Mayors crusade to change police

Black leaders ready to remake system

SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor London Breed has a spacious office in an ornate building, but her roots remain in the city’s rough Western Addition neighborhood. Her sister died of a drug overdose, her brother is in jail and a cousin was killed by local police. For Breed and other African American mayors, the cry for a policing overhaul after the death of George Floyd, 46, a Black man in Minneapolis who was pinned to the ground by officers after being accused of passing a fake $ 20 bill at a store, is deeply personal. “The Black people in communities with Black mayors know we understand these experiences like no one else can,” Breed says. “There’s no way we’re not going to hold law enforcement accountable like never before.” In Minneapolis, officials vowed to dismantle the police department. Monday, the U. S. Conference of Mayors announced a working group aimed “to help end injustices facing black Americans.” USA TODAY reached out to some of the nation’s

“The Black people in communities with Black mayors know we understand these experiences like no one else can.” San Francisco Mayor London Breed

roughly 500 Black mayors in cities large and small to get a sense of their view on this historic moment. They said changing the way officers do their work has long been a priority that has yielded mixed results. All said that Floyd’s death represents an opportunity to remake a flawed system. “Everyone I’ve spoken with in our group feels this is different,” says McKinley Price, mayor of Newport News, Virginia, and president of the African American Mayors Association. “When Floyd’s little daughter Gianna said in that video, ‘ My daddy changed the world,’ we might look back at that moment and say that he did.” Price says that in his two years as mayor of the state’s fifth- largest city, where roughly 40% of the residents are African American, Newport News has embraced tougher hiring guidelines, promotions that include citizen review and requiring that acts of force be reviewed by the police chief. Price says his city used as a guideline a report issued in May 2015 by then-President Barack Obama called “The President’s Task Force on 21- Century Policing,” which offered 59 recommendations in six categories focused on building community trust and improved training methods. Price says his police chief, who is white, announced that officers witnessing a fellow officer violating rules of conduct must intervene. In Floyd’s killing, three other officers stood by as he was fatally kneeled on for nearly nine minutes by officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with second- degree murder and second- degree manslaughter. The other officers were charged with aiding and abetting second- degree murder and aiding and abetting second- degree manslaughter.

‘ It’s nice to see new people join’

For Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, elected last summer, the protests present an opportunity to “bring about a new series of reforms and cause us to look closer at what we’ve been doing well and what we can do better.” He says his priorities are to improve diversity training to better mitigate against systemic racism, increase funding to projects that reduce urban blight, improve education and improve infrastructure in African American neighborhoods. Dallas’ police budget is about a third of the city’s $ 1.4 billion general fund. Though city officials have said they are open to reallocating money away from law enforcement, resident surveys reflect a desire for more officers. “I love seeing all the protests, and I hope they translate into people voting for policy shifts,” Johnson says. “But fundamentally, it’s local police working alongside local community members that will be at the forefront of a lot of these changes.” In Stockton, California, Mayor Michael Tubbs, 29, says his city has made great strides. Last year, city officials announced an 80% decline in police shootings over the past two years. Tubbs says his messaging over the past weeks to residents and activists has been to highlight the city’s progress on police changes while asking for tax increases to cover additional mental health and other social programs. “As a young Black man, I’ve always known police brutality is a problem, from the killings of Oscar Grant to Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown to George Floyd,” he says. “It’s a vestige of white supremacy and structural racism. It’s nice to see new people join the fight as we push to create a society we all deserve.” In Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner issued a sweeping order to his city’s police department aimed at reducing deadly force by officers and banning chokeand strangleholds, unless officers have no other alternative to protect themselves or the public. Placing a knee on a suspect’s neck is expressly forbidden under the order, Turner says. Turner, who represented a predominantly African American district in the Texas House for 27 years before being elected mayor in 2015, said the directive instructs Houston police officers to use what he calls “de- escalation techniques” before resorting to force. The order requires police officers who witness one of their colleagues “using force beyond that which is reasonable” to intercede and report the action to a supervisor. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s first Black woman and openly gay mayor, vowed in her State of the City address June 2 to implement a series of police changes in the next 90 days. This week, she said she was considering licensing requirements for police officers. Despite the cry for reform from many quarters, Black mayors have a tightrope to walk, says Ravi Perry, chair and professor of political science at Howard University in Washington. “They have to navigate being Black and navigate governing as Black, and those are two different challenges, because the latter requires you to engage the institutions that some Black people say were built to subjugate us,” he says. He notes that for years, the thinking was that to get white support for policy changes, Black mayors were required to capitulate and “run away from race,” but that’s no longer true. Mayors can view issues through a lens of “targeted universalism where, yes, you highlight the racial ethnic identity significance of the community in which a project may be targeted, but you also highlight how that project is beneficial to everyone. So while the park is in the hood, it’s open to everyone.” That’s the approach taken by Oliver Gilbert, mayor of Miami Gardens, Florida, the largest predominantly Black city in the state – more than 50% of its 113,000 citizens are African American. In 2014, Gilbert oversaw a multimillion- dollar improvement to the city’s parks system that included programs in science, math, dance, boxing and cooking. At the same time, he allocated funds to beef up technology for the city’s police department, including investing in more body cameras, license plate readers and devices that read where and when shots have been fired. He’s worked to get youth interested in law enforcement, a move he says helped grow the Miami Gardens department to more than half African American. Gilbert says that by empowering city managers to hold officers to certain standards, the city has dismissed a dozen officers for a range of offenses. “When we decide as America to do something, we get it done,” he says. “I was born a Black man, so I’m not going to accept certain things. But seeing that officer’s knee on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds made it clear to everyone, not just Black people, that a system that allows this needs to be fixed.”

Cities grapple with police violence

In 2016, in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, an officer shot and killed Philando Castile, 32, a Black man, during a traffic stop. Castile told the officer he had a handgun and a license to carry before officer Jeronimo Yanez fired seven shots. Yanez was charged with second- degree manslaughter but acquitted by a jury. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, the city’s first Black mayor, campaigned on police changes after the shooting. Within his first 100 days in office in 2018, Carter worked with police department leadership “to completely rewrite our use- offorce policy,” he says. Changes included compelling officers to de- escalate and mediate their response based on someone being passive. Last year, the city passed a $ 3 million community- first public safety proposal that focused on youth jobs and neighborhood supports such as ensuring people who return to the community from incarceration can find stable housing. “Our focus in St. Paul over the past couple years really has been arguing, and I think successfully, for a model of public safety that goes far beyond police to those types of proactive investments that can help us prevent crime before it happens,” Carter says. Baton Rouge Mayor- President Sharon Weston Broome also made revamping police a central part of her campaign in 2016. That year, Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police during an encounter bystanders captured on video. Weeks later, three officers were killed in an ambush. The city was also devastated by a flood. Broome says the city has been recovering from the trauma ever since. That means it has a head start on many of the changes being talked about today. In her first week on the job, Broome commissioned a group of citizens to start giving input on changes. “This takes intentionality,” she says. “It’s just not going to happen without somebody being committed and dedicated to seeing that happen. And it’s a process.” Over the past three years, Baton Rouge got police body cameras, banned chokeholds and required de- escalation and verbal warnings before the resort of deadly force. Last year, the police chief publicly apologized to communities of color for the way policing had gone. There’s still work to be done, Broome says, such as increasing diversity in the ranks. She says the new approach has gotten results in that police have more help solving crimes as citizens trust and feel more connected to officers. “I do think this is one of those moments where we will see substantial action towards police reform,” she says. “That is certainly a positive thing, not only for the citizens but for law enforcement as well.”

‘ This is very personal for me’

In Denver, Mayor Michael Hancock campaigned for office on a platform of changing how police operate – he doesn’t like the word “reform” – and has continued those efforts despite repeated opposition from the city’s police union. “The reality is that we can go a long way to serving the public better and safer if we have a better understanding of where crime comes from, who are the victims of crime,” Hancock says, citing obesity, low school attendance and poverty as drivers of both criminals and victimization. Elected to the mayor’s office in 2011, Hancock brought in a new police chief he said was more committed to accountability. Chief Paul Pazen, who is white, launched body- worn cameras for officers and helped develop a use- of- force policy banning chokeholds and limiting the use of body weight to restrain detainees. That policy took years to develop, and is only now being rolled out across the city. Killings by police have resulted in millions in payments to settle wrongful death claims. Hancock says changing the culture takes time and involves hiring more diverse officers and making sure cops get implicit bias and conflict de- escalation training. He says he’s encouraged by the work that’s been done, but there’s more ahead. “I’m probably more optimistic than I have been in my lifetime,” he says. He was racially profiled as a teen by police, he says, and has had “the birds and the bees and the police” conversations with his son. Listening, he says, remains the key to change. In San Francisco, leaders including Mayor Breed have worked hard on a range of social issues, including homelessness and policing, but fundamental structural changes remain elusive. A report by the state’s Department of Justice outlines successes and shortfalls. Although use- of- force incidents dropped by 24% in 2019, officers continued to use force disproportionately against Black and Latino people – 39% of total incidents involved Black men and 22% Latino men in the last quarter of 2019, the report said. Fewer than 5% of San Francisco residents are African American. Over the past year, police decreased stops of African Americans by 29% and expanded community policing programs. But the department was not found compliant in auditing arrest and use- of- force data, training officers in addressing bias and more than 200 other changes police officials vowed to tackle four years ago. The city’s first female Black mayor says she remains undaunted in her quest to remake a department that, as a child, she feared. “I’ve seen my fair share of officers beat down people in my community,” Breed says. “But I know this is a marathon and not a sprint. This is very personal for me. This isn’t about being the mayor as much as it’s about doing what I can do to make sure I don’t see another Black man die the way George Floyd did.” Contributing: Trevor Hughes in Denver; Grace Hauck in Chicago; John C. Moritz in Austin, Texas; Jennifer Berg of the St. Cloud Times

“I love seeing all the protests, and I hope they translate into people voting for policy shifts. But fundamentally, it’s local police working alongside local community members that will be at the forefront of a lot of these changes.” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson

SOPHIA GERMER/ AP Protesters gather at Jackson Square and Washington Artillery Park in New Orleans on June 5 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/ GETTY IMAGES

“We can go a long way to serving the public better and safer if we have a better understanding of where crime comes from,” Denver Mayor Michael Hancock says. He’s optimistic about efforts to change policing. DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/ AP

Oliver Gilbert, the mayor of Miami Gardens, Fla., a majority African American city, touts programs that steer youth of color into policing and allocate city funds to develop a park and activities program. COURTESY OF MAYOR OLIVER GILBERT