Last week the Guardian had this commentary on the situation in Ferguson and a comparison with the police killing of a young black man which sparked riots in London and other English cities in 2011:
Another contrast, and further complicating matters in the US, is the proliferation of police forces – there are thousands compared with only 39 in England. Ferguson's police department has fewer than 100 officers. Initially supplemented by officers from neighbouring forces and by the St Louis county force, a perceived mishandling of the riots led to responsibility being passed, temporarily, to the Missouri state highway patrol.
In a recent comment I drew attention to this and drew some conclusions that perhaps might be worth discussion. I remarked that in Scotland and Northern Ireland there are single police forces. Police Scotland is a relatively recent amalgamation of a number of forces which were both city and region based geographically. It serves a population of about 5.3 million with around 17,300 (full time equivalent) officers. That is about 1 police officer for every 305 of population.
London has a population of around 8.3 million with around 19,000 police officers or one for over 400. The situation in London is slightly complicated by there being a small City of London police which specializes in financial crimes but has a limited ordinary policing role in the "square mile"; the British Transport Police which is responsible mostly for the rail system nationwide and a Royal Parks Police who are basically park-keepers with a fancy title. The Metropolitan Police area is also slightly bigger than the 32 London boroughs so the rounded down 400 is if anything slightly too small.
Los Angeles Police Department has about 10,000 officers for a population of about 3.8 million. (I have discounted the airport police and CHP from this). In contrast, the Ferguson police department's ratio works out at about 1 per 200 population. This I think raises some fundamental questions about the organization of policing in the USA and whether small town based police departments are fit for purpose.
Taking the rough figures for the Ferguson police as a starting point as an example of a small town force, let's first see why this is too big or rather too big in proportion to the population it serves.
Very obviously the first is the matter of cost. Paying, equipping etc a police officer can be expensive but I'll take the lowest figure of about $32,000 quoted here. So in Ferguson the cost works out about $160 per head of population - over $400 for the average household. Now we have see over the last week that the Ferguson police depend on fines to supplement their budget from the town. Another diary explains how the need to get a quota of tickets leads to both false charges and alienates the public those police are supposed to be serving.
Tiny police departments can also lead to the sort of "good old boy" culture that leads to all sorts of rights violations and ultimately costs to the town as we can see in East Haven. Kos readers will be all too familiar with this sort of thing and it brings me to my second argument; that such police forces are too small to be functional.
At its simplest, these forces do not allow the sort of skills to be acquired that are necessary in modern policing. Having a K-9 department consisting of one man and his dog is clearly stupid if you want 24/7 coverage. There can be no internal independent oversight in a situation where there are not enough to form a proper internal affairs department. Instead reliance is placed either on a potentially corrupt police chief or local mayor, external state/federal criminal investigations or civil courts making bank breaking awards when the department is sued.
Small departments also allow the corrupt and incompetent to simply leave before the solids hit the air conditioning when they screw up - then just sign up with a nearby town. The chief of the force no doubt giving a glowing recommendation to get rid of the guy. (Please note, I am aware that the officer involved in the Ferguson shooting worked at another force but I am not suggesting that this scenario applies to him.) Ferguson does illustrate that small departments just cannot cope with what were after all very minor disturbances. Even the Metropolitan Police in London had to call on reliefs from other forces during the 2012 rioting.
It's arguable that virtually no US town or city should have its own independent police force. Only New York is a city with a larger population than Scotland and only 12 US States have populations larger than Greater London, which is geographically smaller than the Metropolitan Police area. New York therefore provides a possible model - a metropolitan force for the city with the rest of the state served by a separate force. The largest states might use this model or divide the state into geographic areas. Specialist forces might be needed for, say, the transportation system but again there seems no logic to have, for example, a NY Port Authority police department separate from a much larger one (like the British Transport Police).
None of this stops there being local police offices - like the NY precinct system but state wide. It can however avoid the situation where local associations corrupt the system. The Carabinieri in Italy have a policy where for a certain period of years new recruits may not serve in their own region. That might be taking things a bit too far in most instances.
Now I can foresee an obvious objection to this sort of proposal; the loss of democratic control. I fully understand how this exists - the reason for a separate City of London Police goes back to rights given to the City in Magna Carta. However we see from Ferguson that this can be a chimera. Last week a by-election for one of the several directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners in England had a turnout of 10%.
The greatest reason for democratic control is, I would suggest, to avoid and sanction the sorts of abuses that regularly crop up - whether it be a police shooting an innocent or the sort of poor policing that led to insufficient evidence in the Trayvon Martin case. It's a question of how to address the old question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or "who will watch the watchmen? Here I would suggest that "Internal Affairs" departments within forces are again unfit for purpose quite simply because police investigating police brings a lack of public confidence in the outcome. Again as an example, every case of a police killing or death in custody in England is investigated by an Independent Police Complaints Commission. An obvious candidate for this role in the USA is the FBI as the investigations are in essence ensuring the rights of the public are being protected.
I offer this diary as a starting point for discussion and as a few suggestions for re-considering the structure of policing in America. Is there a minimum size population that a police force should serve for example?