There is a deep-seated crisis in the country, and a mounting uproar, about police violence in general and police shootings of unarmed civilians in particular. Some people excuse the behavior of police pretty much no matter what. Many more people are putting forth ideas aimed at stopping extreme police violence by reforming the system of policing. Some of these ideas are the following (I agree with them as far as they go):
• Mandating that police wear body cameras (that cannot be turned off by them).
• Better training for police, including intense sensitivity training about communities of color and poverty.
• More careful selection of candidates wanting to become police, weeding out—through careful and intensive testing and screening interviews—those prone to violence, bullying, racism, prejudice against minorities, super macho ego trips, sociopathic acting out, and so on.
• Massive efforts to recruit minority citizens in large numbers to become police officers, to also be vetted as above.
• Careful re-writes of laws and rules about the use of force by police and the various levels of force and technologies of force to be used and under what conditions, with an emphasis on non lethal force and non lethal weapons technology. Guns must be used only when the life of an officer is truly threatened or he/she is truly threatened with severe bodily injury (emphasis on truly).
• Stop supplying police departments with heavy military hardware and military training—and a military mentality.
• Mandate that police officers live within the city they work in, carrying that even to the point of mandating that they live within the same area/district/precinct where they work/patrol.
• Totally reform, open up, and end the secrecy of the whole grand jury system. Severely curb the wide latitude that prosecutors/district attorneys have in setting up, selecting, managing (manipulating), and using grand juries.
• Use blind lotteries to select grand jurors, but mandate that they be made up of proportions of people who at least roughly match the racial-ethnic-economic makeup of the community.
• Establish the regular, mandated selection of independent special prosecutors for investigations and actions concerning police violence ending in death or severe injury to civilians, especially unarmed civilians.
• Stop setting drug arrest and other arrest quotas as a basis for federal money going to police departments.
• Legalize marijuana. Decriminalize and heavily regulate other, harder street drugs. End the epidemic of masses of arrests and imprisonments for simple drug possession charges. Take the police out of this. Fewer things being illegal equals less police confrontations on the street.
These are good ideas and should be implemented ASAP. There is no time to lose. But even deeper police reforms must happen:
1) The separation between police and the population must be dissolved. Policing duties should be spread among formal officers of the law (living in the neighborhoods, remember) and militias, adjunct forces, made up of qualified, carefully trained, carefully selected (even elected) local citizens (some armed—and carefully chosen and trained for this) who patrol neighborhoods. Assisting them would be beefed up and trained regular neighborhood watch groups. Full and constant communication among all these types of forces, including the police, must be assured. Adjunct forces should also be empowered to follow and monitor the behavior of the regular police to observe suspected improper behaviors and report them, and possibly take action against them in extreme circumstances.
2) All types of police and adjunct forces as above should be heavily populated with specialists in sociology, conflict resolution, social work, psychology and social psychology, social dynamics, etc. Let’s have fewer police who are simply ex-athletes and ex-military.
3) Elected civilian police review boards should be established, fully empowered to investigate, interrogate, arrest, charge, indict, detain—and fire—police officers who commit or allegedly commit crimes/offenses. These boards would supersede prosecutors/district attorneys in these cases (too cozy a connection to cops generally). Full staffing of all kinds must be provided to these boards. No ex-police, police family members, or others with close connections with police should be allowed onto these boards.
And finally:
4) In the end, overzealous policing and violence are only surface symptoms of a society in deep socio-economic crisis, with hostility toward minority communities and the poor becoming almost inevitable on the part of the repressive forces of the ruling, mostly white, wealthy elite. Massive efforts and legislation must be carried out and passed to create a society that seriously and sincerely provides for human needs, prosperity for all, human and civil rights, equal justice under the law, and ending the corrupt legal system. Doing this will depend on you and me—and on cops and police leaders, those of them who really are dedicated to protecting and serving and not acting like a hostile, occupying army in minority, working class, and poor communities.
Jim Griffin lives in San Luis Obispo. Send comments to the executive editor at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 1-8, 2015.