A Return To Mayberry
I think it is safe to say the divide between the media, the community, and the police has taken a turn for the worse in the last few years. Every use of force situation captured on video is endlessly Monday morning quarterbacked on the 24 hour news cycle. The community, especially minority communities, perceives a police force becoming more militaristic and racist. The police as a whole feel as though they are under attack, where a few tragic and isolated gut wrenching examples of misconduct overshadow the thousands of police/citizen contacts carried out flawlessly everyday. This is a problem in need of a solution. We all have our opinion on where the blame lies. But, despite where one believes the blame belongs, everyone must contribute to the solution. The solution is a TWO WAY STREET.
In this post I attempt to tackle what I think are two major points of contention between the police and the community. The first: the charge police are becoming too militaristic (in turn harming community policing efforts). The second: the notion there is pervasive racism throughout American law enforcement and as a result police unjustly use force against minorities at a disproportionate rate. I suspect my thoughts on the subject will be met with sharp disagreement from both sides of the debate. When both sides are angered, I think it means you are on to a solution.
Military Image & Its Effect on Community Policing
The rift, the divide, the downward spiral, began its rapid descent (in this writer’s opinion) when President Obama declared the Cambridge, MA Police “acted stupidly” after they arrested a Harvard University professor. President Obama made the statement despite admitting he had yet to see all the facts. Rank and file police officers and their unions became apocalyptic, and the rift never truly healed between the White House and police unions. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported police unions now hope to repair their damaged White House relationship with the new administration. One of the outcomes police are seeking is a reversal of President Obama’s executive order banning local police departments from purchasing military style equipment from the Federal government.
I’d like to take some time to explain my view on how the “military style equipment” is both necessary for the local police departments and damaging to the police/community/media relations so badly in need of repair. I believe one of the things causing this divide between the police and the community is how the equipment, while necessary, is used and displayed.
The rank and file police feel as though they are being unfairly maligned as too quick to use force and target minorities. I agree with them, but for right now I’m going to set that debate aside and address it below. Whether or not it is true, there is a perception in many communities that this is the case, and as public servants it is the job of the police to fix this perception. When some officers are dressed and carrying equipment appearing (to some) as though they are preparing to invade a foreign country it is tough to fix the perception officers are out looking to use force. To do this “a return to Mayberry” is necessary and “Officer Friendly” needs to return (in other words, “community policing”).
I remember a college professor speaking about how the air conditioner had damaged police community relations. Prior to air conditioning becoming a standard feature in vehicles and homes, police and the community interacted with greater frequency because on hot summer evenings families were out in their yards, and police officers had their cruiser windows down or were out on a foot beat. This caused a natural human interaction and people knew their neighborhood cops just as they knew their mail carriers, like in Andy Griffith’s “Mayberry”. While “community policing” is definitely both a buzzword in law enforcement and a priority in many jurisdictions, it’s difficult to implement. When a police officer begins his or her shift and gets into their car with a ½ dozen calls for service pending, it’s tough to get out and engage a community.
This brings us to the “military style” equipment departments have been banned from buying. The Wall Street Journal article describes this equipment as “tank-like armored vehicles, grenade launchers and other equipment.” If we are going to expect our police, even ones in sleepy suburbia towns, to arrest violent murder suspects on the occasions they occur, we have to allow them to have the equipment necessary to do it as safe as possible and return to their families. Providing officers an armored vehicle to safely approach the house should not be an unreasonable request.
Further, when a city is seeing mass civil disobedience, the “grenade launchers” become pretty useful to deploy tear gas and protect people and the property which could be the lifeblood of some family’s mom and pop business from being burnt to the ground. But with these tools, the “return to Mayberry” philosophy should be at the front of the department’s thinking. While the armored vehicle may be a hit on display at the department open house, it doesn’t help the “Officer Friendly” image, nor does publicly prepositioning it as a “show of force” or deterrent at a large community festival help. Police departments should put the equipment away and aim for the Mayberry image, only bringing them out when necessary.
Police uniforms have also evolved the last decade, and for good reason, but also in my opinion to the detriment of the police image. Departments have moved away from the polyester shirts and dress/slack style pants to a more BDU (military look) version, which includes cotton shirts, cargo pants and in some cases the ballistic vest being worn over the uniform in a tactical style carrier. I get why this happened. It is far more functional to have cargo pockets and be wearing cotton instead of polyester on a 90 degree day with 95% humidity. The laundry bill is also significantly less when everything does not need to be dry cleaned. I’m not sure the general public understands the amount of sweat that collects underneath a ballistic vest, and how uncomfortable it is to wear over an 8, 12, or 16 hour day. However, to many in a community with a perception (and to them perception is reality) the police are to quick to use force, these new uniforms look very aggressive, and hurts the “Officer Friendly” image that is desperately needed.
Racism & Use of Force
These steps alone will not solve the problem and the rest of the community needs to be involved as well, because as mentioned above the solution is a TWO WAY STREET. While perception may be reality in some communities, the false narrative that there is an epidemic of racism throughout American police officers must be dispelled and the voices spreading this narrative should be countered with facts. First I will stipulate, as a New York Times article points out, the African American community is far more likely to be the subject of the use of force by the police than other demographics. However, Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute points out other eye opening numbers and facts:
- Roland Freyer, a professor at Harvard University, conducted a study where he analyzed 1,000 police shooting and found no evidence of racial bias in the shootings.
African Americans do make up 26% of the victims of police shootings while only being 12% of the population, but this statistic can not be looked at in a vacuum, and context is needed for the reasoning behind the numbers. African Americans make up 15% of the population in America’s 75 largest counties, yet African Americans were charged with: 62% of robberies, 57% of murders, and 45% of assaults. In New York City, African Americans account for 23% of the population yet they commit over 75% of the shootings.
FBI data noted African Americans are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. 40 percent of cop killers are African American. According to MacDonald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person.
Heather Mac Donald explains the use of force disparity by saying “Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force”
“There is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police. The proactive policing revolution that began in the mid 1990s has dramatically brought down the inner-city murder rate and saved tens of thousands of black lives.” –Heather Mac Donald
America’s inner-cities have issues which need to be solved. This includes the disproportionate amount of violent crime happening in these communities and the perception police are too quick to use force against minorities. The police are vital to fixing both of these issues. To remedy the disproportionate violent crime rate, departments cannot be banned from purchasing equipment from the Federal government the policing professionals have used to dramatically lower violent crime the last two decades. However, the police need to increase discretion when this equipment and show of force is used. A concerted effort by the police to change the perception and “return to Mayberry” is critical. The police require the trust of their community to effectively combat the violent crime epidemic in America’s communities of color. The police are public servants and it is their job to pivot and regain the trust. Hopefully, this will give rise to other voices of reason in the inner-cities to counter the false racist police narrative, and allow traffic to flow freely on the two way street…through Mayberry.
