Better policing lies in trained community oversight

We recognize the thousands of honest, constitutionally focused and community-minded police officers who serve us every day. Yet, there are many others who have taken a very different path and we must change direction.

Rigid enforcement, citizen distrust, and warrior-style training have overtaken many of our public safety agencies. Gone are the days when most police departments actively sought service-oriented, community problem solving. Since 9/11, the COPS (Community Policing and Problem Solving) movement has collapsed. In simple terms, the warrior cops and their advocates have won.

The legacy of that victory reverberates in over a dozen large cities where leaders have reallocated over a half-billion dollars in police budgets. We are convinced if we want an era of community engagement and partnership with the police, we must create Local Police Management Boards with properly trained citizen appointees to support and hire likeminded chiefs.

This is a far cry from the recent bragging on a social media site where one police leader wrote that in his first few years of leading the organization, he had reached his goals of getting better guns and take-home patrol cars for his officers. At a time of street chaos and political unrest from the “warrior cop” agenda, the shameless claims of this police leader can only thrive in an inwardly-focused and warrior-glorifying environment.

If we leave policing priorities to these types of police chiefs rather than civilian overseers, these are the sort of nonsense results we will continue to suffer.

The abandonment of the guardian-service model has policing laser-locked on crime response and enforcement rather than on creating safer communities.

Unfortunately, we have few public sector models today from which to craft an alternative system. Civilian oversight committees are typically aimed at monitoring police use of force and rarely know enough about criminal justice, policing practices or crime patterns in their own city to know what reforms their police should undertake.

While arresting offenders and enforcing laws will not move outside the police purview, our more expanded view of police service delivery is a much broader concept than the current enforcement era of warrior policing.

We offer the following six steps as building blocks .

Step 1: Establish a Local Board of Police Management (LBPM). The function of the board would be distinct from the concept of a Board of Police Commissioners which becomes too politicized and removed from operational policy, or a civilian review board for police wrongdoing. An LBPM holds the chief and senior police executives accountable for specific reforms, especially as they relate to their community-building role. No chief of police or sheriff should be hired without outlining to the board his or her multi-year plan for police reform.

Step 2: Key competencies for those who serve on the Local Board of Police Management must include knowledge of crime prevention and community development, emotional intelligence, mental health programs, and police training. Some local politicians, such as the mayor, might have a de facto seat on the board, but the board chair should not come from the local government.

Step 3: Establish competency training for those sitting on the board. Before board members are certified to participate in board membership, they must receive training that includes the realities of everyday policing and community needs, as well as the proper balance between service functions (such as crime prevention) and enforcement functions. We also need to do a better job of hiring women and minorities and board members need to be equipped with knowledge on how to monitor hiring practices.

Step 4: Establish five-year fixed contracts including specific, and measurable, community safety goals for police chiefs and sheriffs. This will help establish a culture of accountability.

Step 5: Insert measurable goals and rewards into the contract and make them publicly available for review and comment. Reforms like community policing are too often ignored precisely because they are not mandated or near the top of the ‘hot button’ political items.

Step 6: Institute annual neighborhood-based crime and safety statistical reviews that include community-driven safety audits, crime surveys, and other crime prevention measures.

We have come to a crossroads in policing and public safety. If we continue down the warrior cop path, we will see increasing street chaos, declining services, and ongoing lack of trust and cooperation. The use of properly constituted and well-trained Local Police Management Boards will ensure that police, businesses and residents can work collaboratively toward a safer future.

Gerard Cleveland is an attorney, university law lecturer and former police officer. Gregory Saville is a criminologist and former police officer, who runs a consulting firm in Arvada. Both have consulted with the U.S Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing.