In a previous post, I discussed the necessity of the existence of a solid societal and economic infrastructure to provide the foundation for personal economic success. An important component of that infrastructure is appropriate and effective policing which ensures communities are safe and protected from criminal activity. While higher income, wealthier communities have such an infrastructure, lower income, poorer communities generally do not. In fact, not only is policing frequently inadequate in such communities, it often serves as a hindrance to individuals from those communities from being able to attain personal economic success.
As has been recently demonstrated from the tragic events surrounding the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, too often police act in a confrontational, aggressive (and sometimes predatory) manner when policing in lower income, poorer communities; especially when those communities are home to minority groups. While the public safety aspects of such policing are of paramount importance, the long-term economic impact on the groups that are the targets of this policing cannot be ignored.
Besides the short-term costs of dealing with the criminal justice system in terms of fines, the cost of legal assistance, and the time engaged in the process, when minority groups are the target of excessive, aggressive tactics by the police, they end up with a criminal record that in the long run will hinder, and often prevent, them from being able to get a job that will pave the way for personal economic success.
The #MeAlso story of Dr. Lamont Jones, a renowned ENT doctor and surgeon, illustrates the effect predatory policing can have on the lives and economic prospects of minority groups. Fortunately, through the assistance and support of family, friends, and college administrators, Dr. Jones was able to clear his name and go on to become a doctor and experience professional and economic success.
Sadly, not all victims of such police harassment are as fortunate. On August 24, 2019, Elijah McClain’s encounter with police ended in tragedy. Walking home after purchasing soda from a gas station in Aurora, Colorado, Mr. McClain was stopped by police after they received a call that he looked suspicious. The officers confrontational, aggressive approach results in the situation quickly escalating. Mr. McClain is soon on the ground being handcuffed, despite the fact that he had committed no crime. Paramedics who were called injected him with the drug ketamine to sedate him. He went into cardiac arrest and died seven days later. Police officers involved were cleared of any wrongdoing. Finally, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, a new investigation has been opened into Mr. McClain’s death.
Often, those who are victims of police misconduct, unlike Dr. Jones, do not have the financial resources to help them clear their names. The system of requiring bail for those charged with crimes, even relatively minor offenses, amounts to having a debtor’s prison for low income, less wealthy individuals. They can end up pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit because they cannot afford to post bail or hire a lawyer. They end up with a criminal record that hinders their personal economic success and can contribute to future problems with the criminal justice system that are compounded over time and block any path to meaningful employment; or perhaps even worse.
The story of Kalief Browder, who was arrested for a crime he did not commit, is particularly tragic. At the age of 16 in 2010, he was charged for allegedly stealing a backpack. Insisting on his innocence, he refused to plead guilty, even though the plea deal would mean there would be no jail time. As a result, he ended up spending almost three years in the Rikers Island prison in New York awaiting trial because he couldn’t meet bail. He spent 700 days in solitary confinement and was often beat up by both other prisoners and guards. In 2015, he was finally released and the charges were entirely dropped. Two years later, Mr. Browder committed suicide.
Combating police misconduct requires a new approach to policing and law enforcement. The term “Law Enforcement” itself puts the wrong emphasis on community policing, Instead, a term such as Community Safety, Assistance, and Law Enforcement (SALE) should be adopted. The first two should take precedence over the third. The focus of policing should first and foremost be on Community Safety and Assistance. Law Enforcement should be the third leg of the stool.
If in the cases of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks the police had focused first on Community Safety and Assistance, and lastly on Law Enforcement, the outcomes would have been very different. Community Safety includes the safety of those individuals the police come into contact with. In Mr. Floyd’s case, a focus on safety (both the community’s and Mr. Floyd’s) would have prohibited Officer Chauvin from placing his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes while other officers stood by. An emphasis on assistance would mean the officers would have approached Mr. Floyd in a much different manner (less aggressive and confrontational). The third criteria, Law Enforcement, could then be dealt with. Was Mr. Floyd even aware that the bills he was using were counterfeit?
In the case of Mr. Brooks, the same criteria should have been applied. First, ensure that the community and Mr. Brooks are safe; that he is off the road and not driving intoxicated. Second, provide assistance to Mr. Brooks; can someone come and get him and take him home? Third, are there any laws being broken that need to be enforced? The officers did not find him driving while intoxicated; he was in a parked car. Initially, he was entirely cooperative with the officers. Since he was intoxicated and blocking cars in the drive through of a restaurant, the officers could have cited him for public intoxication and/or a nuisance violation. They could also have taken his keys and allowed him to arrange to be picked up. Instead, they decided to handcuff Mr. Brooks and arrest him. Certainly, Mr. Brooks should not have resisted the officers and fought with them. However, the escalation of the situation by arresting and handcuffing Mr. Brooks was, given the circumstances, probably excessive and unnecessary. The ultimate use of lethal force against Mr. Brooks was tragic. Whether or not it was within the bounds of Georgia law will be determined by the courts. However, his death could almost certainly have been avoided if the entire situation had been approached differently, with an emphasis first on safety and assistance rather than law enforcement.
Adopting a community policing approach of Community Safety, Assistance, and Law Enforcement by itself will not solve the problem of aggressive, predatory policing on minority communities. It will take a much broader effort to eliminate the institutionalized, systematic racism that exists in many police departments across the country. However, it will be an important step in the right direction.
As I have stated before, many local communities do not have the resources to build the necessary societal and economic infrastructure that is the foundation of personal economic success. This means they have inadequate resources to meaningfully reform policing so that it first and foremost serves the community (ensuring safety and providing assistance) and then provides law enforcement. As result, the Federal government needs to provide the necessary resources for lower income, poorer communities to reform their police departments to better serve their communities. These resources should be provided in the form of categorical grants targeted at such reform.
Reforming community policing is not just issues of justice and community safety; it is also a matter of enhancing economic opportunity and reducing economic inequality.
What do you think about the SALE approach to community policing? Do you think it would result in better, more community oriented policing? Please comment below.
The SALE approach to community policing is exactly what we need today to prevent future tragedies like the examples given above in the article, and the many other cases that were forgotten about. Police reform should be imposed sooner than later which should include rigorous training (psychological, physical, communication skills, and problem-solving skills).
However, although there were numerous wrongful killings by law enforcement, we must also acknowledge their safety as well (good cops). I feel like you always have to look at both sides of the story and always be equal. That being said, I feel like the media is biased by promoting their political agenda.
David Dorn was an African American retired police officer who was killed by rioters in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago while trying to protect his business from looters. He was fatally shot but these violent rioters and left him to die in the street.
I watch the news all the time and switch it up from network to network (CNN, ABC, CBS, etc.). None of them mentioned his death but instead promoted violent protests.
On top of SALE, I think the final piece to end this madness is all of us coming together. Realistically, I think there is a lot of work that has to be done and it’s going to take a while, sadly.
Great blog overall 10/10!
You are right. Safety of police officers needs to be included.
While I agree with your analysis, I take issue with the following statement: “However, the escalation of the situation by arresting and handcuffing Mr. Brooks was, given the circumstances, probably excessive and unnecessary.” Again, I agree that the ultimate outcome of the entire situation was undoubtedly excessive, unnecessary, and indeed an illegal act that should result in charges against both officers. However, to state that arresting and handcuffing someone who has clearly committed a crime in front of officers as “probably excessive and unnecessary” is a bit of a stretch. If he was simply being disorderly or selling loose cigarettes, it would be a clear case of “cite and release,” which you imply is what should have happened in this case.
However, that is very problematic as is the following statement: “The officers did not find him driving while intoxicated; he was in a parked car.” Without getting into the nitty gritty, Georgia, like almost every state, prohibits DUI and defines driving as being in “actual physical control” of a vehicle. In the case at hand, Mr. Brooks was either so tired or drunk or a combination of the two that he lost consciousness while driving his vehicle in a commercial drive-through establishment, thereby inhibiting the establishment from being able to do business. There is no question Mr. Brooks was in actual control of the vehicle as it was running and he was in the driver’s seat in a drive-through, which by its very nature ensures that people who enter it intend to “drive.”
Therefore, after administering a portable breath test (PBT) that revealed Mr. Brooks had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) above .08, the officers had every reason to arrest him. He, before their eyes, committed the crime of Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol.
“Cite and release” is not appropriate for a DUI. To obtain a conviction the state must prove the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was above .08. The results of a PBT test, for good reason, are not admissible in courts to prove BAC, as they are inherently inaccurate. Hence, the need to arrest Mr. Brooks. They needed to take him to a police station where he would either voluntarily submit to a blood or (admissible) non-portable breath test. If he refused, the officers, following the same procedure that they do in every DUI, would have obtained a warrant for Mr. Brooks’ blood to prove the crime he committed or didn’t commit. In other words, a “cite and release” in this case would have amounted to Mr. Brooks getting away with a possible DUI (we won’t have a definitive BAC until the toxicology report comes back, so we really don’t know if he committed ANY crime, but there was certainly probably cause to believe he committed a crime after the results of the PBT).
I only point out this proverbial fly in the chardonnay because I feel that in the discussion of excessive policing, nuance is thrown to the wind. It is easy to look at the headlines and say that the entire situation was outrageous and Mr. Brooks should have been allowed to park his car and walk home. However, it is fundamentally false to say that “[t]he officers did not find him driving while intoxicated; he was in a parked car.”
That facts of the situation are actually the opposite; the officers DID find him driving under the influence. If you want to engage in a discussion of whether the nation should enforce its DUI laws in a different way, that is a discussion that may be worth having. However, it is not right to conflate the total wrongness and despicable murderous conduct of the officers AFTER initiating an arrest with, what was, a totally justifiable and necessary arrest being made to obtain evidence in furtherance of a conviction for DUI. After all, if arresting a person for DUI is “…probably excessive and unnecessary” then I would ask you to please explain to me why the police should not arrest people for driving under the influence of alcohol?
I included probably in the post because I’m not an expert in the law. I did not realize in the situation that Mr. Brooks was in that he could be considered legally to be drunk driving. I certainly do agree that drunk driving laws should be enforced, but I also think that police officers sometimes, and perhaps often, use some discretion when deciding whether to cite someone for a particular offense, even drunk driving. I don’t know that’s it’s legally permissible to rank the degree to which someone is drunk driving and the degree to which they are putting themself and the community at risk. Of course, anyone drunk driving puts themself and the community at some risk; but Mr. Brook’s case was probably one of the less egregious.
The outcome of this interaction was tragic. Mr. Brook’s certainly should not have resisted the way he did. Ultimately the police over-reacted. I just wonder if whether at some point earlier in the interaction a different approach would have been better, and if Mr. Brook’s race had been different if the officers, in using their discretion, would have chosen a different course of action.
Certainly, literally defunding the police is not the answer. Seattle’s CHAZ experiment in self-appointed “peace keepers” or whatever they called themselves ended exactly as expected. Those who can afford it will hire private security and everyone else gets anarchy.
The SALE principles have merit. If community safety took priority over enforcement most of these recent incidents involving very minor crimes would have ended short of someone dying. That said, it will not be easy to reorder the priorities of police departments, especially for those with individuals who joined the police force primarily for its “militaristic” aspects.
There may be some functions that police are doing now that even they would agree are best performed by others. The list of such functions usually includes dealing with the mentally ill and domestic disputes. However, these functions have at least some element of danger to them. That is why those tasks currently fall to the cops (and maybe that danger is why the job arguably attracts more “enforcers” than “safety and assist” personality types) We could replace cops with mental health practitioners, family counselors, social workers, etc. etc.. until the day a marriage counselor tries to intervene in a domestic dispute and gets shot. What then? Arm the counselors so they can protect themselves? Give the social workers a police escort? Presumably, most cities currently pondering “re-imagining” their police force don’t have the resources to staff teams of police, counselors and mental health experts to patrol the streets together. Issues of race aside, this is not an easy problem to fix.
Defunding the police is confusing terminology. I believe what most mean is that police funding needs to be re-directed to other uses; some for policing functions and some for other community needs.
I think the first order of business is improved and increased education and training of police officers, similar to what is required in several European countries. I discuss this in my post Federal Aid to Law Enforcement. Giving someone a badge and a gun after three months of training is a recipe for problems. More education would enable at least some work on dealing with the types of issues you mention. Also, individuals could receive advanced training in different “specialties”, such as domestic disputes, and could be targeted to those events.
You are correct, there is no easy fix. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I think many agree that there needs to be a serious reform of policing in many communities. This will require resources; resources that many communities don’t have. Federal assistance for local policing, which already occurs, needs to be redirected to improved education and training (and away from militarization) as well as increased.