Even if they are charged, officers are almost never convicted. Most people perceive that if a police officer did something, he or she was doing it for their protection or the greater good of society. So, the bar for charging and convicting police officers is higher than the bar for regular citizens.
Prosecutors, then, often take more time to ensure that a case is solid before they bring charges. In Minneapolis, the time it took for charges to be brought against the officers in the George Floyd case was abnormally short. Once video evidence was disseminated on social media, the criminal process moved more expeditiously. Most of the time, however, police officers are allowed time to consult with the Fraternal Order of Police and a lawyer, and, at times, even review evidence before officials make public statements.
Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd, has been involved in at least 18 police misconduct cases. The officers who killed Tamir Rice in Cleveland in , and who killed Antwon Rose in East Pittsburgh in —both Black teenagers—were dismissed from previous jobs as police officers. When an officer is dismissed, typically the Fraternal Order of Police has helped them resign quietly instead of being fired.
This gives bad officers the ability to work for another department. This needs to change. Complaints of misconduct within police departments often go to internal affairs. The complaint goes up the chain, and if it makes all the way up, it goes to a trial board that typically involves three officers who decide if the accused officers have engaged in misconduct.
The trial board serves as judge and jury of their own. An officer must do something extremely egregious to be fired. But, there are other types of reprimand.
Officers can be put on desk duty, paid or unpaid leave, or fined at a prorated amount in future paychecks. The problem is that all these actions are typically internal to policing. They are rarely known outside the department until long after the incident and the conduct decision. And, my research shows that Black officers are sanctioned more harshly than white officers for similar misconduct. The Department of Justice often has to be invited in by the state.
Protests erupted across the U. This moment is exposing a pattern of brutality dating back to the violent takeover of lands and lives by White European colonizers — centuries of theft and genocide of Indigenous people and enslavement of Africans. People are seeing more clearly than ever. As an environmental law organization, Earthjustice wields the power of the law to protect not only our planet, but also the people who bear the downstream burdens of industries that pollute the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the earth they travel every day.
In this way, the spate of anti-Black police brutality offends the same values that animate our environmental cases. Law enforcement agencies left unaccountable for human rights atrocities are polluters.
They pollute communities with fear. They pollute the present and future with relics of hate and barbarity. They pollute our ideal of justice. In this difficult moment, however, our partners are guiding us toward learning, cooperation, and efforts to challenge systemic racism in policing and beyond. President Donald Trump repealed that executive order in Training is often cited as a way to reduce racial biases among police officers and encourage de-escalation. Some training methods have evidence to back them up.
But training is a nebulous concept with little oversight, and departments don't necessarily turn to evidence-based programs. In , for example, Fox 9 reported that the St. Paul Police Department's "main attraction" in its annual equity training was watching the children's movie "Zootopia.
There are regulatory ways to change police culture. A report by Sinyangwe released in for the Use of Force Project found that in departments that adopt more of eight policies that limit how police can use force the police kill fewer civilians.
For the report, Sinyangwe looked at records from 94 of the nation's largest municipal police departments. Requiring officers to de-escalate before using force; 2. Using guidelines defining the types of force that can be used to respond to specific situations; 3. Restricting or banning chokeholds and strangleholds; 4.
Requiring a verbal warning before using deadly force; 5. Prohibiting officers from shooting at moving vehicles except in extreme circumstances; 6. Requiring officers to exhaust other options before resorting to deadly force; 7. Establishing a duty by officers to intervene if one of their colleagues is using excessive force; 8.
Requiring officers to report all uses of force or attempted use of force. Police union contracts are also associated with police violence, mainly because contracts can be written to make it very difficult to fire or discipline officers for misconduct.
In some cases, drastic measures are needed. After a major police-corruption scandal in and persistently high crime in Camden, New Jersey, the city decided to entirely disband its police department in , starting a new department with an emphasis on community policing.
This means policies are put in place to reduce the use of force and increase accountability, as well as to build trust between police and the community, according to CityLab. Community policing is an alternative to the "Broken Windows" style policing that cracks down hard on minor infractions, flooding neighborhoods with police enforcement. Related: What's the difference between race and ethnicity? Research shows that more comprehensive investments in communities pay dividends. A study published in the journal American Sociological Review found that across more than cities, a greater number of nonprofit organizations was linked to declines in crime.
A similar study published in the journal Urban Affairs Review this year used Denver as an example and found that a higher density of nonprofits in an area was linked to lower crime, even after controlling for demographics and other factors. Police are often the first to respond when someone with mental health issues is in crisis, and some evidence suggests that as many as 1 in 4 of those killed by police are mentally ill.
Departments in Baltimore and Washington, D. To make sure nothing was missed in testing, background investigations can help surface any risk an applicant presents that may not be revealed by testing. Officers necessarily change after time on the streets, and not all cope well with the stresses of police work.
The changes they undergo can be highly negative and create risks to communities and departments that were not present at the beginning of their tenures. For example, the Minnesota police officer accused of killing George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was on the beat for 19 years. Because changes will happen, officers need to be tested regularly in a way that encourages them to provide candid answers and helps them understand biases they may have developed against the community they serve.
Routine testing of officers can also serve to alert departments to cops who may have changed in ways that might now threaten the community.
Police academy training must go beyond firearms and defensive tactics. Instead, it should emphasize communication skills and methods for recognizing and de-escalating potentially violent situations.
Some academies do teach officers how to de-escalate confrontation, but not to the extent necessary and not as often as they should after the officer is sworn. A critical part of this training is to teach officers how to avoid escalating encounters in the first place. Teaching recruits how to develop relationships with the community will help them solve crime and create a safer environment for them to patrol.
Most departments require officers to reassess firearms proficiency and administer tests for firearms skills.
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