Make it easier for good cops to do the right thing
Systemic reform of policing, in Columbus or anywhere else, doubtless will involve more and better training for police officers in how to interact with people in the communities they serve. Recently released body-camera video from one of the nowfired Minneapolis officers involved in George Floyd’s death makes clear one of the greatest training needs: how to interact with a fellow officer who is doing something wrong.
As with many police departments, the Columbus Division of Police’s Rules of Conduct, agreed to by the Fraternal Order of Police, include a duty to intervene in a fellow officer’s misconduct: “Division personnel who … become aware of another Division employee’s involvement in misconduct of a criminal nature or violation of a Division Rule of Conduct shall take immediate, appropriate action to stop said conduct (for example, advising the employee, reporting the conduct to a supervisor, or arresting the employee).”
There’s a world of responsibility and potential difficulty in that sentence. How does, say, a rookie go about confronting a more-senior officer, especially in the heated atmosphere of a physical confrontation, especially given the code of solidarity common in police departments?
A division spokesman couldn’t immediately answer whether Columbus recruits are trained specifically on that rule, but across the country, many agencies don’t focus on the duty to intervene in their training. The horrific facts of Floyd’s death show that training in the duty to intervene should become a priority.
But they also show the need for something much harder: changing a culture that discourages such independent action.
As Floyd lay dying with former Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee pressed on his neck, three other officers watched. All four have been fired and charged in the death. Two were rookies, in their first week on the job. One asked Chauvin whether Floyd should be rolled over onto his side, but did not argue when Chauvin said he should stay on his stomach.
The other, Chauvin’s partner, Tou Thao, concerned himself with keeping onlookers away from the other officers and Floyd. His body-camera video shows a small group of onlookers protesting the action, yelling at Chauvin to get off of Floyd’s neck and demanding of Thao, “You going to let him kill that man in front of you, bro?”
An off-duty firefighter tried to intervene and was ordered by one of the officers to step back.
In a video of Thao’s interrogation by FBI and state agents, he told investigators that it “wasn’t (his) job” to check on Floyd’s well-being, even as onlookers asked him to. He eventually acknowledged that, if he had it to do over, he “would be more observant toward Floyd.”
Clearly, the “duty to intervene” that is part of Minneapolis police policies didn’t prepare those officers to act.
More than just training, it might take whistleblower-type protection to embolden ethical police officers to confront wrongdoing. Cariol Horne, a former police officer in Buffalo, New York, might well have saved a man’s life in 2006 when she grabbed a fellow officer’s arm to stop him from choking the handcuffed, unarmed subject. Not only did the other officer punch her in the face, but she also was accused of endangering fellow officers, fired and denied her pension.
Amid the current reckoning over abusive policing, the city of Buffalo is reconsidering Horne’s case.
Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin has said that establishing a duty to intervene should be an important part of broad changes under consideration.
History shows it won’t be an easy change to make.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Rigorous, responsible and self-enforced protective efforts by everyone could bring a semblance of normal life back within weeks. That’s science talking, not just wishful thinking. The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study July 29 assessing the potential reopening of America’s elementary schools. Its examination of successful global efforts pegged significant pandemic suppression to “less than two months” of “stringent community control measures.”
The pandemic and its costs have been needlessly prolonged by several factors: the botched federal response, resistance to protective measures and casual departures in discipline. Businesses that disregard state mask mandates and distancing share the blame.
So do masses of fraternity members who congregate for maskless beers, and politicians who dismiss and undercut mask-wearing.
It doesn't have to be this way. Rigorous, responsible
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