded gay cage of uh bureaucracy right bureaucracy swallows us up so our criticism should
be towards this bureaucracy and this bureaucracy itself now we don't need my criticism i don't mean just the others coming you know if the police or this police or that police or defund the police that's not criticism that's anger that's okay i'm not against someone walking down the street shouting whatever they want to shout to express your anger and frustration i understand it and i'll show up to protests and i'll carry banners but our job as academics is not to be activists in the classroom necessarily our job is to push for change it's not to
just be neutral you know as karl marx said our job is not to describe the world the philosopher's job is to describe the world our job is to change it and there's no standing still here right the world is continuously moving but you know literally and figuratively world is moving at a brightness speed and there's no standing still in a moving train so yes we have to move and we have to change and we have to revolutionize but we have to do it from an academic perspective what do i mean by that i mean logic
and reason wins the day not emotions conversation wins the day not ex-communication understanding and sympathy and empathy wins the day not yelling and screaming at each other not name calling not belittling so the way i look at it is that my job is to raise some questions for you suggest some venues by which these we can explore these questions and answer them and then allow you to answer those questions for yourselves do we need police do we not need police what should we do with police how should we reformally should we reform police does police
have too much power does police not have enough power is there not enough policies regulating police is police hampered by red tape is police racist now pay attention i'm saying is police i'm not saying are police officers racist when i say is police racist what i mean is is the institution of policing races now you might say amir this is unfair you cannot just criticize police police is part of a large part of the largest body of governance obviously you're right if you look at the healthcare system for example right healthcare system is quite racist
quite classes just look at the government's uh sort of numbers on uh covert 19 infections and death rates with the possible exception of eastern asian communities in which covert 19 is much lower than sort of uh general population almost every other racial minority group in this country has seen more deaths as a result of covet than the white community as you look at the income levels as income levels go up death rates go down we know that if one of my female students any one of my female students goes to a hospital with a heart
condition and is about to get a heart attack she's more likely to die than one of my male students why because the symptoms of heart attack that we all know the symptoms of heart attack that we teach in medical schools are symptoms that are only seen in men not necessarily in women symptoms of heart attack and women are different than those of men most drugs with the effectiveness of the drug and the dosage of the drug have been tested exclusively on men right income gender race sexual orientation combination of these things or intersection of these
things has been helpful to people in many institutions education you know an lgbt student is much less likely to finish high school than a heterosexuals any member of the lgbt plus community women are more likely to be sent to become a dental hygienist for example than dentists black men are more likely to be encouraged to get into traits than phrasal engineering or university or something like that so no no no no my criticism is not just of the police she said this class is about the police that's society something i say about the police it's
about the relationship between police and society to achieve that we're going to start our class with a discussion on what does police actually mean what do we mean let me say police we're going to set this police up within the larger kind of governmental institution larger governmental body and take a look at what a government looks like what a legitimate government looks like that will give rise to legitimate police we're going to look at history of policing not just to talk about history but to kind of understand where police came from and what are some
of the problems that today's police has in common with the police when it came to be about 400 years ago then we're gonna sort of take a look at police as a government as an institution that supports a particular moral framework particular morality within the larger capitalistic system we're going to look at what a co what the average constable looks like what they have average gospel looks like i'm gonna talk about what an actual console looks like in the terms of like demographic we're gonna talk about what it is they do how it is they
go about doing it then we're gonna talk about sort of um i'm gonna you know talk about all of these things from this sociological perspective right now let's say like oh they spend six hours doing this or that that's not important to us the collectivity is this we're gonna talk about police use of force i'm gonna talk about policing racialized communities i'm gonna end the class by talk about police corruption now there is a common theme in this class and it's a very important thing i want you to understand this very clearly so pay close
attention here whatever you're doing whatever you're watching whatever you're listening to on the side put it aside pay very very close attention to the next couple of minutes of this video because if you get this you get the rest of this class if you don't get this you don't get the rest of this class so pay very close attention here there is there's one thesis to this class the thesis of this class is that the only way police can do his job within a socially democratic society it's a liberal democratic society the only way that
police can do his job within this liberal democratic society is for police to be legitimate okay in other words the only way police can do policing is if the members of society and community within it see the power of the police and the laws that the police is trying to enforce as legitimate laws and as a legitimate power upon them because that's the only power that exists in this society no power but the power of the people and the only legitimate power in liberal democratic society is the power of the people now police has been
given the ability to use the power of the people to enforce the laws of the people so police as the institution itself has no skill in the game the police exists solely in the liberal democratic society the place exists solely to enhance the life of the citizens in that society to serve the members of that society by enforcing the laws that those members have passed that's the only job of the police okay hey you might say man i don't know buddy this seems pretty easy well i don't know does it does it seem easy to
just be legitimate please aim that gentlemen in most sort of lower social economic sectors of society police is a legitimate in many neighborhoods that i know of police isn't legitimate to many people who are your colleagues who are in this virtual class this isn't legitimate to all of them in fact if police was legitimate police no longer needed to use force that's an interesting idea isn't it if i ask you to do something and you find that thing to be a reasonable thing to do i don't need to force you to do it in a
conversation with the chief of police i remember one time he said to me you know when policing fails when handcuffs come out at that moment you're no longer doing policing now you're just arresting someone taking them home that's not policing taking them back to jail that's not policing anymore policing is making sure that you act in that way and you set up a society in which you don't need to take your handcuffs that's a fully legitimate police if a police force can say that in the last however many weeks we didn't even need to take
our handcuffs up that means you have a society in which the laws are legitimate so almost everyone's following them therefore police is legitimate so police is enforcing legitimate laws in a way not only the ends of policing as legitimate but the means of policing is legitimate too that means when a police officer walks up and gives an order and says hey everyone please leave this room everybody listens because police is seen as a legitimate institution in society see people say but amir you need to force sometimes people to do something i don't think you do
doctors aren't forcing people to take medication no doctor comes knocks on my door and drags me to the hospital just saying firefighters don't need to beat me over the head to get me out of a burning building i don't need to use force to get you guys to do the work i've rarely had to you know get in a fist fight with your student in class to get them to be quiet i'm just saying i have a feeling that legitimacy is not as simple as you think especially in a multicultural multi-dimensional society that we live
in like that of canada like that of southern ontario so really this class is about looking at how we can increase police legitimacy because listen place legitimacy is good in many different ways number one it uh strengthens the institution of police by strengthening the institution of police who strength communities emissions institutions exist at the end of the day communities built their bedrocks on the institutions that support them institutions like healthcare system education system police system um mental health system all those things right child care services system uh committee organization systems whatever hospitality institutions are the
alligators institutions are what are the bedrocks of the community right firefighters gas all those things so the more stronger we make these bedrocks of our communities the foundation of our communities the stronger our communities are going to be okay so legitimizing police strengthens police it's good for police as an institution it's good for our community it reduces crime it increases wealth it increases happiness security in individual and our belongings makes us more secure to live a life to be happy it is one of the better foundations of human need is security you know that's what's
hiding i'm going to throw a lot of theorists around throughout this yeah i don't this is the i don't really want to teach theory uh i love theory but we don't have enough time to teach theory here you are have taken theory class so i'm going to throw some theorists name out if you want to look them up look them up if you want to talk about them talk to me about them all right i'm always happy to talk about these things i'm going to keep these lectures kind of almost short so if you want
to talk about any of these people by all means let me know anyhow so that's what this class is really about we're going to look at what does police mean in terms of police legitimacy we're going to look at how does a state build laws in terms of how do we go about building legitimate laws we're going to look at history of policing to look at the police gets its legitimacy from and don't get me wrong please very much interesting legitimacy when we get to the history of policing you'll see that the bedrock of creation
of police in england which was really the first police force in the world was based on legitimacy then we're gonna look at how this legitimacy can break down if the government enforces a particular moral idea that dehumanizes or at least exploits a group of people alienates a group of people okay by looking at sort of how police enforces a particular capitalistic ideal that had at his core some notions of exploitation which brings under question police's legitimacy then we're going to look at constable police officers sort of people who wear their uniform in the streets in
canada i mean i look at sort of what do they look like what does their demographic say about their legitimacy what is it they do and how can you understand the legitimacy of police through what it is that they do we're going to look at how this legitimacy becomes under question or can be strengthened through use of force or lack thereof we're going to look at how this legitimacy can be questioned when police has an adversarial relationship with racialized communities and lastly we're going to end this course by talking about how this legitimacy can be
questioned and can be jeopardized through police corruption and what is it that we can do to reduce police corruption that's pretty much the class so you as you can see every class legitimacy kind of forms a bedrock of discussion so if you find that you're making a reflection you're not talking about legitimacy at all chances are you're missing a point somewhere maybe the world legitimacy show up in every single reflection that you do this year that's all i have to say uh watch the sort of uh interview for this week's lecture it's going to be
a lot of fun i have two of the most fun props in the department in there uh sort of we're gonna just sort of talk about how it is that we use these type of concepts in our own work and how we think students should do it and you might get some tips on how to do well in class i'll see you guys uh in the next module hopefully sooner come talk to me in my office hours come talk to me in the town halls look at officer and talk to me i'm looking forward to
it i'm gonna be really bored sitting around so i love talking to these things i'll see you guys soon
