Strategies To Use To Hold Police Accountable For Police Misconduct

Sam Seder:

Let’s bring on Scott Roberts. He’s the Senior Director of the criminal justice campaign, Color For Change. Give me a sense, I mean when you look at. Obviously we have the catalyst for these protests, right? Where one cop sticks his knee into someone’s neck for ten minutes. This is a cop who has a history of complaints.

This is a cop who, and there’s, four or three others who are just basically standing there. I don’t know if they’re egging him on, but they’re, certainly sort of like not doing anything, and then we have this whole sort of other set, which I think you know, that protest. This bears it out, that there’s a mentality amongst police forces across the country that they can do whatever they want. From the perspective of Color For Change, what kind of reforms do you folks call for? What what do you think would be effective?

Look At How Little There Is To Hold Police Accountable

Scott Roberts:

Well, I think, at the end of the day, big picture, we’ve got to reexamine fundamentally what it means for our communities to be safe. What are the things that our communities actually need for safety and reassess what we’re investing in, right? So one of the things that we’re seeing – and I think you know we all know – we were in the middle of this global pandemic. You know that that the corona virus is disproportionately impacting black communities. I think you know that is probably the frustration that we’re, seeing, But in the midst of that, local governments are putting out their budgets. It’s that season, it’s happening all over the country, including Minneapolis. What we’re seeing is, everything being cut! Education, social services, health care. Except policing. Policing is getting increases, and I think that the timing of all of this is really for in some ways, fortuitous.

That gives us an opportunity to really look at what we’re doing. That’s what we’re seeing on the news every night now. That’s what we’re investing in. There are places where the majority of the city budget, like Los Angeles, the majority of the city budget? Fifty four percent of the budget is going to to the LAPD, and we’re seeing how they’re treating these communities right now. We would love to see us pulling back on policing and investing in the things that make our community safer. Education, housing, jobs.

Also, even in the interventions that come with safety. So often, we’re seeing police response to these incidents. The kind of responding happening when police are responding to issues around mental health or people in crisis. How are we funding and paying for a different response? How? I think we need to look at the kind of community-based solutions. To both issues, like mental health, but also even to violence. We have really well proven community based solutions. To help de-escalate and mediate community-based violence, but instead we’ve neglected all these things and we’ve invested so much in policing.

In addition, I think there are things that we can do within policing too. To lessen the amount of police violence that we’re seeing. We need lower the standards for holding police officers accountable. It’s such a high standard for at both the federal level and at state levels, we worked on legislation.

Sam Seder:

By high standards. Let me just clarify that you have to do something that is so egregious and also you know they are. Looking at the qualified immunity right now at the Supreme Court today. You need to do something that’s so egregious and has already been done and found to be that egregious, to be held to account. Otherwise you just slide under the radar.

Police Are Only Accountable To Their Union That Protects Them

Scott Roberts:

So right. We need to readjust those standards. Make it easier for feds to hold officers accountable. There are a lot of issues with police unions. You know this is this delicate? Because we are very pro-labor, I personally grew up in Union household.

But police unions, they’re not part of our movement. They are the, I would say primary impediment to holding officers accountable. Because of the many obstacles and they work in to police contracts, that make it very difficult to hold officers accountable.

Even in Minneapolis. We’re, happy to see the quick firing of the officers. Before we get to the point of charges, the officers were fired, pretty promptly. I think that alone is a sign of progress. We couldn’t even get that type of stuff, four or five years ago, but there’s, an arbitration board in Minneapolis that has the power to reinstate those officers. Its history is reinstating 50 % of all officers who were fired.

Also we’ve been reading, that there’s a clause in the police contract that says officers have to have three days before they can be fired. That didn’t happen in this case. So there’s a question of whether or not the contract that the union was able to put in place actually means that the firing was invalid. They may be able to be brought back onto the force. So, then we’ve got a law enforcement officers bill of rights. All these things that police unions have pushed through to make it almost impossible.

So we need to push back on those things I think for us. One of the things that we focus on in terms of making change is identifying those people who have a vested interest in the status quo and mitigating their political power. So I think we really have to kind of expose who’s behind this right now. Being police unions primarily and the kind of, and mostly conservative, politicians. Or law enforcement, friendly politicians who have aligned themselves with police unions.

We’re excited to see in New York that some politicians are starting to give back the money. This week or over the weekend that police have given them. So I think going after the policies that they’ve put in place. Also trying to leverage the this moment to build the power to be able to take them on around contract disputes. Things like that.

Sam Seder:

I think Austin has done right specifically. Engaged in those type of reforms of their union contract. That make it much easier to hold cops accountable.

So if I hear what you’re saying that, in terms of what your program is. It starts with not totally defunding police departments but shifting a considerable amount of resources away from police and into the communities that they’re supposedly policing. Then holding police to account by a various number of means. So that they can actually change their own behavior. You know, so that there are just narrower parameters, and I think the idea is that, it is in some respect defunding them.

It narrows their mandate as to what areas they can go in to. Also it seems to me like there’s other, I would imagine subsidiary ones like forfeiture of assets, the way that that needs to be reformed. The main ones, If I’m hearing, what you’re saying is, make these police departments smaller. I would imagine without that funding, less militarized, and make them accountable every time they do something that we don’t want them to be doing.

Scott Roberts:

That’s right, I don’t think there’s, in addition to the things were talking about. Think one of the really critical things is community oversight. Community oversight boards that actually have disciplinary power.

We’ve, seen a proliferation of some of the boards over the last few years, but oftentimes they really don’t have the power. In a place like New York, for instance, the board is made up of half police officers, and retired officers. They’re not truly a community board. So we need to fix the ones that are out there and we need more of them, in more communities. At the end of the day, the police are just not accountable right now to us.

You know it’s, funny, the power that the police unions have. The way that many politicians have kind of cowed before them frankly, and the lack of accountability at the community level.

Can The Federal Government Do Anything About Police Accountability?

Sam Seder:

Is this something that we can do? I mean everything you’ve talked about, for the most part are local initiatives. Aside from like the broad concept of immunity that Supreme Court could deal, is there any type of federal fix for all of these things? Were any of them, I should say?

Scott Roberts:

Yeah, I do think there’s definitely things we need to do at the federal level. I think you’re right to say that. Though, not that to say that a lot of the real things, and especially around accountability, have to happen at the local level.

Sam Seder:

But I think the federal government can’t have a piece of federal legislation that says you’ve got to cut 20 % of your 25 % of your your police budget.

Scot Roberts:

That would be tough. I mean, the only the mechanism that we have is the federal funding. So there’s, a branch of federal funding that comes from the Department of Justice that goes to departments, and we do have that. That’s the kind of leverage that can be used to push departments to do things like better report their incidences of violence. We don’t even have that. We don’t have a clear national database for police killings in the United States.

Right, like, the Washington Post and other folks have had to build that, and so there is legislation around that. That would put that that database in place, and yes they would. You know your funding would be at risk. You’re talking about immunity and how we can deal with that. I think the federal government could certainly decrease funding for things like militarization. The transfer of military equipment to police departments, but and also there’s the DOJ right? This isn’t even really legislative.

I think we can legislate more of a mandate for the DOJ. I think Representative Omar has talked about actually creating an independent agency that investigates every police killing. So I think we need that, but a lot of this is also depending on the administration.

The Trump administration has been slow to investigate some of these cases. They kind of turned it up right now. You know we’re heading into the election. They have a strategy around black voters that, I think is informing me that, but what they haven’t been doing are the patterns and practices investigations. Which are what we really need. These are things that look at police departments as a whole. Not just an individual incident. It says why does a guy like the officer who was kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, have 18 complaints and still is on the force?

What’s going wrong in their systems? That’s allowing that, and the Trump administration has not only not watched any patterns and practices investigations. They’ve tried to end the ones that were put in place by the Obama administration. In places like Baltimore and Chicago, and in both they’re trying to end investigations, but also the consent decrees that came, that were settlements that came out of those investigations. That actually put some systemic reforms in place, in those places.

Sam Seder:

How effective were those consent decrees from your perspective?

Scott Roberts:

It’s better than not having them. I’ll say that. I think that, ultimately, that what you said earlier was right. Their leaders have to make these changes at the local level. I think a lot of it still depends on what local politicians want to do in terms of the consent decrees.

If they’re fighting them, if they’re cooperating, but there’s there’s things that they can put in place that can definitely help communities.

Sam Seder:

This seems to me to be the biggest challenge. That you need to do this locality by locality and, within those localities. You could do this on a municipal level, and you might be able to get sort of enough majorities there maybe. Then you’ve got this, in many of these places. This rural urban divide, which breaks down, not totally, but very much on race. Race is a component of that and you have Minnesota.

Looking at Minneapolis and going we don’t like this. We want the cops. Basically, we’ll have them circle and just keep it there. So that seemed to me to be a big, big challenge here.

Scott Roberts:

It’s a huge challenge beyond, of course, the points you’re making. Which are really valid. There’s preemption, which is where states. overrule, what local reform reforms folks put in place at the local level. We’ve seen that happen around voting rights and gun violence prevention measures.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it also happening around policing policy. Should we get some of these reforms in place. That will see states making it more difficult for localities to make those changes.

Sam Seder:

Lastly, you know we hear people basically coming out and saying go and vote, but the fact is is that in some of these situations. Part of the problem is that there’s not enough people to vote out these politicians. Who are doing the bidding of other groups of people in the state. Who are perfectly fine with the cops being violent.

Because you’ve got two different experiences of the police a lot of times. The people who have the experience of like, they’re great. If there’s someone strange in my neighborhood, I call and they come and make sure that you know my house is fine. Versus the people who are actually being policed as if they’re being occupied.

A Movement Is Required To Hold Police Accountable, City By City

Scott Roberts:

That’s why this movement is so critical. I think, and I feel like, we are definitely raising all of the obstacles they’re in the way, but I don’t want people to lose hope. Because people are seeing what’s happening.

I think there’s a difference in terms of the diversity of voices that are calling for change now and even five years ago. When we were dealing with Ferguson. There was clear evidence during that period of heightening movement activity, that public opinion was shifting around policing and race during that time.

So I do think we’re in this for the long haul. Like you say, we have to do so much change. Place by place. That takes time. We have to continue to change people’s, hearts and minds when it comes to policing.

You know some people. You know Dave Chappelle had a joke. This is almost twenty years ago and in his killing them softly special way. He talked about how white people just discover when they watch the Rodney King thing. Oh Wow, they’re really doing that.

Something that we take for granted our communities, and so I do think we have to keep lifting it up. I think you know the protests are important.

I do think that a lot of people are starting to see the light. I think it’s unfortunate right now that we have such a divided nation politically, and especially with the Trump administration. The White House that you know is the kind of people who are just gonna be shut off to anything.

I think we’ve been making progress. We’re gonna have to convince a lot of people. If we want to be able to make change at the state level and, like you say, in rural communities and places that don’t have large communities of color. Yeah, but I think we’re making progress.

I’m glad to see that we’re back in a moment where people are paying attention to this, and I do think the election is gonna matter. I’m not here to like endorse anybody, but I do think that who we put in places like the White House and in Congress will make a difference. Okay, even if you see the squad over last week, you know they went in office. The last time just jumped off and you can see like Presley and Omar.

They’ve, introduced a resolution calling trying to push Congress to condemn this kind of police violence. So we’re. Seeing more more leaders who coming into office we’ve seen local prosecutors have been elected around the country, who are doing a better job of holding police accountable.

So the movement has been making progress, but it’s gonna be a long haul for sure.

That was an interview about systems and strategies to reign in police behavior with Scott Roberts, He is the Senior Director of criminal justice campaign, Color For Change.

How about a guilt-free snack after all that reading?

Sugar Alternative Monk Fruit Juice Can Help When Going Sugarless