The presidential debates are 20 months away, but you don’t need to run the numbers in Las Vegas to know that at least one of the questions that will be asked at the debates will be about police tactics.
What will be debated is how much of the current controversy in police “overreach” is due to race, how much is related to police training and how much is some combination of both. Way back in the 1950s, the school crossing guards were actual policemen. Bill the policeman was ours. He knew all the kids names, and everyone knew and liked Bill. It was a different time, and people had personal relationships with law enforcement. This is what has now become known as “community policing.”
Now in the 21st century, there are questions about community policing and the training of officers. On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced an investigation of the police department in my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio. The Department of Justice report said, “Cleveland Police engage in a pattern or practice of unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” The report also said the pattern manifested in a range of ways, including:
“The unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons; The unnecessary and excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including Tasers, chemical spray and fists; Excessive force against persons who are mentally ill and in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check and the employment of poor and dangerous tactics that placed officers in situations where avoidable force became inevitable.”
This study was done by looking at 600 incidents of force used by the Cleveland police between 2010 and 2013 and was completed over the last year-and-a-half before the recent shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. The study found that there was “insufficient accountability, inadequate training and equipment, as well as ineffective policies, and inadequate engagement with the community.”
Community policing examples can be found throughout the United States. Lincoln, Nebraska, has put its policy online for its community and the world to see. They know who pays them and who they need to be responsible to. They say, “But policing is much more than law enforcement. … Officers in community-based police departments understand that ‘crook-catching’ is only one part of their job, and a rather small one by comparison to the myriad of issues and problems they deal with each day. Officers freely accept a significant role in issues that might be derisively referred to as “social work” in traditional police departments. Officers understand that resolving a problem with unruly people drinking at a public park, working to reduce truancy at a middle school, marshalling resources to improve lighting in a mobile home park, and removing abandoned vehicles from streets, may all be forms of valid and valuable police work, which affect the livability of a neighborhood. Rather than treating these activities as diversions from ‘real’ police work, officers understand that this is the essence of their work.”
Imagine if the police in Staten Island, New York; Ferguson, Missouri; and Cleveland, Ohio, were trained in community policing and knew that they had to be responsive to the community. Would these incidents have happened? Would there be a different type of police officer? Would the officers have thought longer before acting?
Those are questions that that can’t be answered in retrospect; however, there have been studies that show community policing works. Perhaps it does, but we know that pulling the trigger quickly doesn’t.
Community policing is, at this point, one of the few options to restore confidence in law enforcement. The recent demonstrations have shown a great dissatisfaction with the way law enforcement is conducting business. It is time to turn the page and try community policing. It is the only hope to restoring public confidence in law enforcement.
Media wishing to interview Ellen Ratner, please contact [email protected].
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