To create real police reform, we’ve got to start with prevention

Jun. 22, 2020

The protest phase of the George Floyd tragedy has slowed down to a temporary simmer—until the next tragedy. In the meantime, the public conversation is at present stuck and meandering, trapped between a rage moment and a demand to implement. Something. And soon.

On one side are well-significant, only somewhat powerless House Democrats who were the start to striking the scene with a package of reforms. Only, they won't be able to get information technology through the other side of difficult headed policymakers, especially Republicans in accuse of the White House, U.South. Senate and a majority of country legislatures who don't desire any of this. Screaming to the left, and taking upwardly a bit of oxygen, are those with the questionable messaging choice of "Defund the Police."

There are too many skeptics on both sides of that message because information technology sounds so absolutist and final. If you mean "defund" then y'all mean defund or no money or funding existence channeled into police. Side by side natural question: Then how does a constabulary department exist if it has no money to operate?

Is the absenteeism of police force a chance you want to accept—specially in a city similar Philadelphia? Homicides are, final check, 24-percent more than where they were concluding twelvemonth. Violence overall increased by an phenomenal 41 percent—just in the past 28 days. And then, if there'south no operational police force, what practice we suggest we do about problems similar that?

Merely, considering nosotros're trapped in a hamster-wheel wheel of polemic acrobatics—pro-police law-and-order folks on i side butting heads with anti-racist police force-stop-killing-u.s.a. folks on the other—we have nevertheless to shift into a deeper chat about how policing in America could be better.

We could showtime past "putting everything on the table," as retiring law Captain Sonia Pruitt, chairwoman of the National Blackness Police Association, put information technology during a segment on WURD's Reality Check. "Information technology'southward time we recall exterior the box near what policing is, even if that ways disbanding a police department. Nosotros have an opportunity here to reimagine what our police departments should look like."

In the final couple weeks, policymakers of all stripes have been rolling out all sorts of "police reform" proposals—from the Minneapolis Metropolis Council "dismantling police" to Congressional Democrats and Senate Republicans in Washington at present sparring with competing plans.

In Philly, Mayor Jim Kenney wants to look transformative on policing while he continues to get the soft no-oversight handling after unprecedented mass tear-gassing, highway herding and rubber-bulleting of protesters in Center Urban center. (Would Philly'south last three Blackness mayors—including the one who dropped a bomb on a Blackness neighborhood 35 years ago—take ever slithered their mode out of that?)

Meanwhile, the question remains equally to whether whatsoever of these proposals are truly groundbreaking or just performative. Many seem more than tactical and operational, subtle and not-so-subtle tweaks at law training, hiring and conduct protocols, not a fundamental or philosophical rewiring of policing, particularly at the frontend.

A concept such as disarming the police—while largely working in other modern societies similar England and Iceland—might seem groovy on its face up. Just, would that exist realistic without comprehensive gun control in a highly armed, 2d Subpoena-hugging land like the United States where gun civilisation is supreme?

Mandatory residency requirements are something that keeps popping upward. Simply even that'southward offset to go a much more skeptical await from experts and advocates who have not seen the research to back up information technology.

Instead, we should be looking much more at preventive measures. What about keeping angry, racist or unqualified officers from being in that kind of position where they are armed and arbitrarily dispensing justice to begin with? What most stringent hiring practices, avant-garde education, and liability insurance? These don't sound sexy in the broader public fence, but they are pillar problems.

Hither are some ideas:

Rebrand the Police

It could all start with something as simple, just profound, as a rebrand. The origins, or etymology, of the term "police force" itself is brutally clinical and technocratic. It'south something that's non fifty-fifty rooted in community protection at all, but focused primarily on maintaining order—a brusque, originally French word for "assistants of public lodge, law-enforcement." The first uses and applications of this term advise nil associated with protecting residents, citizens or the public good, only of governments obsession with protecting public belongings.

The outset "police" in England were created to protect Port of London merchandise; the first police in France were just civil administrators. In America, they were "slave patrols," specifically designed to track and hunt down enslaved Black people attempting to gain their freedom. Once again: It'southward ever been most an obsession with things and, unfortunately, human beings viewed equally property.

Another problem, every bit Georgetown University Law Professor Paul Butler put it during a PBS News Hr give-and-take on the contempo fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks, "… is [that] too many cops think of themselves as warriors. Guardians is the meliorate model, and then if we had that culture modify …. we might see the kind of policing that citizens respect."

If you're law and you desire to keep on oppressing Black people you patrol, well and then that's on you—because, with professional liability insurance, you'll be financially on the hook for every misdeed or violence complaint.

The kind of new, modern and authentically multicultural public safety model should really begin with a national standard, versus the patchwork of policing standards which vary throughout a vast, messy network of 18,000 police force enforcement agencies. Maybe if policing was a more than federalized operation allowable by a consensus national standard, in dissimilarity to the confederation patchwork we have at present—where expert and bad policing is determined by the null code yous alive in—nosotros wouldn't accept half these bug.

Merely flipping definitions and eliminating the concept of "police" to mean something entirely unlike (and less terrifying) could be a fundamental game changer in how policing is approached. This includes how current police officers view themselves. Something similar "guardians" or "public safety officers" could prompt a better model and something more than proactively "public safety" than adversarial and reactionary law-enforcing.

We instinctively know these events will happen over and once more, fifty-fifty if tactical changes are made in police procedure, like banning chokeholds or wearing body cams. These are just window dressing fixes that buy police, police unions and policymakers time while they hurriedly await for something to calm noisy protesters downwardly. In the meantime, vicious cops still find another jurisdiction to settle into and the cycle starts all over over again, or what the Yale Constabulary Journal recently dubbed the "Wandering Officer".

Hire better-educated officers

A 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis found that 84 percent of local police departments simply required a loftier school diploma for employment. Just 15 percentage required either some college, a ii-year degree or a iv year degree; just 1 percent of local police agencies required a total 4-year degree. In Philly, the quaternary largest municipal police force in the land, former police Commissioner Charles Ramsey eliminated the higher requirement citing trouble with recruiting new officers. So, now, it just helps officers get ahead if they've got a detective or commander track in mind.

Nonetheless, in addressing the growing problem of police violence and brutality, shouldn't we revisit that question: Does the education level of a cop influence how violent they tin can be?

A 2010 Michigan State University study attempted to answer that question and came to an interesting conclusion: "Higher education does, even so, significantly reduce the likelihood of force occurring. Results may be due to the amount of discretion officers practise in pursuing these behaviors."

Law enforcement officers, particularly those in densely populated urban and suburban areas, patrol tense pockets of poverty that should require, at the very least, a level of intellectual awareness or cognizance. You lot would remember cops should be among the first thoroughly versed in the various social, political and economical problems they're faced with each day. Mandating advanced curriculum credit hours on everything from food insecurity to economic disparities and, more than importantly, the rather challenging histories of marginalized populations in the United States could exist rather useful, too.

Major academic institutions in Philly could pace upward to offer comprehensive public safety studies programs in partnership with the troubled local police bureau. Ane concept: every bit a "Payment in Lieu of Taxes," universities could offer a citywide in-kind contribution to recruits and current officers. Temple Academy seemed off to a decent kickoff with its "Constabulary Officers in Service Training," simply it's too small for the big moment happening right now. Maybe we should look to expand that.

Do amend screening

Simply, what almost hiring standards to avert a lot of this problem in the first place? It doesn't seem like those standards are all that rigorous if this keeps happening all the damn fourth dimension.

"I'm not so much worried about whether or not an officer has a degree," argues Pruitt. "We need better psychological screening to make up one's mind if we should even trust them with such a heavy responsibleness."

She could exist on to something. A larger problem is white extremist groups quietly infiltrating law enforcement—as well equally smaller scale individuals with white nationalist sympathies (something the Philadelphia Police Section has had its own problem with). If that's a national problem that even prompted the Feds to take a look, why aren't law enforcement agencies engaged in much heavier screening to root out openly racist hires?

Nearly 90 percent of police agencies have some form of psychological testing—only, at that place's no deep dive evaluation and screening. It'south not the kind of screening, for case, that can find hostile behavior or aggressive tendencies in a potential hire. Clearly, it'south not working. Whatsoever more than serious psychological screening is taking place only afterward an officer has been hired and been involved in a major incident. By that time, it's too late.

Become insurers involved

What might not exist as well tardily, though, is if an officer understands from the jump that their ongoing bad beliefs or trend towards violence against unarmed citizens is professionally and economically unfeasible for them. This is where cities, whether information technology's Philly or Minneapolis, could start exploring required private liability insurance for officers as a way to gradually exorcise bad culture policing.

If you're police and you want to keep on oppressing Black people you patrol, well then that's on you—because, with professional liability insurance, you'll be financially on the hook for every misdeed or violence complaint. Victimized citizens won't just be holding the employing government liable, but the individual officeholder, as well. That can get pretty expensive over time—for both officeholder and the insurance company that ultimately drops them, thereby forcing so-called "bad apples" to resign from policing altogether because they can't find insurance.

Small to midsize cities have already been toying with this for some time, and showing measurable results. "While much attending has been paid to the issue of constabulary misconduct —with 14 cities pursuing consent decrees with the Department of Justice—what is less well known is how liability insurers tin put a private-sector spin on reform, by demanding structural changes in the police departments that they cover," writes Rachel Boyle in The Atlantic.

What about keeping angry, racist or unqualified officers from being in that kind of position where they are armed and arbitrarily dispensing justice to begin with?

University of Chicago Law Schoolhouse's John Rappaport laid out that case in a piddling known, merely crucial piece of enquiry in the April 2022 Harvard Police Review.

"When the insurer assumes the hazard of liability, it also develops a financial incentive to reduce that risk through loss prevention," observes Rappaport.

"By reducing take chances, the insurer lowers its payouts under the liability policy and thus increases profits. An effective loss-prevention plan can also assist the insurer compete for business past offering lower premiums. In other words, an insurer writing police liability insurance may turn a profit by reducing police misconduct. Its contractual relationship with the municipality gives it the means and influence necessary to do so—to 'regulate' the municipality information technology insures. In fact, the insurer may be improve positioned than the government to reform police force behavior."

Nosotros've seen this work in cities much smaller than Philadelphia, but the results are worth exploration: there have been case studies in smaller cities in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, California and Wisconsin where the police departments take found themselves at the mercy of, yeah, insurance companies. Reducing law violence is not merely a moral or public policy imperative, it'south a mandated business concern model. Insurers tin can't lose money and police departments don't want to become non-existent.

These are strategies that create an environment of both incentives and disincentives, that make the policing climate difficult for malevolent officers. For too long, we've put the onus of fixing the problem on the residents who've been hurt as a result of bad policing actors and the policymakers trapped between political calculi and elective outrage. Just what we keep missing is how we keep this from getting to where nosotros always end up.

Prevention is, indeed, the all-time medicine. In the case of policing, information technology may non be as hard equally it looks.

Charles D. Ellison is executive producer and host of "Reality Check," which airs 11 a.thou. to ane p.m. Mon through Thursday on WURD Radio  (96.1FM/900AM). Check out The Denizen'south weekly segment on his show every Midweek at noon. Ellison is too principal of B|East strategy. Catch him if you can @ellisonreport  on Twitter.

Photograph courtesy Saundi Wilson / Flickr

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/policing-prevention-best-medicine/