The Challenges of Police Reform and Transforming American Policing

Watch the Link Voices documentary, South Bureau Homicide, on our website. The film explores the roles of LAPD homicide detectives and a local communitys anti-violent crime activists, who together investigate and cope with the violence that plagues parts of South Los Angeles.

Lately I've been thinking about why only a small fraction of America's 18,000 police agencies -- and particularly their rank-and-file officers -- are seriously committed to police reform. A situation, I believe, that is currently the most important in the world of policing, because without their support or at least grudging acceptance, there can be no real police reform at a time when the nation and our cops desperately need it.

The hard facts of 2016 tell the story of why American policing is now facing an even more combustible reality than they encountered in the summer of 2014 -- when massive nationwide protests over killings and abuse by police officers fueled a national movement for police reform.

This past July, the unarmed black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot-dead by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and in suburban Minnesota within 48 hours of each other. Caught on iPhone cameras, many Americans were shocked and incredulous as they watched the shootings - just two of about 4,000 Americans killed by police since May 1, 2013.

Sparked by the deaths of Sterling and Castile, five police officers in Dallas were assassinated and seven others wounded by a black sniper just days later. Three Baton Rouge officers were then killed and three others wounded by a second black sniper. Both assassins were young military veterans who'd served in either Iraq or Afghanistan; and were incensed by the killings of black men by the police.

Then, last October, an African American man wearing body armor attempted to assassinate two police officers in Vallejo, CA, and was foiled only because his assault-weapon jammed; while in Palm Springs,CA two police officers were killed and one wounded by a Latino gunmen wearing body armor and firing an AR-15 rifle at police officers.

In short, 2016 has added to an already volatile mix of deadly violence visited on our police officers in retaliation for controversial, caught-on-camera police violence against unarmed citizens.

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All of which should make starkly clear to everyone -- and particularly street cops -- that what's now required to avoid potentially disastrous, police-centered racial violence, is a fundamental transformation of the oppressive policing that's been the profession's modus operandi over the past 30 years; and an equally fundamental reimagining of its mission, officer-selection criteria, and training.

Remarkably, as previously mentioned, it is the passive resistance or outright hostility to reform among vast numbers of street cops, mid-level managers and sergeants and lieutenants in the field that is most standing in the way of police reform. The questions therefore, are: Why does this attitude exist? How can reformers convince cops that reform is not a dirty word, but actually good for them? What kind of training should officers be given that will change the culture and operating philosophy of these agencies?

How can reformers convince cops that reform is not a dirty word, but actually good for them?

The Problem

American policing has its roots in the mission of controlling slaves, indentured-servants, and other poor people -- mostly using violence as its first option. Over the past 30 years this proclivity has exploded as militarized warrior cops, with a mission of amassing the highest possible numbers of arrests, eagerly did that job. Always conservative, the hard-charging attitude that fueled those wars now remains deeply cemented in police culture. And lays at the heart of the problem.

That culture, says Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle, represents the paramilitary, bureaucratic organizational arrangement of American policing -- one that is notoriously resistant to reform through community policing, de-escalation, providing advanced education for officers and handling the mentally ill.

How can the police work with communities to make them safer?

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The wars' on crime, drugs, and terrorism define [this cultures] strategies, operations, training and recruitment, says Frank Straub, the Director of Strategic Studies at the Police Foundation, and a former police chief. Community engagement and programs -- to the extent that they exist -- are [regarded as] the work of specialized officers and/or units that are typically viewed as distracting

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