Global Comment

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It’s Time For Police Reform in the United States

Ferguson has become a flashpoint in the collective US consciousness, a shooting heard ‘round the world as the international community observes the complete and utter unmasking of the truth of race relations in the United States. A country that labels itself post-racial and elects a Black president can still be racist, and one of the starkest pieces of evidence for that racism is the mounting pile of young Black and brown bodies in the US. Whether shot by law enforcement, trapped in the ‘justice system,’ failed by the schools, or pushed to the margins of low-income communities, people of colour in the US are a second class; 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, one of the most landmark pieces of legislation in US history, a young Black man still can’t walk down the street without being shot just for existing.

In the wake of months of sustained protests in a community angered and wounded by the death of yet another Black man, Ferguson hit the news again this week in the wake of a grand jury’s decision to indict Michael Brown’s murderer, officer Darren Wilson. For a grand jury to make such a decision is nearly unprecedented; prosecutors rarely call for and seat grand juries unless they are fairly confident that the preponderance of the evidence will lead to an indictment and subsequent trial. Seating and managing grand juries is expensive, and there’s no reason for such events unless a positive result is likely.

The Justice Department is highly suspicious about the outcome, and if it weren’t already planning to come to Ferguson to conduct a federal autopsy and investigation, it definitely would be now. (Imagine, for a moment, the agony of the Brown family as it waits to bury its son and loved one.) All is not well in Ferguson, a city tainted with a police department that has been revealed as more and more corrupt, and questionable, in recent months, now that the eyes of the nation are upon it.

But Ferguson is only a piece of the puzzle. There are scores of Fergusons waiting to happen, and already happening, across the US. The policing system in the US is fundamentally broken and it needs top-down federal reform in addition to state-wide reforms and pushes on the local level. Clearly, local leadership on the issue has failed, and it’s time for those in authority to take on the task. While policing is often regarded as an autonomous and local issue, there is, in fact, legal justification for reforms imposed from above: The federal government can and has intervened in the past on civil rights issues when it has observed that independent communities are unlikely to address these issues on their own.

Solving the problem with policing in the United States involves a number of factors, but three of the most key must be implemented immediately for successful police reform: Disarmament, monitoring, and a refocusing of purpose.

Police departments in the United States are among the most heavily armed in the world. Many international citizens are aware that police officers carry sidearms in addition to weaponry in their cars, but in addition, police departments in urban, suburban, and sometimes even rural areas are also equipped with military materiel; the same equipment the United States is using in the green zone is literally being sent to police forces around the country as the Pentagon sells off surplus and police departments line up for equipment not just from the government itself, but also from private contractors. Veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan note that some police forces are actually better armed than they ever were, with more weaponry, body armour, and better communications systems (like jammers and electronic surveillance equipment).

Policing in the United States has turned dangerously close to making war on civilians, which is not part of the stated mission of law enforcement: Police departments are, as the slogans on many department vehicles remind the public, designed to ‘protect and serve.’ The level of materiel deployed by departments for regular officers, not specialised teams with extensive training for handling hostage situations, bomb threats, and other extenuating circumstances, is nothing short of boggling.

The United States must take weapons away from its police departments. This starts with removing any and all materiel away from law enforcement agencies — police don’t need tanks, grenade launchers, and machine guns, nor do they need equipment like Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs), designed to disperse crowds by emitting incredibly painful and irritating noise. Next comes the seizure of sidearms and other weapons routinely carried by police officers, who do not need to be armed for the bulk of the work they perform. While vehicle-mounted equipment like shotguns for emergencies may be appropriate for some agencies, officers should be extensively trained in the correct and appropriate use of such equipment.

An unarmed police force will find it extremely difficult to shoot people. This explains why the rate of officer-involved shootings in nations like the UK and New Zealand is extremely low; it’s not a statistical variance, but one of mindset and approach to policing. It also forces police officers to focus on conflict de-escalation training and communication for the purpose of resolving situations. In cases where armed tactical teams are merited, specially trained teams akin to the SWAT departments used now should receive extensive education in negotiating situations and resorting to force only if no other options are available. A special response team has the ability to assess a situation and determine the best course of action while protecting the public, and, of course, fellow officers.

This comes hand in hand with monitoring. It’s clear that many US police officers, for a variety of reasons, cannot be trusted to be evenhanded and respectful in their dealings with the public. In a statement after the grand jury decision, the Brown family noted that: “We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen. Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera.” Their statement pled for peace and asked people to take their response to the next level, but it illustrated a serious problem in the US: Oversight over police, when in the field, is often limited.

Body cameras aren’t the only tools for oversight (and they have a number of problems, including the potential for being turned on and off). Dashcams, long in use, should be made more sophisticated and capable of additional oversight. Third-party investigators and organizations should work with police forces and community representatives to develop appropriate tools for monitoring police officers and reporting on their activities while on duty (and off-duty, in the case of officers who abuse their station to rape, harass, and intimidate). In perhaps the most simple example, departments need to actively enforce the requirement for all on-duty officers to clearly display their names and badge numbers and to provide this information when requested.

Some officers and departments may be resistant to such reforms, arguing that they are too expensive or too distracting, or that they deflect from the purpose of police forces and will make officers feel uncomfortable. The public should, rightfully, have little pity for such arguments; police officers have been making members of the public very unsafe for a very long time, and such measures will only improve policing. They’re not just to the benefit of civilians (which should be enough). They also provide benefits for officers, eliminating ‘he said, she said’ problems, providing concrete evidence for convictions, and providing documentation for concerns like chain of evidence and custody of materials vital for closing cases.

The nature of policing in the US also needs to change focus — or, rather, it needs to return to its original focus. Serving and protecting is a service-orientated, public-orientated approach to work, while the current position of police in the United States is oppositional to the public, viewing everyone as a potential criminal or suspect. In a world where officers assume that everyone is guilty of something, and where implicit and explicit racism play a role in perception of other individuals, this puts people of colour and nonwhite people at considerable risk. A young Black man walking down the street is no longer just a man, nor a man walking down the street: He is a figure of menace who must be taken down before he causes harm or commits further crimes (his very existence is criminalised, therefore, he’s committed a crime just by being alive).

Police forces need to revisit their original purpose, working directly in their communities on public safety issues, reaching out to community leaders to address their specific concerns, and developing community programs that improve safety rather than breaking it apart. Police, like firefighters and other public safety personnel, should be serving a role to members of the public, rather than creating and fostering an us and them mentality; instead of taking up arms, they should be taking up sneakers so they can hit the streets and get to know the people and communities they work with, becoming known and getting familiar with common issues. This provides useful tools for de-escalating conflicts and identifying potentially dangerous situations; a police officer who knows a member of the community, for example, can call upon that mutual connection when that individual is being aggressive.

The United States is a nation with flaws in the ‘justice’ system from top to bottom. Many of those flaws start on the local level, with the role of police officers in their communities, creating a funneling effect as law enforcement agencies criminalise the populations they are supposed to be protecting, divert young people of colour into courts and ultimately into the prison system, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy as they attempt to convince themselves that people of colour are dangerous, imprison them, and thereby affirm their notions.

To create a new spectrum of policing in the US is no easy task, but it’s long past time.

3 thoughts on “It’s Time For Police Reform in the United States

  1. You’re right, we do need reform. If it wasn’t for the First Amendment, the author of this article would likely be sued for libel and slander. And there’s no mention of all the white people who are killed daily by black police officers. However, I’m not going to insult the reader by saying they were shot just because they existed. More than likely, the majority of them were committing crimes at the time.
    As former President Reagan said, “We don’t need gun control, we need criminal control.” Tougher laws and mandatory sentencing for convicted criminals would be an excellent place to start.
    There’s no way you’re going to convince the public that all the violence after the announcement from the grand jury was done by white police officers.

  2. A great blog of the need for reform is William Scott’s. It’s at williambscott.com. Talk about a man who has his heart and soul in the game of calling for reform. His son was murdered by police, and he wrote a book called The Permit which is based on the facts surrounding his son’s death. HIs site is fantastic.

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