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Race and policing: The path forward

National

Latino

Axios Latino

One proposal after another has been offered on ways to tackle systemic racism in policing — but nearly all have fallen short, and significant reforms have been slow.  

The big picture: Protests, technology and court orders have forced some departments to face transformation, but systemic barriers continue to stall major changes.

Since George Floyd's murder in 2020, there has been more progress on changes to police tactics — such as banning chokeholds — than on deterrence of police misconduct and accountability for the worst misconduct.

Where it stands: President Biden in May signed an executive order to create a national database of police misconduct, ban the use of chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized, and require anti-bias training.

But the executive order doesn't have the force of legislation, and bipartisan talks on a broader bill collapsed last year.

Damon Hewitt, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that order was "a floor — not a ceiling — on future reform efforts."

Jewel Hall, whose son Milton was killed by Saginaw, Michigan, police officers when they unloaded 47 shots in a July 2012 standoff, said she's seen some positive change with reforms. "But those with money can still escape accountability."

Body cameras: The 2014 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, added pressure for more departments to use body cams. 

Some believe body cams can deter bad policing, but research is mixed on their impact. And body cams can be turned off.

Various studies show body cams reduced the use of force by police and the number of complaints against officers.

Footage has been used as grounds to fire officers or criminally charge them — most recently after the shooting of 17-year-old Erik Cantu by a San Antonio officer — or to expose policies that allow officers to use deadly force methods activists say are unnecessary. 

Consent decrees: Federal court-ordered settlement agreements between cities and the Justice Department have compelled more than 40 police departments to change their practices since 1994.  

In one example, the Justice Department and Springfield, Massachusetts, have entered into a consent decree over the city's narcotics unit using excessive force repeatedly.

Yes, but: A majority of police agencies that entered into consent decrees in the last 10 years saw violent crime rates skyrocket immediately, according to an Axios examination. The reasons for those increases are not known.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to spend $36 million on consent decree compliance and hire civilian employees for the police department's Office of Constitutional Policing & Reform, Axios Chicago's Justin Kaufmann reports.

The CPD has been under a consent decree since 2019, after the Justice Department investigation into the 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

Civilian review boards: These boards to discipline police, an idea that goes back decades, got a jolt after the deaths of Brown and Floyd. 

But their influence varies state by state, city by city, as some lack power to gather evidence or fire officers.

In Rochester, New York, voters approved a 2019 referendum to create a police accountability review board to investigate misconduct by officers. 

But the board was challenged in court by the city's police union and stripped of its disciplinary powers in 2020 in a decision by the state Supreme Court.

Other piecemeal changes have stuck, including some that have targeted police chokeholds and qualified immunity — the shield that protects police officers from personal liability for constitutional violations. But these reforms are not being instituted throughout the country.

New Mexico enacted a law last year that allows people to sue police officers and other government officials for violating their rights under the state constitution without having to overcome a qualified immunity defense.

California enacted laws in 2020 that ban chokeholds and allow the state Department of Justice to investigate police shootings.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed an executive order prohibiting the state's emergency services from buying military-grade equipment from the federal government.

In one of the known examples of a sweeping change, the city of Camden, New Jersey, disbanded its troubled police department in 2013 after police officers were laid off due to a lack of funding from the state.

The rebuilt police force is run by Camden County. The new department is  seen as a success now, but only after a rough beginning led local activists to get involved and push for changes.

Amir Khan, a resident of Cherry Hill township in Camden County, told Axios he's seen improvements in the county-run police department despite his initial skepticism.

"Officers are out talking in the community," said Khan. "We're seeing more community engagement."

What's next: New Orleans and Cleveland are among the cities working to end their consent decrees, and the Justice Department announced in September that Albuquerque had made enough improvements under court-ordered police reforms to begin monitoring its own progress. 

Activists are watching to see if anything changes.

1. Snail-paced police reform

The impact of body cameras, consent decrees and other changes.

Illustration of three overlapping police badges, oriented differently, with marks around the badges

Deep Dive: Hard Truths - Police

One proposal after another has been offered on ways to tackle systemic racism in policing — but nearly all have fallen short, and significant reforms have been slow. The big picture: Protests, technology and court orders have forced some departments to face transformation, but systemic barriers continue to stall major changes.

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

Two years after George Floyd's murder renewed long-standing calls for police reform, including diversifying police departments, law enforcement agencies are still wrestling with ways to rebuild community trust.

And it's happening at a time when officers have been leaving the profession in droves, crippling recruitment efforts.

Why it matters: Law enforcement experts say that building police forces that better reflect the communities they serve is one way to combat distrust and could even reduce police violence.

One study of the Chicago Police Department, published last year, found that Black and Hispanic officers made fewer stops and used less force than white officers.

The big picture: After Floyd’s death in 2020, there was a push to create more diversity in police departments on the streets and among top brass.

That would include greater numbers of Black and brown officers — as well as women, who account for 12% of sworn officers and just 3% of police leadership in the U.S., according to the 30×30 Initiative.     

Last year, New York City made history when Keechant Sewell became police commissioner of the nation’s largest police force.  

Police departments have a number of hurdles that must be cleared, including public mistrust, says Brenda Goss Andrews, the president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

"We can't be warriors all the time and we can't be guardians," she told Axios in an interview, adding that "our modeling now and our messaging has to be a little bit different if we want to attract women." 

Yes, but: Others have argued that adding more diversity won't eliminate toxic workplace culture.

Andrea Headley, an assistant professor of policing and race at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, told Axios that "if ... we want to reap the benefits of diversity, then we have to really have a culture that allows for those benefits to occur."

And Jennifer Cobbina, a professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University and the author of "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," said the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups aren't necessarily calling for police diversity.

Instead, they want "the scaling back of police functions" in favor of community initiatives like mental health crisis teams, better drug treatment and more school counselors, Cobbina said.

By the numbers: The portrait of diversity looks very different at agencies across the country.

In Minneapolis, Cedric Alexander, who was appointed in August as the city's first community safety commissioner, tells Axios the police department has struggled to attract enough candidates to fill its thinning ranks.

The Minneapolis Police Department employed about 900 officers before Floyd was killed in 2020, Axios Twin Cities' Torey Van Oot reports.

The department's current authorized force is closer to 560 officers — far under the minimum of roughly 730 established by the city's charter.

More than two-thirds of the current MPD force is white, according to the city, while 11.4% is Black. The city is 63% white and about 20% Black.

Alexander says the MPD is increasing its outreach efforts in communities of color in the Twin Cities. They've held events at Somali community centers seeking to recruit both police officers and 911 workers from Minneapolis' large East African population.

Chicago, which budgeted for 13,176 officers and staff in 2022, has more than 1,300 vacancies after hundreds of officers retired this year, Axios Chicago's Justin Kaufmann reports.

The Chicago Police Department created a unit last year dedicated solely to retention and recruitment, part of a coordinated attempt by the department and the mayor's office to diversify hiring.

That includes targeting historically Black colleges and universities for potential applicants, CPD spokesperson Thomas Ahern tells Axios — although he insists the shortages aren't affecting the department's diversity efforts. The CPD is 20% Black, in a city that's nearly 30% Black.

This past spring, Mayor Lori Lightfoot told a predominantly Black audience at a West Side community safety town hall to consider joining the police force.

In Philadelphia, the police department is short of its budgeted staff of 6,380, with 679 vacancies and hundreds more officers out injured, officials told Axios Philadelphia's Isaac Avilucea.

This year, the city repealed a requirement that recruits had to live in Philadelphia for a year before applying. The residency rule, passed by the City Council in 2020, had aimed to increase diversity on the force, which is 56% white, 31% Black, 10% Hispanic and 2% Asian.

In Atlanta, the police department had just under 1,600 sworn officers on the force as of the end of August — close to 450 officers short of its authorized positions, Axios Atlanta's Thomas Wheatley reports.

While the police force has roughly reflected the diversity of the city for years, the department last year set a goal to diversify the force even further by accepting more women and people with different work backgrounds.

2. Diversity efforts struggle during officer shortages

More diverse police forces are seen as one way to combat distrust and reduce crime.

Illustration of a police officer's silhouette cut vertically in thirds and descending in height to mimic a downward trending bar chart

Two years after George Floyd&#x27;s murder renewed long-standing calls for police reform, including diversifying police departments, law enforcement agencies are still wrestling with ways to rebuild community trust.<ul><li>And it&#x27;s happening at a time when officers have been leaving the profession in droves, crippling recruitment efforts.</li></ul>

Several apps and technological solutions have been launched over the past decade in an attempt to help de-escalate police encounters. 

Why it matters: Technology has played a significant role in exposing police abuse. But activists say it can only be one tool in leading to change — and some technologies have raised civil liberties concerns.

How it works: The ACLU created an app called Mobile Justice, which allows users to quickly record and send videos to contacts or local ACLU offices. It also lists information about people's rights and includes a portal to report any abuses witnessed to the ACLU and its networks.

"There's no question that we've seen that cops lie, and they continue to lie," said Marcus Benigno, chief communications & marketing officer for the ACLU of Southern California.

"[I]t is so crucial and so important that the public's viewpoint is out there without filter."

Former police officer and police trainer Stan Campbell formed the De-Escalating Officer Patrol Encounters (DOPE) organization and developed its companion app, which allows users to record encounters and includes training videos on how to handle them.

It also provides a way to directly file complaints against law enforcement.

"I have a unique position because I'm African American, as well I was a policeman, and I was a trainer,” Campbell told Axios. "I was behind the blue curtain and knew many of the issues with training, and the fact that everyone was concentrating on racism."

But as a police trainer, Campbell said he concluded the problems were "more of a training issue than a race issue."

Other apps, including Cop Watch and PulledOver, are also available from developers unaffiliated with larger organizations.

Enterprising smartphone users have found other ways to use tech when dealing with police.

One person set up a program using the iOS Shortcuts app that activates when you say, "Siri, I'm being pulled over." It turns down music, alerts selected contacts, and begins recording from the front-facing camera.

Additionally, there are many police scanner apps and neighborhood watch platforms such as Citizen.

Of note: The ACLU's Mobile Justice app was instrumental in leading to law enforcement procedural changes in one case involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In 2017, an Oregon man in a courthouse was stopped by plainclothes ICE officers. The man was asked for his ID and refused. Meanwhile, a bystander recorded the interaction using Mobile Justice, Benigno said.

"This was an instance of racial profiling that then led to the chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court requesting that ICE stop making courthouse arrests and treat courthouses as sensitive locations for immigration enforcement," Benigno said. "So that was pretty big."

Yes, but: Police are using tech too — and it has had an enormous role in perpetuating what many see as police violations of civil liberties. 

Surveillance equipment and facial recognition technology has led to massive collections of biometric identifiers in the hands of law enforcement, with little oversight into how the information is handled.

Consumer surveillance tech has also been co-opted by the police. Amazon has faced criticism for allowing law enforcement to have too much access to Ring doorbell cameras.

What they're saying: "[W]hat you have is a system where huge amounts of data of varying quality — some reliable, some unreliable — is available to law enforcement, without really any regulation of how it's used, when it's used, how long it's kept or who has access to it," Faiza Patel, a senior director with the Brennan Center for Justice, told Axios.

To Patel, the inherent problem with both police and citizens documenting each other is the unverifiable nature of the raw footage.

"Citizen recording of interactions with police is a good thing," Patel says. "I do think, though, that the tech by itself cannot solve the problem of police accountability. It can really only contribute to it in a minor way directly, with the exception of the citizen videos."

The bottom line: "The main issue really is the culture of policing, and an app can't change that," Patel said.

3. "Siri, I'm being pulled over"

Tech can expose police abuse, but activists say its uses are limited.

Photo illustration of a police cap with facial recognition lines on top, and abstract shapes.

Several apps and technological solutions have been launched over the past decade in an attempt to help de-escalate police encounters. Why it matters: Technology has played a significant role in exposing police abuse. But activists say it can only be one tool in leading to change — and some technologies have raised civil liberties concerns.

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

Some cities with deep histories of police misconduct against people of color are trying to make amends for their most egregious episodes. 

Why it matters: More diverse city governments are acknowledging and trying to  atone for incidents from the past. But they're almost always decades old, not the police violence that's in the news today. 

Cities are reluctant to apologize or admit wrongdoing for many recent cases of alleged police misconduct, since those cases are under litigation.

Houston: The mayor and the police chief apologized last year to the family of a Mexican American man who was beaten to death by officers and dumped in a bayou in 1977 — a killing that sparked riots and massive reforms.

The apology nearly a half-century after the murder of Joe Campos Torres came amid a national reckoning following the death of George Floyd — who was a small child in Houston when Torres was killed and the city erupted in flames.

In April 2022 the city dedicated a new trail, park and plaza along the Buffalo Bayou in memory of Torres. 

Joe Campos Torres Plaza in Houston. Photo: Russell Contreras/Axios

Jackson, Miss.: The mayor of Jackson apologized last year on behalf of the city for the 1970 shootings by police officers that killed two and injured 12 on the campus of a historically Black college.

21-year-old Jackson State student Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and 17-year-old James Earl Green, a high school student, were killed in the violent police response to a protest against racial injustice.

Philadelphia: The death certificates of the 11 victims of the 1985 police aerial bombing of a house occupied by a black liberation group were amended this month and ruled homicides following a request from the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

4. The value of an apology

The apologies are usually limited to incidents from the past.

Some cities with deep histories of police misconduct against people of color are trying to make amends for their most egregious episodes. Why it matters: <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="More diverse" data-vars-click-url="https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-census-big-cities-grew-and-became-more-diverse-especially-among-their-youth/" data-vars-content-id="8fbce689-c978-4d3a-b676-e67b2b97e593" data-vars-headline="The value of an apology" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-census-big-cities-grew-and-became-more-diverse-especially-among-their-youth/" target="_blank">More diverse</a> city governments are acknowledging and trying to atone for incidents from the past. But they&#x27;re almost always decades old, not the police violence that&#x27;s in the news today.

6. The shift to mental health crisis teams