International- American
police violence has come under renewed focus, and a debate has opened up on the nature of policing and how to fix it. - Some say that police need stricter oversight, more training, and better education.
- Others argue that procedural and piecemeal maintenance will not fix the American policing system, calling for the system to be abolished wholesale.
Rayshard Brooks was running away from two police officers, having grabbed one of their Tasers, when then-officer Garrett Rolfe shot Brooks in the back twice, killing him.
The June 12 killing in Atlanta, Georgia, caused an uproar: The fast-food property where Rolfe killed Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was reduced to ash and rubble a day later, torched by protesters. Others blocked a highway for hours.
It also renewed the questions about American policing that were already on the top of mind since George Floyd died in Minneapolis, in late May, as a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. What will it take to stop police from killing Black men at disproportionately high rates? What must be done to keep all communities safe?
Over the past few weeks, Insider has spoken to a range of experts who've suggested a range of options for fixing policing — from better types of training to abolishing the police altogether. Here's what they came up with.
1. Create a uniform code of policing
Among the most frequently cited problems with American police forces, at least among reformists, is that police trainings vary by department. There is no standardized code of police education.
Los Angeles police officers, for example, receive 960 hours of training before hitting the streets, including implicit-bias courses. On the other coast, New York police get 700, and the NYPD website does not mention bias training.
Some 36 states allow police officers to start working before they've attended basic training, and the average police officer spent about how as much time training as a licensed barber.
The divergence in training protocols is a national problem. "Honestly, it's not even like apples to oranges," Dr. Rashawn Ray, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, told Insider's Connor Perrett.
"It's more like fruit to vegetables. That's just how different they are," Ray, who is also executive director of the University of Maryland's Lab for Applied Social Science Research, added. "That is something that definitely needs to change."
Such a program could also help limit the spread of misinformation in police training programs. Currently, many programs include strategies that lack a basis in research, and there's no central body to regulate them.
2. Focus on recruiting the right people instead of relying on implicit bias training
In the wake of so many police shootings of Black Americans, some politicians have called for a renewed focus on anti-bias training. Police departments should be trained for "racial and religious bias," Biden opined in USA Today, adding that chokeholds should be banned and officers should be tracked for their use of force.
But many police forces already receive such training, and bias training does not work, according to a scholarly review of 492 studies on such training.
"It's not actually going to threaten any entrenched interests or cause any significant change in policing," Dave Bicking, vice president of the Minneapolis-based Communities United Against
Jacinta Gau, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida, instead proposed establishing programs that recruit a more diverse set of officers, helping local police forces integrate into the communities they're supposed to serve.
"We cannot train our way out of the current problems," she told Insider.
"Cadet programs can get teens involved in the department and start them on the path toward eventually becoming sworn officers," she added. "Establishing relationships with Black clergy can be a productive way for police to improve their image as well, and possibly reach out to Black youth."
3. De-militarize the police
Since the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have struck deals with local and state police departments, giving them low-cost military-grade weaponry and equipment. The proliferation of military gear has had a noticeable impact on American policing – and the communities they operate in.
Ryan Welch and Jack Mewhirter, the authors of a 2017 study on the militarization of police found a direct correlation between the rise of militarization and more police killings.
"Even controlling for other possible factors in police violence (such as household income, overall and black population, violent-crime levels and drug use), more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police," they wrote in the Washington Post. "When a county goes from receiving no military equipment to $2,539,767 worth (the largest figure that went to one agency in our data), more than twice as many civilians are likely to die in that county the following year."
And it's not just the equipment. Military-style training causes unneeded deaths, Craig Atkinson, a documentarian who covers police training, told Insider's Kelly McLaughlin.
"Obviously not all cops are bad, but you take good cops and you give them warrior training and you quickly have an outcome that we see moving across this country right now," Atkinson said.
4. Stop training officers like warriors
Part of the trend of militarizing police includes training them like they're in a warzone.
It's common for police officers involved in killings to have a record of violence. Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, had been the subject of numerous complaints and internal investigations. Tao Thao, who stood guard as Chauvin killed Floyd, settled an excessive use-of-force lawsuit out of court in 2018 for $25,000.
And existing de-escalation trainings aren't always effective. Rolfe, for his part, completed a nine-hour training course on de-escalation 49 days before he killed Brooks.
That culture is embodied by the teachings of Dave Grossman, an Army-veteran-turned-police-trainer who describes himself as a "killologist."
"He doesn't see the separation between Fallujah and Ferguson," Atkinson told Insider. "And so he thinks of the police as the first line of defense to Al Qaeda, and there's no difference."
What does he teach the hundreds of police departments he's instructed since 1995? "Killology," a doctrine that dispels with the idea that police should feel shame for killing Americans.
"Are you emotionally, spiritually, psychologically prepared to snuff out a human life in defense of innocent lives?" Grossman asked one group of trainees. "If you can't make that decision, you need to find another job."
According to a 2016 survey, police departments spend an average of 58 hours on gun training, 49 hours on defensive tactics, and eight hours on de-escalation, crisis intervention, and electronic control weapons like Tasers.
Communities United Against Police Brutality railed against the "warrior-cop" style of policing.
"Officers routinely hear that 'every single traffic stop could be, might be, the last stop you ever make in your life,'" the organization wrote in a 2018 pamphlet shared with Insider. "Awakening officers' fear that their work continually puts them in lethal danger, Grossman begins cultivating fear of the public and a readiness to kill."
5. End the stigma around seeking help for mental health
Police forces' self-understanding as warriors may also contribute to a culture of silence, where getting mental-health treatment is taboo. Ninety percent of police officers in the LA police union said seeking therapy was stigmatized, NBC News found in a 2018 poll.
"It's the 'stiff upper lip, don't show any emotion, don't let anything bother you' mentality, but, of course, internally, the stress of the job is impacting you," Risdon Slate, a criminologist at Florida Southern College, told Insider. "The problem is, traditionally, if police officers were to ask for help, they ended up being placed on what we call the 'bow-and-arrow squadron' — their service revolver was taken away and they were given a desk job."
That kind of attitude is going to have an effect on the communities officers are supposed to serve, according to Thomas E. Coghlan, a psychologist and retired New York City Police Department detective.
"It's going to show itself at work and show itself in social interactions out in the community," Coghlan told Insider. "You're putting an officer on the street and out into the public with the right to enforce the law and make an arrest and use lethal force, who's not operating at an optimal capacity and is potentially impaired by some sort of mental health issue."
6. Defund the police
In response to militarization and a level of police violence that disproportionately impacts Black communities, numerous experts have advocated limiting police departments' operational capacity, by defunding them and shoring up social and community services with the newfound cash.
"When we talk about defunding the police, what we're saying is 'invest in the resources that our communities need,'" Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC's "Meet the Press."
The idea has found some success. Last week, San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed redirecting police-budget money to "programs and organizations that serve communities that have been systematically harmed by past City policies." New York City will slash its $6 trillion police budget by $1 trillion, and Los Angeles is considering up to $150 million in cuts to its $2 trillion police budget.
7. Maybe we should just abolish the police altogether
While reformists believe that police need better education and more oversight. Abolitionists believe that the essential function of policing begets racialized violence, originating as it did in "slave patrols and social control, where human property of enslavers was 'protected' with violence and impunity against people of African descent," as United Nations experts wrote.
After defunding the police, they must eventually be abolished, the abolitionists say. "It's time instead to have a complete rethink about why we're using police in the United States to solve every problem under the sun," Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College and author of "The End of Policing," told Insider.
This proposal has little purchase so far. In fact, none of the abolitionists' demands have been taken up on the national stage.
"Nobody is going to defund the police," said Rep. James Clyburn, the House Majority Whip. Last week, Biden called for an additional $300 million to police departments to "reinvigorate community policing."
But in places like Minneapolis, where police officers killed George Floyd in late May, the conversation about policing strikes a different tone.
"We can send a city response that makes situations better. We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon, or pulling out handcuffs," Minneapolis City Councilmember Steve Fletcher said in early June, announcing that the body will disband its police department.
"The whole world is watching, and we can declare policing as we know it a thing of the past, and create a compassionate, non-violent future," Fletcher added. "It will be hard. But so is managing a dysfunctional relationship with an unaccountable armed force in our city."
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