Punish abusive policing faster, more severely

The international outrage over the killing of George Floyd, spawning protests across America and around the world, has an urgency to it. The insistent call is for action, not just talk, no matter how impassioned.

Actions have to be specific. The scale of the protest may unintentionally dissipate the momentum for such concrete reform; when a great number of people are voicing a broad range of grievances, the general can become the enemy of the specific.

The specific issue at hand is police brutality against black men. Racist policing is a type of bad policing. A call about an alleged counterfeit $ 20 banknote that results in a death is very bad police work. Bad, abusive policing will have a greater impact on racial minorities. So it would be best to start there.

Police brutality is a species of abuse of power. Abuses of power are corrected by preventing and punishing abusers, and limiting the power that can be abused.

In the case of police officers, the prevention side is already quite advanced. For generations, major metropolitan police forces have had programs aimed at rooting out racism in the ranks, increasing the number of racial minority officers, initiatives in community policing, outreach measures to racial minority communities and the abolition of certain practices ( carding, stop and frisk, chokeholds). There are monitoring and investigation measures, like dashboard and body cameras and the internal investigation bodies that attempt to reduce the temptation for police to cover up for their own.

All to the good, but no manner of such programs will reduce to zero those would abuse the fearsome power of the police. So the question of punishing abusers needs to be addressed.

In the Floyd case, the firing of the four officers involved in 24 hours, and the subsequent charging of all four ( second degree murder and accessories to murder) within in weeks is highly unusual.

There can be no doubt that the public outrage, sparked by the clear video evidence, drove the quick response.

The usual course of action is much more leisurely. Paid suspension pending a long investigation, charges ( if any) of a lesser nature and a robust defence of the accused officers mounted by the police union. The criminal justice system is not seized by urgency.

In my favourite police show, Blue Bloods, Tom Selleck plays New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan. Dealing with a case of an officer who has choked a man in custody to death, Reagan informs the officer that the grand jury has declined to indict him.

“They say a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, but when a police officer acts in the line of duty suddenly they lose their appetite,” Reagan says in a 2014 episode. Then Reagan fires the officer.

That’s television. In real life, the consequences are rarely that severe and that quick. Indeed, the officer who killed Floyd had a history of complaints that did not unduly impair his career. What made his case unusual was that he was fired immediately.

That needs to change. The power of police unions over disciplinary action needs to be dramatically diminished. Police unions are no different than other unions; they defend their members come what may. But that protection against employer exploitation can become a betrayal of the wider duty to serve and protect the public. Cities and metropolitan police forces need to negotiate with their unions swifter and more severe processes in cases of alleged abuse of power. And the privacy protections on allegations cannot be absolute; allegations of abuse of power and their resolution should be publicly available, whether the officer is disciplined or exonerated.

All police forces have “internal affairs” or “special investigations” units to investigate corruption and abuse of power in the ranks. It is usually mandatory to engage such bodies when there is an “officer- involved” death. In areas where trust between the police and the public has completely broken down, those bodies should be removed from police departments altogether.

Something like a special prosecutor office with a community relations liaison may be needed. Such a special prosecutions office would be more free to take aggressive action against abuse of power. The necessary close and collaborative relationship between the police and prosecutors is often an obstacle to policing the police.

Widespread protests against racism are apt for galvanizing energy. That energy now needs to be channelled toward concrete change in the abusive policing that killed George Floyd.

Back to the fictional Frank Reagan.

“This job is not about being strong enough to use force; it’s about being strong enough not to.”

Abuses of power are corrected by preventing and punishing abusers.