There was a Federal-level program in place under Obama to reform police departments, rebuild trust in communities, issue audit reports, and recommend reform.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (under the direction of Trump) ended that program in 2017. Trump then issued an executive order to reinstate a program to supply police departments with surplus military gear. Not trying to turn it into a partisan issue, but these steps in 2017 certainly don’t help the situation by any stretch.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will overhaul a six-year-old Obama-era program that had been put in place in the wake of police shootings and other controversial officer incidents.
In a statement released Sept. 15, the DOJ said it would significantly scale back its Collaborative Reform Initiative, effectively putting an end to federal efforts to reform local police departments and improve police-community relations. Instead, the Justice Department will focus on providing more direct support to officers fighting gangs, drugs and violent crime as well as those dealing with protests.
The move is in line with a tougher law-and-order approach that President Donald Trump advocated during his campaign and in his first several months in office. Despite Trump’s claim that violent crime is at near record highs, it remains near historic lows.
In August, Trump signed an executive order to reinstate a program that provides police with surplus military equipment.
Can’t have a Gestapo kicking in your door at 4AM without them being outfitted in full military gear! I mean, what kind of despot would allow such a sartorial gaffe OMG
Making it easier for police forces to get military gear certainly isn’t going in the right direction, I agree. (Sessions was a terrible pick as AG for a while lot of reasons.)
I don’t remember hearing much about the Obama reforms, so it’s not clear to me how much, if at all, they would have helped. If they were aimed at changing police culture from an oppositional “us against them” mindset to a more collaborative softer approach, then I completely agree that ending them was the wrong thing to do. Reading the article, I’m still not clear how well the programs were working. It sounds like they were getting a lot of pushback from the rank and file officers.
To me, the most important reform would be to insist that officer misconduct investigations get handled by independent agencies. There’s too close of a relationship between the local prosecutor’s office and the police departments in many places. I know a couple of states have their state police do the investigations and I think those states tend to have fewer police problems. I may be wrong, but it can’t hurt. If putting people in jail for swatting acts as a deterrent, surely prosecuting police for shootings would also be a deterrent.
I really don’t see the military gear as a major problem. Let them have their toys, so long as they’re trained to use them properly and safely. It all comes back to training.
While I have my doubts about the Federal level currently, I am sure both sides of the aisle could do better at the State and local level to improve police-community relations and work on better methods of oversight and responsible reform.
There’s a series on HBO called Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas that’s about better Policing. It’s a pretty thoughtful look into the issues. Each episode goes into different aspects of the problems, and different solutions being tried in different communities across the country.
If anyone gets HBO Go for watching Game of Thrones’ final season, I recommend checking it out.
I don’t know. Supplying police with military surplus at a time when violent crime is at a near all time low seems odd. It frames community engagement as a war on the population. An unnecessary perpetuation of the “thin blue line” ideology.
Consider a peaceful protest in the streets. The interactions, atmosphere, and risk of violence differs dramatically if normal uniformed officers show up to maintain order with police tape and such versus rolling up in an armored personnel carrier filled with troops in body armor, riot shields, and tear gas. Even the best training is undermined by the implied message the military-grade gear projects.
Oh I do think it’s a problem, just not the root of the problem, which is training. Even if they don’t have M16s cops will still have handguns, and while less effective than a fully automatic machinegun, handguns seem to kill people just fine.
I don’t think it’s training. I think it’s culture. The problem with police continuing to tell people they can’t be recorded, threatening people who record them, running around with Blue Lives Matter… this swatting problem would not be as much of a problem if we didn’t have police so ready to kill. It doesn’t work as well without the trigger.
I think it’s the whole mix of stuff they get. AR-15s are one thing, but uparmored Humvees, APCs, grenade launchers, tactical vests and gear, etc. are all part of a “uniform” that says you’re a badass army dude there to take out the bad guys. I’m sure there’s a whole testosterone-fueled ritual they all go through to put that shit on, too.
But yes, perhaps much improved training would counteract the psychology of the whole thing. I’m for trying it all.
On other websites I read, every time there’s a story about police shootings exmilitary guys chime in to say that the rules of engagement they followed in Iraq / Afghanistan / wherever were much stricter than what US police use. I’m sure some of that is the military looking down on the police, but I see it often enough that I think there’s probably something to it.
Yeah, from what I understand, soldiers aren’t allowed to shoot someone who might possibly be holding a gun just standing there in the street. They are expected to wait until they are actually in danger or being shot at to act.
In the US, cops are allowed to shoot anyone, preferably with dark skin, who they can plausibly suggest might be a threat to someone within a pretty wide radius. This includes people running away while holding a cellphone, sitting in the middle of the street holding a cellphone, or sitting in their homes minding their own business.
Thankfully, this particular situation was quickly defused because one of the officers attending the incident lives in Bugha’s neighbourhood and recognised the teen.
We still need better outcomes when this is not the case.
Or least that other one, Endangerment. I am not… sure an attempted murder charge would stick but this is definitely endangering lives, those of the officers as well as those being swatted and for… nothing.
