POLICE REFORM: HERE WE GO AGAIN

After every high-profile police use of force going back to the Rodney King incident involving the Los Angeles Police Department, there has been an immediate knee-jerk reaction call to reform police agencies. Change was needed, we were told. The problem is that the final reports on the need for change were one-sided. Efforts were made to improve policing but no efforts to date have been made requiring criminals to behave in ways that will increase the likelihood of surviving an encounter with police. When you flee police, fail to abide by an officer’s lawful command, resist arrest or attempt to disarm an officer, you are likely to experience a bad outcome.

Yet every time an officer legally uses force to protect themselves against a threat posed by a suspect, we go about the same inane exercise of trying to reform policing. The reason that not much ever changes, however, is that we end up working on the wrong thing. The police are not the problem. Failed communities are the problem, but fixing that seems to be too high a mountain to scale so we go back to picking at the low-hanging fruit, which is to try to reform policing. Panels and task forces are convened, meetings are held and a work product is usually produced that contains nothing more than platitudes, rhetoric and cliches. After a while when emotions have subsided, everybody goes back to doing what they were doing before the incident that got people’s attention.

The last time we heard calls for change on a national scale was after the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, New York and Baltimore. People forget that before Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, President Obama gave a speech in which he heralded the Baltimore Police Department for its reform efforts and its commitment to community policing. He called Baltimore PD a model for change and one that every law enforcement agency should emulate. A few months later, after the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Police were being investigated by Obama’s Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder for racism, profiling and unfair treatment in black neighborhoods. I’m serious.

Obama signed an Executive Order appointing an 11-member task force titled 21st Century Policing that would “begin the process of healing and restoring community trust”. Yes, here we go again. A 38-page document called an action plan was produced. Most of what was recommended was already being done by agencies across America. All the usual key words were included, like community policing, crime reduction, building trust, oversight and training. The rest was a bunch of pie in the sky flowery-sounding nonsense that was actually dangerous to officers and citizens alike. Nothing changed. And then came the in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And just as sure as the sun rising in the east, the call went out to reform policing — yet again.

I cannot stress enough the importance of blocking efforts by politicians to transform the profession of policing in America in knee-jerk fashion because of one or two incidents involving the police use of force. Knee-jerk public policy most often turns out to be bad public policy because a balancing test is not performed. The balancing test answers this vital question. Have we considered what bad outcomes might result from our emotional decision? Asking this important question can reduce the likelihood of the law of unintended consequences. Another troublesome point is that this reform movement is being led by people who do not like police. In fact, they hate police. Black Lives Matter, Antifa or any other innocently disguised groups cannot and should not be allowed to drive police reform. They are pursuing reform with one goal — to weaken a law enforcement officer’s ability to keep the peace, enforce the rule of law and take law violators into custody. In other words, it will severely hamper effective law enforcement. Calls for reform are not based on any data or research to support sweeping change. These are based solely on emotional rhetoric and propaganda. A recent poll by Rasmussen shows that 81% of people polled believe that police deserve more respect and support. A Gallup poll shows that 80% of blacks polled want the same level of policing and some want more law enforcement in their communities. Why, then, are politicians ignoring the will of the general public?

Fortunately, many police agencies are refusing to cave to major policy changes being pursued by the idiot social justice warriors. The reformers are people who have no understanding whatsoever about police work. A Washington Times newspaper survey of police agencies across the country found that, “Most are making only slight adjustments to standard operating procedures rather than major overhauls.” Calls for more body cameras is a reasonable request. Most agencies banned the use of chokeholds a long time ago. Banning no-knock search warrants deserves more data and research before banning. This is an officer safety issue when serving narcotic-related search warrants. Let’s be clear. What the cop-hating crowd has in mind for reform is to ban the use of tear gas in riot situations and to eliminate the use of police canines as one Milwaukee, Wisconsin, alderman has introduced and to prevent agencies from buying surplus military equipment under the 1033 federal program. Things like ballistic shields and helmets.

Another sweeping change suggestion is a call for national standards in local policing. It’s a terrible idea. That is about one thing: federal control of local police. The Founding Fathers knew the danger of that and did not want it. What the people making this suggestion to police standards fail to understand is that how a community is policed is incumbent upon local conditions. Every community is unique and requires a style of policing tailored to that particular environment and culture. How you police in a dynamic and complex densely populated urban area like New York is different than how you would police a midsize Midwestern city or outlying rural area.

What is noticeably left out from the recommendation list is how the community can do a better job of holding up their responsibility in a representative democracy. People have certain responsibilities to make communities work and function. Parents need to raise socially adjusted children, for instance. They need to instill virtues in them like respect for authority and personal responsibility. Police were designed to keep the peace already in place because of societally enforced standards, not create the peace. Now they are called for everything. Increased police/citizen interaction leads to an increase for potential conflict.  That’s how we arrive at Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and George Floyd.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com