♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Captain Sonia Pruitt on the state of community policing in America next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

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♪♪ ♪♪ >> We're so pleased to have one of our nation's top law enforcement executives, retired Captain Sonia Pruitt.

Welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you for having me.

My pleasure.

>> So glad to have you.

You know, I'm from North Carolina originally.

You're from North Carolina.

Talk to me about your social upbringing and how that impacted or led as a pathway to becoming in law enforcement.

>> Well, first I got to say that I had never intended to be a police officer.

I thought I was going to be a doctor.

I went to Howard, pre-med.

Well, I grew up in a small town in North Carolina.

My father, when he went into the Army, he was an M.P.

And then he ended up being a police officer in Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.

I was also not following in his footsteps.

My grandmother, my maternal grandmother, was -- I tell people that she was the first Madea that I met.

She was a social advocate, but she would not have understood what that meant.

But she was always the person that was making sure everyone had something to eat.

Didn't have to be a family member.

If you were involved in domestic violence, she would come and say "You need a place to stay."

She was that person, and she would fight.

And I mean physically to save other people.

So I feel like I got the spirit of justice from her.

But I didn't realize policing was my thing until actually -- I actually entered into policing.

And I went into policing because I was looking for a job where I could be outside and be around people.

And that's how it started for me.

>> So from being an aspiring medical student... >> Yes.

>> ...to a real-life police officer.

>> That's correct.

>> You don't find many sisters getting the rank of captain.

Now, tell us, so did you start out with the Montgomery Police Department?

>> I did my entire career in Montgomery County in Maryland.

>> And worked your way up to the rank of captain.

>> And that is putting it mildly.

Yes, it was a lot of work.

It was quite a struggle.

>> 28 years?

>> 28 years.

>> That's a long time.

>> It's a long time.

I think I should have been assistant chief way before that.

I never made assistant chief technically, but in my head I was one [Chuckles] because the journey took so long.

And by the time I reached captain, I was like, "You know, I'm feeling a little tired and maybe I should take this skill set that I've developed and do some other things for the community."

>> So I detect not just an element, but a force of perseverance in your career development.

>> Yes.

>> Why did you stay a cop so long?

>> I think sometimes people take a lifetime to find their purpose.

I recognized my purpose early on in policing.

Again, I come from a family with the spirit of justice.

And I inherited that.

It's part of my legacy.

And so I began to see things in policing that I wasn't quite in agreement with.

And of course, being a Howard undergrad, you learn a whole lot about being a revolutionary and how to stand up for people who are vulnerable and put upon and oppressed.

And so all these things came to bear as I saw some things that I didn't quite appreciate about policing, and I recognized early on also, and maybe this was a little more mature than I ever gave myself credit for, that somebody needed to stand for the people who were victimized by the institution and structural ills of policing.

>> So you decided to make some change, not just outside the system, but within the system, by being a leader of that system?

>> That's correct.

>> That's a lot of courage.

>> Yeah.

It took some courage.

On the way here, I was having a conversation with a friend about -- He asked me, he was like, you know, same as you -- "How did you end up staying in for so long?"

He says, you know, "What were your experiences like?"

Because I was telling him about I was going to have this interview, and I said there was actually a period in my younger years of policing where my family was threatened.

I don't recall -- maybe this is just, you know, young -- >> This is in Maryland or in North Carolina?

>> This was in Maryland as a police officer by my colleagues.

They, you know, threatened harm to my husband at the time.

And I could not remember -- >> Because of your police work?

>> Because I was a policewoman, because I was very vocal.

You know, I would say -- when I saw something that wasn't right, I would say something.

And so I became a target and it was racialized.

And of course, you know, my gender came into play.

But I don't recall feeling afraid.

I just got pissed.

I was really angry about that.

I was like, "How dare you?

I'm one of your colleagues.

Y'all said this is a 'fraternity,' but I'm not part of the fraternal part."

I was an outsider, and that was something else I realized early on.

You know, if you are Black, you better step in lockstep with the culture.

And if you are not in lockstep, then you become an outsider within the institution.

>> In the United States of America, we have a growing demographic change, "the browning of America."

>> Yes.

>> What's happening in the police department?

Is there a browning within the blue?

>> No.

And I think that that is intentional.

I think that just as we have people who are part of this country who are in strict denial about the browning of America, and they're doing everything they can to make sure it does not happen, policing represents that community as well.

One of the things I did, and I would tell anyone -- I'm sure we'll get to this -- who's entering policing is to try to go into as many different areas of policing that you can to learn about policing.

And I worked in background investigations, and I saw people who were like me, Black women, Black men, other men and women of color who were written out of the process for no really good reason.

Just "we don't want them."

And so now we're in an era where, you know, there's a call for "police reform."

Well, there's always been a call for that ever since the institution began, back during, you know, in slavery.

But there is still a fight against having too many people who look like you and I in policing and who might just think like, you know, you or I.

>> Most police departments around the country have a shortage of recruits.

They're trying to find people to join the various police forces at municipal levels, state level, even federal.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> It seems to me the whole question of diversity, equity and inclusion should be more than just something ceremonial.

If you're going to engage in community policing, then the police force should be representative of the community that it has to police.

>> Absolutely.

So after the murder of George Floyd, we thought, "Okay, things are about to change."

I'm sure you probably thought about that too.

Like, you know, maybe we're going to have some change in the criminal legal system.

>> A lot of police officers were carrying signs Black Lives Matter.

>> They were down on their knees.

They had their fists up in the air.

They were like, "Yeah, you know, Black Lives Matter, we get it."

Because many officers do.

Not just Black officers or brown officers.

Many officers get this conversation that we are having and they're like, "Okay, here's an opportunity.

I can actually say something."

But it probably took about two or three weeks before officers got up off their knees.

You know why?

Because the institution said "Get up off your knees."

The FOPs, all the unions were saying, "You better get back to work and quit this stuff about Black Lives Matter."

And so here we are.

George Floyd passed away.

They put his name on a bill in Congress which has gone absolutely nowhere.

>> Right.

It never passed the Senate.

It passed the House but not the Senate.

>> Well, yes.

Which for me is like absolutely nowhere because -- And we are still having these same conversations about "police reform."

But how do you reform something that's working the way it was intended?

>> You've been working on reform from within the department.

>> Yes.

>> You are known as an activist police official.

>> I am, and I wear that title proudly.

I had a young lady say to me... She accused me of contributing to the ills of the Black community because I was a police officer, and surely I had been involved in state-sponsored violence.

But I had to let her know, if she didn't, all of these systems are connected -- housing, education, employment, policing.

It's all one.

It's not, you know, there's separate little categories, but it's all one and the same.

So if you've worked for any -- if you're not an entrepreneur, you work for yourself, at some point, you worked for part of the system.

And if -- whether a vulnerable person or a Black person was killed at the hands of police or whether they died slowly because they weren't getting good medical care, or they died because of stress, because they couldn't get a job, death is death.

Death in any vulnerable community is death.

And so you contributed as well.

So the real question is what can you do?

And let me tell you, you cannot take down a structure from the outside.

Even when they blow up a building to level it, they put the dynamite on the inside.

You have to go inside and you have to figure out how this is working so I can start manipulating the pieces so maybe we can take this apart.

>> What has been the response of your colleagues?

Have people welcomed reform or welcomed discussions about police reform?

In many communities today, there's -- some have an increase in crime and violence.

Others have a decrease in crime and violence.

But the whole issue of police reform, sometimes there's a very famous case like the George Floyd case, there's a focus, but American focus is very temporary.

You know, we tend to turn the page after a few months and what was a priority in one month may not be a priority several months later.

So how do you handle the issue of ongoing need for police reform in America?

>> You have to keep pressing.

You just have to.

It's just like the civil rights movement.

And actually, I see the efforts to change policing as part of that movement.

You just have to keep pushing.

You have to keep pushing.

My colleagues -- there are many colleagues who are like-minded.

Everyone's not going to be brave enough to step forward and be vocal like I am, but they might do something else.

They might come to you and say, "Hey, I have a group of people who are looking to have someone speak to them about these issues.

Would you mind coming?"

I actually had a colleague at the police department when he -- it was a white male.

And when he saw that I was going through some issues, he came to me and he says, "Hey, listen, I have some people I want you to talk to about your issues and maybe help you come to a resolution," which was pretty big.

He says, you know, "I'm like-minded, but I'm just not as brave as you to say these things outwardly.

But I think I know some people who can help."

So there are people -- And everybody can, you know, you do what you can do.

But what I found is that it is the community that is the greatest driver of change in policing.

My job is to educate the community about how policing works on the inside, and so they can take that information and say, "Okay, so these are the things that we want to do," and they can ask questions, but it's the community who has to make change in policing.

It's not -- We can't expect policing to change itself.

That's not going to happen.

>> In terms of community involvement and community policing and reform in the communities in which you work now in Maryland, are you seeing disengagement?

>> I am, but I do work not only in Maryland, I do work across the country and internationally.

The same issues that we see in policing here, we see globally, in Africa, in the United Kingdom.

>> Why is that?

Because of the power dynamics?

>> And race being a social construct everywhere.

That caught on obviously globally that, you know, we can tell folks that Black people are less than and they will actually believe it anywhere that there are Black people, but there's also other people of other ethnicities.

It caught on.

And if you talk to officers, for instance, in the U.K., they will have the same experiences.

Officers of color will have the same experiences as I did and other officers of color in the United States.

The communities that they serve are having the same issues that the communities in the United States is having.

So it's not just a U.S. issue, it is a global issue, something that I like to highlight with my students every semester.

Like, "I need you all to think broadly.

It's not just in your home state, it's not just in Washington, D.C., or Chicago."

Those are other myths that we could talk about forever.

But it is everywhere that we're having these issues of race and discrimination.

>> Given the global context that you're giving us good information on, does that enhance the ability to have global change or does that, because it's global, it makes it much more difficult?

>> Oh, wow.

I think it... Oh, that's a great question.

I think that it is both.

I think that the most difficult part for me is to bring the knowledge of that to other people because they don't think outside of the United States.

But for people who are living outside of the United States, they know.

They're like, "Oh, you know, I know this is happening in the U.S., but it's happening here."

And so it's easier to engage with them and have these conversations, such as I've had with United Nations officials about police bias in certain countries.

>> There's a corollary on issues of climate.

The whole climate movement started really outside of the United States.

Then it came within the United States because there was some reluctance for various reasons to even admit that there's a climate problem in the world.

But the analogy is that the whole law enforcement issue, as you correctly state, is just not an American issue.

>> No.

>> And the extent to which reform can be realized in other parts of the world, there may be something that Americans can also learn about police reform, about community policing, particularly from the perspective of community involvement with the police.

>> Yes, absolutely.

And I think that we serve as a model for other countries.

That's my sense when I, you know, go to other countries and we have these conversations.

I think if anybody can do it, it can be us.

I have...

I do some collaborative work with sociologists, anthropologists, other people who have a vested interest -- stakeholders -- in making this change.

And you might hear different language.

You might hear people talk about abolishing the police.

But what they're really saying is changing the structure of policing as it is right now.

We all recognize we may need some sort of public safety help.

We can't just throw the police out the window and then we, you know, what are we going to do?

Some people say we're going to police our own communities, but you're going to still be policing, if you want to use that word, your community.

So how are you going to do that?

>> Well, it's an interesting dynamic.

You know, at one point people on the far, far left were saying defund the police.

Now people on the far, far right are saying defund the police, defund the FBI, defund the Justice Department.

But funding does set somewhat of a goal line, whether or not police reform is going to get the kind of not just political attention, but funding attention to bring it possible.

>> So first, let me just say defunding the police, that's just propaganda because the police have been defunded since time untold.

Any time you go through some sort of financial crisis in the country, police departments may lose money.

I know mine did.

We were on thin ice for quite a while.

That's defunding.

"We're going to take this money that we would normally give to you and we're going to do something else with it."

But you're right, because we're driven by capitalism and, you know, driven by money.

If change is going to be made, it's going to cost us a little bit.

Well, it cost us a lot.

And so that's part of that conversation where, you know, "How are we going to do this?

Where are we going to get the money?"

As a matter of fact, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act -- and I hate putting his name to something that has not moved along, but yet that's what it's called -- a lot of the parameters were attached to funding because policing and law enforcement is driven by the state and local jurisdictions, right?

And so you can't make a police department do something like you can't make them give you valid information on use of force.

But if you tie money to it, then they may be inclined to give you some information.

>> You've become a real role model not only for Black women, for women of color, but I would say women in general.

Can you just reflect on your triumphs for our audience?

>> I think my journey to become the first African-American woman to be a captain in my police department was a slow journey, but it was necessary.

It had to be that way for me to become who I am now and do what I do now.

Maybe if I had -- if it had occurred faster, I might have missed some things that are essential to what I do as a social advocate.

And maybe I also would not have gotten some of the experience that I ended up getting in trying to present my best self so that I could get promoted.

[ Chuckles ] I feel like you're going to ask me what would I tell younger women, right?

I would tell them to be prepared because you're not going -- You're stepping into a very patriarchal, sometimes sexist career, and you're going to have to just steel yourself for some of the things that may come your way.

These are conversations I didn't have.

When I came in, there were not a whole lot of women for me to talk to about these things.

And you're going to have to have perseverance and be very focused on what it is that you want, because you can get sidetracked trying to defend yourself and distracted and, you know, you might want to give up.

There were a couple of times when, before I made captain, I was like, "You know, I'm not going to take this test anymore.

I'm more qualified than most of the people who've been promoted.

Why do I keep doing this?"

And I don't know how to stop, though.

And so you got to have a lot of perseverance.

And I would say to them, like I would to any young officer, again, learn everything you can about policing.

Take all the training you can.

If you need to pay for it yourself, pay for it yourself.

Do everything you can to learn about this place that you're working in, and then you can make some really great decisions about how you want to make change.

>> As a college professor now, you teach at Montgomery Community College as well as at Howard University, H.U.

>> You know.

[ Laughs ] >> Right.

What has been the resonance and response of some of your students today?

Are they finding not only your lectures are interesting and informative, but does it open some aspiration of others to follow your path?

>> I like to think so.

I've had some students that told me that they decided to go into policing because of the classes that they've taken with me.

I also like to think that, based on their reviews, that they are learning about policing in a way that they don't get from people who have never been in law enforcement.

So I get to tell them my stories to, you know, highlight a point.

And I get to tell them the truth about my experiences and not try to sugarcoat it.

You know, this is real.

So you can make an educated and informed decision about whether you want to go into policing or not.

>> Retired Captain Sonia Pruitt, thank you so much for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, please visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also follow us on Facebook, X, formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

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