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How do we fix, defund, reinvent policing? I learned a ton from the activists & experts I got to talk to for @NYTMag. A few highlights, starting with this one from @aliciagarza: https://twitter.com/EAJProject/status/1272163382129496065
Another from Alicia: People in black communities "often ask why the police fight so hard to keep investigations & complaints in the shadows. The continual push to shield the police from responsibility helps explain why a lot of people feel now that the police can’t be reformed."
From @vanitaguptaCR: "I don’t think we’ve seen major federal legislation for police reform pass since the 1990s, when Congress gave the Justice Department the power to investigate departments for civil rights complaints."
More @vanitaguptaCR: "When I did investigations for DOJ, I would hear police officers say: “I didn’t sign up to the police force to be a social worker. I don’t have that training.” They know they’re stuck handling things because ...
... there is a complete lack of investment in other approaches & responses."
From @DrPhilGoff: "if you have a strong union with a union head who says, 'We’re not doing any of this because it’s bunk,' the chief of police can’t change the culture."
More @DrPhilGoff: "Imagine that you have a tool chest for solving social problems. It gives you options. Then you lose the tool of mental-health resources. You lose the tool of public education. They take out the tool of job placement...
... And then all you’ve got left is this one rusty hammer. That’s policing."
From @samswey: if you look at the 30 largest cities, police shootings have dropped about 30 percent, and some cities have seen larger drops. In some of these cities, like Chicago and Los Angeles, activists with Black Lives Matter and other groups have done a lot of work ...
to push for de-escalation, stricter use-of-force policies and greater accountability."
More @samswey: "One thing that’s important, and often overlooked, is that police unions enjoy broad bipartisan support. ...
... The language of the contract with the union in Chicago requires misconduct records to be destroyed after five years; in Cleveland, it’s two years. Louisiana has a law, which the police unions lobbied for, that says investigators have to wait 14 days to question an officer ...
who used a weapon or seriously injured or killed someone and 30 days to question an officer accused of other misconduct."
And from Scott Thomson, police chief in Camden, NJ from 2008 to 2019: "The Supreme Court standard allows for a lot of situations that should never develop. Think about the mentally ill individual who refuses to drop a knife when a police officer tells him to."
More Thomson: "Within a Police Department, culture eats policy for breakfast. You can have a perfectly worded policy, but it’s meaningless if it just exists on paper. You get trained in it when you’re a recruit in your three to six months at the police academy. ..
... But in too many departments, officers never receive more training on the policy or even see it again unless they get in trouble. They are then befuddled by being held to account for behaviors that regularly exist among their peers, and they feel scapegoated."
A 2016 survey from the Police Executive Research found that police depts spend a median of 58 hours on training for recruits on how to use a gun and 49 hours on defensive tactics, but they spend about only 8 hours on de-escalation and crisis intervention.
Thomson: "To change the culture around the use of force, you have to have continuous training, systems of accountability and consequences."
From @barryfriedman1 on domestic disputes, basis of 15 to 50-plus % of calls to police, & can turn serious unexpectedly. “We may well want force on the scene. But might we get further in the long run if someone with other skills — in social work or mediation — actually handled?”
From @monicacbell, who interviewed 50 low-income mothers in Washington about the police for a 2016 article interviewed 50 low-income mothers in Washington about the police for a 2016 article in Law & Society Review. The women were deeply wary of the police in general ...
... but 33 of them had called them at least once, often for help with a teenager. “Calling the police on family members deepens the reach of penal control,” Bell wrote. But the mothers in her study have scant options.
Here's @monicacbell's super interesting article:
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bell/files/bell-2016-law_society_review.pdf
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bell/files/bell-2016-law_society_review.pdf
Here's @barryfriedman1's, great data & fact about alternatives 911 services: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3564469
And for the history relevant to all of this, read @elizabhinton on the results of the 1967 Kerner Commission: “Neighborhood police stations were installed inside public-housing projects in the very spaces vacated by community-action programs.” http://bostonreview.net/us/elizabeth-hinton-kerner-commission-crime-commission
We have been here before. We could do so much better. The ideas & examples are clear & concrete. /end
