Finding solutions: former police Chief Norm Stamper on how cops can get it wrong

From big city mayors to Congress to the Obama administration, America seems to be grasping for solutions when it comes to policing the police and changing how law enforcement is conducted. Sparked by the protests in Ferguson, Mo., after a police officer shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown, there seems to be no end to the controversies — and those are just the ones caught on tape.

Chicago has faced its own reckoning in the wake of the release of videos that showed Police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel formed the Police Accountability Task Force, which delivered a blistering rebuke of the CPD, but also offered a pathway toward reform and garnered a substantial list of promises from the city. The New York Times offered its own look at barriers to reforming police departments in a piece that ends with a thought from The Invisible Institute’s Jamie Kalven, stating what seems like the obvious but has become an objective no one is quite sure how to achieve:

“The procedural justice stuff is fine in itself,” Kalven said. “But accountability should have priority. If people don’t have confidence there are limits to police power, the absence of that confidence just undermines initiatives like procedural justice — if it doesn’t impeach them altogether.”

Enter Norm Stamper and a new book entitled To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America’s Police.

Stamper, who served for nearly 30 years as an officer in San Diego before becoming chief of the Seattle Police Department from 1994 to 2000, resigned as head of the department after controversy surrounding the use of tear gas against WTO demonstrators. Stamper has called for the legalization of marijuana and the end of the death penalty — certainly not the typical law enforcement view. He addressed Chicago’s woes specifically in a recent piece for The Nation calling for the “structural ‘demilitarization’ and complete overhaul of American law enforcement.” Stamper wants to end America’s drug war, institute national certification for police officers and departments and institute citizen oversight over police.

Our interview is edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why did you want to write this book?

The fact of the matter is shortly after Ferguson erupted I got a call from my publisher and they said we need another book from you. I said that’s not going to happen. … Two weeks later I called her back and said, ‘I cave.’ So this was kind of a have-to-write book. I felt very strongly that the unfolding recommendations for reform, while pretty much all positive and headed in the right direction, were insufficient to meet the challenge of reforming policing. That was where I was coming from.

I am convinced that’s what’s needed is fundamental reform, not tinkering with the system.

Q: We have a tendency to think things are the worst they’ve ever been. Where do you see us today, in terms of law enforcement’s relationship with the community?

You’re asking a very important question that has been unasked and unanswered generally over the last couple years. I cite someone in the book that I say why are things looking and feeling … so much worse now? He said from the perspective of the black community there has been no change.

Police officers and police work have really not changed all that much. What’s new, and he picked up my iPhone, which I was using as a recording device. Now, from his point of view, white people were now seeing what (black communities) have always seen. I thought that was a very telling comment. He was raised in Watts and his father moved him to Westwood. My purpose in talking to him was to talk about ‘the talk’ black parents give to their children. What he said really hit home for me because I had my own experiences when I heard on the radio and then read an account of a particularly controversial shooting in Seattle. At first blush I thought well, what a tragic shooting, necessary, but tragic. This was Officer Ian Birk who shot and killed John T. Williams, a native woodcarver, back in 2010. I get my news the way most people do, reading online.

I drew that conclusion it was one of those lawful but awful shootings, somebody attacking the officer with a knife. And then they released the video. Just like anybody else who saw what I saw, I was left with certain conclusions. As the investigation unfolded … it became very clear it was an unnecessary shooting. I think now what is happening is that people are seeing and hearing evidence of the actual events.

The Michael Slager, Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina. The Tamir Rice shooting in Cleveland, where you have actual footage. You’re left with an entirely different impression that you might have by reading an account. … Take the Laquan McDonald shooting in Chicago.

All the other officers at the scene have their guns holstered. They felt this wasn’t a case that required force, much less lethal force. And yet their account supported what Van Dyke, the officer, was saying. The institution is now facing the reality that there are witnesses other than police that can draw their own conclusions.

Q: Do you believe there has been a widespread effort in police efforts to cover up murders, unjustified police shootings, and police brutality?

I believe that to be the case. While most police officers are decent and honorable and committed to public service and often times courageous, there are far too many police officers who have fallen into a trap. They believe they are in charge of everything. We can label that arrogance and I do. But we can also plumb a little deeper … we can look at the system. We can focus on the culture that produces this kind of behavior. It is from that culture that these incidents emerge. We tend to fixate on the incident... That’s understandable. If there’s wrongdoing than individual officers must pay the price. (But)what happens if we don’t invest the really hard work that’s necessary to understand what gave rise to that incident?

We’ll be back a year later or two or three years later and wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth and wondering what’s wrong with policing.

Q: Some police feel handcuffed by videos and new policies that make it harder to do their jobs, while others in the community want cops to back off. Whats the middle ground?

I would characterize it as new ground. My prescription for so many of these problems is multi-faceted but at the heart of it is that that the police in America belong to the people, not the other way around. What’s needed is a radical shift in the attitudes of law enforcement. If a police department opens itself up to very broad community participation in everything from policymaking, to program development to crisis management to participation in the hiring decisions, to participation in entry level and in-service training … if the police work is in full authentic partnership with people in their communities then … we’ll actually start to see much healthier neighborhoods. It’s this sort of realization that public safety is a community-wide responsibility. It is not just the cops, a neighborhood watch. We’ll begin to see major reductions in crime.

That gets to the essence of true community policing, not cosmetic versions of it, or PR versions of it, which I’m afraid characterize almost all community policing programs in this country.

Q: Is that the biggest impediment or hardest part of reform, for police departments to say that citizens have real control or input?

Yes, that is the biggest impediment. It’s the insulated and often times isolated police culture. The organization has grown up, the institution has grown up, as a paramilitary, bureaucratic organization in every community across the country. You have this formidable fortress against community participation. The arcane language police officers use, the attitude they convey, they know what’s best for the community.

To be fair and to highlight one of the most promising aspects of a true partnership between community and police is that we need to educate the citizens of America that your police do have a considerable body of knowledge and a set of skills and considerable experience to help you police your community. I’ve always said that true community policing is a community policing itself with a lot of help from your partners in blue. If we can imagine breaking through those barriers, which is not going to happen by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week… and actually forging an authentic partnership there’s no end to the good that can come from that.

One of the biggest complaints of cops is ‘I don’t have time to do community policing.’ Community policing is not something you do to somebody, it’s not something you do in your spare time between taking 911 calls and busting bad people. It’s a way of thinking, it’s a way of being in the community. No single police department anywhere in the country has achieved a level of commitment to true community policing I think is necessary.

Q: Talk about what’s happening in Chicago and I wonder if you think these reforms are possible.

Chicago is near and dear to my heart because I’ve done a lot of work there as a consultant and a trainer and an expert witness. I think what is happening in Chicago today is predictive of what could easily happen in other big cities in this country unless we reverse many current trends. The panel that Emanuel put together I think did a great job, just as I think Obama’s panel did a great job in … analyzing the problems and developing some good solutions for those problems.

But in both cases and in every other case dating back to the Wickersham Commission in 1931, what happens is they inevitably fall shy of that one recommendation I think would make a huge difference: it’s reengineering the way policing is organized. Organizational structure does give rise to a workplace culture. What has to happen I’m convinced is a deep de-bureaucratization, de-militarization process.

We must forge this partnership. That’s against the backdrop of another one of my recommendations, which will not endear me to my former colleagues in the business:

That is, I believe it is time for the federal government to set national standards for police performance and conduct, or at a minimum for police conduct.

There are roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in this country but only one Constitution. Don’t engage in unlawful search and seizure, you don’t engage in unlawful stop and frisk.

I think police officers, the institution of police, is responsible for more violations of the Constitution than any other entity in the country when in fact the police are strategically positioned to be defenders of their fellow Americans civil liberties, but that requires a fundamental shift in the attitudes and certainly in the behavior of police officers.

What if we had a certification process? Binding in all 50 states on all organizations and each individual within that organization that would say, you get de-certified in New York, you can’t become an LAPD cop. That would go a long ways toward rooting out some of these renegade cops you see.

Those two recommendations alone, true community policing with citizens constituting the spine of your model and more big government, federal government participation in every aspect. And for me, the third and terribly important prescription is to end the drug war. Where Nixon proclaimed drug abuse public enemy number one and declared all out war… every president since has signed on to the drug war, we make enemies, literally tens of millions of of Americans over the years. Tens of millions, disproportionally young and poor.

What it has said to the cops is the people are your enemy.

I’m careful in my mind and on the page that there are evil people out there. There are bad people that would just as soon shoot you as look at you. And I think it’s vital the police take public safety and their crime fighting responsibilities very, very seriously but they not do it alone, they team up with the community to reduce that crime.

Every once in awhile, I’ll come across cops who says ‘you’re asking me to be a social worker! That’s not why I hired on.’ I hired on to bust bad people. Well, at maximum, even in the biggest, meanest cities, about 20 percent of your time is spent in what we’d call crime-fighting. Most of the time you’re involved in public order issues, from traffic to missing juveniles to potential bar room fights and things like that. What you’re on the streets to do essentially is to keep public safety. And that might mean conflict management.

It might mean, at the heart of it, a modern police officers job description should be de-escalation.

Q: Are more people, police officers, changing or are you a lone voice? Are more people coming over to what you’re saying?

I’m not reluctant to acknowledge to you that some of the best ideas I get are from people opposing my position. They’re saying how in the hell can you possibly create a community based police department when the community has got other things to do, the citizens have other things on their mind? I say I don’t know, tell me? How do we recruit candidates for such a position? How do we screen them?

To get directly to your question, I think there are many people in this country … who see things the way I do, with variations here and there, but who are oftentimes beholden to their positions and worried about speaking openly and freely. I’m not talking about attacking policing but I’m certainly talking about confronting policing and not with rocks and bottles and not with name calling and certainly not with physical violence. How do we create a safe place for people to have that conversation and forge the conversation so the conversation continues week after week and month after month and year after year? I think there are people who want just that.

There are people who say this is a pipe dream, this is converting cops into social workers, I don’t want any part of it. But more often than not when good and willing minds come together you start coming up with some really good solutions.