Growing up in the 1960’s, most of us were taught to think of the police as “peace officers” endowed with the confidence of the communities they were charged to protect, and the kind of public servants we should admire. But, notwithstanding the emergence of the estimable Capt. Ronald Johnson to sporadically halt the violence, the sad spectacle in Ferguson in recent days has reinforced how outdated the perception of police as peace officers has become. Right or wrong, how many of us teach our children to look for a cop when they need help? Far less than in past decades, I suspect.
In the early 1800’s Sir Robert Peel addressed the issue of police officers’ relationship to those they were policing. He forwarded the notion of policing by consent, called by a police historian “unique in history and throughout the world, because it derived, not from fear, but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect and affection of the public…[t]he police are the public and the public are the police.” But far too many Americans of all races do not feel in community with the police these days.
The drug war has arguably been the chief culprit in causing untold damage to this maxim, especially in poor black neighborhoods. We have been paying a steep price for making enemies of people minding their own business, pursuing their own wants and needs, however self-destructive we find them to be. We seem to have learned nothing from the famously disastrous alcohol prohibition, and will continue with our current selective drug prohibitions until we come to our senses, and allow people to choose what intoxicants they choose to ingest. The stopping and frisking, the basic elimination of probable cause to rifle through someone’s car or pockets, and more than 300,000 people (including more than 50% of the federal prison population) incarcerated for drug violations are all the legacy of the drug war, and contribute greatly to the hatred of so many for the police. Add to that the reality that police are seldom disciplined for abuse, and we have a recipe for the type of conflagration we are now witnessing in Ferguson. It seems the aggressive and often lawless tactics employed in the war on drugs have emboldened the police more broadly.
What is to be done about crimes committed by police in Ferguson? What will it take for federal authorities to act? And we are not talking about the shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson. Increasingly, that looks like it could well be a simple case of justified use of force by a police officer against an assailant, and the various state and federal investigations underway will address it. No, we are talking about the daily displays of criminal behavior by the militarized police in response to the protesters. In case anyone needed reminding, it is not legal to point loaded rifles at unarmed people who are doing nothing wrong. It is not legal to shoot tear gas and bean bag rounds at people peacefully standing on their own lawn. It is not legal to threaten to kill a person videotaping the police or making similar threats to journalists for not immediately responding affirmatively to your command.
Police in Ferguson are obviously dealing with extreme circumstances. They have various groups, from pacifist religious protestors to ultra violent communists, all wanting their piece of the action. They are the focus of the nation and the world, and are no doubt burning the candle at both ends. But all that is no excuse. If you or I were having the worst day of our life and ended it by, say, pointing a gun at someone who carelessly hit our car, we would be arrested and rightfully so. The difference is we are not supposed to be held to a higher standard – the police are. There are too many instances of police in Ferguson not meeting that standard. Why aren’t authorities doing anything about it?
While hardly a supporter of Barack Obama, it seemed to me that one legitimate aspiration for his presidency was a reduction in racial tension – the sense that our first black president could bring a measure of healing to the long-simmering feud between the races. That racial tensions would worsen seemed inconceivable, but that is exactly what has happened. Indeed, the president’s statements and omissions in response to the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri – not the least of which is a missed opportunity to show up in Ferguson and use his well-worn bully pulpit to promote legitimate racial reconciliation – reinforce the sad truth that we can add race relations to the economy, foreign policy and health care on the list of major administration failures that have exacted a steep toll on civil society.
Of course, even without making use of his famous oratorical skills, the president could have simply called for the application of Federal law, which makes it a crime for police to “willfully deprive or cause to be deprived from any person those rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the U.S.” Especially given Obama’s unique position in history, it is hard to understand why the Justice Department refuses to enforce it. But perhaps we should not be surprised, when you consider the surprisingly lenient track record of Attorney General Eric Holder on matters of police conduct, DOJ has so far opted to limit its involvement to a civil rights investigation into the death of Michael Brown.
But out of crisis arises opportunity. We know about all the bad things that have resulted from this spectacle. But there are actually good things that can come out of it. Specifically, reforming police practices to rebuild their relationship and restore some modicum of confidence with the people they serve.
1. Require that police wear body cameras, and urge people to record their own interactions with police.
Incredibly, people are arrested all the time for recording the police, and the Justice Department refuses to prosecute the police. This leads to the widespread impression that the police can do whatever they want without fear of serious sanction.
Photographer Carlos Miller’s Photography Is Not A Crime blog is just one of many websites featuring almost daily examples of police who detain, arrest, and too frequently, stomp on people for doing nothing more than recording them. The cases are often followed by civil suits, but never state or federal prosecutions.
In addition to what should be obvious about human nature, studies have shown that when police wear body cameras, not only do use of force complaints go down, but use of force incidents themselves do. Both citizens and police modify their behavior – for the better – when on camera. Policies making sure citizens can access the video also need to be in place, and if video is missing, rules of court should treat that as a (rebuttable) presumption that the police were acting improperly.
2. Only use SWAT teams and no-knock warrants for people who are demonstrably, or highly likely to be, violent and dangerous.
Some places, like St. Louis county, use SWAT teams for all warrants. The problem is the use of SWAT can encourage a violent response. This is especially true for raids in pre-dawn hours or the middle of the night using flash-bang grenades and tactics designed to confuse and overwhelm. Defending one’s home in the face of a stranger breaking in during the night is a natural reaction. These teams are now used far too often. Here in Virginia, they have been used to terrorize restaurant patrons during alcohol licensing inspections, and to kill a decidedly non-violent optometrist accused of illegal sports betting.
De-escalating the interactions between police and the citizenry brought about primarily by the drug war, will necessarily result in a reduction of both police and non-police deaths. Further, when SWAT and no-knock searches are used, we must make sure they are preceded by sound intelligence, not based on the word of unreliable junkie snitches hoping to get off the hook for other charges. Supervising police should be held publicly accountable and fired for serious mistakes like tossing flash-bangs into a toddler’s face, or raiding the wrong house.
3. Eliminate police pensions.
The standard state/municipal pension systems offer very generous financial payments for retired police who serve 20 years on the job. That’s one of the big reasons why officers accused of wrongdoing fight so very hard to keep their jobs – they are not fighting for the right to remain a cop, they are fighting for the treasure trove of cash payments they expect to make in retirement.
This change would also significantly increase the average cop’s take home pay. That would in turn entice many more applicants to the police force who might not otherwise apply because they have no intention of doing the job for 20+ years, or don’t want to wait for 20+ years to be compensated for what they are doing today. The larger the applicant pool, the greater the chances of hiring more officers with the capacity for sound decision-making when interacting with the public.
4. Eliminate police unions
Unions function well when there is an adversarial bargaining process – management wanting the best deal for buying labor negotiating with unions who want the best deal for selling it. But that simple formula hardly applies to public sector unions because the union does not have to face off against a management looking for the best deal. More often than not, the other side of the table in negotiations is animated by politicians hoping for union support to further their political ambitions. The union and the state/municipality representative thus have interests that are aligned, and no one is representing the people who actually pay the salaries.
5. Enact an officer corps for the police.
We don’t make people who want to fly fighter jets work the fuel dump for a few years before they can enter flight school, and aspiring Admirals don’t need to work the mess hall while waiting for a chance to be a sailor. The military has an officer corps because without it, they wouldn’t be able to attract the best people. Time has come for police to adopt the same system. Mencken recognized this in 1931 and his arguments are just as sound (and amusing) today:
The young man with intelligence enough to be a good detective simply refuses to waste the best years of his youth tagging automobiles parked in the wrong place, and stealing peanuts. He declines to take orders from a sergeant who, in nine cases out of ten, is an illiterate ignoramus, fit only for clubbing Communists and boozing in speakeasies. So he never goes upon the force at all, and his perhaps highly useful services are lost to law and order, and the subtle and difficult art of catching criminals falls to men who are truck-drivers and trolley motormen still, though every bootlegger bows to them and they are hymned by the newspapers, when a murderer accidentally walks into their hands, as the peers of Sherlock Holmes.
A very bright person would have to have an exceedingly strong desire to be a cop to be willing to sit in a car and write tickets as a de facto government revenue agent, in hopes of getting to do real criminal investigations some day. Let’s make it easier for those people to take jobs as police with an officer corps.
6. Prosecute cops who don’t tell on other cops.
When police are found to have committed serious violations, and other police knew and didn’t report them, those police need to be fired. Charlottesville SWAT commander Michael Farrugio wrote an interesting piece here on BD a couple of days ago discussing his opinions on policing and the relationship between the police and public. He states “ That heavy-handedness came from the hands of both black and white officers against black and white citizens. Not every one of those citizens deserved it and that is one of the problems of policing.” I wonder how much of the mistreatment he has witnessed was reported? I mention this not to denigrate officer Farrugio, but precisely because he seems like a model officer. What are the good cops doing about the bad ones – not enough. Sound public policy would encourage reporting and punish any failure to do so.
Ferguson has produced a Bonfire of the Vanities-style standoff between two sides dramatically overplaying their hand – out-of-control police on one side and the usual rogue’s gallery of despicable headline-seeking opportunists descending on the scene to foment unrest and hatred between the races on the other. But there is indeed opportunity that lies in this crisis, for it can serve as the impetus for serious and constructive reforms among police authorities across the nation. Is not a restoration in citizens’ relationship with, and confidence in, the police worth the effort?
