Fear of crime unravelling reforms brought by police killings
Some US law changes were rolled back after complaints that police are too restricted. Officials say other changes amount to fine-tuning, writes Robert Klemko.
RowVaughn Wells travelled to the Tennessee Capitol last week hoping to preserve the small silver lining that emerged from the death of her son, who was fatally beaten last year after being pulled over by Memphis Police. In his memory, the city passed the Tyre Nichols Driving Equality Act, barring officers from conducting certain traffic stops for low-level violations, among other measures.
But now state lawmakers are advancing legislation that would nullify the Memphis law. last Monday, state Representative John Gillespie (R), the bill’s sponsor, ran into Wells and her husband in the Capitol, where they had come to bear witness to debate on the legislation.
Gillespie appeared taken aback at seeing them, Wells recalled in an interview, then collected himself.
“I hope you understand,” he said. “I don’t,” she shot back. Gillespie’s measure is part of a groundswell of legislative and voter pushback against reforms initiated over the past four years after the police killings of Black Americans including Nichols, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Each killing stunned Americans and inspired activism, rioting and a racial reckoning that translated into hundreds of bills aimed at curtailing law enforcement powers and reshaping how police do their jobs.
In some cases, lawmakers and voters now say those changes needed to be finetuned to work well. In others, they are trying to address community backlash at measures that have been labelled antipolice, as well as a perception that crime has worsened while police have been hamstrung by policy changes.
Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban civilian-run police review boards. Louisiana legislators voted in favour of a law that would make it harder to sue police officers; cities including Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles have restored police funding cut after Floyd was killed.
Under pressure to address high-profile incidents of crime on New York’s subway system, Governor Kathy Hochul last week said she would send the National Guard underground to help police with random searches of riders’ bags. San Francisco voters last week approved loosening the rules around police surveillance and allowing officers to pursue suspects in their cars even for some misdemeanour violations. And in Washington, DC, lawmakers passed a massive public safety bill that increases punishments for a range of crimes and adjusts or walks back accountability measures that addressed police transparency and rules for neck restraints and vehicular pursuits.
In Tennessee, Gillespie declined an interview request, but explained his bill in a written statement that said Memphis, where crime has ticked up in recent years, has become “a safe haven for criminals”.
“We cannot allow any local government to embolden criminals by nullifying our state laws and demonising law enforcement,” he wrote.
President Biden pushed back against the notion of rising crime in his State of the Union address on Thursday evening, pointing to a sharp decrease in the national murder rate and a national decline in violent crime “to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years”.
Lieutenant Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, acknowledged that crime is down in San Francisco, but described walking down the street and seeing people under the influence of drugs. She cited personal experience with car break-ins her own car window was smashed - as part of the reason she supported the policing changes passed by voters in “Proposition E” which, among other things, expanded the use of vehicle pursuits to “violent misdemeanours”.
“It’s so in-your-face,” McCray said. “We’re still a compassionate city. We want to help people. But at what point do you have to draw the line?”
In DC, last year’s homicide spike gave officials fodder to argue that funding cuts to the city’s police force have damaged public safety. Other lawmakers and researchers say it is too early to make that correlation, pointing to other factors like disruptions to schools and social services caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
DC Council member Brooke Pinto, a lawyer, was elected in 2020, weeks after Floyd’s murder. At the time, she voted in favour of sweeping police reform and accountability laws.
Years later, she joined a police officer for his night shift. She said the officer shared his frustration about a new rule for police body cameras, which barred officers from reviewing the footage. The change was an attempt to keep officers accused of wrongdoing from being able to prepare for questioning by reviewing what had happened. But officers also relied on the footage to write accurate reports.
Pinto this year spearheaded “Secure DC”, the sweeping bill that passed the council in a near-unanimous vote last week and, among many other things, would allow police to review their bodycamera footage in all cases except those involving serious or deadly use of force.
“We right-sized some of those interventions in a more balanced and appropriate way,” Pinto said. “We have not swung the pendulum back entirely.”
Major measures still in place
Policing experts warned against viewing the recent policy shifts as a complete reversal of legislative gains in the fight for police reform.
Both San Francisco and DC have been at the forefront of large-city police reforms for decades. Officers in San Francisco have been banned from aggressively chasing suspects in vehicles and shooting into moving vehicles since 2013; in Washington, chokeholds have been outlawed since 1985.
“It’s not going to be NASCAR running through the streets,” McCray said of San Francisco’s newly amended pursuit laws. “Give us a little credit here.”
Both cities have kept major measures passed in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder. In DC, the mayor’s office still releases within five business days of the incident names and body-camera footage of officers who used serious or deadly force, and the department can still discipline officers with less involvement from the police union.
In San Francisco, officers are still instructed to limit how often they conduct traffic stops for low-level offences and to obtain approval from the civilian police commission if the department wants to implement new surveillance technology. The city is still diverting mental healthrelated calls away from police to specialised teams without armed officers, a change launched after Floyd’s death.
But advocates and experts said there is still much work to be done to improve policing. Even in politically liberal communities that have long welcomed police accountability measures, entrenched biases and constitutionally unsound traditions can counteract legislative changes, they said. And with the failure of the federal George Floyd Policing Act, which was backed by Biden and most Democrats, many parts of the country never felt the policing changes of 2020