Trump-Session Reversing Progress Made in Health, Policing in Last 8yrs
A dying kidney next to its healthy sister, if the good one goes is a transplant from donor or death. |
In a March 31 memo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions initiated a “sweeping review of police reform” initiated under President Barack Obama, or at least that’s how USA Today reported it. That’s clearly what Sessions was up to, as underscored by his follow-up attempt to block implementation of the Justice Department’s consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department, an attempt that was opposed by the city’s mayor and police commissioner, and which a federal court quickly shot down, much to Sessions’ dismay.
But the actual text of Sessions’ memo was far more muddled than that sounds. Its real motives were tucked into the folds and creases of the text, while its main thrust and broad outlines would actually support a continuation of Obama-era policies, according to activist and data analyst Samuel Sinyangwe.
A co-founder of Campaign Zero, Sinyangwe authored a study and co-authored a related report last September, as part of the Use of Force Project, finding that if departments implemented eight common-sense regulations on use of force, not only would they reduce the number of police-involved killings by 72 percent, they would make police officers safer too. What’s more, only one-third of America’s largest departments currently have at least four or more of the policies in place — meaning there’s a huge untapped potential for a proven win-win approach that saves lives of officers and the public as well.
A key passage in Sessions’ memo declared that “The [Justice] Department will use its resources to effectively promote a peaceful and lawful society, where the civil rights of all persons are valued and protected.” It then went on to present a set of bullet points, presented as “principles that will advance those two goals,” the very first of which was: “The safety and protection of the public is the paramount concern and duty of law enforcement officials.”
“If Sessions were serious about protecting civil rights in America, he would continue what the Obama administration started,” Sinyangwe told Salon, “with initiating more investigations of police departments, getting consent decrees that would mandate these types of changes to happen. I would encourage him to look at the evidence — instead of the rhetoric and the fear-mongering — that shows that when these things are implemented it does not have a deleterious effect on officer safety, which is what is put out as being his primary goal.”
There are, in effect, two contrasting worldviews in play, as Sinyangwe described. “From the police side of things, most of the conversation … is that deadly encounters with civilians are the result of resisting [arrest] or threats to officers, and it’s purely based on the actions of the subject, rather than the officers,” he said. In this view, “the officers are sort of reacting reasonably to the threats that they face.”
What’s missing from that argument is any analysis of the role that policies and practices can play in determining the outcome of any encounter. That kind of analysis also differs from the activist focus “that these police interactions are guided purely by racism, and a dominance of the privileged classes over the low-income communities of color.” Unsurprisingly, Sinyangwe believes there’s clearly something to that view. “We do find support for the fact that police are more likely to kill folks in communities that are minorities, so that theory hasn’t been discounted,” he said, “but we’ve added that the policies also matter in terms of those interactions.”
Sessions’ biases were clearly on display in his response to the Baltimore consent decree. “I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city,” the attorney general wrote, adding, “there are clear departures from many proven principles of good policing that we fear will result in more crime.”
But “proven principles” in common speech are a far cry from what a scientist would mean. It’s not enough that you’ve done something the same way for years, and seemto get good results — as in football before the invention of the forward pass, or basketball before the Harlem Globetrotters reimagined the game. It might seem common sense that restricting use of force in any way would make officers less safe, but it also seems to the naked eye that the earth is flat. You could even have called it a “proven principle.” When you shift your frame of reference, however, “common sense” can change, too.
The main argument put forward by police unions trying to block use-of-force regulations is that they endanger officers. “Whenever this argument is put forward,” Sinyangwe noted, “there’s never any data to support it. The police unions have never presented any national data showing that the stated relationship actually exists. They just sort of taken it at face value. What we’ve done is actually tested that proposition and found that the departments that have the most restrictive policies on use of force are actually the safest for officers.” Increased officer safety was reflected in reductions of the number of officers assaulted and killed in the line of duty.
These findings point to a different sort of common sense, coming out of a different frame of reference. “Departments that have more reasonable and less confrontational interactions with the public because of these types of policies,” Sinyangwe explained, “are going to be less likely to anger civilians and provoke civilians into attacking law enforcement.
“It’s a two-way street. If you have a department that is operating consistent with community expectations and upholding the decency and dignity of civilians, it makes sense to think that in those areas civilians will respond in kind and be more trusting towards the police. So that’s one explanation of what’s happening.”
Two facts combined to create the perfect conditions for a “natural experiment” to see if use-of-force regulations could reduce officer-involved killings. Ironically or otherwise, the first scientific findings about improved officer safety came out of this effort as well. First of all, officer-involved killings vary widely from place to place. Rates of police killings per million people ranged from a low of zero (in seven jurisdictions) to a high of 25.2 in Orlando, Florida. Five other cities had more than 20 killings per million, and another 26 cities had rates in the double digits. Second was the fact that use-of-force regulations have been widely but not universally adopted. The average department employed three of the eight policies, but none employed all eight. The number employing any single given policy ranged from 15 to 77.
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