The current dismal news about how American minorities are often more endangered than protected by American police forces raises a market design problem. How can police departments be reformed, in a vast, diverse democracy, where the responsibility for policing falls largely on the smallest government units, namely towns and cities and counties?
While many responsibilities are local, government at the state and federal level (and the courts) have a role in regulating police work and in providing collective resources such as training that can't be provided effectively at the municipal level.
Here's the May 2015 (Obama era) report published by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS):
Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Washington, DC: Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services. May 2015.
The overall thrust of the report is that policing is a community activity (the word "community appears 318 times), and should have a "guardian" rather than a "warrior" culture. The report has many chillingly timely recommendations. E.g.:
"2.7
RECOMMENDATION: Law enforcement agencies should create policies and procedures for policing mass demonstrations that employ a continuum of managed tactical resources that are designed to minimize the appearance of a military operation and avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust."
"6.1.3 Action Item: The Federal Government should support the continuing research into the efficacy of an annual mental health check for officers, as well as fitness, resilience, and nutrition."
"6.4
RECOMMENDATION: Every law enforcement officer should be provided with individual tactical first aid kits and training as well as anti-ballistic vests."
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The 2016 presidential elections intervened, and this report was shelved. Many of the authors have retreated into a private sector consulting organization named after the report on 21st Century Policing:
"
21CP is an outgrowth of many of its consultant’s experiences on the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. That Task Force produced a pioneering report on contemporary policing, creating a common-sense law enforcement agenda based on input from criminal justice experts, community leaders, law enforcement, and civil liberties advocates. The recommendations have been endorsed by the Major Cities Chief Association, embraced by the National League of Cities, and heralded by community organizations and civil rights activists.
"21CP Solution’s trusted police leaders and experts work on the ground in police departments across the country – leading large departments and assisting smaller agencies. Public safety in partnership with the community is not a theoretical enterprise for 21CP."
One imagines that some of these individuals could be recruited to government service if a different administration takes office in Washington in 2021.
One of the principals in 21CP, who was the director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the time the above report was issued, is Ronald L. Davis, who came to COPS from East Palo Alto (where I lived briefly in 1978 while visiting Stanford, and near where I now live), where he was chief of police. Here's an excerpt from the
announcement of his appointment to COPS in 2013:
"Attorney General Eric Holder today announced Ronald L. Davis as the director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). Davis comes to COPS from the East Palo Alto Police Department, where he served as Chief of Police since 2005.
...
"In East Palo Alto, Davis led an organizational reform and community-policing effort that increased public trust and confidence and achieved dramatic crime and violence reductions in a city once dubbed the murder capital of the United States. Davis also partnered with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to implement a pilot parole-reentry program that provided programming and enforcement services and a job program with the California Department of Transportation. The East Palo Alto Police Department was the first police agency in the state to operate a state-funded reentry program. Return-to-custody rates dropped from more than 60 percent to less than 20 percent during this program."
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Under the current administration in Washington, the Federal government has stepped back from police reform in a number of ways. Here's a story that ran yesterday in the Guardian:
Trump's scrapping of Obama-era reforms hinders police reform
Trump’s justice department has dropped the use of consent decrees to bring federal oversight of troubled police departments by Ed Pilkington.
"Under Donald Trump, the US justice department has allowed federal mechanisms designed to impose change on racist police agencies to wither on the vine. As a result, law enforcement agencies that practice racial profiling, use excessive force and other forms of unconstitutional policing are now free from federal oversight.
"The most important of those tools, known as consent decrees, were deployed extensively by the Barack Obama administration in the wake of previous high-profile police killings of unarmed black men. They included the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014; 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, that same year; and the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland.
"Under Obama, 14 consent decrees were enforced upon troubled and discriminatory police agencies. By contrast, none have been issued in the more than three years of the Trump administration.
...
"Consent decrees fall under the
1994 Law Enforcement Misconduct Act that was passed by Congress in the wake of the brutal beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police three years earlier. The statute allows the US government to sue local police agencies that engage in “patterns and practices” of unconstitutional policing and fail to comply with essential reforms."
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For the record, here is the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 14141, which is part of U.S. civil rights legislation:
(a) Unlawful conduct
It shall be unlawful for any governmental authority, or any agent thereof, or any person acting on behalf of a governmental authority, to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers or by officials or employees of any governmental agency with responsibility for the administration of juvenile justice or the incarceration of juveniles that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
(b) Civil action by Attorney General
Whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that a violation of paragraph (1) has occurred, the Attorney General, for or in the name of the United States, may in a civil action obtain appropriate equitable and declaratory relief to eliminate the pattern or practice.
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Two stories in the Washington Post together frame the current political moment:
Here's the first:
‘Defund the police’ gains traction as cities seek to respond to demands for a major law enforcement shift By Derek Hawkins, Katie Mettler and Perry Stein June 7, 2020
"Though long a concept floated among left-leaning activists and academics, officials from Washington to Los Angeles are now seriously considering ways to scale back their police departments and redirect funding to social programs. The moves would be a strong show of solidarity with protesters, who are clamoring for social justice and to strike back at what they see as an oppressive force across the country."
And here's the second:
Protesters hope this is a moment of reckoning for American policing. Experts say not so fast. By
Kimberly Kindy and Michael Brice-Saddler June 7, 2020
"Charles H. Ramsey, a former chief in the District and Philadelphia and co-chair of President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, said perhaps the biggest obstacle to nationwide change is the unwieldy way in which police departments are organized. With every city, town, state and county fielding its own force, he said, it’s hard to standardize training and policies.
“Regionalizing them would be a solid first step,” Ramsey said. “But then you get into the politics. Every county and every mayor; they want their own police force, they want their own chief.”
"For that reason, a coalition of nearly 400 disparate organizations is focusing on securing federal reforms. Last week, the group — including the NAACP, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Music Therapy Association — sent a joint letter to congressional leaders calling for legislation to combat police violence.
“With so many police departments, it is important that there is federal action,” said Vanita Gupta, a former head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
"Although past efforts at policing reforms stalled in Congress, Booker expressed optimism, noting that civil rights legislation has always traveled a bumpy road. "
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