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Feb. 26, 2024
Courage and Integrity with Dr. Roland Fryer
Have you ever stood at a crossroads, principles in one hand, the easy path in the other? In this episode, we tackle the silent crisis afflicting today’s society: a dire need for courage among leaders. Courage that demands we stand grounded in our convictions, regardless of the tremors that threaten our professional and personal worlds.
Through our journey, the spotlight falls on Dr. Roland Fryer, the brilliant mind whose empirical research on police use of force overturned widely accepted narratives. Withstanding immense pressure and the looming threat to his career, Fryer’s resolve to publish his findings remains a testament to integrity. His story, woven from the threads of a challenging upbringing to the academic peaks of Harvard, underscores the monumental impact that one individual's adherence to truth can provide. Our discussion is not just a chronicle of Fryer’s work, but a rallying cry for the kind of leadership that can genuinely reform and inspire change within the community.
This episode is a tribute to those who prioritize unwavering principles over the luring call of comfort and a reminder that it is these rare acts of bravery that carve paths for progress. Listen in for an urgent, heartfelt charge towards cultivating a society that values integrity and the powerful influence of courageous leadership.
A special thanks to The Free Press and Barry Weiss for the audio portions of this podcast.
You can view Dr. Fryer's research here.
An article dedicated to Dr. Fryer is here that contains the full 77 minute interview.
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Transcript
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And I had colleagues take me into the side and say don't publish this, you'll ruin your career.
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I said what are you talking about?
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I said what's wrong with it?
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Do you believe the first part?
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Yes, do you believe the second part?
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Well, it's, the issue is they just don't fit together.
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We like the first one, but you should publish the second one.
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Another time I said, let me ask this If the second part about the police shootings this is a literal conversation.
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I said to them, if the second part showed bias, do you think I should publish it then?
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And they say yeah, then it would make sense.
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And I said I guarantee y'all publish it.
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Welcome to courageous leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today.
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And probably one of the most frustrating things that I deal with on a daily basis is when I look around and I see the sheer cowardice that seems to have taken over our country.
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I know I talk about law enforcement a lot, I talk about leadership a lot and of course there's plenty of cowards there but just in general, when you look around and you see some of the ills of society, the dregs of society and what is happening, the sheer silence of people of not wanting to speak up or take action or advocate for anything that seems to be good, moral and right, it's very frustrating because that is how things go very, very bad for entire country, cities, counties and, of course, organizations the cowardice in leadership, the cowardice in general.
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But, with that said, when I find someone that has been courageous and has ultimately paid a price, I've got to speak about it and we've talked a lot about some folks in law enforcement that's done that.
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But there's one particular example and I actually wrote an article last week on the sub stack TravisHsubstackcom.
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If you can't remember that, you can just go to TravisHorg and you can go over to the sub stack link and grab that article.
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In fact, if you go over sub stack, you can just put your email in and every time I write an article you'll get notified about it.
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And I'm very, very honored that we have close to 1,000 people in the last 12 months that are getting those articles.
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And that's encouraging to me because you're not gonna sign up for those articles if you don't like what you're reading.
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So that tells me that there are plenty of folks that believe in what we're talking about.
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And what we're talking about on a weekly basis is courageous leadership.
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Now, everybody knows what leadership is right.
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Everybody may has a different definition of that, but I think people understand what that is.
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The shortest terminology I've ever used is its influence.
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You know it's people that can influence others, but without the courage around that meaning, when things get tough, when you have something to lose, when it may hurt your career or it may hurt anything or your reputation, you'd still do it anyway.
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That's why we talk about principles a lot, because if you have principles, you will not back down.
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But we really live in a society where so many people will talk about leadership or talk about doing what's right until it could affect them in a negative way.
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And there was a 90 minute video that came out on Dr Roland Fryer.
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He gave a talk at the University of Texas in Austin and I wanna kinda back up and tell you about Dr Fryer.
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I first wrote about Dr Fryer in my book in 2019 called the Courageous Police Leader.
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I was so impressed at the time because I spent about a chapter on it, because Dr Fryer's research on police use of force is the only research I have seen that has been done properly.
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And I've done a fair amount of research myself.
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Of course.
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I have my doctorate in strategic leadership.
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I've had to do research, I've had to do dissertation, so I understand, when I look at research, what real research is.
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And if you weren't aware of this, the academic world's been kinda taken over by cowards.
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Very few times do you see research on law enforcement that's done correctly.
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An example is all of the use of force research most people cite.
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They compare police activity to the US census.
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That's not real research.
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In fact, dr Robin Engel from University of Cincinnati calls that junk science, because you're kinda not comparing apples to apples, so to speak, and I don't have time to go into all of that.
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If you come to our seminars, we go into that and talk about how our leaders can actually look at this from a data and research fact-based center.
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But Dr Fryer basically saw what was going on in Baltimore with Freddie Gray, saw what was going on in Ferguson, Michael Brown, and, of course, if you remember back to those years 2014, 2016, I believe it was pretty outrageous when the story came out.
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We all know now, looking back, that it was most of all of that was lies Ferguson especially and many of these high profile stories that the media ran with that affected law enforcement.
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Such a negative way turned out to be lies.
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But Dr Fryer Was really a guy that kind of grew up in a horrible environment and no father, no mother, grandmother raised him, was getting good grades but was not rewarded for that.
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Nobody thought that was cool.
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He goes into this interview talking about this and he admittedly did not like the police, worked his way up from a drive-through at McDonald's to becoming the youngest tenured professor at Harvard University at the age of 30 a very impressive guy.
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But he saw what was happening and, of course, you remember the protests, you remember the riots, you remember the outrage and he decides I want to do my part to reform police.
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And so what's my gifts?
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I can do research.
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He calls himself a data nerd.
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So he decides to do research and this research is Called an empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force.
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I'll link that up in this document.
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And fryer Basically said listen, this is gonna be the easiest research ever.
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I know the police are biased.
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I know the police are racist.
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Now it's odd that an academic guy would say that.
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But this is sort of what it's out there, right?
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He said I'm just gonna grab some data and I'll put it in a database.
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I'll do my research and I'll prove to the world that police are actually racist.
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He talks about this in the interview.
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He has this hardwired sense of he's a truth teller, regardless of what's being said or done or the narrative.
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He said he wants to tell the truth.
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He's an economics professor and he wants to tell the truth.
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In fact he says in the interview he goes I can't lie to my community.
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He's talking about the black community.
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I have to tell them the truth, whether people like it or not.
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So what he decided to do, instead of just pulling data or looking at the US census, what everybody else seems to do he set up right alongs across the country.
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He rode with a bunch of police officers, he figured out what kind of data he needed and he pulled that data from several agencies across the country.
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The study goes into that and, according to him, he had Millions of points of data.
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He hired eight researchers and for a year, they went through the data and the end outcome shocked him and the outcome said that, when it comes to police deadly force, there was no bias.
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In fact, knowing was there no bias Per the crimes being committed?
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He would have expected more African Americans being shot by police.
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He literally found no bias.
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Now you got to remember the narrative.
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In 2016 and 2017, Dr.
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Fryer was about to put out a research report that went against the narrative.
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Now, this narrative had no fact basis, right, that's just what people said, and this was Very well done research that said the opposite.
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Now Fryer was so shocked by it he decided to hire eight more researchers and Redo the study and it came back exactly the same.
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It's a very interesting study.
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His colleagues told him not to publish it.
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His colleagues told him it would ruin his career, and Fryer was really confused by this.
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He said well, this is research, this is what we do.
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We don't dictate the outcome.
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This is why academics exist or it used to be, of course and Fryer put the study out.
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I want you to hear directly from him on Exactly how that went down.
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Look, I saw what was going on with Michael Brown and some of the early viral videos of police violence.
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I Wanted to do something, but Protesting it's just not my jam.
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I'm not saying that people shouldn't protest, go for it but seemed hot outside I just didn't want to do it and so I thought I want to do something, and only thing I know how to do is I'm one of the world's biggest data nerds.
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So I said this is going to be the easiest paper I ever write.
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I'm going to go get some data.
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I'm going to go show that the police are biased.
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Finally, people are gonna like me and my grandmother is gonna go.
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You show that the police don't like black people.
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Really, what are you doing up there?
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Right, like this was.
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I had it all laid out and then I had dinner with a colleague of mine and I was telling him about my plan and he says you know, roland, when you work on schools and other stuff like that, you really just are in the schools, and so it's weird for me strange that you would just download police data and not understand more about the police.
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He says I wonder what the police are maximizing.
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A very Econ kind of thing to ask I wonder what the police are maximizing.
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And it dawned on me in that moment I Didn't know, nor did I think I cared, so I said, okay, fine, I didn't give him credit in the moment, but I left and said you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go figure out what police maximize.
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So I set up ride-alongs in Camden, philadelphia, houston, some places in Massachusetts, to ride along with the police.
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Now, back to 1991, I don't like the police very much.
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I Don't what had been your experience with the police.
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I had been roughed up by the police.
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I've had guns pulled on me, mind you.
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They pulled me over and I decided it'd be a good idea to get out of the car and walk away.
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The details are important, probably, but at any event I didn't like their customer service and so I just didn't like police.
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They came, they took half my family away.
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Granted, they were selling a lot of drugs, but, again, not the greatest customer service.
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So I was biased against the police, that's obvious.
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I went and I don't think I've received a better education since my grandmother taught me to read.
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It's a hard job and I know that sounds obvious.
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Sitting on a stage, it's a really hard job.
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I am a terrible police officer.
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After four hours everyone looked like a criminal to me.
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I don't know if I was angry.
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I don't know what it was.
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I'm telling you I am serious.
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They were like you could never be a cop Because I was like hey, let's pull over that kid's got a basketball.
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I don't like it.
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I participated in these weapons training not real weapons, relax, but these weapons trainings where there's simulations and some guy like I'm in the building, the guy walks out, he's got a baby.
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I shoot the guy right in the head and they're like what was about the baby?
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I said sorry, I didn't see the baby.
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I wasn't bad Police officer, but what I really did, I'm serious.
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I realized the job is really hard.
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It was the end of a 12-hour shift in Camden and we get a call for a potential overdose in a row house.
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It's an abandoned building.
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We bust in.
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A person dies within six feet of me and it shook me up a little bit, and so I looked at the guys I was with and I said yo, how about beers on me?
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And they said what do you mean?
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Beers are on you.
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I said I don't know.
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I don't know how to say it.
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Do you want me to speak in Greek?
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I mean, I don't know, it's, beers are on me.
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We should leave here, Let the paramedics take over, we should go.
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And they said we got to go back to work.
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And I said but we just saw somebody die and the police chief overheard me and he was incredulous.
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He says, roland, if I gave everybody a break every time someone died, I wouldn't have known I'm a cover the shifts and I was like, wow, it is a hard job.
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And so through these experiences, long story short, I collected a lot of data, and those experiences helped me understand what types of data that was going to be, and those experiences helped me understand what types of data to collect.
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We collected millions of observations on everyday use of force that wasn't lethal.
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We collected thousands of observations on lethal force and the key question I alluded to it earlier in a bit of a joke, but the key question is not just this arbitrary, silly snapshots that some journalists, not named Barry, do a lot is black people are 13% of the population and they are 50% of the police shootings.
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I'm sorry about that, but I don't know what that has to do with the question.
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Right, and it was in this moment in 2016 that I realized people lose their minds when they don't like the result.
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Right, and so what my paper showed you'll see tomorrow, like some of you was that, yes, we saw some bias in the low level uses of force everyday pushing up against cars and things like that.
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People sent to like that result, but we didn't find any racial bias in police shootings.
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Now that was really surprising to me because I expected to see it.
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The little known fact is I had eight full-time RAs that it took to do this over nearly a year.
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When I found this surprising result, I hired eight fresh ones and redid it to make sure they came up with the same exact answer and I thought it was robust.
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And then I went to go give it and, my god, all hell broke loose.
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Tell us about that.
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What was?
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the result?
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Well, your former paper published a thing, published a report about it, and it was a 104-page dense academic economics paper with 150-page appendix.
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Ok, it was posted for four minutes when I got my first email.
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This is full of shit, doesn't make any sense.
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And I wrote back how'd you read it that fast?
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That's amazing.
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You are a genius.
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People lost their minds.
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I mean it was like colleagues of mine were going well, I don't believe these results.
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He's using regressions.
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I'm like well, what the hell has we been using?
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I mean, we've been using them for ever.
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That's what you use.
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And I had colleagues take me into the side and say don't publish this, you'll ruin your career.
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I said what are you talking about?
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I said what's wrong with it?
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Do you believe the first part?
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Yes, do you believe the second part?
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Well, it's.
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The issue is they just don't fit together.
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We like the first one, but you should publish the second one.
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Another time I said let me ask this If the second part about the police shootings this is a literal conversation.
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I said to them if the second part showed bias, do you think I should publish it then?
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And they say, yeah, then it would make sense.
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And I said I guarantee you I'll publish it, we'll see what happens.
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So it was.
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I lived under police protection for about 30 or 40 days.
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I had a seven day old daughter at the time.
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I remember going and shopping for it because when you have a newborn, you think you have enough diapers.
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You don't.
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So I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with an armed guard.
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It was crazy.
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It was really truly crazy and yeah, it was a really phenomenal experience.
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Pretty amazing.
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I know it was a long listen, but pretty amazing and you have to be inspired by that.
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You're talking about somebody that was at the top of his game, a heralded professor, won tons of awards.
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As I said, the youngest tenured professor in Harvard history, african-american professor in Harvard history, 30 years old.
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It was incredible what he had to go through.
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But Barry Weiss, who is interviewing him, asked him and this is why I wanted you to hear this.
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It's very important for you to hear from Dr Fryer and not me today, because it's so encouraging what you hear from him.
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She asked him.
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She says this listen, leaders come to a decision point and when that decision point comes and what she's referring to is you can go right or left, you can go with the narrative and you're gonna be just fine, but if you go the opposite way, you could be destroyed.
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And she says she said most people go with the narrative.
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That's the safe pick.
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By the way, that's what we call cowardice.
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Right, that's what we call cowardice.
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She said what made you different when most aren't?
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Why would you make the choice you make?
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And, folks, you gotta hear his answer.
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I think it's what's in all courageous leaders, it's what's in all of us that know who we are, that know our identity, that knows the truth matters.
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Here's what Dr Fryer said.
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There are a lot of people, many people and this has been a realization for me over the past few years of my own life who, faced with that exact decision point, would make the opposite choice.
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I think the majority of people actually would make the opposite choice.
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They would think I'm gonna preserve my career, my professional status, my prestige.
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You were the golden, I mean, you were a golden boy at that point.
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I'm gonna preserve my popularity, my ability to get along with my colleagues.
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Someone nice to sit next to me in the cafeteria, like every incentive, to use an economics term, would be pushing you to make that choice.
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What is it inside of you?
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What can everyone here learn about?
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What allows you to make the opposite choice?
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To make the choice that would force you to suffer all of the consequences you would come to suffer, some a direct result and some adjacent to it.
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I don't covet what they covet and I tell my undergraduates every year in the final lecture of my undergraduate classes, each one of them the key to Harvard is get a great education without letting this place change you.
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It's really important.
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It can be corrupting.
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So not every incentive was pushing in that direction, because every day I have to look myself in the mirror and say what are you here for?
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What did you leave behind?
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I did not grow up wanting to go to Harvard.
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I didn't.
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I really didn't.
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I wanted to do something and I, like many others in here I wanna acknowledge that have suffered a lot of losses in my life.
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My grandmother's no longer here.
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My father is dead.
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I don't know where my mother is.
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I have they're all gone.
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Every single cousin is gone.
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My favorite cousin.
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The day he got released out of prison after 25 years, someone walked up behind him and shot him directly in the head.
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So I have to make this journey worth it.
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I am here because I want to solve problems.
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I am here because I have seen so much talent in these neighborhoods and I know they know bullshit when they see it.
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So I'm not going to lie to them.
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I wouldn't be able to show my face in these places If I told lies to them like, oh, I heard this result from you.
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