Recorded LIVE at Tattered Cover Book Store, Paula Lehman-Ewing speaks with retired NYPD lieutenant, whistleblower, and author Edwin Raymond about the unresolved tension between inside and outside approaches to change in policing.

Edwin joined the NYPD after experiencing police harassment as a teenager, determined to challenge discriminatory practices from within. He later became the highest-ranking whistleblower in NYPD history and the lead plaintiff in the federal lawsuit Raymond v. City of New York.

Together, Paula and Edwin explore the difficult questions that sit between reform and abolition: Can a system built to resist accountability actually change? Is incremental reform progress — or the system absorbing change to survive? Are justice-minded officers a path forward, or a contradiction?

The conversation moves through whistleblowing, broken-windows policing, restorative justice, ICE enforcement, leadership, recruitment culture, and the emotional cost of challenging institutions from the inside. This episode doesn’t offer easy answers — it sits in the tension between two worldviews trying to imagine a different future for public safety.

Recorded live in Denver with audience Q&A.
To attend a LIVE recording visit bit.ly/COJAEvents
Learn more about Edwin at edwinraymond.com
Watch Crime + Punishment on YouTube or Hulu

What happens when a liberal and a conservative sit down — not to debate, but to think out loud together?

In this episode of Get Me to the Gray, Paula Lehman-Ewing speaks with Josh Lewis, a CPA, government auditor, and conservative writer behind Saving Elephants, about a core political divide: whether the systems we’ve inherited are capable of correcting harm, or whether they were built to benefit some while excluding others — and therefore need to be reimagined.

Paula approaches the conversation from the perspective that questions preserving institutions that have consistently failed marginalized communities. Josh argues from a conservative framework that imperfect institutions may still be the most durable tools for reform. Together, they explore urgency versus restraint, reform versus rupture, and who bears the cost of change.

Note: There will be no new episode next Tuesday due to our live Get Me to the Gray event in Denver. If you’re local, we’d love to see you there. Tickets are available at tinyurl.com/COJAEvents. The recording from that conversation will be released here in two weeks.

What do we do when the stories we tell about violence stop helping us solve it?

In this episode of Get Me to the Gray, Paula Lehman-Ewing sits down with criminologist David M. Kennedy to confront one of the most uncomfortable questions in public life: how do we reduce violence without falling into either punishment-for-punishment’s-sake or denial that harm is happening at all?

The conversation unfolds inside a tension most people avoid. On one side is the instinct to respond to violence with overwhelming force. On the other is the belief that structural change alone will eventually make violence disappear. Kennedy argues that both approaches miss what’s actually happening on the ground — and that the truth lives in the space between them.
To learn more about David Kennedy and focussed deterrence, visit nnscommunities.org.