Law enforcement needs to be changed
Let’s displace standard policing with community options,
In the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd, there must be a debate about police brutality, and that debate must result in legislative changes — in the United States, in Canada, and elsewhere. The aim must be the development and sustaining of consciously anti-racist social institutions — new institutions designed to hold the legacy ones in check.
What must now be considered are special courts for the exclusive trial of allegations of criminal conduct by police, and the utilization of judge-only trials within those courts. The concept of a jury, based as it is on the weighing of evidence by one’s peers, is fair and workable in a monolithic society, but it exacerbates differences in a society riven with social and racial divisions. Given the history and present circumstance of some states in the United States, it would also be useful to ensure such courts are federal entities, and that they sit in a small and carefully selected number of cities.
In addition, the very understanding of what policing is and how it is to be carried out is in need of fundamental change. Communities with defined geographic boundaries must be able to exercise the ability to opt out of standardized policing, replacing it instead with well-structured internal measures undertaken by community members. Winnipeg’s Bear Clan Patrol — a community-developed augmentation of standardized policing — is a clear pacesetter with regard to this solution. Rather than augmentation of the traditional police force, however, the objective would be displacement.
Community policing, truly based on well-trained neighbours helping neighbours, would ensure that calls to check in on isolated persons don’t result in brutality or death, as was the case with Chantel Moore, shot dead by an Edmundston Police Force officer during a wellness check in New Brunswick, and Atatiana Jefferson, fatally shot in her home by a police officer in Texas after a neighbour reported her front door was open.
To displace standardized policing, communities would organize, vote in a referendum on entering into a restrictive covenant with regard to policing, and in the event of a successful vote, enter into that covenant after the appropriate training and non-lethal equipping of replacements. Standardized police forces would have no jurisdiction in restrictive covenant communities. Should a police officer lacking jurisdiction nonetheless act and cause injury or death in such a community, a criminal indictment would be automatic, and the judge in the ensuing trial would be entitled to draw an adverse inference as to the intent of the police officer.
It has become painfully clear that on the question of police misconduct in dealings with racial minorities, a package of effective policy prescriptions can no longer wait. True justice, and a stemming of the tide of brutality, requires the fundamental alteration of the institutions and processes that have delivered the results we see on the streets of cities worldwide today.
Jidé Afolabi is a Black male and a lawyer. He lives in Ottawa. @Afolabiwillslaw