The Broken System.

Between 2013 and 2019, police in the United States killed 7,666 people according to data compiled by Mapping Police Violence, a research group. Despite making up 13% of the US population, Black Americans are two and a half times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans. Michel Brown, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner and now George Floyd are unfortunately amongst the names that have become a symbol of police brutality against Black Americans.

Whilst being a minority allows me to empathise with racial mistreatment, sadly when it comes to police brutality the American police force have a bad reputation, especially against Black Americans. In Utah, despite African Americans making just 1.06% of the population, they amounted to 10% of the police killings over the past 7 years. In Minnesota, Black Americans are four times more likely to be killed by law enforcement then White Americans.

Whilst there is undeniable racism in the American policing system, the issue runs deeper. It is not just the individual officers that are killing innocent minorities, the American policing system is allowing these officers to get away with these murders with little to no accountability. The police are excessively protected from consequences and the training they receive is fundamentally flawed and instigates the violence we see.

Seth Stoughton, who was a city policeman for 5 years and a state investigator for 2 and a half years, says that it is not the abilities of the police that is an issue but it is “what they are trained to do that is part of the problem”. He reported that the police are trained to always be on their guard to protect themselves from threats. Whilst this is justified on the premise that the police are risking their lives to protect communities, the issue that this brings is that it creates an overly aggressive police force. Seth Stoughton stated that as part of his and most officers training, they are taught to neutralise threats before they manifest. This proactive policing leads to innocent people being killed that posed no threat. Sadly, this is exemplified by the murder of George Floyd and many other African Americans throughout history.

According to the police executive research forum, American police are trained with 8 hours in conflict de-escalation but receive 129 hours of weapons and combat training. It cannot be correct that the police receive 16 times more training on how to use violence rather than how to avoid it. 93% of the respondents received firearm training whilst only 65% (the second-lowest figure) received de-escalation training and the lowest category of training was communication skills. This shows that the policing system favours the use of force and anticipates violence rather than taking a diplomatic approach to handle issues and avoid the need of force.

This fear-based proactive policing has, in some instances, gone too far. Professor Dave Grossman’s training service is one example of this. Professor Grossman teaches what is known as warrior policing which is consumed by thousands of American police officers. He also founded killology which is the study of combat in which he describes police officers as soldiers and uses words like enemy and target throughout his work. In the minds of the thousands of law enforcement officers, this will create a more aggressive and adversarial mentality instead of a mentality that is compassionate and seeks to de-escalation situations. He teaches that to fight violence, you need to use “superior violence” and says that “violence is a tool” and “violence is the realm we (police officers) operate in”.

Whilst some may argue that this has no real bearing on policing tactics, this is sadly not true. Officer Jeronimo Yanez, who killed the innocent Philando Castile by firing 7 shots, was an attendant of Professor Dave Grossman’s warrior training. Whilst the training was not the sole cause of the killing, it played a part. Whilst human error is inevitable the American policing system needs to work actively to reduce these controllable factors that increase the chances of excessive force being used and to reduce these controllable factors that exacerbate aggressive policing.

There is also a lack of consequence from police misconduct. Whilst softer penalties for mistakes are justified as police officers are putting their lives at risk, this protection has been taken a step too far for misconduct. The is mainly due to qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is a legal rule which means that when you sue a police officer you have to prove that the officer has violated a clearly established right of yours. However, a right is not considered clearly established until someone successfully sues an officer for violating it. This brings a cyclical issue which is best seen with an incident involving Deputy Michael Vickers and 10-year-old Dakota Corbitt. In Corbitt v Vickers the deputy attempted to shoot a dog but hit the child in the leg. However, when the Corbitt family attempted to sue the police officer it was thrown out of the courts as there had never been a previous case where an officer was trying to shoot a dog and hit a child. This means that the police can commit crimes and get away with it so long as nobody has done it before.

Even when there has been misconduct and an officer is convicted there are usually rules to stop public discourse of this information. In half of the US states, the police get to keep records of police misconduct confidential, there is no central database where this information is stored. This means that there is no way that the public can know the track record of an officer who may be a regular offender. On top of this when these files are made more accessible the police find ways to block or water down the effect of these laws. In 2019 California passed laws to allow public access to the police records. However, Inglewood City Council allowed the destruction of the records of over 100 police shooting and investigations so they could not be accessed by the public. This stops the officers involved in these shootings and investigations from being held to account and allows police misconduct to slide under the raider.

There are also laws that allow for a periodic deletion of police records which aids this lack of accountability. When comparing this to doctors, who can have their medical license revoked for misconduct, or American lawyers, who would be disbarred for misconduct, it is surprising that American police get this level of protection even when they have done something that is clearly wrong. This can pose as a source of confidence to police that even if they do something wrong, they will not face the repercussions.

To compound this issue police unions come into play. Not only do they seek to do normal union work such as representation, but they seek to shield officers from consequences via special terms in police contracts. This includes having collective bargaining agreements with individual police agencies which often put limits and controls on police discipline and investigations.

However, some police contracts go beyond just this. In Chicago, after the police killed Laquan McDonald their union deal gave officers 24 hours before they were required to comment on what happened, to review the footage. Adam Gross who is part of the police oversight working group said that this institutionalises private understandings among police officers, and he fears that these grace periods allow for officers to collude and concoct a story of what happened. They can work out the details and make it seems as though there was little to no misconduct or where there was force that it was justified. The COASE-SANDOR institution stated that when deputies in Florida got union contracts violent misconduct complaints went up 40%. This clearly shows that the power of these unions is too great and is harming the standard of policing in America.

Even if these terms do not make it into union contracts, they still have legal bearing due to the Law Enforcement’s Bill of Rights. These Bill of Rights provide the same protection as a union contract in the form of state laws. There are currently 16 states with these laws ranging from California and Florida. This further enshrines the negative impact that unions have on the America police force.

Unions do not see it as their function to enforce positive policing, their function is to protect their members. This protection does, however, comes at the cost of obstruction and justice. Unions have gotten paid leave for officers that have killed, they have made it almost impossible to investigate anonymous claims against officers and as mentioned protected the identities of officers that constantly conform with misconduct. This combination of factors creates more space for misconduct and leads to a lack of repercussions.

The onus falls on prosecutors to charge and convict these guilty police officers with their crimes and hold them to account for their actions. However, the prosecutors depend on the police in investigations to produce witnesses and to testify. Thus, the prosecutors rely on the police as they play a key role in how effectively they can do their job. This usually forces prosecutors in a tough place which often leads to no charges being brought against guilty officers.

This was seen in Sacramento, where the District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, failed to bring charges against the police officers that killed the innocent Stephan Clarke. It was later found that the District Attorney was given a “donation” from two police unions just days after the murder. Subsequently, no criminal charges were brought. This shows the underhanded dealings that go on in the American policing system, not only are prosecutors inherently reliant on the police which makes them ineffective, there is underlying corruption in the system.

However, there have been active steps to reduce this concoction of factors that allow for tyranny. In the wake of Philando Castile’s death, the city of Minneapolis, banned warrior training. However, the effects of this have been limited. Whilst the city can deny paying for this training, they cannot outlaw it and cannot control officers who voluntarily attend such programmes in their own time. This led to the police union partnering with Law Officer Training to offer free warrior style training to any officer that wants it. Whilst legally there has been a change, in reality, the opposite has happened. It is now easier and cheaper for officers to receive training which makes them overly aggressive and more likely to use excessive force which played a part in Philando Castile’s murder.

Whilst these issues affect all American citizens, it sadly affects black Americans disproportionally. In Ferguson, the mostly white police force unfairly target black residents. Of the 21,000 people that live in Ferguson 16,000 of them have an arrest warrant. 96% of these people were black and the arrest warrants were for very minor offences. Whilst some incidents of this unfair behaviour can be attributed to individual officers, to reach this level of bias it takes an entirely faulted system.

Thus, if we need to take something forward from the unfortunate events that have persistently occurred to black people, it is not only the police officers that are at fault, but it is also a system that needs to be changed. This means tackling unions, legal protections and fear-based training. If the police are held to a different standard to the rest of society it should be a higher one. They need to be given interpersonal training and de-escalation training to stop them ever needing to use force.

Whilst this is an article showing the issues with policing and racial bias, this is not to say all police are bad. There are some very fair police officers who have supported the black lives matter movement and helped protect those peacefully protesting. We must stand together to fight for what is right. Unfair treatment to one is unfair treatment to all. We were all born equal and we must take a stand to ensure that we are treated as equal.