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Main argument: Misconceptions and myths about policing (overestimating police resistance to change, for example) can hurt reform efforts. It is essential to execute practical solutions that emphasize community involvement, training, and leadership. Gross argues that generalizations about ineffective police can hurt the chances of implementing practical changes.

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As the months have ticked by since the brutal January 2023 killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, the problems with policing in this country have largely receded from the headlines. Before the next crisis-and at the end of a summer that marks the ten-year anniversary of the Black Lives Matter movement-we should take a moment to reconsider the terms of the national debate over police reform.

As with much of public life these days, the conversation around policing has become intensely polarized, pitting the small percentage of Americans who favor literally abolishing the police against an equally small number who insist that policing is perfect as is. Although both camps have prolific and vocal supporters, neither comes close to representing the views of the average American voter, who prefers meaningful but not radical police reform and whose perspective often seems to have been left out of the debate.

As a former cop and now a sociologist, I've puzzled over how we got here and how we might turn things around. As I've spoken to public audiences over the last few years and taught courses to undergraduates, I've encountered three widely held but false or misleading beliefs about the police that underlie polarization on the issue. Clearing away these misunderstandings could lead to more productive conversations and policymaking.

Myth #1: The police can't prevent crime

Attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie, who co-wrote the abolitionist tract No More Police with activist Mariame Kaba, expressed this position when she told The Guardian last year, "the police are not producing safety. They are not preventing or interrupting violence."

Although I can understand why some people might feel this way-if you live in a neighborhood with persistent crime and what seems like an oppressive police presence, say-research shows that the opposite is true. All else being equal, the larger the number of police officers in an area, the less crime there tends to be, at least for many kinds of crime.

In a study from 2020, for example, criminologist Aaron Chalfin and colleagues found that every ten additional police officers employed by a city prevents about one homicide annually. (This finding did not hold in cities where more than 27 percent of the population identified as Black, however.) Analyzing data on almost 7,000 municipalities, economist Emily Weisburst (one of the coauthors of the study by Dr. Chalfin) likewise discovered in 2019 that "a 10% increase in police employment... reduces violent crime rates by 13% and property crime rates by 7%." A visible police presence can also bring down traffic accidents.

The reason is simple: few potential law breakers will commit crimes when the cops are around, meaning that the police may have a deterrent effect. While random patrols aren't terribly effective, newer, more efficient strategies for police deployment, including "hot spot" approaches that zero in on the places where crime is most likely to occur, multiply policing's deterrent benefits. Better staffed departments with more detectives also solve more crimes, affecting the certainty of punishment, another key element of deterrence.

Some crimes, like mass shootings, aren't as responsive to police presence. ( Research shows that many mass shooters intend to die during the commission of their crimes, and so are not easily deterred-although when police are able to respond quickly, they may be able to neutralize a shooter before he causes further casualties.) And the crime suppression gains from having cops on the street must always be weighed against potential costs, such as the prospect that people will be harassed, arrested for unimportant "quality of life" offenses, or hurt, with negative consequences for mental health, the educational performance of kids (Black male teenagers in particular, who are disproportionately targeted by police), and more. Better policing-for example, policing that does not rely on blanket "stop, question, and frisk" tactics-can mitigate these negative consequences.

But as to whether police can prevent crime, the answer is yes.

At the same time, the police are not the only way to prevent crime. Consider the massive, nationwide drop in both violent and property crime that began in the 1990s and continued until recently. While police chiefs like Bill Bratton took credit for this, and while an increase in the number of police officers per capita funded by the 1994 crime bill was part of the story, other factors were probably more important. Among them were the coming of age of adolescents and young adults who'd been brought up in a period of tighter environmental regulation, limiting their exposure to lead, which compromises impulse control; growth in community nonprofits, which, as the sociologist Patrick Sharkey has found, helped reknit the social fabric of neighborhoods devastated by job loss due to structural changes in the economy; and significant increases in immigration (immigration being associated with rates of criminal offending, contrary to the claims of its opponents).
Read More: To Reduce Deaths at Hands of Police, Reduce Traffic Stops
That doesn't imply that interventions tied to these factors are the only way to drive crime down further, or to counter the crime spike we've witnessed over the last few years. (More on that spike below.) Some of the strategies currently popular in progressive circles, such as scaling up social services, decriminalizing narcotics use, and employing civilian "violence interrupters" to mediate conflict among disputing individuals and groups, might prove effective in this regard, though the scientific jury is still out. Given that serious street crime is often rooted in poverty and social marginalization, poverty reduction efforts, from expanding the housing supply and thus lowering rental prices to business investment aimed at job growth to more radical proposals like a universal basic income, could also be useful over the long-haul. But these efforts are most likely to produce safe streets when coupled with professional, respectful policing, not with an absence of police.

Myth #2: Police reform compromises public safety

It's already becoming clear that crime and policing will be major issues in the 2024 presidential campaign, with Republicans doing their best to paint Democrats as soft on crime. Before he announced his candidacy, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis traveled to Staten Island, New York, home to thousands of cops and firefighters, to proclaim his support for law enforcement. "The foundation of Florida's success," he said, "has been a commitment to law and order and support for the men and women who wear the uniform." Amid the unrest of 2020, DeSantis continued, woke Democratic politicians had succumbed to demands from the radical left to defund and hamstring the police, sending crime rates soaring in blue cities. DeSantis, by contrast, signed into law a bill in 2021 that would restore police funding to any Sunshine State municipality that dared to follow suit. The result, he said, was that crime rates in Florida had reached a fifty year low. The implication was obvious: if you meddle with policing, you'll get more crime.

Protesters block traffic as they rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, in Venice, California, on January 29, 2023. - The US city of Memphis on January 28 disbanded the special police unit whose officers fatally beat a young Black man, after graphic video of the assault sparked widespread shock and outrage. The video, which shows five officers repeatedly kicking and punching 29-year-old Tyre Nichols as he moans and calls out for his mother, triggered calls for police reform. Agustin PAULLIER-AFP

DeSantis's speech made for good political theater, but it didn't square well with reality. In 2020, Democratic politicians in a number of big cities, including Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, did vote to reallocate a portion of funding from police department budgets to other areas. But much of this reallocation never happened, and by 2021 nearly all the cities on the list had restored or grown their police budgets. So if crime soared during this time, it can't primarily be a result of defunding. (President Biden has opposed police defunding and called for the hiring of more officers.)

But are crime rates soaring? It's complicated. Take homicide. The US homicide rate rose significantly in 2020-by about 30 percent over 2019 levels-before flattening out in 2021. About 21,500 Americans were murdered in that first pandemic year, an increase of almost five thousand from the year before. That is an unthinkable number of violent deaths to add on to the more than 350,000 Americans who lost their lives in 2020 from COVID-19. And the pain was not felt equally: more than half of those murdered were Black. Although the homicide rate had risen in 2015 and 2016 as well, the 2020 spike was the largest in decades. In most places homicides per capita remained well below what they were back in the 1990s, but some cities, such as Philadelphia, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, and Chicago, had as many victims (in absolute numbers) as ever before, or more, overwhelming the capacity of law enforcement. Especially in the impoverished, racially segregated neighborhoods where gun violence is concentrated, it was spot on to describe crime as soaring.

But, again, it's complicated. Not all crime rose in tandem with homicide. The overall rate of violent crime went up by about 5.6 percent from 2019 to 2020-before falling slightly in 2021. (And, it seems, falling again in 2022, though the FBI hasn't yet released its final report. There was also a change during this period in how police departments reported crime statistics to the federal government, so there is considerable uncertainty in the data.) On property crime, there's been much discussion in the media of a wave of theft and other forms of lawlessness in progressive cities like San Francisco. Some urban areas have indeed been having a much harder time than others. Yet for the US as a whole, property crime has been sloping downward more or less uninterrupted since the early 1990s, as measured by official reports to police as well as anonymous victimization surveys.

And now, preliminary data from the largest US cities show a major drop in homicides for the first half of 2023. (Not for all cities. Violent crime in Washington, DC, for example, including homicide, is up this year.)

Social scientists don't know what caused the murder spike of 2020. It could be the pandemic. It could be the rise in gun ownership that took place then. DeSantis and other conservatives blame progressive prosecutors, but research suggests that the election of progressive district attorneys had no appreciable effect on crime rates. Another possibility is that Black Lives Matter protests-for all the good they've done in prompting a racial reckoning throughout society-had indirect, unintended consequences for homicide.

One commonly invoked hypothesis to explain the bump in homicide numbers in 2015 was the so-called "Ferguson effect," the theory that after the protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri (and then other cities) following the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in 2014, something shifted in the urban landscape, increasing the probability of violence. Several studies at the time found support for this hypothesis, including one I carried out with the sociologist Marcus Mann. Our research showed that violent crime from 2014 to 2016 rose the most in cities that had the greatest number of Google searches for terms related to police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement, signaling greater concern with the issue. This concern-likely reflecting anger and frustration with local policing practices that the protests amplified-could have made police hesitant to engage in normal enforcement activities. Or it could have enhanced a perception among city residents that the police were not a legitimate institution, encouraging some to turn to violence as a way of handling disagreements and disputes. (More recent research highlights police illegitimacy as an explanation, though both factors appear to have been at play.)
Read More: Three Years After George Floyd, Police Culture Still Hasn't Changed
The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were among the largest protests in American history, dwarfing those of 2014 and 2015 in size. Could a similar Ferguson effect dynamic have taken place in their wake? There are no conclusive studies on this yet, but there is strong evidence that in Minneapolis police pulled back their enforcement following George Floyd's murder and the protests around it; and that in Denver, where a similar pull back occurred due to both protests and the pandemic, there was an associated rise in crime. Gun assaults on police officers coast-to-coast jumped to abnormally high levels in the three weeks after Mr. Floyd was killed.

The protests and subsequent calls for defunding also contributed to a wave of police resignations, and may now be making recruitment more difficult, potentially increasing crime by leaving fewer police on the street. But it is hard to disentangle the effects of anti-police sentiment here from the effects of a tight labor market. With an unemployment rate today of just 3.8 percent, recruitment in nearly every industry is a challenge (it's been especially difficult to fill jobs in the public sector); and the last time unemployment was so low-right before the start of the pandemic, and before there was much talk of police defunding-police leaders were equally bemoaning the struggles of recruitment and retention.

The point in all this isn't that Black Lives Matter protesters should have stayed home; public demonstrations are a natural and appropriate response to injustice. Rather, the onus is on police departments to weed out bad cops like Derek Chauvin, whose behavior can trigger chain reactions that impinge on public safety around the country.

Myth #3: Because of policing's racist origins, there is nothing we can do to improve it

A common refrain of activists on the left is that because US policing originated in slave patrols, racism is built into its DNA, making real reform impossible. It is true that in the South, in New Orleans, Charleston, and elsewhere, we can trace the history of the municipal agencies that came to be called police departments to antebellum "city guard" units whose primary task was capturing enslaved Black people who had escaped and quelling slave rebellions. Throughout Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, these agencies continued to enforce white supremacy, not least through their connections to the Ku Klux Klan.

Yet police departments elsewhere in the US sprang from different roots. Boston and New York, for example, established police departments with full-time, uniformed officers in the mid-nineteenth century for the same reason that European cities like Paris and London had done so earlier: urbanization generated crime and public disorder problems-along with mounting social anxieties-at a scale that previous, more informal systems of justice administration couldn't handle. Problems like that track with inequality, so even in the North policing functioned to maintain hierarchies of race and class. But in a rapidly industrializing society with a racial caste system, most major social institutions, from the labor market to education, functioned in part to maintain those hierarchies. That this was true for policing doesn't necessarily speak to whether it can be reformed along more racially equal lines today.

Flanked by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, lawmakers and cabinet members, U.S. President Joe Biden signs an executive order enacting further police reform in the East Room of the White House on May 25, 2022 in Washington, DC. President Biden's executive order is intends to improve police accountability and direct federal agencies to revise use-of-force policies, such as banning tactics like chokeholds. Anna Moneymaker-Getty Images

Anyone who doubts that institutions can evolve beyond their origins should consider American colleges, which began as conservative, all-male, and dedicated to providing future ministers with an education in classics and theology. Or look at state institutions and many large private enterprises in contemporary Germany, which were more or less successfully de-Nazified after World War II. Or the Democratic Party, for that matter, which defended segregation and white supremacy for nearly a century before becoming committed to civil rights. Although an institution's founding and history can certainly shape its present performance, the fact is that institutions can and do change.

Policing, for its part, has transformed over the decades, as any historian of the subject can attest, and this is also true along the dimension of race. While stubborn racial disparities remain in use of force, arrest rates for petty offenses, routine traffic stops, internal hiring and promotion, and other aspects of police operations-disparities every department should work to minimize-and while horrific evidence of racial animus continues to surface with disturbing frequency, there can be no serious question that policing in 2023 looks very different than it did in, say, Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, when "Bull" Connor, the notoriously racist public safety commissioner, directed his officers and their dogs to viciously attack civil rights protesters because of his opposition to integration.

Nearly a thir d of police officers nationwide are now Latino, Black, or part of some other ethnic or racial minority group, as are more than half of big city chiefs. Diversifying police forces won't fix everything-the cops who beat Tyre Nichols were Black-but the best research shows that Latino and Black (and female) cops use force less and are more selective in their stop and arrest behavior. Seasoned police veterans I've interviewed who are Black have told me how much police attitudes and conduct have changed during their years on the job, even if those officers are critical of current practices. And still further progress is possible.

An Example from Rural Georgia

It's an unusual case, but in LaGrange, Georgia, a majority Black town with a history of racism as shameful as any, a white police chief named Lou Dekmar fundamentally remade his department, upping hiring standards, putting in place a host of stringent policies, increasing training, and changing department culture. LaGrange PD today isn't perfect, but it's doing better than other departments at minimizing the use of force as well as racial disparities in traffic stops, and the department's solve rate for homicides over the period 1995-2019 stood at an impressive 84 percent. (As journalist Jill Leovy has argued, the fact that police departments solve many fewer homicides when the victim is Black than when the victim is white is an important but neglected aspect of racial inequality.)

Back in 1940, LaGrange officers abetted the lynching of a Black teenager named Austin Callaway. In 2017 Dekmar apologized publicly for this despicable crime and his department's role in it, using the occasion to emphasize to his cops the importance of equal treatment under the law. Most U.S. police agencies haven't come as far as LaGrange PD. But that's only to say that they need to be pushed harder to change. As I've written about elsewhere, visionary and tenacious police chiefs backed by politicians and everyday citizens are the often-overlooked key to successful reform.

Under Chief Dekmar's tenure, crime in LaGrange fell by 50 percent before the pandemic hit. And that raises a final point that's gotten lost in current conversations on criminal justice: there needn't be a tradeoff between public safety and the quest for better policing. Smart approaches to police reform can produce more equitable and humane law enforcement that reduces crime.

Cops Explaining Themselves

Consider a study carried out in Tucson, Cambridge, and Houston by the criminologist David Weisburd and colleagues. Working with the local police departments, the researchers first identified crime hot spots in all three cities. Half of those areas were selected to be policed as normal, while the other half would be policed by cops trained in an approach called "procedural justice." The theory behind procedural justice is that if cops are fair, equitable, reasonable, and communicative then people will perceive the procedures of law to be just. That should make them more likely to cooperate with authorities and to obey the law in the first place.

Members of the research team rode with the police, observing and taking notes on their behavior. They administered before and after surveys to people living in the hot spot areas. They found that the officers who received the procedural justice training treated citizens more respectfully and made fewer arrests for minor offenses; that citizens living where those cops policed felt less harassed and noticed less use of force; and that-remarkably-at the end of the study period crime was 14 percent lower in the areas that saw improved policing.

Procedural justice aims, in part, to change the culture of the police. Implementing it in departments with particularly troubled cultures and recalcitrant unions, like Minneapolis PD, is no easy feat. But it's only one in a whole suite of reform strategies we know can be effective.

If we're serious about achieving safety and justice, we need to get beyond hyper-partisan talking points. Policing isn't going away anytime soon-nor should it-and the institution has real problems that need to be addressed. Let's work together, in communities large and small, to get the job done.

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A cop turned sociologist details the realities overlooked by advocates on both sides of the debate over policing.

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Policing in the U.S. has become heavily militarized, which damages public trust, increases violence, and reflects deeper systemic inequalities. This militarization stems from historical and structural factors, such as federal policies that promoted the use of military-grade tactics and equipment in domestic law enforcement. This framework prioritizes control and order over community safety and justice.

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Black Clergy United March for Justice on June 13, 2020 in Tampa, Florida. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Introduction: Closing the Gap between Police and the Communities They Serve

Alongside the military as one of only two agents of society granted the authority to employ lethal force, law enforcement holds a privileged position in the social contract between the public and the government.[i] Although some of the recent protests and calls for action following the latest deaths of Black Americans at the hand of police officers seem directed at the United States federal government, the focus of reform efforts should be pinpointed on the state and local levels. While many assume the federal government pulls the levers of policing powers, control of around 18,000 municipal, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies stems from the local level.[ii] The decentralized nature of policing systems creates at least two significant challenges for reforms. First, decentralization makes it difficult to focus on systemic issues of policing, rather than the individual behavior of officers. Ronald L. Davis who served as the Director of the United States Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services in the Obama Administration writes, "There is no question that rank-and-file officers must be held accountable for their actions. However, if the systems in which they operate are flawed, even good officers can have bad outcomes."[iii] This systematic approach shifts the focus of emotional backlash against the actions of individual police to the crux of a much deeper problem: systematically inequitable policing systems.[iv] Second, decentralization has contributed to the militarization of law enforcement further decreasing communities' trust in police officers who no longer resemble the communities in which they work. Reflecting on the words of Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern law enforcement, the responsibility of the community served by law enforcement must also factor into the equation as he explains, "The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."[v] Against this backdrop, the militarization of the police has widened the gap between law enforcement and the communities they serve. While decentralized policing systems certainly pose challenges to systemic reform, local approaches to reform capitalize on the deeply interconnected relationship between the police and the public to deliver effective localized solutions.

Historical Background on Police and Police Reform in the United States

Since their origin, police departments have been connected to issues of local politics, economics, and race. The first organized police force in the United States was founded in Boston in 1838 when merchants argued for public funding in the name of the "collective good."[vi] As policing institutions spread to the South later in the 19 th century, police were used to coral runaway slaves and prevent slave revolts.[vii] Local economics and politics resulted in police precincts aligning with political wards, politicizing the application of law and order.[viii] Familiar issues being protested today, such as police's excessive use of force when attempting to make arrests, emerged as a polarizing issue as early as the 1830s.[ix] As this problem propagated during Prohibition, President Herbert Hoover appointed the Wickersham Commission in 1929 to investigate criminal law enforcement.[x] The resulting review recommended a transfer of criminal prosecution from local jurisdiction to the state level in an attempt to remove power from local corruption, but little action ensued.[xi] Other commissions investigating corruption, racism, the use of excessive force, and fraud among other offenses have produced similarly disappointing actionable results.[xii]

The 1950s introduced an effort to professionalize law enforcement by restructuring police departments and centralizing authority.[xiii] American police officer and scholar O.W. Wilson headed the professionalism movement, advocating for centralization of the police force and lauding military discipline in his book Police Administration.[xiv] These recommendations, however, ultimately served to widen the gap between police departments and the public they served as increasingly isolated police bureaucracies emphasized efficiency at the expense of losing touch with their communities.[xv] Wilson's insistence on military discipline did not fit a police force intended to serve its community in contrast to a military force charged with the management of violence.

The police responded to charges of police brutality, corruption, and other misconduct with a unionization campaign that led to the unionization of nearly every metropolitan police department by the early 1970s.[xvi] Police unions became the scapegoat for municipal social and economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s, bringing about another reorganization of police departments.[xvii] These reforms included reducing the size of police forces, increasing their division of labor, implementing technology to control police administrators, and employing civilians to take on some traditional police tasks.[xviii]

The professional image of the police suffered due to their suppression of the Civil Rights movement, use of force in handling large demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and the string of political assassinations that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s.[xix] Instead of providing a source for de-escalating tensions, the police became identified with flaring tensions.[xx] In the 1980s, the police departments sought to improve their image and efficiency through community policing, which emphasized a close working relationship with the community.[xxi] Dr. Gary Potter characterizes the challenges facing contemporary police reform efforts, writing:

Community policing is the latest iteration in efforts to (1) improve relations between the police and the community; (2) decentralize the police [by tailoring their policies to the community]; and, (3) in response to the overwhelming body of scholarly literature which finds that the police have virtually no impact on crime, no matter their emphasis or role, provide a means to make citizens feel more comfortable about what has been a seemingly insoluable [sic] American dilemma.[xxii]

Ultimately, the role of police in the United States has identified more with the American political-economy rather than crime or crime control.[xxiii]

Law Enforcement Statistics and the Policies That Fuel Them

In the international context, the rate of police killings in the United States far exceeds those of other wealthy and developed countries such as Canada, Australia, and countries in Western Europe.[xxiv] American law enforcement registered 1,099 civilian deaths in 2019, which comes to 33.5 civilian deaths per 10 million people.[xxv] Canada is the next highest wealthy and developed country, registering only 36 civilian deaths in 2017, representing 9.8 civilian deaths per 10 million people.[xxvi] Polling by the Pew Research Center exhibits a stark divide in police treatment based on race.[xxvii] According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, the majority of both Black (84%) and white (63%) Americans responded that the police treat Black people less fairly than whites.[xxviii] In the same survey, Black adults are about five times as likely as white adults to respond that they attribute being unfairly stopped by police to their race or ethnicity, further demonstrating police bias.[xxix] When surveying police officers on their views of fatal encounters between Black people and police, a 2016 survey showed that 57% of Black police officers view fatal incidents as evidence of a broader problem, whereas 72% of white officers and 72% of Hispanic officers viewed such encounters as isolated incidents.[xxx] When it comes to training expectations, surprisingly, the average police officer must complete 672 hours of basic training, which comes to only half of the average time it takes for a person to become a certified barber.[xxxi] Statistics like this fuel the cries for law enforcement reform in the United States.

Police unions present an obstacle to reform, protecting accused police officers and leading the narrative that policymakers who attempt to change law enforcement are soft on crime.[xxxii] High membership rates provide ample resources for police unions to wage campaigns and take legal action to defend officers.[xxxiii] Showcasing these resources, one New York City police union spent over $1 million on state and local races since 2014.[xxxiv] This kind of investment in state and local elections demonstrates the importance of these elections for reform efforts. In order to facilitate local reform, citizens need to recognize the influence wielded by local officials and respond with increased civic engagement.

Qualified immunity provides another crutch to police protection.[xxxv] The legal doctrine of qualified immunity protects officers in the case that they are accused of violating others' constitutional rights.[xxxvi] Protection under qualified immunity defends officers from further litigation if relatives or victims seek to sue.[xxxvii] The case of Baxter v. Bracey demonstrates the application of qualified immunity.[xxxviii] In Tennessee in 2014, the police responded to a call citing burglary and, using a canine unit, found Alexander Baxter to be the burglar.[xxxix] The police apprehended Baxter, but, following his surrender, unleashed a police dog who then bit Baxter.[xl] Baxter sued the police for excessive force, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the district court that denied claims of qualified immunity "because the officers' conduct, whether constitutional, did not violate any clearly established right."[xli] The debate over unique job requirements for police officers, judgement when using force, and holding police officers accountable continues to level scrutiny on qualified immunity and the protection it provides.

The Militarization of Law Enforcement

In a move that might bear resemblance to an oft-used negotiation tactic used by President Trump, protest movements have called out to "defund the police", perhaps using an extreme demand in an effort to meet somewhere in the middle.[xlii] Much of this ire centers on the 1033 program, which provides military equipment to local law enforcement agencies.[xliii] Originating in the post-Cold War environment of 1990, the 1033 program transferred surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies to bolster their war on drugs.[xliv] Similar to how reform efforts in the 1950s advocated for a police force guided by military discipline, the 1033 program evidences a policy disconnect. While the program puts surplus military equipment to use, it neglects the optics of the operation, isolating the police force from the community it serves. Since the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, more than $850 million worth of equipment has flowed to local law enforcement agencies through the 1033 program.[xlv] In August of 2017, President Trump removed restrictions on the 1033 program put in place by President Obama by executive order.[xlvi] A bipartisan effort between Senator Brian Schatz and Senator Rand Paul attempted to place limitations on the 1033 program by adding an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, but the effort failed.[xlvii] The program follows a pattern of ebbing and flowing with the level of fear of domestic threats.

Action in the Wake of Public Outcry

Partisan politics have slowed the federal response to law enforcement reform as evidenced by a Senate vote of 55-45 falling short of the 60 votes needed to begin debate on the police reform bill endorsed by Senate Republican Tim Scott.[xlviii] Although polarization and the upcoming Presidential election in November have, at times, paralyzed the federal government, states are taking action. Reform bills are receiving attention in state legislatures, focusing on police oversight, regulating the use of force, banning chokeholds, establishing public databases of traffic stops, and augmenting investigations of misconduct with an independent agency.[xlix] The police reform bill passed by the Iowa state legislature illustrates the impact a state can have on reform by granting the state attorney general power to prosecute police officers, banning chokeholds, and restricting police departments from hiring officers with records of misconduct.[l]

Local jurisdictions have pursued similar measures in strengthening transparency and accountability, regulating policing practices, and prioritizing community-based solutions.[li] Governors, Mayors, Attorneys General, City Councils, Police Departments, and School Boards across the United States have all taken action to implement police reform.[lii] Lasting changes to public safety and improvement to the relationship between police and the public thrive on this kind of engagement. The cry for reform has been heard, but in order to solidify these changes and enforce the wave of reform being elicited, citizens must hold state and local representatives accountable for the influence they wield.

Bibliography

[i] Scott L. Efflandt, " Military Professionalism and Private Contractors," Army War College Quarterly 44 (Summer 2014), 50.

[ii] Ronald L. Davis, "Police Reform vs. Policing Reform," COPS, August 2016, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/08-2016/police_reform.asp.

[vi] Olivia B. Waxman, "How the U.S. Got Its Police Force," Time Magazine, May 18, 2017, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/.

[ix] Gary Potter, "The History of Policing in the United States," Eastern Kentucky University, Police Studies Online, July 9, 2013, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1.

[x] Olivia B. Waxman, "How the U.S. Got Its Police Force," Time Magazine.

[xi] Ronald F. Wright, The Wickersham Commission and Local Control of Criminal Prosecution, 96 Marq. L. Rev. 1199 (2013), http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol96/iss4/11.

[xii] Gary Potter, "The History of Policing in the United States," Eastern Kentucky University.

[xxiv] Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer, "Not just "a few bad apples": U.S. police kill civilians at much higher rates than other countries," Prison Policy Initiative, June 5, 2020, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/.

[xxvii] Drew Desilver, Michael Lipka, and Dalia Fahmy, "10 Things We Know About Race and Policing in the United States," Pew Research Center, June 3, 2020, Accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/03/10-things-we-know-about-race-and-policing-in-the-u-s/.

[xxviii] Ibid.

[xxxi] Kelly McLaughlin, "The average US police department requires fewer hours of training than what it takes to become a barber or a plumber," Insider, June 12, 2020, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.insider.com/some-police-academies-require-fewer-hours-of-training-plumbing-2020-6#:~:text=Police%20departments%20on%20average%20require,for%20Criminal%20Justice%20Training%20Reform.

[xxxii] Noam Scheiber, Farah Stockman, and J. David Goodman, "How Police Unions Became Such Powerful Opponents to Reform Efforts," The New York Times, June 6, 2020, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapolis-kroll.html?auth=login-email&login=email.

[xxxv] Hailey Fuchs, "Qualified Immunity Protection for Police Emerges as Flash Point Amid Protests," New York Times, June 23, 2020, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/us/politics/qualified-immunity.html.

[xxxvii] Ibid.

[xxxviii] "Baxter v. Bracey," ACLU, July 2, 2020, Accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.aclu.org/cases/baxter-v-bracey.

[xli] Baxter v. Bracey, Case No. 18-5102, (Tennessee 2018), https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/18a0566n-06.pdf.

[xlii] James Hohmann, "The Daily 202: 'Demilitarize the police could be a more fruitful rallying cry for reformers than 'defunding'," Washington Post, June 9, 2020, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2020/06/09/daily-202-demilitarizing-the-police-could-be-a-more-fruitful-rallying-cry-for-reformers-than-defunding/5edf0e54602ff12947e87c9e/.

[xlviii] Claudia Grisales, Kelsey Snell, and Susan Davis, "Senate Democrats Block GOP Reform Bill," NPR, June 24, 2020, Accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882530458/democrats-vow-to-block-gop-police-reform-bill-unless-republicans-agree-to-negoti.

[xlix] Weihua Li and Humera Lodhi, "Which States Are Taking on Police Reform After George Floyd?," The Marshall Project, June 18, 2020, Accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/18/which-states-are-taking-on-police-reform-after-george-floyd.

[li] Kenny Lo, "Assessing the State of Police Reform," Center for American Progress, July 16, 2020, Accessed July 28, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/news/2020/07/16/487721/assessing-state-police-reform/.

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Police and the People: Perspective on Police Reform

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The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police in early 2020 sparked protests across the world, drawing critical attention to how Americans relate to the police officers sworn to protect and serve them. To understand this relationship, this paper reviews the historical background on policing and police reform in...

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The public's misunderstanding of the role of the police leads to resistance to reform. Gross argues that the public largely believes police deter crime through presence and arrests. However, research suggests that crime is more closely tied to underlying social factors like poverty and unemployment. The article cites studies showing that increasing police presence has a relationship with reducing crime, along with addressing other issues such as poverty and narcotics use. Reallocating funds towards these issues can prove to be extremely beneficial for both the community and police. This will challenge the perception that reforming or reducing police budgets would result in lawlessness.

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Due to the deep ties of racial equalitiy in policing's origins, many believe that it cannot be transformed into a just and effective force that many dream of it to be. Though these roots may hold an influence over how police operate today, this does not mean the system cannot be improved. Modern policing has already undergone huge changes over time, such as reducing corruption and introducing stricter forms of accountability. It is evident that reform is possible when there is effort and political will. If society gives up on trying to improve the system, it could leave communities without support and allow crime to increase beyond bounds. History should not be an excuse to abandon police efforts. Focusing on real solutions, such as better accountability, community focused practices, and addressing social inequalities that contribute to crime can lead us in the right direction.

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The militarization of police is the direct result of professionalizing the career, along with the addition of excessive force. The roots of police militarization are when policies in the 20th century funneled federal funds and military-grade equipment to local police departments. This transition equipped officers to approach domestic policing as though it were war violence, emphasizing control rather than community engagement.

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Small incremental reforms, such as implementing body cameras or providing implicit bias training, are inadequate for addressing the deep-rooted issues in policing. The current issues at hand demand structural changes that go beyond surface-level adjustments to tackle the root causes of inequality and mistrust in law enforcement. Citizens should begin with their involvement on a local level, as their actions can impact higher-level policies and policymakers.

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"Given that serious street crime is often rooted in poverty and social marginalization, poverty reduction efforts, from expanding the housing supply and thus lowering rental prices to business investment aimed at job growth to more radical proposals like a universal basic income, could also be useful over the long-haul...But much of this reallocation never happened, and by 2021 nearly all the cities on the list had restored or grown their police budgets. So if crime soared during this time, it can’t primarily be a result of defunding."

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"Seasoned police veterans I’ve interviewed who are Black have told me how much police attitudes and conduct have changed during their years on the job, even if those officers are critical of current practices."

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"These recommendations, however, ultimately served to widen the gap between police departments and the public they served as increasingly isolated police bureaucracies emphasized efficiency at the expense of losing touch with their communities. Wilson’s insistence on military discipline did not fit a police force intended to serve its community in contrast to a military force charged with the management of violence."

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"The police reform bill passed by the Iowa state legislature illustrates the impact a state can have on reform by granting the state attorney general power to prosecute police officers, banning chokeholds, and restricting police departments from hiring officers with records of misconduct."

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Police abuse of power is the result of militarization and its racial history. However, addressing these issues could provide a more community-focused law enforcement. Both militarization and racial history result in an aggressive form of policing that is no longer appropriate in today's society.

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The Time article calls for the reallocation of some funds along with the maintenance of current law enforcement. The Georgetown article calls for a complete reform beginning with policy changes on multiple government levels.