Local cops after Ferguson: guardians or warriors?

Independent investigations

The county departments in DeKalb and Gwinnett have decided that the GBI will now investigate all shootings in which an officer is involved. And the Cobb County district attorney called in the GBI to investigate after Smyrna police shot a garage employee as he allegedly drove at them in a customer’s Maserati.

Training on mental illness

The DeKalb police shooting of an unarmed Afghanistan War veteran, who had stripped naked following an adverse reaction to medication, prompted the county’s top cop to call for continuing mental health training for all officers.

Community outreach

Two recent examples: Gwinnett police joined an African-American sorority in sponsoring a meeting of officers with the community. Marietta police asked local black ministers to take part in a special police academy, which includes simulations in which the officer must make a split-second decision on use of force.

A string of police shootings has stirred a national debate over police use of force, but the incidents haven’t prompted widespread change in policy, procedure and training in metro Atlanta.

The reforms that have occurred here and nationally have generally been incremental and often involve greater attempts at community outreach and transparency. Perhaps the most concrete change is the use of body cameras on street cops. Departments in Atlanta, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, Gwinnett and Smyrna are moving closer to widespread use of the devices on officers. Coweta and Powder Springs already use them.

In the days after the Baltimore riots, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked a dozen local police agencies whether recent events have or should spur changes in policy and procedure. Several local departments asserted that they are largely getting it right and that police are being scapegoated by voracious media that keep stoking anger in the community.

The dissonance is striking: many in the public have come to view the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., as a symbol of the gulf between police and the communities they serve. But to many in the police, it was simply a righteous shooting.

“Ferguson is not seen as a watershed moment for us to change what we are doing in terms of use of force,” said Lt. Brian Marshall of the Marietta Police Department, recognized as one of the best agencies at community outreach by President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. “The facts are that the use of force by that officer in Ferguson was seen to be objectively reasonable under the (court) standard.”

The challenge is not use-of-force policy but better community relations, Marshall said: that’s the lesson.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, president of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, tends to agree.

“Sometimes the worst enemy of police officers are themselves,” he said. “A lot of these problems can be overcome by communication. Get out there. Tell the public what’s happening, why you did what you did.”

Some experts believe that the problem lies not in the officer’s holster but in his or her head, and they call for a change in police culture. They also suggest that while changes in policy may be important, the first thing that needs to change is the conversation.

‘Core values: honesty, professionalism, respect’

Don’t think for a minute that police departments aren’t having that conversation. Just as the public has been buzzing about Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island and North Charleston, the discussion has also worked its way into morning roll-call meetings, training sessions and informal talks among junior officers and their supervisors. The messages being emphasized, officials say, focus on the role of police in the community, the appropriate use of force and the importance of community relations.

Marietta Sgt. Ben Mixon, a day-watch supervisor, said he uses news events as teaching moments. He discussed the fatal shooting last year of a homeless man in Albuquerque, N.M. Two officers have been charged with murder but have denied wrongdoing. Authorities say the man threatened officers with two knives.

Mixon talked about the importance of watching a person for the signs of aggression, such as keeping an eye on their waist and hands, as well as the need for officers to have a shared plan of action should a threat arise.

Broader lessons also emerge.

“It’s important to us to focus back on core values, simple things: honesty, loyalty, professionalism and respect,” Mixon said. “If you have those when you’re making a decision, you’ll be OK.”

At the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, which graduates 1,500 recruits annually, trainers are enhancing some instruction, such as teaching these officers-in-training to notice their own prejudices, while also developing the verbal skills to connect with people as a human being and not just a badge.

“We probably need to do more of that” work on verbal skills, said center training division director Ray Saxon. He added, “We don’t do a very good job of letting people know what we do … why we make some decisions.”

‘A lot of what’s being said is media-driven’

The United States stands at a critical moment in policing, some criminologists say. What began with protests in Ferguson last August has been followed by public attention on one officer-involved death after another.

These deaths almost exclusively involved African-Americans and have inflamed a tense racial debate on the use of police force that has played out on cable news, social media and, at times, on the streets.

“Police-minority relations are at a fever-pitch,” said Dean Dabney, an associate professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University. “This is a very important time. The stakes are very high. Both groups — the minority citizens and the police community — are both feeling tremendously uneasy toward each other. That’s going to produce negative results in the short-term. Whether there will be long-term solutions remains to be seen.”

Atlanta community activist Marcus Coleman welcomed body cams and third-party investigations into shootings, but he said training needs greater emphasis.

“My focus is on preventing the shootings in the first place,” said Coleman, founder of the group Save our Selves. “There needs to be changes in training so that deadly force isn’t at the forefront of these split-second decisions these officers have to make.”

He added, “Ferguson is not unique.”

But the director of operations for the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council said he does not see the need to alter training. Ryan Powell acknowledged isolated incidents of police wrongdoing, but said he sees no systemic problem.

“A lot of what is going on is so media-driven,” Powell said. “I think a lot of what is being said doesn’t play out in the statistics.”

Capt. Brian Batterton, director of the Cobb Police Department training academy, said he has evaluated these incidents and is satisfied no change in training is necessary.

“We’ve always given a good amount more training than has been required,” he said. “We believe our training is sufficient.”

‘We have to worry about the backlash’

Many police say they feel unappreciated and unfairly criticized.

“Nobody wants to wait for all the evidence to be in, they want to jump in right away and say the officers are in the wrong,” said Vince Champion, southeast regional director of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.

Police worry that publicity has inflamed tensions between police and black youth. Some say they see signs that these young people are more apt to refuse to follow an officer’s instructions. That lack of compliance can quickly escalate into trouble.

“Now we have to worry about the backlash. You’ve got officers who’ve done nothing wrong getting hurt, because someone’s mad at a police officer in Baltimore,” Champion said.

Sills, a former DeKalb police officer now in his 20th year as Putnam’s sheriff, said he worries about an “us-against-them” mentality.

“A lot of these officers, they aren’t going to live in these high-crime areas,” Sills said. “So (they) approach (their job) as if they’re in combat mode. And then you go from being a justice agency to an occupying force.”

He added, “If you’re not feeling the pain of your community, you’re not doing your job. And when the community doesn’t support you, you’ve got trouble.”

‘It’s going to show transparency’

Substantial changes in police procedure, where they have occurred, have generally been driven by local events, the AJC has found. In DeKalb County, for example, where two black men were fatally shot by police within a span of three months, investigations into police-involved shootings are no longer handled internally. The county’s public safety director, Cedric Alexander, has also vowed to have all his officers outfitted with body cameras by early next year.

Indeed, the broadest consensus has been on body cameras, which attach to officers’ clothing, helmet or glasses and capture footage of traffic stops, arrests and other police calls.

“It’s going to show transparency on the part of the department,” said Smyrna police spokesman Officer Chris Graeff. The city recently approved the $68,000 purchase of 75 cameras for the entire department. “A lot of the speculation in Ferguson could have been squashed if they had a video and put it out there.”

But cameras come with a host of complicated issues. How long does the department store the images? Indeed, departments are finding that prospect costly.

Another lesson police agencies are embracing is the need to bridge partnerships with the community.

‘We should always have a check on police’

Arthur Gibford said he wants to become a police officer for the same reasons he joined the Army — to serve.

The 26-year-old is halfway through his training at the Canton facility of the state police training center. He’s set to join the Holly Springs Police Department next month.

He’s well aware of the national conversation going on, and he said he welcomes the emphasis on community involvement.

“We should always have a check on what police do, so there’s no police brutality,” he said.

Gibford said his instructors have talked about the need for officers to be guardians in the community and not some occupying force. He likened it to the soldiers he saw in Afghanistan who helped build schools and deliver care packages to kids.

“(One trainer) said that in the public eye, we’re seen in our patrol cars, windows rolled up, the air-conditioning on,” Gibford said. “He said, ‘Get out of your vehicle. Talk to people.’”