New York can point way to national police standards

The horrific murder of George Floyd is steeped in racism, but there are other disconcerting elements that must be confronted. Fundamentally, the crime was another ghastly example of a systemic failure that can be best addressed on a systemic basis.

From the standpoint of scale and complexity, air travel provides a reasonable systems parallel. The FA A handles 44,000 airline flights every day, carrying 2.3 million people. Even at these volumes, crashes are exceedingly rare. Why? Because robustly enforced systems and training regimens have been standardized across the nation.

It’s a parallel that begs the question: If the government can implement and effectively oversee standards concerning the vast complexities of air travel on such an immense scale, why can’t it do the same for policing?

Magnitude is not an obstacle.

According to federal labor and industry statistics, there are nearly 1.5 million Americans who build, f ly or maintain commercial aircraft. And hundreds of thousands more who support the airline industry in jobs that could impact safety. Compare that scale with policing. According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are one million full-time police officers in the U.S.

Today, nearly every police chief or sheriff operates their departments with significant independence. Some very effectively, some less so. While there are various attempts at national policing standards, there appear to be no consistent standards for police candidate selection, training or

retention. That lack of national standards is a main root that continually sprouts these horrible acts.

Aversion to change will most certainly be an obstacle to a national standard. The federal Highway Trust Fund offers a good model for a workaround. HTF funding is essential for states to maintain their highway infrastructure. The federal government has repeatedly used these funds to persuade states to adopt various traffic safety laws, including drinking age, speed limits and other measures. The states didn’t have to comply with the requests for the safety measures, but they didn’t get the federal highway funding if they didn’t adopt them. It worked. Roads got safer and the dollars flowed.

Let’s do the same with law enforcement funding.

It won’t be easy, but no landmark achievement ever is. The federal government, with input from impacted sectors, can develop national standards for police qualifications, selection, training, operations and retention, and then present them as an option to state and local departments, with a hefty price tag of lost federal funding should they refuse.

But this is one area where New York doesn’t have to wait for the feds. We can consolidate and standardize all state and local police training so that every human being who carries a gun and badge in New York has gone through the same training, will be familiar with the same operational standards, and will be held equally accountable to them.

There will be cost, for sure. But what are the costs of these repeated incidents and reverberations in terms of lost commerce and tax revenue, property damage, police overtime, etc.? Cost isn’t an obstacle, it’s likely an incentive, since more effective policing should mean more efficient policing.

We need to act, not just to prevent police violence and the horrendous civilian violence that often follows, but also to give our law enforcement professionals a fighting chance to make the positive impact that most signed up for. Right now we are sending too many police out into the streets with too little training, too little support and too little understanding of what they encounter. In the name of George Floyd, and the litany of other names lately and tragically invoked, we must standardize and consistently oversee our police systems. These lost lives deserve better, and our police and those they serve deserve no less.