American Catastrophes, Part 2
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images News/Getty Images
In the midst of the worst global public health crisis and economic downturn in modern history, the United States suddenly faced a second crisis. The killing of yet another unarmed black man by police officers birthed the largest season of civil unrest in our country in over half a century. The simmering rage of the Trump-era exploded onto the streets. Protesters pressed all the way up to the gates of the White House.
What followed was a summer of overwhelmingly peaceful protest in over 2,000 American cities and towns. In certain places, there were high-profile incidents of arson and looting at night. Many police departments, overwhelmed and embarrassed during the first weeks of the protests, responded with shocking violence. Scenes of peaceful protesters and members of the media being bludgeoned, gassed, pepper-sprayed, and shot with “less-lethal” rounds played out across the country.
President Trump, of course, did nothing to calm the situation. Instead, he fanned the flames of division and sought to portray those using their constitutional rights to demand justice for American citizens as radical anarchists attempting to overthrow the government. At one point he tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Numerous Republicans called for the protests to be crushed with military force, inadvertently echoing some of the foreign autocratic regimes they once criticized. Certain voices on the Left made equally illiberal arguments, claiming that looting was legitimate as it represented a form of reparations.
What took place, and continues to take place, on America’s streets is more complicated than either side is willing to admit. Both sides see the other through their single lens of choice. For conservatives, every single protest is a Leftist-riot, hell-bent on burning civilization to the ground and plunging us into anarchy. For liberals, every single police officer is a fascist storm trooper frothing at the mouth to maim and murder anyone who dares to question their authority. Both the Left and the Right see the issue as a moral binary, a struggle between good and evil, light and dark, life and death. In truth, this season of protest is the latest manifestation of the most complex and essential question we’ve never answered as a nation: equal protection under the law for Black Americans.
The Protests
Following the on-camera murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, America’s melting pot boiled over. Fury at this taped execution added to the lingering pain of Breonna Taylor’s death at the hands of police in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13, and the grisly killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia in February. The protests demanding justice and an end to police brutality against Black Americans saw early instances of arson and looting in certain cities by frustrated residents and those looking for an excuse. This included the dramatic burning of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct headquarters on the night of May 28.
These incidents, in turn, triggered increasingly aggressive and violent responses from police, with daily examples of excessive force being used against protesters and members of the media covering the events. This led Donald Trump to embrace his most totalitarian tendencies, openly calling for the United States military to be deployed to city streets to “dominate” the protesters. The now infamous clash in Lafayette Square for Trump’s photo op and the deployment of unidentified federal agents in tactical gear to Democratic-led cities like Portland stand out as brazen examples of the Trump administration’s disregard for civil liberties.
The response of many police departments to the protests made it seem increasingly clear that significant segments of law enforcement across the United States view the public they’re sworn to serve and protect with a combination of fear and outright contempt. There have been numerous examples of excellent policing, brave efforts at de-escalation, and community engagement, specifically in places like Flint, Michigan, Houston, Texas, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Columbia, Tennessee. These should all be showcased as templates for how police can positively engage with protesters. Plenty of police officers and sheriffs across the country are horrified by the deaths of unarmed citizens at the hands of police, knowing that it goes against their oaths to serve and protect.
However, there have been far too many repeated instances of police intimidation, aggression, and brutality in responding to the summer’s protests. Police in dozens of cities angrily lashed out at those criticizing the very law enforcement practices on display. When they knew that they would be under the most intense international scrutiny for their behavior, many officers seemed to act with less restraint or professionalism than ever. It appeared they were doing what they wanted without fear of oversight or consequences, to make a statement, to make an example.
“93.39% of all Black Lives Matter protests since May were non-violent and saw no vandalism or looting.”
Many conservatives will cite the “looters” and “anarchists” in the streets, saying that these aren’t peaceful protests at all. The new conservative boogeyman “Antifa” is now the quickest way to delegitimize any criticism of the president or law enforcement. However, according to the U.S. Crisis Monitor project, an initiative between the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) and Princeton University, out of the 13,626 total demonstrations from May to October, only 56 saw violence. 93.39% of all Black Lives Matter protests since May were non-violent and saw no vandalism or looting.
Why are we so quick to smear the sobriquet of “leftist rioter” across all protesters, but maintain that racist or violent police officers represent only “a few bad apples?” As many activists have pointed out, if there are this many bad apples, perhaps there is something wrong with the tree.
The State of the Police State
The first week of June felt like something out of a dystopian film.
Trump, embarrassed after the Secret Service moved the first family to an emergency bunker in response to protesters outside the White House, wanted to appear strong. On June 1 in Washington, D.C., federal law enforcement agents and national guard troops lashed out. They attacked peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square and St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House. They used tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray, and in fact gassed members of the clergy who were attempting to hand out water bottles and offer first aid to injured protesters on church grounds. This, of course, was all in service of Donald Trump’s profane photo-op in which he held a Bible upside down like a toddler with an iPhone.
The site ProPublica conducted a detailed review of police tactics and uses of force in nearly 400 videos taken at Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death. They found improper police behavior in 184 of them, including 59 instances where tear gas and pepper spray were used improperly, 87 videos of officers punching, kicking, and pushing retreating protesters, and dozens of videos of officers striking unarmed and non-combative protesters with batons. By the end of June, there were more than 40 lawsuits around the country claiming police brutality during the protests.
ProPublica concluded that in a majority of the incidents they reviewed the police took actions that escalated the situation and led to confrontations. In a number of instances, the conflicts began as police declared the protests unlawful and moved to disperse the crowds. In a loud and hectic environment like a protest, these sometimes snap decisions may not be clearly communicated to protesters. According to Yale law and sociology professor Monica Bell, police commonly declare protests violent or unlawful and move to disperse them if they don’t like the message of the protesters. This was a common theme throughout the Civil Rights Movement.
“ProPublica concluded that in a majority of the incidents they reviewed the police took actions that escalated the situation and led to confrontations.”
The U.S. Crisis Monitor project records that government and police forces engaged demonstrations five times more frequently in 2020 versus 2019. They also note that the authorities used force six times more often against protesters in 2020 than in 2019.
There were also frequent incidents of police attacking journalists covering the protests. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker from the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Committee to Protect Journalists, there have been more than 825 reports from across more than 70 cities of journalists being physically attacked, arrested, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, shot with projectiles, or having their equipment damaged or seized and searched. In one incident in the midst of the melee at Lafayette Square, U.S. Park Police attacked two Australian journalists while they were on the air. Dramatic video showed one officer strike photojournalist Tim Meyers in the stomach before bashing his camera with a riot shield. Another officer struck reporter Amelia Brace on the back with a baton as she attempted to flee. The incident led Australia’s foreign ministry to direct their embassy to open a formal investigation.
The Authoritarian Itch
Under President Trump, elements of the federal government have shown a shocking tendency towards repressive force against protesters. On a conference call, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told the nation’s governors they had to “dominate the battlespace” to put down protests, a comment he later apologized for. According to Major Adam D. Demarco of the D.C. National Guard, prior to the forcible clearing of Lafayette Square, officials stockpiled 7,000 rounds of 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammunition along with M4 carbine rifles.
DeMarco also provided emails in which the chief military police officer for the Defense Department recommended the use of a microwave weapon known as the Active Denial System. This system is essentially a “heat ray” meant to disperse large crowds by pushing energy through a magnetic field to cause anyone caught in the field to feel as if their skin is burning. The system, however, was never actively deployed during the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq due to ethical and safety concerns. On the prospect of using this potentially dangerous and unethical device on American citizens, the lead military police officer wrote that it “can provide our troops a capacity they currently do not have, the ability to reach out and engage potential adversaries at distances well beyond small arms range, and in a safe, effective, and nonlethal manner.” As DeMarco’s attorney stated, “That anyone in the Department of Defense referred to American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights as ‘potential adversaries’ and even contemplated the use of an ADS on the streets of our nation’s capital is deeply disturbing.”
On June 1, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas posted a tweet calling for infantry units of the U.S. military to quell the protests. He specifically called for “No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” Cotton, a decorated Army veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq and Harvard Law School grad, knew what he was saying. Ordering a military unit to deny quarter is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. It is defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross as “refusing to spare the life of anybody, even of persons manifestly unable to defend themselves or who clearly express their intention to surrender.”
Cotton then published an astounding op-ed in The New York Times, that called for the president to “send in the troops” to stop the protests. “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets,” Cotton wrote, “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” He advocated for the president to use his authority under the Insurrection Act, which he referred to as a “venerable law,” to deploy the military in a law enforcement capacity. He disgustingly tried to draw a comparison between the present moment and the use of federal troops by presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson to enforce school integrations in the face of racist mobs in the South.
That a sitting U.S. Senator would openly call for American soldiers to murder American civilians to crush dissent is beyond reprehensible. Even if they committed a crime, those citizens still have rights protected by the Constitution and our laws. Sending in the military with orders to leave no one alive, in the name of restoring order, is what happened when the People’s Liberation Army of China massacred student protesters in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. It represents totalitarian repression at its most basic.
Cotton was probably familiar, however, with Trump’s previous admiration for the incident. In 1990, Trump told Playboy this: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.” Thirty years later, Trump clearly has allies who see a similar need to be “vicious” in order to show the tyrant’s version of “strength.”
The authoritarian trend lines culminated on Tuesday, June 2, in the chillingly dystopian image of anonymous National Guard troops in full body armor occupying the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was, in truth, the perfect distillation of the Trump administration’s response to the protests.
A Badge of Shame
Just when things seemed to cool off slightly, another video of another police officer shooting another Black man shocked the nation. On August 23, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, responded to a 9-1-1 call regarding a domestic disturbance. On the scene, they tried to arrest Jacob Blake. Multiple police officers were unable to detain Blake, even with the use of two tasers. As Blake opened the door to his car, which held three of his children in the backseat, Officer Rusten Sheskey grabbed at his shirt and shot him seven times in the back. Blake had a warrant out for his arrest on charges of third-degree sexual assault, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct, but this was not the reason for the 9-1-1 call. Officers recovered a knife from the floorboard of the vehicle but it does not appear that Blake was going for the weapon or had it in his hand. Blake is now paralyzed from the waist down.
If Blake had a legitimate warrant out for his arrest, or was engaged in behavior that led to the 911 call, then he should have been arrested. He should then have had the chance to answer those charges in court with all of the legal rights and protections afforded by the Constitution, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Nothing he did, or could have done, warranted seven bullets in the back form an “officer of the peace.” That is not justice; that is not detaining a suspect resisting arrest; that is an attempted execution.
Similarly, critics cite the fact that George Floyd allegedly tried to pass a fake $20 bill and that’s what led to his encounter with police. The maximum sentence, if convicted, of passing a counterfeit bill is a fine and up to 20 years in prison under U.S. law. It is not a death sentence, and it certainly does not merit the cruel and unusual punishment of being strangled to death face down on the street.
If a police officer, or group of officers, is unable to physically restrain a single suspect without shooting them in the back with a gun, they are not qualified to be police officers. Their job is to protect and serve all of us, even those who break the law. That is an incredibly difficult task. We frequently ask too much of our officers, having them play social worker and mental healthcare provider and family counselor in addition to all of the other dangerous tasks that come with the job. But that is why we must hold our police forces to such high standards, and demand that we only give the power and authority the role carries to the most qualified and dedicated.
Justice for Breonna
Breonna Taylor’s case in Louisville, Kentucky, is an example of the dangers that come from bad policing. Taylor, 26, was killed in her apartment after midnight on March 13 after police executing a search warrant battered down her door. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, 27, believed it was Taylor’s ex-boyfriend attempting to gain entry to the apartment. Both the police and Walker claim that they called out repeatedly but received no answer from the other side of the door. When police used a battering ram to gain entry, Walker fired his gun, which he is licensed to carry, believing he was acting in self-defense. His round struck Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly in the leg, and the officers returned fire. One officer, Detective Brett Hankinson, ran out to the side of the apartment and fired 10 rounds blindly into the apartment from the parking lot.
While the officers attempted to render first aid to their wounded colleague, and to direct an ambulance to their location, Walker called his mother and then 9-1-1 in panic. “Someone kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker said on the recorded 9-1-1 call. He still did not know it was the police who had knocked down the door and shot her five times. Inexplicably, no officers entered the apartment to secure the scene or render aid. Breonna Taylor lay dying on the floor of her apartment and did not receive any medical assistance for more than twenty minutes.
Police did not find any drugs in the apartment that night. The suspect they were looking for, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover, was not in the apartment. Taylor had cut ties with him a month before and was moving on with her life. Glover has an extensive record and Louisville police were building a case against him for his involvement in a drug ring in the city. The same night as the botched raid at the apartment, the police also raided a vacant building Glover used as a “trap house” and recovered cocaine, opioids, and fentanyl packaged for sale. Unfortunately, Taylor’s relationship with Glover brought this world into her life. He used a car registered in her name to visit drug houses under surveillance. The police tracked his movements and followed him to Taylor’s apartment. Taylor’s new Dodge Charger was seen at one of the drug houses multiple times, and she was photographed outside of the house in February.
However, the police had no evidence directly tying Taylor to the drug trafficking operation. All that could be said of her was that she had dated a drug dealer. That a person in their mid-20’s exhibits poor judgment in personal relationships and dates someone their friends and family disapprove of is neither all that unique or criminal. The tragedy is that in Taylor’s case it led armed police officers to her apartment door.
Before they ever stacked up to execute the warrant that night, Louisville Police should have done more detective work. They should have known from surveillance that Taylor was no longer involved with Glover. They should have known that her new boyfriend, Walker, was in the apartment with her that night. They should have known that breaching a door in the middle of the night under confused circumstances and guesswork is a high-risk operation that endangers both officers and civilians.
I’m not denying that Louisville has a dangerous narcotics problem, or that certain areas of the city face serious violent crime rates. But, again, the police should not add to the danger and fear of those innocents forced to live in communities already plagued by high levels of crime.
The movement calling for justice for Breonna continued all through the spring, summer, and into the fall. On September 23, the Kentucky Grand Jury in the case announced that it was charging Detective Hankinson with three counts of wanton endangerment as his blind fire could have killed three of Taylor’s neighbors. However, they did not bring any charges against the two officers who shot and killed Taylor. Louisville and other major cities erupted in protest, and that night two Louisville police officers were shot.
“Members of the LMPD SWAT team told department investigators that the raid was ‘an egregious act’ that violated ‘basic academy’ rules of policing.”
Since then, we also learned that police obtained the warrant for Taylor’s apartment using false information. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the LMPD detective responsible for obtaining the search warrant wrote in an official affidavit that he had personally confirmed with a U.S. Postal Inspector that Jamarcus Glover was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment. This was untrue. The police were told the exact opposite, that no packages, “suspicious or otherwise,” were delivered to the apartment. The judge who issued the search warrant now says she is concerned that officers lied to her in their efforts to obtain the warrant.
Members of the LMPD SWAT team told department investigators that the raid was “an egregious act” that violated “basic academy” rules of policing. They claimed that they were not briefed on the raid, but had they been they would have “advised them 100% not to do it” until the SWAT unit could assist. When they did arrive on the scene, they said they found officers aiming weapons at the building for no discernable reason, “pointing a gun to point a gun.” There were also multiple violations of department policy regarding officers involved in a shooting. Ultimately, according to Lieutenant Dale Massey, “any amount of dope’s not worth it” to endanger the lives of officers and suspects with a raid like the one on Taylor’s apartment.
Breonna Taylor was killed by poor police work, a warrant obtained with falsified information, and a sloppy, dangerous raid that found no drugs but killed a 26 year old woman in her own home and wounded a police officer. This is the type of policing that makes our streets less safe, not more.
Murder By Numbers
In the face of these examples, conservative critics frequently rely on several well-worn arguments. First, they claim, police kill more White people than Black people in our country per year. Second, they continue, “Black-on-Black crime” is responsible for more deaths than officer-involved shootings. Third, they conclude, there is no evidence of implicit-bias in policing and if Black people just committed less crime then they would not have so many run-ins with the police.
Regarding the first claim, they are absolutely right. Police do kill more White people per year than Black people in America, overall. However, that’s not the issue.
Police in the U.S. kill about 1,000 people per year. An analysis of more than five years of data on police killings by the The Washington Post finds that since 2015, police killed 2,589 White Americans. In that same time, they killed 1,342 Black Americans and 941 Hispanic Americans. So yes, more Whites are killed by police in total. The difference, however, is that the population of White Americans is roughly 197 million individuals. Comparatively, there are roughly 42 million Black Americans, and 39 million Hispanic Americans. When measured in relation to their proportion of the population, Blacks are killed by police at more than twice the rate of Whites, at 32 per million versus 13 per million. Hispanics are killed at a rate of 24 per million. According to the science journal Nature, Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police than White men. A different study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that for White men and boys in the U.S., about 39 out of every 100,000 will be killed by the police over the course of their lives. For Black men and boys, nearly 1 in 1,000 will be killed by police. They also found that police use-of-force accounts for 0.05% of all male deaths in the U.S. For Black men between the ages of 20 and 24, it accounts for 1.6% of all deaths; for Whites males of the same age, it represents 0.5% of all deaths.
And how many of the officers that kill these 1,000 Americans per year face legal consequences? Not many. According to an analysis by Philip M. Stanton at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, since 2005 only 121 officers have been arrested on murder or manslaughter charges related to civilian deaths. Of those, 95 cases reached a conclusion, and of those only 44 resulted in convictions over a span of 15 years.
“Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police than White men.”
What about “Black-on-Black” crime? Don’t homicides and gun violence account for more deaths than police shootings? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2017 there were 8,504 Black Americans killed by homicide with a firearm, at a rate of about 18.57 per 100,000. Similarly, in 2018 there were 8,095 Black Americans killed by homicide with a firearm, with a rate of roughly 17.5 per 100,000. Comparatively, in 2017 there were 5,684 White Americans killed by homicide with a firearm, with a rate of 2.24 per 100,000. In 2018 that number was 5,426, at a rate of roughly 2.13 per 100,000. According to the Department of Justice, the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by offenders of the same race as the victim, including 70% of violent crimes involving Black victims and 62% of violent crimes involving White victims. So yes, Black Americans are being murdered with guns by Black offenders more frequently than Whites. The DOJ reports that 2.21% of Black Americans were victims of a serious crime (defined as rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, or motor vehicle theft) in 2018, while 1.57% of White Americans were victims of a serious crime that same year. What that means, though, is that Blacks are being victimized at higher rates than Whites AND they are more likely to be killed by police than Whites. Black communities, in fact, are the ones most in need of reliable, trusted policing.
On to our third point. What evidence is there of inherent racial bias in policing? Isn’t that just a liberal narrative based on a few bad apples?
A study at Texas A&M University examined more than two million 9-1-1 calls in two different cities. The results showed that White police officers dispatched to Black neighborhoods fired their weapons five times more often than Black officers dispatched to Black neighborhoods. A separate study cited in Nature found that Black people fatally shot by police were twice as likely to be unarmed as Whites fatally shot by police. A study published this March in the Journal of Urban Health examined police shootings of civilians. They found that police were three times more likely to shoot and kill Black Americans as White Americans during encounters in which the victim did not appear to pose a threat to the officer.
Whether you agree or not that the higher rate of police killings for Black Americans is caused by racial bias, surely it is not unreasonable to demand that the police to kill less frequently. 1,000 people per year is far too many. And the fewer people the police kill, the more communities will trust them and work with them to help solve and prevent crimes. How do we get there?
Make Cops, Not War
The hard truth is, we will always need law enforcement. It’s an unfortunate fact of human society. However, the way we enforce our laws and protect the public is not set in stone. The relationship between police forces and their communities is now warped. After 9/11, the federal government flooded departments around the country with funding and surplus military equipment. According to PBS Newshour, the Department of Defense transferred $4.3 billion worth of military equipment to police departments between 1997 and 2014. Police departments then made more frequent use of these new toys.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists examined 9,000 different police forces around the country. It found that increased use of SWAT teams had no effect on officer safety and no effect on overall crime rates, but it did negatively impact the perception of police forces by citizens. The same study examined the use of SWAT teams in the state of Maryland over a four year period. It found that out of 8,200 missions, 92 percent were search and arrest warrants. This over-reliance on the use of militarized force to conduct routine policing introduces violent conflict and escalates too many situations. As the psychologist Abraham Maslow famously wrote, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
Officers and departments absorbed not just the weapons of war, but also the mindset of war. Rather than seeing an American street as part of a neighborhood that should be patrolled on foot by an officer recognizable to the community, police see that same street as dangerous hostile territory full of insurgents that need to be controlled. This is due, in part, to the prevalence of “warrior” cop training programs.
Seth Stoughten, a former police officer and a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, describes the effects of these trainings in the Harvard Law Review. “The warrior mindset has mutated into the warrior mentality,” he writes, adding “they are taught that they live in an intensely hostile world. A world that is, quite literally, gunning for them.” Within this worldview, he says, “officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies. As a result, officers learn to be afraid.” Through warrior training “officers learn to treat every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making. Every individual, every situation — no exceptions,” according to Stoughten. Police come to believe that “everyone is a threat until conclusively proven otherwise,” and that, like infantry troops deployed to combat zones, they should have a plan to kill everyone they meet because “everyone they meet may have a plan to kill them.”
The equipment and the mindset feed upon themselves to create a sort of siege mentality, where police officers and their weapons of war are the only thing standing between order and chaos, between civilization and anarchy. This Manichean philosophy is epitomized in “Thin Blue Line” branded merchandise. This is the wrong approach.
Stoughten argues that this “warrior mindset” corrupts the legitimate concern for officer safety and turns it into a paranoid, aggressive, and combative form of policing. Warrior-style policing “creates a substantial, if invisible, barrier” between officers and the communities they serve. It also “makes policing less safe for both officers and civilians” as it needlessly aggravates all encounters and “creates avoidable violence” through unnecessary use-of-force tactics.
As an alternative to this approach, Stoughten argues officers should adopt the model of a “Guardian” in policing. This entails more focus on community policing efforts like non-enforcement contact with their communities and greater tactical restraint and use-of-force restrictions. Rather than fearing everyone they meet, officers should seek to protect and help everyone they meet by building trust and relationships with the communities they serve.
Calling All Cars
We will always need police, but we do not need them to be an occupying army. We need them to be highly-trained, highly-disciplined, and highly-accountable first responders we entrust with the protection of all citizens.
Since George Floyd’s death, protests helped to push through some police reforms. In 11 states, bans or limitations on chokeholds and neck restraints are now on the books. New York state repealed a state law that kept officer disciplinary records sealed. Certain cities banned the use of tear gas Some have enacted policies requiring the use of body cameras in more scenarios, and Louisville banned “no-knock” warrants. These measures are not enough.
Real efforts at police reform should include the following:
Increase training for officers on de-escalation and implicit bias. A survey by the National Police Foundation in 2019 found that departments that incorporated these types of trainings saw a 21% drop in officer-involved shootings.
Collect more data on officer use-of-force incidents. A 2017 study found that a policy of requiring officers to file a report any time they point their gun at someone, but do not fire, resulted in significant drop in shooting deaths. Every single encounter that turns violent, or even causes the officer to threaten violence, needs to be thoroughly documented and reviewed.
Mandate the use of body cameras the entire time an officer is on duty. A randomized experiment published in 2014 in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology discovered that officers required to use a body camera for their entire shift used force half as often as officers without a camera. The officers with cameras also received one-tenth the number of complaints as officers with no camera.
Invest in social service and mental health resources to respond to non-violent incidents or individuals. Each year, more than 10 million arrests are made in the United States. Of those, less than 5% are for serious violent crimes. For 9-1-1 calls relating to homeless citizens, someone suffering from acute mental illness, or public drug abuse, shouldn’t we rely on the experts?
Create a permanent national database of officer misconduct and make disciplinary records public. The officer who killed George Floyd had 18 previous complaints against him. He should have been fired long before that incident took place. The officer who killed Tamir Rice in 2014 had previously resigned from a department that deemed him “unfit to serve.”
Increase the length of training for potential officers. Police recruits in Germany train and study for a minimum of three years before joining the force. In the U.S., most officers start on the job after 11 weeks of training focused on firearms and tactics. Our recruits need to train longer and study other topics like law, sociology, criminology, and psychology.
Ban “warrior” training programs for cops. Alongside the militarization of police forces, these types of trainings have significantly contributed to the warped world view held by some officers. Instead of focusing on the use of violence to resolve situations, officers should be taught “tactical restraint.” This approach focuses on how to minimize the chances of a situation turning violent at all.
Adopt “guardian” training and policies. As Professor Stougthen writes, officers should be required to spend a set amount of time each week “approaching civilians just to have meaningful conversations” while on duty. Their training should include elements of the “Good Stranger” and “Tact, Tactics, and Trust” training strategies developed for the military by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Interacting on a human level with the community will build trust and help de-escalate existing tensions.
Abolish qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine meant to shield government officials from being held personally liable for financial damages for violating a citizen’s constitutional rights if the official did not knowingly violate “clearly established” law. In theory, it allows “any reasonable officer” to do their job without fear that they will be retroactively sued for unknowingly breaking the law in the course of their duties. In practice, however, it “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished,” according to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Overturning qualified immunity will allow citizens to more easily hold officers accountable for constitutional violations. This outcome, however, will either require the Supreme Court to overrule the doctrine in a relevant case, or Congress to pass legislation reforming the current law.
Pass clear use-of-force legislation. If we want police to change their behavior, we must define what we want that behavior to look like. Less than a third of states have passed official use-of-force laws that govern when officers are authorized to use force, and the consequences for failing to follow the law. Cities and states, with input from the federal government and law enforcement, should write and enact legislation to govern how their departments can use force, instead of allowing departments to write the rules themselves.
We can transform policing to better align with the needs of 21st century America, and learn from the history of law enforcement being used as an instrument of oppression and terror against minority communities. We can change conditions on the ground so that officers and the public can speak to one another when they are not separated by riot shields and face masks.
Police officers are civil servants. They work for the citizens who pay their salaries. Citizens need a greater role in oversight of the police in their communities and should be part of any hiring or contract negotiations. Creating these conditions will face serious pushback from police unions and others. But it is past time for citizens to reassert control over their police forces, instead of allowing police forces to treat citizens like unruly children in need of discipline.
If there is ever going to be real and meaningful change, police departments and unions must be willing to make some compromises. Compromises around military equipment and increased oversight will not make their jobs harder or put them in more danger. It will make their jobs easier and safer. Setting clearly defined standards of conduct with legal consequences will make it easier for communities to trust them in the first place and to approach discussions from a common record of events. It will allow us to trust that when they are forced to use their weapons, which will still happen in the line of duty, that they did so as a last resort instead of a first instinct.
King’s Speech
Unfortunately, even if we do enact all of the changes listed above, it will only treat the symptoms and not the underlying cause. In the face of such massive outpourings of civic grief and anger, our instinct should not be to silence the message with overwhelming force and assume that everything will go back to normal. If a pot of water is boiling over, the solution is not to slam a bigger lid down and try to press it down more tightly. Instead, you find a way to reduce the heat. In order to do that in America today, we will need to go beyond mere police reform to address fundamental issues like economic inequality, voting rights, access to affordable healthcare, quality public schools, and the basic functioning of a fair and representative democracy. Many of these are the same issues that brought people to the streets during the Civil Rights Movement.
During this summer of protest, many White Americans pointed to the example of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the “correct” way to approach protest. MLK, they argued, represented a non-violent, peaceful approach that was sure to convince more people to join your cause than the anarchy and looting being shown on Fox News. This, however, is a convenient narrative. In truth, the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King were both immensely unpopular at the time. In 1963, Gallup found that only 23% of Americans approved of King’s proposed March on Washington, where he wound up giving his “I Have a Dream” speech. That speech caused the FBI to increase surveillance of him, and to describe him as “dangerous” to “national security.” In 1966, a year after the Voting Rights Act passed, only 36% of Americans thought that King was helping advance the cause of civil rights. 85% of Whites thought that demonstrations by Blacks hurt the cause of civil rights, and 72% of Americans viewed King unfavorably.
“In 1963, Gallup found that only 23% of Americans approved of King’s proposed March on Washington.”
We White Americans like to remember the easy parts of MLK’s message and legacy. It helps us feel better about our history. But to focus solely on King’s message of potential national unity is to ignore his clear prescriptions for what it would take for America to achieve that promise.
Here are three passages from King that do not get as much attention, but that I think speak specifically to our national moment in 2020. In his address from the steps of the Lincoln memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King said this:
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
In 1967, King spoke to the continuing unrest in the streets, saying:
I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. In a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.
One year later, in April of 1968, King spoke in Memphis, Tennessee, at Mason Temple. In his final sermon, King declared:
All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there.
But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
The next day, he was shot dead.
We imagine these words were spoken in some other time, in some other place, remote from the America we know. But we are not so far removed from the conditions that elicited those calls for justice 52 years ago. According to The Economist, “In 1968 black households earned around 60% as much as white households, and owned assets that were less than 10% of those of a typical white family. They still do.”
To become the nation described on those pieces of paper we hold so dear, we must change. Today’s protests speak to the fundamental tension at the heart of America since the founding: the value we place on property versus the value we place on human life. We must decide if the United States of America is an idea and a system of self-government capable of addressing the basic needs of all its citizens, or if it is merely a gilded myth meant to distract us as the few profit from the suffering of the many.
I believe we can change. I believe that we can make the American dream a reality for all of us.
Of course, none of these changes will be possible until we successfully address the third national catastrophe of our times: the presidency of Donald Trump.
