DETROIT – Sunday's edition of Flashpoint began with a roundtable discussion about the investigation into an arrest made by the Inkster police.
Political consultant Adolph Mongo, Detroit News editorial page director Nolan Finley, Republican strategist Paul Welday and Detroit Free Press columnist Nancy Kaffer joined Devin Scillian to talk about the issue.
In a video showing the arrest, two officers are seen pulling a man from his car and tackling him to the ground. While he's trapped beneath the two officers, the man is punched several times in the head and face. Officers claim they found drugs in the man's car before the beating, but the man says the drugs were planted there by the arresting officers.
Mongo says this kind of incident is happening everywhere now and reveals that he hated coming to downtown Detroit when he was growing up because the police would stop young black guys while they were driving.
Finley pointed out that Inkster is a mostly black suburb and said that seeing this kind of incident in the area is just bizarre. He said it's hard to understand why the police officers would do such a thing when they know they're on camera.
On the other hand, Welday warns people who see the video not to jump to conclusions, citing the two officers that were killed in the United States earlier this week. He said that being a police officer is one of the toughest jobs in the country.
"This does not look good," Kaffer said of the video. "And regardless of how this particular incident plays out, we can't hide the fact that there's a really documentable difference in the way police officers interact with African Americans and with white people."
She said that African Americans are more likely to be arrested for crimes, prosecuted for crimes and given longer sentences.
The panel discussed how the officers' willingness to perform this arrest on camera shines a light on the discipline police receive for brutality. Mongo thinks that the penalties for officers are not harsh enough, and Kaffer said that weak punishments aren't enough of a deterrent for avoiding more incidents.
Finley said that smaller, struggling police departments are another problem that needs to be addressed in metro Detroit.
"You've got a department out there in Inkster that is on a shoestring, it's dysfunctional, it's been troubled, it probably shouldn't exist," Finley said. "And we have small little police departments in struggling communities all over this area that don't have the resources to pay for the best officers, to train officers, to put in preventative measures for this sort of thing."
You can watch the panel's whole conversation about the Inkster police in the video posted above.
After a break, the panel returned to talk about the condition of the roads in Detroit and Michigan.
The proposal to increase Michigan's sales tax 1 percent in order to raise money to fix the roads will be voted on in just over a month, and Welday says that a recent poll showed consistent opposition to the proposal at about 55 percent. The number of voters in favor is still hovering around 40 percent, he said.
Welday said the governor is out campaigning for the proposal, but has a lot of work to do.
Kaffer said the problem with resorting to a Plan B if the proposal doesn't pass is that the government will miss the construction season.
There's no disagreement that the roads need to be fixed, according to Finley. But he says the argument is over the plan itself, and whether it's the correct approach to making the improvements.
The panel also talked about a pardon that was granted by Governor Rick Snyder and why that decision enraged many people. Members of the panel were torn on whether or not Snyder made the right decision and had different opinions on the importance of the pardon.
Click on the video below to watch the second segment in its entirety.
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In the final segment, the panel looked ahead to the country's next presidential race.
Finley talked about the decision facing the Republican Party as they search through potential candidates. He said he thinks the Republicans will choose an electable candidate, as they have in the recent past. He said we might have a very interesting presidential election after all.
Welday thinks there will be a long march in the Republican Party because of the sheer number of candidates.
The panel also touched on Hillary Clinton's situation and what they would like to see happen in the elections. Each panelist gave their favorite candidate before the end of the discussion.
You can see the entire conversation about the presidential election in the video below.
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