<Begin Segment 18>

TI: And then what kind of work did you do after graduating?

PT: I became a prison guard at San Quentin.

TI: Now, why did you choose that? That's an interesting choice.

PT: I don't know. There was something I was interested in, maybe because I was imprisoned. Maybe, I don't know. And I was on a midnight shift, and then there was no bridge at that time so we had to ride a ferry, go back and forth. I was going to be the first one off, so I didn't go up to the coffee place and I just leaned against my car and just looking at the terrain. And then that's where Standard Oil unloads. And then this deckhand comes up to me and says, "During the war I used to deliver petroleum to the Germans in North Africa." I said, "What?" And that turned me around like that. This is the country that put us in concentration camps? This fucking country is sending soldiers over to Europe and corporations are selling gasoline to the Germans. Think about that. So there's the military, politicians, and there's business. And business as business. So that's one of the reasons I don't vote. [Laughs]

TI: So let me make sure I understand. So you have a corporation, Chevron, multinational, during the war, aiding the Germans during the war. And this gentleman actually helped do that.

PT: And downstairs I have three books on how America worked with the Germans, and the others are Ford Motor Company, and the other is IBM and gasoline.

TI: Chevron. Interesting.

PT: So what would you do, suddenly learning something like this, what happened to us? And then here this great country, "one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all." That's a pile of shit.

TI: You say that, but yet you stayed in the country and you went on to get your advanced degree at Stanford, and a long career as a professor at Berkeley. So in some ways, that's kind of like staying in the system, isn't it? You stayed in the country doing these things and researching.

PT: Well, the kind of research I did led to when this guy was the governor, he shut down the school.

TI: So Ronald Reagan was the governor at that point. So you were at the School of Criminology at Berkeley when they had a School of Criminology. And because of your work and your outspokenness, they shut down the school.

PT: Yes. And then in the meantime I'm doing consultation on police violence. And then he becomes the President, and the first thing he does is cut it off. Then I was out of a job.

TI: Did he know your name?

PT: Well, I'm sure he did. Perhaps not by name, but his staff would know who are the guys that got to be cut.

TI: So let's talk about some of the, what he would deem "controversial things" you did while you were at Berkeley. So when you're at Berkeley, what were some of the things you were doing that would lead to the shut down?

PT: I was criticizing the police killing of blacks. The first story I wrote was a Los Angeles case, and she had not paid her gas bill. And her husband had died of that illness that kills blacks.

TI: Sickle cell?

PT: Sickle cell anemia just three months before. And then Christmas is coming along, and this is the worst time for poor women. They don't have any money to buy presents for their little kids. And so she didn't pay for December so she could have this dinner for her two little kids and give them their presents. And then this is on January 2nd, and the guy comes to turn off her gas because she didn't pay. And she says, "I have the money, I have the money. Please don't cut it." And this guy says, "My job is to cut off your gas." So she got a rake and just lacerated his arm. Then he went back and told his boss what happened, and he said, "Get your hand bandaged and go to the police." And two policemen came, and there she is with her purse, always has the purse on one arm, and she has this axe or something, just cutting the branches of the trees. The police drive up, they both get out, one of them is black, and said, "Drop the knife." And she just keeps on doing it, and they empty their guns and kill her. They have the autopsy and then, guess what? Within her purse, she had paid for it during the time that the police were coming. Then the person that got it was a Japanese woman in Los Angeles who went to the police department and sent me the report, and then I published it. It went all across the country.

TI: So you didn't make the police look good.

PT: [Laugh] You can bet that all the police were pissed off as all hell. And you can also bet that the police organization, national one, they got pissed off. So anyway, that's what I did.

TI: But more than that story, I read your article, "A Garrison State in a 'Democratic' Society," and this one is more statistical. It's very straightforward, where I think at the time there were claims that the number of police deaths were going up. But you showed that proportionally, there were no changes, and in fact, the number of deaths caused by the police were going up all the time, and furthermore, it was race based between whites and blacks. To me, that seems to be a powerful indictment against the police and what was happening trend-wise. It was pretty astounding, the statistics. But yet, it was all numbers. It was very statistically clear what you were showing. So were these the kind of things that the Reagan administration, they were opposed to and that's why they shut down the school?

PT: Sure.

TI: The astounding thing to me as I read these articles is they don't seem that radical. I mean, they seem like what, fifty years later, people kind of know or understand.

PT: Well, I have to tell you that I have no particular love of the black community. But I do think that they do deserve clean policing, and that's what I was criticizing. You don't shoot someone like that, because they could very well do that to me or to you. For some reason... maybe the Japanese keep their cars more in conditions that they don't go speeding, they don't have flat tires on the highways and so on and so forth, so maybe they don't, as a result, have that much encounter with the police, possibly. I don't know.

TI: And yet, when you talk about your work, black organizations sort of want to be associated closely with you. People like the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, things like that, because your work helped to shine a light on this problem that was confronting them. Any interesting stories about your relationship with black organizations?

PT: In fact, I did have a relationship with the Black Panthers.

TI: And what was that relationship?

PT: The City of Berkeley put on a...

TI: Referendum?

PT: Referendum to divide Berkeley into three sections, and a black section, there was a center section, and university section and then there would be the white residential section. Then there should be no white police officers in a black section, and there should be mixed officers in the other two sections. And I supported that. And a British guy, he supported that. He was fired after that. [Laughs] For me, I was tenured, so they couldn't fire me, so they closed the school.

TI: Oh, interesting. Well, they closed the school, but then you moved over the School of Education?

PT: Yes, that's right.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.