Ron Davis was a cop for almost thirty years, first as an officer with the Oakland P.D., then as the chief of police of East Palo Alto, California. In 2013, he joined President Barack Obama's Department of Justice to direct initiatives on policing reform. He investigated the police response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown. Davis tells Jelani Cobb that police violence in black communities is built into the structure of policing. “I think the system is working perfectly. It is working as it was intended to work,” Davis says. “We’re still using the same systems that were designed on purpose to oppress communities of color.”