I was arrested for obstructing an officer in 2007. At the time, I was a young public defender and I had several clients who claimed they had been beaten by cops and then accused of attacking their assailants. Before body cameras, these cases were swearing contests, and most defendants in these situations pled guilty because they knew most jurors would trust an officer’s word over theirs.
On November 11, 2007, my wife and I were driving to our home in East Atlanta from a restaurant. Two of our neighbors were in handcuffs a block or two from our house. We passed by again 15 minutes later on the way to a friends house. They were still there and in cuffs. I thought my neighbors could use a credible witness, so I told my wife to pull over, got out, and approached the officer.
Officer: what are you doing?
David: watching you.
Officer: You are interfering with an investigation.
David: I am a member of the bar and I have the right to stand on a public.
Officer: I’m going to count to ten, and, if you don’t leave, you are going to jail
David: don’t bother, I’m not leaving.
I went to jail, posted bond and got out after three hours. The cop never showed up for court. This incident convinced me having a boss who might fire me for this kind of thing was a bad idea. I opened my own law practice 10 weeks later.
Matt's a bit vague on specific reforms here. I'll propose mine: federal law enforcement (probably the FBI) should investigate local law enforcement misconduct. We mostly can't trust local or state prosecutors to go hard on officer crimes, as they're all in a pretty tight-knit social & professional circle. Most of the big rule of law reforms of the 20th century involved the feds cracking down on petty state misconduct- the 'Mississippi Burning' cases where civil rights workers were murdered weren't exactly investigated by the Mississippi state police. Neither were the church bombings of that era, Emmett Till, etc.- in fact, local & state PD were outright violent thugs, beating & torturing protestors with impunity.
It's not as well-known, but the FBI is specifically commissioned to investigate local corruption- bribes, payoffs for real estate deals or liquor licenses, etc. This is based on the theory that if an alderman in say Chicago is taking some cash under the table, local prosecutors might be a bit conflicted in investigating him? Why not apply to this horrifically corrupt, violent gang of current Chicago cops as well?
A strong minority of cops today are legitimately bad human beings, who can commit terrible crimes with complete impunity. I think the knowledge that the FBI is waiting in the wings, watching their body cams, looking at bystander phone evidence etc. would be a huge step forward for the rule of law. Seeing as no one local would prosecute, say, the Buffalo cops who cracked open an elderly man's skull for no reason (1)- this is exactly what we have federal oversight for. Combine that with mandatory minimums for officer misconduct & mandatory use of at least medium security prisons when convicted I think should do the trick
- If we want good cops, it must be a well-respected field
- The anger towards the police from the left is making the job less appealing. Who wants this job with the public hatred and legal risk?
It's easy to see how the current climate can drive a death spiral in quality where no respectable person with options would enter the field, and we're only left with psychopaths and morons policing us.
The left needs to get on board with giving good cops the respect the deserve because it's the only way to get good people to take the job.
"Policing reduces crime, and policing the police reduces misconduct."
"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
I’m not sure if this is new, but there seems to be an increasingly vocal subset of left radicals that appears to view harm-mitigation reforms in any field as illegitimate or pointless in the absence of broader social revolution.
I’m not sure if the intent is to encourage broader revolution by allowing conditions under the status quo to worsen (like Leninism) or whether it’s the policy equivalent of shouting into the void, but it sure is disheartening to see.
My minor but maybe meaningful reform suggestion: stop with the scary names for various units and initiatives. For example, the officers involved in the Tyre Nichols incident were part of "Scorpion Unit". It has a real "are we the baddies?" ring to it. What, exactly, are we expecting Scorpion Unit to do when we name it Scorpion Unit? What do the officers think when they're asking to join Scorpion Unit?
I think Matt is probably right that in the king run the only viable solution if we want to tackle BOTH misconduct and crime is a slow process of reform where we invest more money rather than less.
That being said, I am very sympathetic to the reform is hopeless side. So many examples of police misconduct are just beyond the pale. I remember watching the video of Mesa police murdering Daniel Shaver and it’s one of the most disgusting anger-inducing things I’ve seen. And in that case there were literally no consequences for the officers involved.
Too often when civil cases do succeed - the remedy is to fork over taxpayer money to the victims, leaving no actual impact on the officers responsible.
Now obviously none of this is a reason to give up and call it all hopeless, but it’s so easy to see why people feel that way.
There are at least 3 major categories of reform needed:
1. Accountability. Eliminating Qualified Immunity. Independent investigations/prosecutions (DAs can't be trusted to prosecute the same cops they rely on professionally). A huge emphasis on destruction of evidence, if a body cam happens to fail, or "not be on" at the precise moment someone dies, someone should be getting charged. Also, we need to invest in tracking officers fired for misconduct so they aren't just moving from department to department.
2. Training/Policies. End no knock raids, fire people who lie on those warrant applications and the judges who rubber stamp them. End the escalatory warrior cop bullshit. Ban chokeholds. Strict policies on taser use. Etc.
3. Code reform. Get police out of revenue generation. No traffic enforcement. No victimless "possession" crimes. End the drug war. End civil forfeiture. Raise the standard for police interactions beyond pretextual harassment levels.
The whole system we have of crime suppression via targeted oppression of "problem" neighborhoods and populations is fundamentally unjust. Good policing means more investigations. Solving crimes. It's harder and more expensive than what we do now. It will take more professional officers with greater resources at their disposal.
I think the Chicago mayoral election is going to be an interesting bellwether for the political consequences of winking at the defund the police crowd. CPD enrollment is down, recruitment is down, suicide among officers is way up, and there’s a general perception that the mayor doesn’t support the police. Most the younger cops I know quit to become firemen if they could. Crime is the biggest issue at the ballot box. Paul Vallas, a guy who was an afterthought in pretty much every other election he’s run in, suddenly finds himself the only white person in a crowded race, running to Lori’s right, largely on the back of pro-police/crime reduction policies. He would normally have zero chance (I think he came in 9th place the last time he ran). Suddenly he’s surging in polls and is the number 1 attack target of the other candidates- with “Republican” being the top slur. Going to be very interesting to see if he can pull it off
The center-left really needs to excise the anarchists. If you believe we should abolish the police and abolish prisons, you're an anarchist. There should be no room for you in the Democratic party. Good riddance.
Right, but the kind of police reform that Progressives need to be associated with is reform that reduces the harms from crime, its deterrence and punishment. This is why I think that police redeployment away from traffic enforcement and some kinds of public nuisance and possibly domestic violence toward felony crimes makes so much sense. It removes police from some situations where police misconduct can occur AND should _reduce crime_.
I know Matt apparently doesn’t like lawyers but the division of fatal incidents into the four categories above is an example of exactly how a good lawyer conceptually approaches an argument.
Does anyone find it less than coincidental that the folks who disbelieve “this basic cycle of obtaining evidence of misconduct and punishing it” also disbelieve basically all incentive-based systems in economics and schooling?
The biggest (and probably most intractable, aside from the ubiquity of guns, thank you Second Amendment!) problem here is that, as Matt Y. points out, the kind of people most concerned about police reform are the ones least likely to become police officers themselves.
Discussions of the police and military in our society always bring to mind Jack Nicholson's famous speech in "A Few Good Men." I *want* a man with a gun to protect me from criminals and invaders, but I don't want to *be* the man with the gun. And it's not just a matter of fear of getting hurt or killed. Suppose a magic fairy promised to protect me from all bodily harm if I became a police officer; I still wouldn't want to do it, because I don't want to deal with the segment of the population that police officers routinely have to interact with.
Right now I'm in academia. My job is stressful, but it's a completely different kind of stressful than being a police officer would be. What would I rather do? Sit in my lab with one of my graduate students discussing upcoming experiments, or try to restrain a drunk/high suspect who is screaming at me, calling me a f***ing b****, and expressing wishes for my violent rape/death?
I had three years enlisted in the "draft era" army. There I met individuals proud of their criminal accomplishments, from robbery/assaults on gays to random black vs white, or the other way around, violence, plus a few who displayed little self-control. These are the folks police deal with at a much higher frequency than the critical general public.
The press was thrilled when videos showed police running toward the explosion at the Boston marathon. We don't hear so much when medics and firemen are held back from a dangerous scene until the police get control. It's just routine.
OJ's ex wife and her boyfriend would dispute the contention that deadly force is not appropriate against a knife wielding assailant, except they're dead from, perhaps, a Swiss Army knife.
None of the above excuses misconduct. However, just as the military requires combat experienced panels for courts-martial of combat misconduct, so should judgments about police misconduct be judged with understanding of the reality of their interactions with a public ranging from the actively criminal to habitually arrogant and disputatious. It is that kind of understanding that I believe is the source of court decisions and rules that place police actions in a different context than for the citizenry as a whole. Properly so.
I was arrested for obstructing an officer in 2007. At the time, I was a young public defender and I had several clients who claimed they had been beaten by cops and then accused of attacking their assailants. Before body cameras, these cases were swearing contests, and most defendants in these situations pled guilty because they knew most jurors would trust an officer’s word over theirs.
On November 11, 2007, my wife and I were driving to our home in East Atlanta from a restaurant. Two of our neighbors were in handcuffs a block or two from our house. We passed by again 15 minutes later on the way to a friends house. They were still there and in cuffs. I thought my neighbors could use a credible witness, so I told my wife to pull over, got out, and approached the officer.
Officer: what are you doing?
David: watching you.
Officer: You are interfering with an investigation.
David: I am a member of the bar and I have the right to stand on a public.
Officer: I’m going to count to ten, and, if you don’t leave, you are going to jail
David: don’t bother, I’m not leaving.
I went to jail, posted bond and got out after three hours. The cop never showed up for court. This incident convinced me having a boss who might fire me for this kind of thing was a bad idea. I opened my own law practice 10 weeks later.
Matt's a bit vague on specific reforms here. I'll propose mine: federal law enforcement (probably the FBI) should investigate local law enforcement misconduct. We mostly can't trust local or state prosecutors to go hard on officer crimes, as they're all in a pretty tight-knit social & professional circle. Most of the big rule of law reforms of the 20th century involved the feds cracking down on petty state misconduct- the 'Mississippi Burning' cases where civil rights workers were murdered weren't exactly investigated by the Mississippi state police. Neither were the church bombings of that era, Emmett Till, etc.- in fact, local & state PD were outright violent thugs, beating & torturing protestors with impunity.
It's not as well-known, but the FBI is specifically commissioned to investigate local corruption- bribes, payoffs for real estate deals or liquor licenses, etc. This is based on the theory that if an alderman in say Chicago is taking some cash under the table, local prosecutors might be a bit conflicted in investigating him? Why not apply to this horrifically corrupt, violent gang of current Chicago cops as well?
A strong minority of cops today are legitimately bad human beings, who can commit terrible crimes with complete impunity. I think the knowledge that the FBI is waiting in the wings, watching their body cams, looking at bystander phone evidence etc. would be a huge step forward for the rule of law. Seeing as no one local would prosecute, say, the Buffalo cops who cracked open an elderly man's skull for no reason (1)- this is exactly what we have federal oversight for. Combine that with mandatory minimums for officer misconduct & mandatory use of at least medium security prisons when convicted I think should do the trick
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_incident
I think we need to realize
- If we want good cops, it must be a well-respected field
- The anger towards the police from the left is making the job less appealing. Who wants this job with the public hatred and legal risk?
It's easy to see how the current climate can drive a death spiral in quality where no respectable person with options would enter the field, and we're only left with psychopaths and morons policing us.
The left needs to get on board with giving good cops the respect the deserve because it's the only way to get good people to take the job.
"Policing reduces crime, and policing the police reduces misconduct."
"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
I’m not sure if this is new, but there seems to be an increasingly vocal subset of left radicals that appears to view harm-mitigation reforms in any field as illegitimate or pointless in the absence of broader social revolution.
I’m not sure if the intent is to encourage broader revolution by allowing conditions under the status quo to worsen (like Leninism) or whether it’s the policy equivalent of shouting into the void, but it sure is disheartening to see.
My minor but maybe meaningful reform suggestion: stop with the scary names for various units and initiatives. For example, the officers involved in the Tyre Nichols incident were part of "Scorpion Unit". It has a real "are we the baddies?" ring to it. What, exactly, are we expecting Scorpion Unit to do when we name it Scorpion Unit? What do the officers think when they're asking to join Scorpion Unit?
I think Matt is probably right that in the king run the only viable solution if we want to tackle BOTH misconduct and crime is a slow process of reform where we invest more money rather than less.
That being said, I am very sympathetic to the reform is hopeless side. So many examples of police misconduct are just beyond the pale. I remember watching the video of Mesa police murdering Daniel Shaver and it’s one of the most disgusting anger-inducing things I’ve seen. And in that case there were literally no consequences for the officers involved.
Too often when civil cases do succeed - the remedy is to fork over taxpayer money to the victims, leaving no actual impact on the officers responsible.
Now obviously none of this is a reason to give up and call it all hopeless, but it’s so easy to see why people feel that way.
There are at least 3 major categories of reform needed:
1. Accountability. Eliminating Qualified Immunity. Independent investigations/prosecutions (DAs can't be trusted to prosecute the same cops they rely on professionally). A huge emphasis on destruction of evidence, if a body cam happens to fail, or "not be on" at the precise moment someone dies, someone should be getting charged. Also, we need to invest in tracking officers fired for misconduct so they aren't just moving from department to department.
2. Training/Policies. End no knock raids, fire people who lie on those warrant applications and the judges who rubber stamp them. End the escalatory warrior cop bullshit. Ban chokeholds. Strict policies on taser use. Etc.
3. Code reform. Get police out of revenue generation. No traffic enforcement. No victimless "possession" crimes. End the drug war. End civil forfeiture. Raise the standard for police interactions beyond pretextual harassment levels.
The whole system we have of crime suppression via targeted oppression of "problem" neighborhoods and populations is fundamentally unjust. Good policing means more investigations. Solving crimes. It's harder and more expensive than what we do now. It will take more professional officers with greater resources at their disposal.
I think the Chicago mayoral election is going to be an interesting bellwether for the political consequences of winking at the defund the police crowd. CPD enrollment is down, recruitment is down, suicide among officers is way up, and there’s a general perception that the mayor doesn’t support the police. Most the younger cops I know quit to become firemen if they could. Crime is the biggest issue at the ballot box. Paul Vallas, a guy who was an afterthought in pretty much every other election he’s run in, suddenly finds himself the only white person in a crowded race, running to Lori’s right, largely on the back of pro-police/crime reduction policies. He would normally have zero chance (I think he came in 9th place the last time he ran). Suddenly he’s surging in polls and is the number 1 attack target of the other candidates- with “Republican” being the top slur. Going to be very interesting to see if he can pull it off
The center-left really needs to excise the anarchists. If you believe we should abolish the police and abolish prisons, you're an anarchist. There should be no room for you in the Democratic party. Good riddance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
Right, but the kind of police reform that Progressives need to be associated with is reform that reduces the harms from crime, its deterrence and punishment. This is why I think that police redeployment away from traffic enforcement and some kinds of public nuisance and possibly domestic violence toward felony crimes makes so much sense. It removes police from some situations where police misconduct can occur AND should _reduce crime_.
I know Matt apparently doesn’t like lawyers but the division of fatal incidents into the four categories above is an example of exactly how a good lawyer conceptually approaches an argument.
Does anyone find it less than coincidental that the folks who disbelieve “this basic cycle of obtaining evidence of misconduct and punishing it” also disbelieve basically all incentive-based systems in economics and schooling?
Thank you for this column, Matt Y.
The biggest (and probably most intractable, aside from the ubiquity of guns, thank you Second Amendment!) problem here is that, as Matt Y. points out, the kind of people most concerned about police reform are the ones least likely to become police officers themselves.
Discussions of the police and military in our society always bring to mind Jack Nicholson's famous speech in "A Few Good Men." I *want* a man with a gun to protect me from criminals and invaders, but I don't want to *be* the man with the gun. And it's not just a matter of fear of getting hurt or killed. Suppose a magic fairy promised to protect me from all bodily harm if I became a police officer; I still wouldn't want to do it, because I don't want to deal with the segment of the population that police officers routinely have to interact with.
Right now I'm in academia. My job is stressful, but it's a completely different kind of stressful than being a police officer would be. What would I rather do? Sit in my lab with one of my graduate students discussing upcoming experiments, or try to restrain a drunk/high suspect who is screaming at me, calling me a f***ing b****, and expressing wishes for my violent rape/death?
Hmmmmm.... Tough decision!
Several comments.
I had three years enlisted in the "draft era" army. There I met individuals proud of their criminal accomplishments, from robbery/assaults on gays to random black vs white, or the other way around, violence, plus a few who displayed little self-control. These are the folks police deal with at a much higher frequency than the critical general public.
The press was thrilled when videos showed police running toward the explosion at the Boston marathon. We don't hear so much when medics and firemen are held back from a dangerous scene until the police get control. It's just routine.
OJ's ex wife and her boyfriend would dispute the contention that deadly force is not appropriate against a knife wielding assailant, except they're dead from, perhaps, a Swiss Army knife.
None of the above excuses misconduct. However, just as the military requires combat experienced panels for courts-martial of combat misconduct, so should judgments about police misconduct be judged with understanding of the reality of their interactions with a public ranging from the actively criminal to habitually arrogant and disputatious. It is that kind of understanding that I believe is the source of court decisions and rules that place police actions in a different context than for the citizenry as a whole. Properly so.
This is yet another article where I quickly think about how I miss Graham and would want to hear his opinion.