The crisis of the American police: 4 options for replacing traditional law enforcement

A world in which there will be much less police is possible. VOX tells what experts think about how this world might look.

Photo: Shutterstock

On the night of Friday, June 12, a policeman shot and killed Reishard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, near the drive-thru service of Wendy's Atlanta fast food restaurant. The police arrived after receiving a complaint that Brooks was sleeping in his car, which blocked the passage and forced other cars to go around it.

Video from the scene of the incident shows that communication begins calmly. Brooks repeatedly asks for permission to leave his car in the parking lot and go to his sister's house, which, according to him, is nearby. But the officer insists that he pass a field sobriety test, which discovers that Brooks’s blood alcohol level is slightly above the limit. The officer tries to handcuff Brooks, the man resists, and the physical struggle begins. Brooks grabs the officer’s stun gun, starts to run away and turns to use him. After a few seconds, the man lies motionless on the ground, having received three bullets.

This was not the first time a black man was killed during a police interaction after falling asleep in a parked car. This wasn't even the first time in recent weeks. At 5:30 a.m. on Memorial Day — the day George Floyd was killed — Dion Johnson was sleeping in his car on the side of a highway in north Phoenix when he was approached by an Arizona State Trooper who planned to arrest Johnson for “suspicion of impaired driving.” According to the officer's report, Johnson resisted arrest and reached for the officer's weapon. The officer shot Johnson in self-defense.

In both cases, the same basic question arises: why did the armed representatives of the government choose this answer to the fact that these men were sleeping in their cars? You can ask the same thing about a dispute over a (possibly) fake $ 20 bill (George Floyd's case). Erroneous drug search invasion. Road fine. Sale of tax-free cigarettes. None of these violations began with violence, but each ended with the death of a black man or woman killed by an armed police officer. Stories abound with examples of the fact that in such situations, police kill both white and Native Americans, and Hispanics and Asian Americans.

This dynamic reflects the structure of US policing. Those officers who write accident reports and respond to noise complaints can also shoot and kill. This means that one policeman has a monopoly on the entire continuum of power, from casual conversations to aggressive arrest, shooting and killings. The situation can develop from a calm conversation to the use of deadly force in a matter of seconds, completely at their discretion. If the one who answered the call did not have stun guns and firearms, Brooks would be alive today.

Many European countries view the use of lethal force as a narrow specialization and accordingly structure their police forces.

“If this had happened in the UK, the first person to contact Brooks would have been a community support officer,” says Colin Rogers, a former UK police inspector turned criminologist at the University of South Wales. - He, of course, would not be armed. And even if that interaction had gone badly, an officer armed only with a baton and handcuffs, not a gun, would have come to the rescue.”

In 2015, a Guardian investigation revealed that British police shot dead fewer people (24) in 55 years in England and Wales than US police in the first 24 days of 2015 in the United States. This discrepancy can only be partially explained by differences in armed clashes: the U.S. police shot 161 unarmed people only in 2015. This is partly due to the exceptionally high level of gun ownership in America, which is why police officers are constantly on the alert.

It's also because in the UK, government officials who carry out the vast majority of public safety responsibilities - from patrolling the streets to responding to non-violent crime - do not carry firearms. Only about 10% of British police officers carry weapons, and they mostly work in teams of highly trained specialists whose full-time job is to respond to calls at the highest possible threat level, such as an active shooter or a terrorist attack.

What if the US decides to do the same? What if, amid widespread calls to defund departments in the US, traditional policing—defined by the ability to deploy potentially lethal force—was made a subspecialty? What would this world look like? What will the police no longer do and who will take their place?

“It’s easy for me to imagine a world in which Rayshard Brooks was driven home that night rather than shot,” says Georgetown University law professor Christy Lopez. “The question for me is whether we have the will and desire to create a public safety system that will make this world a reality.”

Over the past few weeks, the author of this article, Roger Karma, has spoken to more than a dozen sociologists, criminologists, police experts, nonprofit leaders, and legal scholars to better understand the range of alternatives that exist in the current universal US police response model. The author wanted to know what alternatives could be developed to address unique challenges, such as the overwhelming presence of firearms, the interwoven history of racism and police activity, and the relatively high rate of violent crime in the United States. Here are four ideas they suggested.

Idea 1. Creation of specialized departments of road regulation

The vast majority of civilian interactions with the police take place on the road. According to a Department of Justice report for 2015, of the 50 million Americans who made contact with the police for the year, 25 million were stopped in the cars that they rode or were in as passengers (black Americans were the most likely objects of such attention). Another 8 million people had a car accident. And many of the 9 million who called the police to report crimes reported road accidents.

There is no justifiable reason why armed police officers should be responsible for road safety. Police officers are not hired for specific talents in the areas of traffic control, accident reporting, or ticket writing. And deploying armed officers to perform such routine tasks poses the risk of unnecessary use of deadly force in millions of encounters each year. The police killing of Philando Castile in 2016 was one example (among many others) of a routine traffic stop turning into a disaster—and it simply wouldn't have happened if the officer didn't have a gun. Sandra Bland's arrest for changing lanes without signaling and her subsequent suicide is another example.

It's not hard to imagine shifting most highway patrol functions to specialized officers - something that's being done for a variety of other public safety roles, such as restaurant and food inspections. England's highways employ unarmed traffic officers who drive a variety of vehicles, and many of the country's other road duties are left to "community support officers" who can issue fines but are unarmed and have no powers of arrest.

Some US cities are even starting to take steps in this direction, largely because armed police are a very expensive way to control traffic. In 2017, the City of New Orleans approved NOPD to hire outside officers to handle crashes where there were no injuries and there were no concerns that the driver was driving under the influence of alcohol or any substances.

On the subject: Trump signed a police reform order: what's in the document

Idea 2. Participation of mediators in the resolution of minor disputes

A huge number of police appeals is associated with relatively small interpersonal disputes: disputes over noise levels, illegal entry into someone else's territory, poor behavior of pets or hooliganism; disputes between spouses, family members, roommates, homes, or neighborhoods.

Without a mediator, what begins as a minor argument can turn into violence. But there is no particular reason why mediation should be entrusted to armed police officers; in any case, the traditional police tend to exacerbate these situations unnecessarily, leading to arrests or worse.

That is why a number of countries, such as Great Britain, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and South Africa, have created a special class of employees who can be called “public security professionals”. They are unarmed, they do not have most of the formal police powers, and they perform duties such as working with young people, mediating in conflicts, patrolling in communities and fighting low-level crime and unrest. The preliminary results of their impact on crime and community well-being have been promising.

“The idea was for community support officers [the UK version of the role] to act as a bridge between communities and police officers,” Rogers says. “Because we are unarmed, we maintain order in and with communities, not above them.”

A similar approach was first adopted in many street-sweeping programs in the US, such as Cure Violence and Advance Peace, which use “violence breakers” and “peacekeepers” from local communities to mediate conflicts before they develop into higher-level violence level. Scientific evaluations of these efforts have shown that non-police mediation can be very successful if properly executed.

“If someone is angry or thinking about shooting, violence interrupters can almost always calm that person down and stop them from acting out,” says Cure Violence founder Gary Slutkin. “The goal is to contain incidents before they become a police matter.” If nothing else has happened, it's not a police matter."

The author of this article asked A.T. Mitchell, the former "violence breaker" who now runs Cure Violence's ManUp in New York, is thinking about a dispute between George Floyd and a store cashier who claimed that Floyd used a fake $ 20 bill.

“This situation needed someone to resolve the conflict,” Mitchell said. “Should [Floyd] have apologized?” Did he even understand what was happening? We do not know. But I'll tell you something: if we had gotten the call, we could have come between them and that person would still be alive."

One can imagine cities hiring a cadre of “community mediators” as community health workers—a department trained in conflict resolution, applied psychology, and relationship management. Like their European counterparts, these intermediaries would be completely unarmed, have no formal police powers, and wear a different uniform from traditional officers. They could spend their time building relationships with local community members and maintaining a presence in high-traffic schools, neighborhoods, and public places.

Cities can even develop special numbers 2-11 or 3-11 so that interested neighbors, spouses, or citizens can make calls when they witness disputes, and can redirect appropriate calls from 9-11 to a community mediation group. If any of these disputes begins to escalate into violence, community mediators may have special silent alert systems (similar to those used by older people to receive medical care) to call the armed police for reinforcements.

“Imagine a world where first responders are really good at calming situations so people can get on with their lives without anyone ending up getting arrested—or worse,” says Barry Friedman, director of the Policing Project at New York University. “We don’t need so many police officers in this world who carry guns.”

Photo: Shutterstock

Idea 3. Creation of mobile crisis response units

Often the role of the policeman moves from mediation to a kind of social work, usually involving people such as the homeless, drunk, substance abuse or mental illness.

The results can be disastrous. About half of the prisoners have mental illness. About a quarter of law enforcement deaths relate to a person with a mental health problem (and these figures may be seriously underestimated). The massive disproportionate number of police calls and arrests in cities across the country affects homeless people. In Portland, Oregon, the city's homeless population accounted for 52% of all city arrests in 2017, although they make up less than 3% of Portland's population.

"You wouldn't try to build a house with a jackhammer," says Zachary Norris, director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. “But that’s what we do when we assign police officers to public health issues like substance abuse, homelessness and mental illness.”

One of the most promising alternatives to the police social work model is a program called Cahoots, a collaboration between local police and a community service called the White Bird Clinic operating in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. In these cities, police officers are not dispatched to every 9-11 call. Instead, about 20 percent of calls—often calls from homeless, drug-addicted, drunk or mentally ill individuals—are referred to a separate team of professionals highly trained in mental health counseling, social work and crisis management.

Cahoots employees do not brandish weapons of any kind. They dress in black hoodies, listen to police radios through headphones and purposefully speak in calm tones and use inviting body language. Their role is closer to that of a social first responder than that of a traditional police officer: they assess the situation, help the person as best they can, and then refer them to a higher level of care or service if necessary. If the situation escalates, they may also call the police for backup, but this rarely happens. In 2019, Cahoots received about 24 calls, and police helpline had to be called in less than 000% of cases.

“In 30 years, we have never had a serious injury or death that our team was responsible for,” said Ebony Morgan, a crisis worker with Cahoots. "I think it's important."

To top it all off, Cahoots saves the Eugene and Springfield police departments about $15 million a year, according to clinic coordinator Ben Brubaker, while taking care of incidents that would otherwise have to be handled by law enforcement or emergency departments—much more expensive solutions .

The Cahoots model scales easily elsewhere. And lawmakers in cities across the country, including San Francisco, Auckland and Minneapolis, are considering doing so.

City authorities might also consider building and improving this model. The main limitation of the existing program is the fact that its jurisdiction lies only in “non-criminal” challenges. This means that ordinary police officers can be sent to solve situations with which crisis workers at Cahoots are much better trained.

There are two possible remedies here. One of them is decriminalization of issues such as addiction and homelessness.

“Currently, police efforts to combat homelessness are driven by the criminalization of city laws,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. “Typically, homeless calls concern issues such as sleeping rough or begging, which should not be addressed by law enforcement. Changing laws that criminalize this behavior could expand the range of activities that a mobile crisis response unit like Cahoots can perform.”

Another idea is to deploy hybrid response units, consisting of both police officers and mobile crisis services, in situations that would normally fall outside the scope of Cahoots. For example, police may be called to the scene to stop a fierce fight. But it’s easy to imagine that the Cahoots team will come first and try to defuse the situation while the police are waiting nearby, out of sight, to be called in only if deemed necessary.

“I would be very excited to imagine a completely different first responder model,” Friedman says. “What that means is that people are trained completely differently, assigned those people differently, and given them a different reward system than we gave to police officers.”

On the subject: Know Your Rights: How To Behave With US Police

Idea 4. Experiment with community self-control

The first three ideas include solutions that local government officials could easily add to existing policing models. But what if you completely change the model? What if instead of keeping an eye on the public, the public will be given resources for the police?

Just over 20 years ago, the Australian government did just that.

The history of the indigenous community in Australia is full of state repression, cruelty and violence. Descriptions of the relationship between the police and indigenous peoples are read as if they could be drawn directly from contemporary African American experience in the United States (not to mention the indigenous communities of the United States). According to Harry Blagg, a professor of law at Charles Darwin University in Australia:

“Historically, policing has been a tool to control, limit or monitor the entry of Indigenous people into the dominant white community. According to criminologists, this has led to a legacy of over-policing of Indigenous peoples in the public sphere - where they may pose a threat to public order - and under-policing ("underserving" may be a better term) for Indigenous peoples in their own communities."

That began to change in the 1990s when a government commission found that there were overrepresentations of Indigenous people in prisons as a result of systemic bias. The authors concluded that the only way to end these injustices is to completely rethink the way Australians interact with the criminal justice system.

One recommendation they made was for the government to fund local forms of community self-control, such as Julalikari Night Patrol in northern Australia. The idea of ​​night patrols was simple: to enhance public safety by creating a buffer between indigenous peoples and the police. Here's how Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey described his visit to the Nyongar Patrol in Perth, Australia, in his book, The Challenging World: The Great Decrease in Crime, the Revival of Urban Life, and the Next War with Violence, in 2018:

“I joined a team led by Annie and Rachel, two amazing women who were wonderful to watch in action. I watched as they tried to calm down a shirtless man who was drunk and belligerent in front of a crowded bar. I saw them talking to a man who was not feeling well, lying on a bench in the middle of the town square, and stayed with him while the emergency worker asked him questions and eventually took him in for treatment...

Trouble arises during the shift every night, but the main goal of the patrol teams is to maintain a presence in public areas where young people spend time, looking for Aboriginal people who look like they need some help, and to give anyone who is causing trouble, an opportunity to cool off or go home before the police intervene. Sometimes the intervention of the patrol team is accompanied by a stern warning, but usually it is accompanied by a warm smile.”

Reading this description, it’s hard not to think about how differently things would have gone for Reichard Brooks or Dion Johnson if there were members of such a night patrol on duty. Maybe they would take Brooks to his sister's house for the night. Maybe they would take Johnson to a local shelter to sober up and feed him a hot breakfast. No one would even call the police.

Today, hundreds of such night patrols have been organized in indigenous communities across Australia, many of which are government-funded. Patrols lack formal police powers, but their legitimacy stems from the fact that they are created by community councils, approved by elders, use local knowledge and work within the framework of indigenous laws and culture.

In many ways, patrolling was extremely successful.

“The relationship between night patrols and the police is generally excellent these days,” Blagg says. “The police cannot do without them.”

Police do not have a permanent presence in most night patrol communities. They intervene to reassure or arrest, but usually only when a patrol contacts them. One study found that patrols in three areas were able to reduce arrests by about 30%.

The public safety approach has also been put into action in some of America's most violent neighborhoods by many "street outreach" programs, the largest and most thoroughly evaluated of which is Cure Violence Global.

Like Australian night patrols, Cure Violence’s “breakers of violence” are local people with close public relations, many of whom were in prison themselves. Their job is to build community-wide relationships so that they are aware of ongoing disputes, interpersonal conflicts, and potential clashes before it escalates into violence by civilians or comes to police intervention.

“We have a level of trust in the community that the police will never have,” Mitchell says. “That’s because we only hire people who live in the neighborhood.” Information comes to us long before it reaches the police."

The role of interruptors of violence goes beyond mere mediation in place. They provide mentoring and economic opportunities to individuals who are considered “at risk” for violence. After brutal skirmishes, they mobilize the family and friends of the victims and respected community leaders to prevent revenge. And in a quiet time, they are working to spread the social norms of non-violence.

Cure Violence programs have been implemented in 25 US cities, often in areas with high levels of gun violence. And numerous independent program analyzes in places like New York, Chicago, and Baltimore have shown that this model could potentially lead to a significant reduction in violent crime and gun violence by a fraction of the cost of a police effort.

Then one option would be for local lawmakers to simply expand the Cure Violence model from one or two districts to a whole city. Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced that he will invest an additional $ 10 million in expanding the program to 20 of New York’s most violent and violent areas.

"The timing is more than right for a major investment in Cure Violence," says Katerina Roman, a sociologist at Temple University who has conducted research on the organization's approach. She points out that while the organization has never been tested on the scale currently in demand, it is also one of the few models that has been shown to successfully make highly violent communities much less violent without the use of arrest and detention.

Another option for local legislators in the US is to experiment with community approaches to policing. Sharkey believes city officials should bring together local community organizations, community leaders and residents to form a new community coalition tasked with planning a new public safety model in a predetermined number of neighborhoods.

The group will receive funding equivalent to that received by the police department in this jurisdiction. They will be allowed to use the funds at their discretion. They will plan their community’s relationship with the local police station, which is likely to serve as a sort of reserve in case the situation worsens. Then they will be given at least 10 years to conduct an experiment with careful monitoring and evaluation.

“It's up to communities to decide these issues,” says Tracy Kesey, a former police officer and co-founder of the Center for Police Justice. — Who do you think should provide the services? Who should be responsible for public safety? These questions need to be asked of the community.”

These ideas may fail - but the current system is already failing

There is no guarantee that any of these offers will be successful in all directions. When it comes to police alternatives, even the best of the existing models have not been tried out on a scale, and it is impossible to say how different communities will react to them. The implementation of any idea on this list will mean entering a relatively uncharted territory.

This means there will be failures. Everything will go wrong. Systems will break. Programs will fall apart. In some places, violence may temporarily increase. Sometimes a “violence interrupter” or mobile crisis worker is seriously injured or killed.

But the current system is already a kind of profound failure. Americans live in a country that has built the largest prison system on earth, where state agents kill unarmed community members that they must protect and terrorize those who are still alive. Where peaceful demonstrators are beaten in the streets.

Communities across the country are already living with failure every day. This failure is due, at least in part, to the fact that police officers in the United States are tasked with responsibilities—from highway patrol to mediation to crisis response—that heighten the risk of unnecessary violence.

There are many models for how these responsibilities could be transferred to non-police personnel, while making the use of lethal force much more rare. The question is, are the Americans ready to give them a chance?

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