Our Biggest Roadblock to Police Reform is Us
Without any doubt, America is in desperate need of police reform. Better training and information, better guidance, and more clear regulation. It will not bring back the men and women who have been lost to neglect, accidents, and intentional slayings, but it is still a conversation that needs to be had. Unfortunately our voice, the people’s voice, is absent from that conversation and we had a hand in stifling it. Yes, it is partly our fault that we are unable to get any movement this issue. If you’re skeptical, or this makes you defensive, stick with me and hopefully it will all make sense.
Police, along with firefighters, and some politicians, are civil servants. Public servants if you will. A civil servant is someone employed in the public sector, who answers to, and works for the government. In our constitutional republic, that’s us. The people, who elect representatives to speak for us, to be our voice in matters of our common interest, safety, and protection of our rights. So we are, in a sense, their employers. Obviously it wouldn’t work to have 300 Million bosses calling the shots, that’s what our representatives are supposed to be for.
According to mappingpoliceviolence.org there were 1,099 people killed by police in 2019. In the cases between 2013 and 2019, 99% did not result in any charges being filed, and fewer than 1% charged, are convicted. Why is that? Lawyers cite many factors, including juries being overwhelmingly trusting in law enforcement. There’s a more concerning factor they also bring up.
In the Iowa Law Review, Kate Levine calls out several causes for concern when it comes to conflict of interest in prosecuting police misconduct. She includes several specific examples of police unions getting involved, and putting pressure on officials involved in the cases.
More recently, the shooting of Laquan McDonald illustrated that police unions are not above making negligent, if not intentionally false, statements to protect their members. Days after the teenager was shot by a Chicago police officer, a representative for the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police asserted that the officer only shot the 17-year-old after he lunged at the officer with a knife. Police dashcam video footage, however, shows that the teenager never lunged at the officer, and was, in fact, walking away when he was shot, multiple times.
And in another example:
Even more nefarious activity takes place behind the scenes. For instance, one former Baltimore police officer, who reported his sergeant and another detective for assaulting a handcuffed suspect, walked out of his house one morning to find a dead rat on his family’s car. This was compounded by threats, refusals from other officers to answer his calls while on duty, and a work environment so hostile that he eventually quit the force.
So when you ask, why haven’t charges been filed against an officer for misconduct, or even murder, you have to look to the district attorney. It is their responsibility to determine if there is a case, and if they will pursue it. According to Levine, 95% of local district attorneys are elected. Because their decisions are made in secret, they can decline to prosecute without the public being aware, but the police unions can sway elections.
The police, however, are well-informed and interested in the outcome of elections, and their support matters. “[P]olice unions enjoy remarkable political influence” over politicians of all stripes, but particularly over district attorney elections. For instance, “[w]hen a powerful police union charges that a politician is ‘soft on crime,’ that candidate’s chances for election or reelection can be dramatically reduced.” Given the lengths that the unions will go to intimidate systemic actors who diverge from their agenda, it is likely these unions would bring their numbers out to defeat a district attorney who vigorously prosecutes police–defendants.- Levine quoting Angela J. Davis, Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor
But it’s not just prosecutors and district attorneys under this sort of pressure. Useofforceproject.org points out that there are solutions to reduce killings by police officers, but few departments adopt these procedures. In many cases it is voluntary. That is where our voice should come in. The people we elect to speak for us in these matters. These reforms must be mandated, implemented, and enforced by those people who we’ve elected to do just that.
In February of last year, the California legislature began working on a bill that would changed how police officers used deadly force following the killing of Stephon Clark. The bill was opposed by a dozen police unions. By the time it got through the state legislature it was gutted of any real change. The Clark family civil rights attorney said of it, “They watered down the bill a lot from what we wanted. I’m still cautiously optimistic that it gives us hope for change.”
How is this party our fault? According to opensecrets.org, the National Fraternal Order of police gave $15,500 to political campaigns in 2018. Split 74% to Democrats and 26% to Republicans. You can see a list of recipients on the site. That’s just one union. There are several more listed here. So these politicians are receiving money from the organizations who are focused on protecting the police, which seems to me to be a conflict of interest for those who are supposed to be protecting us.
If you consider that a union’s job is to be the voice of an employee. To arbitrate for them when it comes to pay and benefits, and protect them from an abusive boss. Then how does it work when the boss, or in this case the boss’s representative, is being paid by that same union? It sounds like they’re both interested in protecting the employee. In that case, who protects us? Who looks out for our best interest? I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a union for the police, but when two sides come to the table to discuss change, it seems like everyone’s sitting on the same side of the table here.
Now we come to our own responsibility here. We keep voting them in. We keep voting for politicians to represent us, who are taking money from people who do not have our best interest at heart. Everyone talks about corporate lobbies, and oil lobbies, and so on but what about police unions. Their only interest is in protecting police officers, sometimes rightly, from all the things that come with the job. They are not in the business of caring about the public. We are ultimately responsible for the lack of progress when it comes to police reform.
We can rail and protest, scream and fight, and drive each other to each side of the ring with politics and hyperbole, but at the end of the day it won’t change a thing if we go to the polls and pull the same lever time after time. A cop, one of which was rightly arrested as I’m writing this, may face charges but that doesn’t address the issue. Sure, he may pay, but he probably won’t. What about next time? Who will make the police reform the practices and policies that led to the death of George Floyd? The politicians who are taking money from the same union who is protecting the cop? The district attorney who has to weigh this decision against reelection? This reform must become a demand from the people, held accountable by the ballot box.
