A City's misuse Of Police

As sheriff, I would constantly remind county officials that when they look at a law enforcement officer, they should see with pay and benefits, a roughly six-figured taxpayer resource. It is one of the most expensive resources that local governments have. That means that it should be used sparingly and for a narrowly defined purpose. Police are intended to do two main functions. Preserve the peace and enforce the law. Any use outside that should be resisted by law enforcement executives.

We are at a point in society where police are used for a plethora of things outside their intended purpose. Officers are sent to just about everything today. When people don’t know what to do about a particular thing, their first thought is, call the police. A dog left tied up outside that continually barks, call the police. Somebody gets locked out of their car or home, call the police. Somebody illegally parked, call the police. And it doesn’t stop here.

I want to take you back to a high-profile incident in New York City several years ago that turned deadly. A man named Eric Garner was selling individual cigarettes on the street called loosies. Business owners called police because it was undercutting their ability to sell full packs of cigarettes, thereby costing them revenue. I get that. It however is not a police matter. It is a New York State Department of Revenue issue. It’s a tax stamp violation. Police were sent to handle it. Why? Using police as Department of Revenue officials was a bad idea. The precinct commander should have called the Department of Revenue director and had him or her send their employees to the location to hand out a citation or summons to Eric Garner. Officers relied on one of the few options they possess. They tried to arrest Eric Garner, who resisted. Garner later died of a heart attack in addition to many other poor health issues. So Eric Garner ends up dead and at least one officer involved was terminated. All this over NYPD officers being misused as de facto state revenue inspectors. This isn’t the first time it has happened.

After the death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a Department of Justice investigation that followed showed that the city relied heavily on its police department, especially for generating revenue through police traffic enforcement. I don’t have much use for then-Attorney General Eric Holder’s report, but it did have a valid claim on the misuse of police for things beyond protecting the public. It said in part, that, “A community where local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way to generate revenue.  A community where both policing and municipal court practices were found to disproportionately harm African American residents…and a community where all of these conditions, unlawful practices, and constitutional violations have not only severely undermined the public trust, eroded police legitimacy, and made local residents less safe – but created an intensely charged atmosphere where people feel under assault and under siege by those charged to serve and protect them. 

We continually ask officers to create and maintain good community relations. On the other hand, we ask them to engage in activities like giving them citations for picayune violations like parking meter violations. Nobody likes those. It leaves people resentful of police officers. How many times has an officer heard this: Don’t you have more important things to do? Many agencies have gotten away from officers looking out for and citing people for parking violations and the like, using civilian city employees to do that. Those functions should be expanded to include many things we currently send law enforcement officers to that are designed, not for order maintenance but to simply generate revenue.

I realize that traffic enforcement can yield at treasure trove of criminal activity. Officers can find prohibited persons illegally possessing guns, large amounts of illegal narcotics being moved and people wanted on serious felony warrants.

In the George Floyd case, Minneapolis officers were sent to the report of a guy passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Altering U.S. currency is a federal offense and the purview of the United States Secret Service. They should have been called to respond. But again. Don’t know who to call? Dial 911.

This issue came up in the recent police use of deadly force in Berkeley Center, Minnesota when the driver of a car, Duarte Wright, was pulled over for having expired registration plates and wait for this, having an air freshener tag dangling from his rear-view mirror. Sure, the driver was wanted for a felony warrant, but that was learned after the stop. The driver resisted arrest when one of the officers pulled what she thought was her Taser that mistakenly was her firearm and she shot and killed the driver. Over a traffic stop for dangling from the mirror air freshener? So Wright is dead and the officer has been charged with manslaughter and her 26-year career goes up in smoke. Wow.

Why am I focusing on this right now? Because this issue is part of the current attempt in the U.S. Congress to once again unnecessarily reform policing. HR 1280 in part addresses phasing out municipalities using traffic enforcement to derive a significant portion of their income from traffic fines. This increases police interaction that can turn deadly and sometimes over something as insignificant as vehicle mechanical issues. Why stop there? Let’s look at other misuses of police resources.

Can’t we avoid some of this? We should at least try for the sake of not the perpetrators but for the sake of the officers. Agencies should sit down and take an inventory of things that they currently have police handle and stop sending police resources to these things and find some other resource to handle it. Like we have done with traffic control, parking violations, loud music complaints and the like.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the city set up a Department of Neighborhood Resources where uniformed civilians respond to low-level and low-risk nuisance reports. It frees up the finite expensive resource of law enforcement officers for things like more time for preventive patrols in high crime areas and reducing response times for felony calls like robbery in progress or shots fired complaints.

I am an advocate of quality of life or order maintenance strategies. Let’s review what we are doing, however, to find a balance where both objectives can be met. Let’s find the sweet spot to reduce a police officer being used ineffectively, inefficiently, inappropriately and out of their realm of expertise that results in a bad outcome through no fault of the police. Otherwise, we will continue to be pushing back on the knee jerk response of calls to overhaul policing every time there is a police deadly use of force especially when it is done by agenda-driven two-bit politicians wanting to re-imagine, redefine and remake policing as they look to curry favor with cop-hating groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

 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