Bridging the gap between police and citizens

"I think at times . . . race does have a role to play . . . as to how they perceive whoever it is they're confronting," Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson tells Bill Whitaker about his police department's relationship with the city's minority communities.

But last December, the Department of Justice used much stronger words to describe problems it found in the Cleveland police department. "We have determined that there's reasonable cause to believe that the Cleveland Division of Public Police engages in a pattern and practice of using excessive force," then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said about his department's findings.

That DOJ report came at a time when police departments across the country fell under sharp criticism for their treatment of blacks and other minorities, a situation that has led some African-American families to have "The Talk" with their sons.

"The Talk," Bill Whitaker says, is a conversation that many African-American families have with their young black sons about how to behave with any encounter with the police.

In the above video player, Whitaker tells 60 Minutes Overtime about this very delicate issue:

"We lived in Los Angeles. He's got dreds. Yeah, I did tell my son that, you know, it may be unfair but it's possible that he may be singled out as someone who's done something wrong because of the way he looks.

"You don't like that you have to say it, but you feel that it's necessary to be said...The encounters with police end badly with too many young black men. And I want my young black man to get through the encounter. Safely."

The video above was produced for 60 Minutes Overtime by Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson and Lisa Orlando and was originally published on January 25, 2015.

Editor's Note: On May 26, the Department of Justice and the Cleveland Division of Police agreed on a plan to reform the city's police force. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson responded to the latest DOJ findings, saying: "This agreement... gives us the structure and tools we need to have comprehensive reform rather than doing one thing at a time. This agreement gives us the structure now to implement comprehensive reform."