Police Reform: A Lost Cause?

“Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.” — Clarence Darrow

I have to admit I can get pretty despondent over the pace of police reform in our country — is it a lost cause? (I have studied, worked in, and been part of this system and its problem for nearly 60 years!)

I don’t want to think of police reform in a free society as a “lost cause.” Yet if I still wore a set of dog tags from my days as a Marine I would add the tag “Hope springs eternal” to remind me that we have a strong, resilient government and that “this, too, shall pass.”

So, what have I learned over the years about the cause for which I profess? I have learned that improving a system like policing (especially on a national basis which involves about 600,000 police in 18,000 agencies) takes time and much longer than most of us (including elected officials and community leaders) are willing to give.

The problem is that we look at change in America in 4-year segments — terms of elected office. And that’s simply too short a period of time to change much of anything. In my experience, to significantly alter the culture and practices of an organization’s culture and practices like a police department takes at least seven and more likely ten. But we seem to never talk about it this glaring fact of life.

So, mayors and commissions, not thinking about this fact of life, pick nice, capable, often charismatic police leaders who are short on how to actually implement needed change and have been too immersed in the culture in which they developed their ideas about leadership. Actually, there are too few police leaders in our nation who understand the change process and what it takes. This is not a prescription for police reform.

Of course, reform is not just about the man or woman on top, it’s about the organization, its values and practices which can implement the right values of justice and fairness in our society, along with leaders who are mature, emotionally intelligent, and value human persons. It’s also about those leaders having the passion, patience and persistence to embody those values during the upward climb in their careers and, have been able to influence those around them to the way they do policing.

I have to admit after watching what happened after the report of the 1967 President’s Commission and the 2015 Task Force Report, that the only way I see for significant and continuing reform is some kind of intervention and regulation by the federal government which is designed to work with failing police agencies and their communities. Much along the lines that we have seen the U.S. Department of Justice do with a number of our nation’s police agencies.

That has been most commonly done through consent decrees oriented toward improving the constitutionality of policing practices and after an investigation found done blatant civil rights violations.

What does that record look like? Since 1994, over 60 cities and counties have come under a federal consent decree. Twenty police agencies are currently under a consent decree which involves a federal court-appointed monitor and oversight by that court.

Consent decrees are, however, a mixed bag as to how effective this type of reform is. Has it improved policing in those cities? For example, Michael Wood, a self-described police management scholar and former Baltimore police officer makes the argument that even consent decrees cannot bring about the reform that is needed today.

For example, Cincinnati is the city that has been longest under federal oversight. It’s been over 15 years now and I think it is fair to say that reform has been slow – but, perhaps, a fairer question might be, what would Cincinnati be today without this intervention?

Whatever way you come out on the effectiveness of consent decrees, you have to admit that it is one heck of a way to run a police department. Wouldn’t a well-trained, emotionally intelligent, and experienced police leader be a better approach?

Of course, anyone who follows national politics and police will know that the option of using federal consent decrees to improve police is now a moot point under the current administration as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, appears adamantly opposed to such intervention into a “local matter” – even with a well-founded suspicion of long-term and egregious civil rights violations by that local police department. After all, is not policing and its improvement a local matter that is best undertaken by the community? But we all know too well that policing ceases to be a local matter when a person’s civil rights are ignored.

So where does that leave police improvement and reform? This is what I have learned about it:

1. Change takes time; sustaining any of the improvements made takes even longer.
2. The central factor (but not only one) in police reform is the chief of police. He or she must be experienced, mature and with strong internalized constitutional and ethical values.
3. It is not enough to have a chief with these characteristics, he or she must also be able to show they can practice what I call “Quality Leadership;” a collaborative, data-based servant-style of leadership that is focussed on the community and not solely on the police department. This will also require those leaders to have strong Emotional Intelligence.
4. As Jim Collins wrote a number of years ago in his book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” (2001), it’s important to put the right people “on the bus” and be able to get those of the bus who aren’t willing to be on the improvement team. (And that requires a leader who has wide latitude in police officer hiring, assignment, and promotion.)
5. Collins also identified the best leaders as “Level 5 Leaders;” those “who display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They’re incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves.”
6. Changing and improving police, however, is not a singular, top-down effort. Reform police chiefs must have a mayor, city council members and community leaders in their corner. Without community-wide support and understanding why improvement needs to happen, change will either never begin or soon falter.
7. Within the department, formal and informal leaders must be able to be the values professed. It’s also important for them to see there can be self-interest in what is  trying to be accomplished; to see that improvement can benefit them as well as the community at large. For without understanding what is being proposed is best for them as well and the road on which they are asked to travel, needed changes will never be sustained.
8. Leading a change process takes constant, informed, and energetic cheerleaders for reform. That requires leaders who are able to “tell, sell, persuade” others; rank and file officers, elected officials, and the community at large, that what is being proposed is good for everyone. A good example is the practice of what is called Procedural Justice. (PJ). When building trust between citizens and police, trust is a primary police objective and it can be periodically measured. Measurement enables improvements to be given some substance. When community members report they were treated with dignity and respect during a police contact a deposit is made in the police “trust bank.” And when PJ is also practiced within the ranks of the police department, police officers will sense they are working in a fairer, more-rewarding and safer environment. The beneficiaries of PJ are not only to citizens who encounter police, but also police officers in their daily work. That is because in order to make PJ work it must also be practiced within the ranks of the police agency as well as the community.
9. I would add to my learning that which I have written in two of my books (where I explain this in greater detail and illustrate an actual successful and sustained process of change).

• Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off About Protest, Racism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police. (2017).
• How to Rate Your Local Police (1983/2015).
• Further information on successful reform can be obtained by reviewing a two-year, outside study of police reform in Madison, Wisconsin by the National Institute of Justice: “Community Policing in Madison: Quality from the Inside Out” NIJ (1993).

11. Over the years, the successful process of improving a police agency is all about what a learned professor told me years ago, “It’s not what you say, it’s what comes out the spout!” And the spout for me has been a police organization staffed my mature, educated, well-trained, emotionally controlled men and women who are committed to working with and respecting community members in solving problems they, the community, identify.

12. Finally, I have learned that community-identified problems are the problems on which police need to work (and not the problems they think need addressing). As a primary example, the problem the community sees with police use of deadly force needs to be addressed openly, respectfully, and honestly with the community. It is there and then they will find how to use less-than-deadly methods to contain persons NOT threatening with a firearm. Once that problem is addressed and the numbers go down I am confident community trust in their police will rise. In the meantime, police must connect and stay connected with those whom they serve — all of them — and continue to assure fellow citizens by example that they are primarily in the business of protecting and saving lives.

I pray that the proper and effective policing of a free society is not a lost cause, that it is possible and inevitable. And that after I no longer walk upon the earth, there are young men and women today who will carry this cause across the finish line and hear the community raise their voice as one:

“Yes, we have a learned, trusted, effective, and respected police of which we all support and take pride in.”

from Improving Police https://ift.tt/2LhRTP3