Police departments need culture change more than legislation

Policing is in urgent need of reform, but it will not happen through the efforts the nation will soon witness.

Not with President Joe Biden addressing a grieving family with “thoughts and prayers” and inviting them to “come to the State of the Union after your kid gets killed.”

That is the facetious tone that House Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., took recently as he threw shade at Biden and the fact that the president extended an invitation to Tyre Nichols’ surviving mother and stepfather for his State of the Union address today.

Nichols was the 29-yearold man who was beaten to death by a special unit of Memphis police officers early last month. The officers tased, kicked and punched him repeatedly after a traffic stop. Nichols died days later.

It’s not that the invite is without merit. Nichols’ family deserves the spotlight, the chance for the nation to share their grief and the presidency to acknowledge the racist strains deeply woven into American society, including in law enforcement.

But Biden is trapped between a public bewildered in seeing yet more footage of officers going brutally rogue on a citizen and a GOP-controlled House that knows spinning phrases like “defund the police” can squash any attempt to pass significant legislation.

Instead, we should look to the sergeants. They are the police officers who function much like middle managers, controlling the culture of any business. As unsatisfying as this sounds, this is one place where significant shifts could happen in law enforcement.

Members of the Black Political Caucus met with Biden ahead of the State of the Union and pleaded for him to reinvigorate the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, named after Floyd’s 2020 death. In that case, video footage allowed the public to watch an officer slowly murder a citizen.

The act seeks to nip at qualified immunity, which makes it more difficult to hold officers liable in civil court for their on-duty actions, among other points.

Instead, expect another executive action on policing by Biden, which is what he settled for at the two-year anniversary of Floyd’s murder.

Expect also that whatever is signed will not radically change how police function. Little of what Biden could execute with a pen will bridge the gap between what is legal for officers to do under the Fourth Amendment and what increasing numbers of the public view as unacceptable behavior.

A civil case brought against a specific police officer or a department doesn’t necessarily change how that department functions. This is because lawsuits are routinely brought and they’re often settled out of court.

Nor will better data collection on how a department functions immediately alter how it functions. More data is what Biden has sought in the past. The problem is that police departments often resist fully participating in data collection, even when it is mandated.

There are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and not all of them have the staff or technology to drill down into every incident to produce accurate data.

What really controls police culture and training is far less tangible, far more difficult to categorize and study. It’s the decisions that officers make second-to-second that need to be managed and addressed in training.

A 2018 report issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights titled “Police Use of Force: An Examination of Modern Policing Practices” points out that the minutes that lead up to when an officer feels threatened enough to draw his or her gun or taser are crucial. Police can inadvertently escalate situations.

Improved policing requires paying close attention to individual situations that can’t be fairly described in data points.

Ultimately, what sticks with officers in terms of meaningful reform will be accomplished via internal discussions few of us will ever hear.