Better policing calls for re-funding
It’s one of history’s most tantalizing what-ifs?
Suppose King George III had given the American colonists the representation they wanted, a voice in deciding how they would be taxed?
But the king didn’t get it. He was too jealous of his power to be willing to share it.
Everyone knows how the story ended. America is now having another revolution. The demonstrations prompted by the Minneapolis police who murdered George Floyd on May 25 have swelled into a mass movement in all 50 states and some 700 locations, uniting white and black, old and young, rich and poor, in what is in every sense a revolution.
It is a revolution that the rebels of 1776 would recognize: A revolution against abusive government power.
For police are the government — in its most fundamental, visible and potent function. When the police act badly and aren’t held to account, it is the government acting badly and refusing to be accountable.
But, like George III and his ministers, there are again some people who just don’t get it.
The most prominent of them is President Trump. He blustered, fumed, threatened to sic active-duty military on peaceful civilian protesters, encircled the White House with nearly a mile of ugly fence, and used brute force to clear a public square so that he could pose for a photo with a Bible. He uttered not a word to comfort the millions of Americans who are saying: “No more!”
In so doing, he managed to turn the protests against him, as well. There’s no doubt that his callousness has contributed to prolonging the unrest — and to a new poll in which 61 percent of those questioned said they disapprove of how he has responded to the protests, most of them “strongly.”
The poll, published by the Washington
Post on Tuesday, found even stronger opinion in favor of the protests. More than two-thirds of Americans — 69 percent — regard Floyd’s murder as symptomatic of “broader problems” in law enforcement’s treatment of black Americans. That’s half as many more as thought so following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
They get it.
But too many police — and particularly their union leaders — still don’t get it. Some of the protests were marred with unacceptable force, including beatings and tear gas against peaceful protesters. Random looting and vandalism by fringe elements and lone-wolf hoodlums did not justify such behavior.
Some of what we’re hearing is an arrogant, outright contempt for authority.
In Minneapolis, the head of the police union — who has had 29 complaints against him — decried as “despicable behavior” not the murder of George Floyd, but the prompt firing of the four cops who killed him in plain view of the public.
The Brevard County chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police posted an invitation to police in Atlanta, Albany and Buffalo, NY, another troubled city. “We are hiring in Florida. Lower taxes, no spineless leadership or dumb mayors rambling on at press conferences … We got your back!” it said. The ad was taken down.
We believe most American police officers are decent people who don’t approve of the misconduct of others. But they have to be willing to call them out. Too few are, and the inflexible resistance of police unions throughout the nation is the core of the problem. Elected officials won’t stand up to them.
That’s why we’re hearing angry calls to “de-fund” the police or otherwise abolish entire departments. Well, that’s one way of breaking union contracts. But it’s irresponsible.
Let’s talk about “re-funding” the police instead. This is what Congressional Democrats
propose as part of a massive reform to be called “The Justice in Policing Act of 2020.” It would condition federal funding on the required use of body and dashboard cameras, on new local efforts to end discrimination, and better efforts, including training, to overcome racial profiling.
It would also make it easier to bring federal charges against law enforcement officers who violate civil rights and to sue them for damages. It would prohibit chokeholds, no-knock warrants — which were at fault in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky — and limit the transfer of military weaponry to local agencies.
It would give the Justice Department more authority to investigate suspicious patterns of behavior that suggest violations of constitutional rights. The Department was active in that regard under President Obama, obtaining consent decrees authorized after the Ferguson tragedy, but Trump put a stop to that and has boasted about doing so.
Local and state governments, which pay most of the bills, should not wait for federal action — which may depend on the November election, although it shouldn’t — to do what they ought to have been doing all along.
In Florida, that includes establishing civilian review boards with subpoena power. Internal review is undependable.
In Florida, the USA-Today network counted 1,671 cases from 1985 to mid-2018, in which police, sheriff ’s deputies and prison guards were disciplined for excessive force and other complaints. Only 515, fewer than a third, ended in firing or resignation. Of those who lost their jobs, at least 104 were re-employed elsewhere in Florida. There should be zero tolerance for excessive force.
Failed officers should not be re-employed. The proposed federal legislation contemplates a national registry of complaints against officers and of the action, if any, taken against them.
A police union official who spoke to the Miami Herald complained that civilian review boards would be “dangerous” because they would “answer to nobody.”
As if internal review answers to anybody.
Local and state government need to put more money into alternatives to policing, such as mental health outreach. Salaries should be raised to make hiring more selective. Perhaps probationary terms should be longer.
Police work is an inherently dangerous profession, for which those who wear the badge deserve reasonable job security, including due process. But that has to be balanced against the public’s right to be protected from people who abuse their power to take their liberty and their lives.
An acceptance of violence has crept into the culture of American police, who fatally shoot about 1,000 Americans every year, according to the Washington Post. That’s a rate more than 10 times as high as in Great Britain, where most police are unarmed. The toll has been conspicuously constant despite a plethora of promises, after Ferguson, to do something about it.
The U.S. is awash in firearms, courtesy of a powerful gun lobby, but that does not diminish the duty of police to bear their own weapons responsibly. According to a CNN report, American police are almost four times more likely to use force against black people as against whites. George Floyd was only the latest of far too many.
The American people have seen enough. Those who still don’t get it will have themselves to blame if those who do start defunding their budgets and taking other rash actions to weaken the police without reforming them.