Warning: Long post.
Let me start clearly: If you are surprised by the intensity of these protests, by the insistent nature of the movement, by the anger of those involved, or by the calls for drastic action, where we are is, in part, your fault. It's my fault, too, even though I'm not surprised. And if we should get here again, it will be all of our faults -- all of us in positions of privilege, power, and authority who had the opportunity to use our resources to create change and didn't. After this point, further bloodshed by the police is blood on all of our hands. Change is an absolute requirement and it cannot wait.
Up front: I’m not a cop (though I am friends with some), and I am not black. I’m a high school teacher and this is written entirely from the perspective of a white man who has spent 20 years of his life working in communities of color which have suffered dramatically and devastatingly from military policing. The ideas herein are not mine – I’ve been listening and these are the ones that make sense to me. This list is not exhaustive and is not meant to replace or preempt any other list.
First off, anybody staking out the "we don't need policing" ground is immediately unserious. We do. Especially those of us who live and work in neighborhoods of poverty and struggle where crime is a part of daily life. The issue isn't "no more police," the issue is "how do we police in a manner that is respectful and helpful to the community being policed?"
Currently, if given a choice between rampant crime and rampant policing, I suspect those most affected would be evenly split -- modern policing isn't that much better than crime among those being policed -- especially if they are black.
What we are looking for is a police service which reflects the community policed, is responsive to its needs, and is focused on being a contributing part of the growth of the community. We have to end the dual poisons of "thin blue line" thinking and "occupying force" attitudes which currently dominate law enforcement. Our neighborhoods are not filled with animals who need to be contained, and if there is to be policing, it needs to be from those who are members of the communities they serve.
So how do we get there?
Any real answer won't lend itself to a hashtag. The real answer, as I understand it, will involve changes at the federal, state, and local levels and each of those changes need to work in concert with each other for the change we want to happen.
FEDERAL: Power of the Purse
This level is policy driven and has to do with Federal guidelines for police misconduct, federal oversight of use-of-force complaints, federal racial bias oversight, and demilitarization of the police – banning the cheap-to-free sales of military overstock to local police departments. Fortunately, the bill introduced today by the Democrats after their – let’s be honest – embarrassingly performative kneeling stunt does much of this and does it quite well. Here’s a bill summary:
STATE: Laboratory of Democracy
The State level is going to be similarly policy-driven. The states determine local jurisdictional issues, uses of the national guard, and any oversight over the federal minimum standards. The states are also the best places to institute programs that work at the local level on a larger scale. For example, Bend, Oregon has created a 4th emergency response element beyond Fire, EMT, and Police for Mental Health emergencies. Currently, when a person in mental health distress calls 911, or has 911 called about them, in most places it’s the police who respond and, oftentimes, this ends very badly. In Bend, those calls are diverted to mental health professionals. This plan is scaling up to Portland, but it wouldn’t be difficult with state resources to make this statewide in Oregon. Here’s more information:
Another place the state itself can be useful: Creating statewide standards for engagement which meet, at least, the 8-Can’t-Wait standards. Currently adoption is a patchwork of localities which means that jurisdictional boundaries and overlap can create havoc with some officers operating under different rules of engagement than others. The 8-Can’t-Wait programs aren’t the end-point for reform, they’re the beginning of it, but if implemented statewide they could quickly reduce incidents of violence from the police.
LOCAL: Force to Service
Local is the place of biggest change. Currently our police are a “force” and they are applied as such. They are coercive by training and mission. They have been trained for generations to think of themselves as the “thin blue line” between civilization and savagery – and due to the basic racist nature of American society, that has clearly been interpreted as “keeping black and brown folk in line.” The worst departments – Minneapolis, Seattle, and Bakersfield come to mind -- are the worst offenders, but even those departments that “look” better still engage in systematic racist policing and, worse, when confronted with abuses in their systems, they’ll work to mitigate the fallout, not fix the problem. LAPD is a prime example of a department in the grips of the bureaucratic majority, more concerned about bad press than bad policing.
To change policing, we need to transform our policing from a force to a service. In a service model, police aren’t imposed on a community, they are a natural part of it. An incomplete list of the changes this would require:
- Officers live in the community they police.
While this is hard to, er, police, it’s a vital step in creating community bonds and ending the occupying force mentality. It’s much harder to think of people as savages when you just talked in line with them at the liquor store.
- Have local community oversight:
Civilian oversight commissions as we have them now end up just putting a lot of power in the hands of some politically connected civilians and generally act as a rubber stamp – they have an adminispheric view of policing and limited contact with those being policed. Instead, let’s create civilian oversight at the precinct level – not just as a tool to reign in the police, but as a tool to foster actual communication.
- Local community engagement:
This isn’t buying ice cream for kids and it’s not the occasional pick-up basketball game – those aren’t enough. Cops need to get out of their cars.
- Training needs to change:
And not just de-escalation and nonviolent methods for subjugation. Those are necessary, but they aren’t even in the right direction for the changes we need to make. We need to train cops to shift their mindset entirely. I’m not sure how this looks, but I suspect that a lot of the Restorative Practice work happening in schools right now could be modified.
- Disarm the vast majority of police
A shotgun in the car, no gun on the belt.
Up until the 1920’s most metropolitan cops weren’t armed and up through the 1950’s it wasn’t standard but optional in most departments. We can go back to that. I would suggest that there be a percentage of armed responders who have undergone much more rigorous training and certification than the average officer. The firearm has become a chief tool of enforcement and when something is a chief tool, it gets used. Currently, with all cops armed, we have situations where “panic storms” of officer fire occur – one officer fires – accidentally even – and the others present empty their clips in reaction to the first shot. My uncle was a cop in the 80’s in King County, the height of the crack wars. He never unholstered his weapon. I’ve spoken with many cops who have said the same. As a matter of fact, even now, only 27% of police nationwide have ever fired their weapon, but the profiles of those who do speak volumes to the changes we need to make:
Those who do fire their weapons tend to be whiter, more often male, more often ex-military, and more often hold view of power that are anathema to the policing we need.
If we disarm cops, these folks will be the first to quit and that’s not a bad thing.
Hiring changes:
- Hire locally – don’t hire cops who haven’t lived in the community previously.
- End drug-use eliminations – don’t just not ask, but make it okay for cops to have smoked some weed.
- Require a two-year criminal justice degree minimum for beat cops and a 4-year degree for armed police.
- Don’t exclude 2nd career applicants.
Currently the average age of a new recruit at LAPD is 21 years old. There are few, if any, rookies who are over 28 who aren’t ex-military. Younger people tend to be more reactive and have less people-experience which can lead them to misread situations.
- Spin off Mental Health Services and Homeless services like they’ve done in Portland. A 4th emergency service that is trained specifically for mental health will be a blessing.
And here’s the kicker: All of this will cost more money, not less. It may even require more officers than we currently have. As a teacher, I know damn well what happens when public institutions which are perceived as failures are defunded. Let’s not make the same mistake again with policing.
And how do we get this done?
We need a police reform voting guide that focuses on local races that most people aren’t able to properly vet, especially on issues specific to BLM concerns. Which judges, AGs, DAs, city attorney, sheriff, police commissioners, city council members, county executives, and mayors will be the ones who promise to chaperone these changes through the system? Right now, we have no way of knowing, specifically, because there isn’t any central place to check. Especially in larger counties where there may be 35 judges up for election, aside from Bar Association ratings and the occasional newspaper endorsement, we have nothing.
But if we crowdsourced this, created a list of policy statements which, if the candidate agreed, we could give them a Police Reform Endorsed badge and then swore to follow those recommendations in the next election, we could get this done.
Maybe we should.