The War At Home feat. Ray Taseff

What this episode covers

In Miami, where many communities feel a wide gap between themselves and their police, law enforcement can often feel more like an occupying force. Part of the problem is that there is very little accountability for bad cops. From unions that protect the worst members of the force to a state attorney that is loathe to charge officers in even the most cut-and-dry cases of police brutality or abuse of authority, law enforcement operates with impunity in Miami.  After the recent shootout in Miramar that resulted in the deaths of two innocent men, we caught up with Ray Taseff, a civil rights lawyer and defense attorney, a member of the Florida Justice Institute, and an advocate for victims of police abuse and brutality. Ray has been a vocal critic of police abuse of authority in South Florida, and of our long-serving state attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle. We talked about what real police reform would look like, and how it’s possible to get there.  (Yes, we know that the US is on the brink of war with Iran, and yeah we’ll talk about it on the next episode. But frankly, crooked cops in Miami are a hell of a lot more dangerous than a dead general in Iraq.)  Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s challenger is likely to be Melba Pearson. She doesn’t have a campaign site up yet or we’d link it here, but check back later.  The book Ray mentions is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.  This episode was recorded at Unicorn Fire Radio in Miami.  Music in this episode is by David Rosen.