Policing: Contemporary Issues and Challenges

Everyday Actions

People person profession

  • Interacting with the public

  • Annually: 1/5 Americans have interactions with police (60 million)

What might discourage people to call police?

  • What might discourage you from calling the police?

    • minding your own business

    • Response time

    • Its embarrassing

What do you expect from the call to police?

  • police being professional

  • Want the issue to be resolved

  • Tell us what to do

Police Discretion

The most powerful tool officer have

When and how to use it depends on:

  • The nature of the crime/incident

    • Lower level traffic crimes vs murder

  • The relationship between alleged criminal/victim

    • Domestic violence

  • The relationship between police and alleged criminal/victim

    • This criminal reminds me of my own kid!

  • Race/ethnicity, age, gender, class relationships

  • Departmental policy

Domestic Violence as an example:

  • Historically: a private matter not for police to interact with

  • Now: Mandates arrests

How else might discretion impact police/citizen relationships

  • Can create inconsistencies for one person getting arrested and another person won’t

Use of Force

Justifying your actions

As a civilian: fear from your life

Officer: when you use force, use it, emphasis on your training

Use of Force Continuum

  1. Officer presence - Least Severe

  2. Verbal Direction

  3. Soft Empty Hand Techniques

  4. Hard Empty Hand Techniques

  5. Intermediate Weapons - Most Severe

Split Second Decisions

  • Sometimes more obvious, sometimes very troubling

Using Force

  • Again, a continuum

  • Least severe to most severe

We often see the most severe

  • least severe goes unseen

  • And context is important too!

    • (You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? - Kamala Harris)

Michael Brown Shooting

  • 18 years old, suspect in a robbery of convenience store, (threat of violence, mini cigar was stolen), Officer Darren Wilson shows up at store, gets info. Drives away trying to find 2 people who match the description of the suspects. Pulls up next to Michael brown and friend. Talks to them for a bit, Michael brown refuses to stop, and the cop uses his car to block the sidewalk. Brown gets to the intersection and there is some hand fighting between them at the car window. Brown tries to get the cops gun (evidence supports this). Brown goes into the street,

  • Department of Justice investigated the shooting and ruled it to be justified

    • Evidence backed up Wilson’s story of events

    • Found evidence of racism between the officers and the community

    • Ferguson (the town) told the police department to raise funds (did so through fines, tickets)

  • the whole situation was through the environment of Ferguson

  • Unarmed black citizens are 2x more likely to be shot when compared to white citizens

Tennessee v Garner (1985)

  • By law, officers can legally use force to make arrest and to protect the public

    • Split second decision, interpretation, and context of system

  • Him using deadly force was a seizure of the body (violating 4 amendment)

    • “I didn’t know he had a fire arm, I just assumed”

  • Officers have to have probable cause that the person poses a significant threat of violence to the officer or the community

    • If not it is an unlawful seizure of the person

Accountability - Civilian Review Boards

Accountability

  • What does it look like?

  • Qualified Immunity - As long as they are doing their job and they don’t clearly violate established law, they are protected

Public often demands an independent review board

  • Blue wall of silence

  • Lack of Trust in IA (Internal Affairs)

Civilian Review Board (picked due to their expertise, not random)

  • Review/oversee how complaints are handled

  • They do not investigate or discipline → recommend actions

  • Criticism → Civilians don’t understand the nature/day to day of the job

Accountability - Civil Suits

Suits filled for: use of force, dangerous driving, false arrests, civil rights issues, etc.

  • More of a punishment for the department/city than officer

  • More likely than officer-specific discipline→ Qualified Immunity

    • Grants immunity while preforming discretionary functions as long as the officer did not violate “clearly established statutory of Constitutional rights”

    • Allows for mistakes to be made when acting in good faith

    • Difficult to overcome with regards to officer accountability/discipline

Body cameras?

  • Issues good and bad:

    • Who Pays for them, how long do you keep the footage, when do you turn them on/off, who has access to footage, what about missing footage?

Abuse of Power

A continuum

From disobeying policy to committing crimes

Some we see on the news (most troublesome), most we don’t (use of discretion)

  1. Least problem (accepting gratuities, free coffees at Tim Hortons)

    1. They can become an issue, many departments have policies against it

  2. Playing Favorites

  3. Minor Bribes

  4. Being above “inconvenient Laws”

    1. Violation of speeding, smoking weed, drinking

  5. Role malfeasance

    1. Destruction of evidence, biased testimony, protection of “crooked cops”

  6. Major Bribes

  7. Property Crimes

  8. Criminal Enterprise

  9. Denial of Civil Rights

  10. Violent Crimes

2010 - 2019

  • 85,000 officers facing at least 200,000 incidents of alleged misconduct

  • only 10% faced investigations (does not mean that they got disciplined)

  • Nearly 2,500 had been investigated 10+ times

  • 20 Faced 100 or more allegations

Officer Discipline?

Corruption

Context of the power police have

  • Police had a ton of powers, (arrest, courts often believe officers over the criminal, use of force)

Knapp Commission

  • Formed in 1970 to investigate NYPD corruption

  • Frank Serpico

    • first to publicly speak out against police corruption, a member of VICE unit

      • Officers were getting money from drug lords

    • Reported Corruption to higher ups, who did nothing, then reported it to the press

    • During drug busts, fellow officers refused to help after he was shot in the face… may have been set up

  • Commission noted there are two types:

    • Grass eaters - if something presents itself, they will take it, but they do not actively seek it out. Most prevalent type

    • Meat eaters - officers that actively and aggressive seek out opportunities to benefit themselves. Least prevalent type

Michael Dowd (Meat Eater), the Seven-Five and the Mollen Commission

  • Normalized Corruption - part of the informal code of the Blue Wall of Silence

    • NYC was an incredibly violent city (war between police and drug dealers)

  • Mollen Commission said that corruption was more wide-spread, much more aggressive, and intentional and really based in active police criminality

Dirty Harry Syndrome - questionable means can justify the ends

  • Police officers can bend or break the law in order to save people

  • Often used in police procedural (blue bloods, early SVU)

  • It is still corruption

Accountability - IA Units

Accountability: Responding to civilian complaints without being overly burdensome

  • Balance of serious issues with frivolous complaints

Internal Affairs

  • Depending on department size: Specialized units that investigate serious civilian complaints

  • More likely to be issues of sexual harassment, alcohol/drug problems, use of force

    • Not like Hollywood would have you believe… but it can be

Contemporary(?) Issue

  • Code of silence - culture of not wanting to “rat” out other officers

    • Having officers as your friends, needing them to have your back (Serpico), sub-culture of not getting into each other’s business

  • Issue for IA, Civilian Oversight, etc.

Delivery of Services - Response

Budgets, Evidence-Based Practices, Data, etc.

  • Doing more with less, being more effective and efficient, and doing a better job

Police Response

  • We prefer reactive compared to proactive (kind of)

  • We don’t want officers everywhere (very 1984)… but we don’t want crime

    • Data: 81% of actions result from civilian calls for service

    • We expect quick responses but police are incident driven (need the call to initiate)

      • What if there are a lot of calls (only about 40% actually need LE in some Capacity)

      • Results in differential response - priority response

Delivery of Services - Productivity

Shrinking budgets requires more efficiency

  • Using data to police more efficiently

    • But data can be manipulated

    • And what does the data say?

      • Are we measuring good data to say the police are effective?

Remember evidence-based policing

  • Crime is sticky to people, placing, and things

What is a “good” goal?

  • Clearance rate - The number of crimes cleared or “solved” (by arrest, or death)… 13%

    • Usually used to measure effectiveness but day to day tasks are forgotten

Patrol Functions

Word originates in French term meaning “to tramp about in the mud”

  • Fitting for patrol → at times aimless, difficult, uphill battle

Patrol accounts for about 2/3 of all officers

Patrol is mostly about the routine and the mundane but that is where the work is done

  • How Timothy McVeigh was apprehended

Three Main Functions:

  1. Maintain presence

  2. Answering Calls

  3. Probing Suspicious Circumstances

Complex

  • Give aid, control the scene, make arrests, control the crowd, preserve evidence, ID witnesses, maintain good communications in a hectic environment

Investigations

All cities over 250k populations and 90% of smaller cities have detectives

  • 15% of all police personnel

  • Specialized: Higher status, higher pay, no uniforms, more flexibility, only focus on investigations (Not everything else that patrol does)

  • Much of the essential info is gained by responding officers

    • Detectives start after the preliminary investigation

      • all the work patrol does at the scene

Media complicates this process because society has unreal expectations

Special Operations

Larger cities/departments might have specialized operations

  • Juvenile, vice, gangs, SWAT, traffic, organized crime

  • Separate from specialized assignments

    • think SRO

Traffic

  • Focus on traffic related issues and proactive policing (stopping people, check plates, patrol)

Vice

  • UC/Informants focusing on drugs, gambling, prostitution

  • More trained in legal procedures for arrest

    • avoid entrapment, understand when crime is committed

  • Drug Enforcement: more aggressive… focus on arrests to show dealers law is enforced… get dealers of the street to disrupt supply

    • is supply-side enforcement effective?

  • What is deviant behavior?

SWAT and militarization of police

Assigning Patrol

How to assign patrol officers?

  • Preventative Patrol: Officers moving through an area known for crime/saturation patrol → mere presence of officers deters crime

    • Kansas City Patrol Experiment debunks this

Hot Spots

  • Remember, crime is sticky to people, places, and things

  • RAT - Likely offender, suitable target, absence of guardian → can be characteristics of specific areas

  • Weisburd: Focusing on hotspots would increase crime prevention and decrease prison population

    • You are focusing on small% of people committing the crimes

      • The sticky people are probably in the stick places

    • Might lead to direct/saturation patrol - not being smarter with hot spots and being a partner

      • Might lead to dispersion (so might hot spot) or issues with community relationships

Foot vs Motorized:

  • Foot (and bike) used in medium to large cities… or in conjunction with community oriented tactics

    • GOOD: Know neighbors and community, easy to approach and be seen, slow down and know beat.

    • BAD: limited coverage and information(no computer

  • Motor is most used… east of getting around

    • GOOD: More coverage, safer (car as a protection), more info (computer

    • BAD: Disconnected from community in all the ways foot is connected

Aggressive patrol: Focus on an issue then aggressively dealing with it

  • Sting ops, UC or plain clothes, zero-tolerance

  • Balance with crime prevention/arrests

  • NYC’s zero tolerance aggressive patrol and broken windows

    • Focusing on the idea of a lack of guardians helped reduce NYC’s crime rate, but stop and frisk was used in conjunction and that hurt community relations (and really did nothing)

Community: building relationships, including residents, making police more accountable, focusing on community needs/problems… generally being preventive. Identifying the communities needs and addressing them to get to the underlying issues

  • less us vs them or warrior cop and more guardian and all of us together

    • It shouldn’t just be the police controlling/dealing with crime

  • All about that relationship building and partnering

Special Populations

Patrol and interactions with individuals with complex problems

  • Homeless, alcohol/drug addictions, serious health concerns, juvenile, and mental health

  • Training and what we expect from police

  • CIT cars

    • Crisis intervention - Specialized unit to deal with specialized need

  • Mental Health

    • Our jails are the new mental health asylums

    • Why?

    • Mental Health driving the interaction

Changing Patrol

Post 9/11 and Homeland Security

Police in a more complex society

  • Aware of international threats

  • Not just street crimes

  • FBI and their field officers, fusion centers, and interpol

  • partnerships with federal agencies

    • Training to understand racial groups, suspicious suspects and infrastructure, facilities, phony charities steering $ to terror groups, groups with foreign ties, unexpected terrorist information in “normal” investigation (maintaining international vigilance), bomb-making operations

    • Internet has made the world a smaller place… all of these things can reach any community because of it

  • Training, training, training with more tech and equipment… see militarization of police