A critical, but eminently solvable, problem facing policing agencies today is lack of trust between the police and the community, especially in minority communities where the makeup of the police force does not match the makeup of the community they represent.
Many solutions have been looked at in light of some of the recent tragedies that have taken place, such as the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson; Eric Garner in Staten Island; John Crawford in Beavercreek, Ohio, and numerous others.
The solution that the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police fully endorses is contained within a report titled “The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.” That report can be found on a U.S. Justice Department website, www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/TaskForce_FinalReport.pdf.
The report is a set of guidelines meant to bring in an era of more community-focused policing. As Community Oriented Policing Services Director Ronald Davis has stated, “There is a difference between community policing and policing the community.” The report sets out pillars upon which we can build. Those are: Building Trust and Legitimacy, Policy and Oversight, Technology and Social Media, Community Policing and Crime Reduction, Training and Education and Officer Wellness and Safety. We will discuss a few already being done in Georgia and others that we recommend take place in a timely manner.
Building trust and legitimacy is going to be the most difficult area to address and overcome. However, a great part of working toward that goal will be accomplished through progress in the other areas. To properly function, a police department must have proper policies, develop training to ensure that all members of the department are fully aware of the policies, have proper supervision to ensure that policies are being followed, and have fair and impartial investigations into violations of these policies. Each department should immediately do their own self-evaluation to try to determine whether these things are currently taking place. Once that’s done, a department can determine steps that need to be taken as a blueprint for improvement.
One of the hardest things for a department to do is change an old pattern of practice or conduct and get rid of inconsistencies in the ways that these are followed. The best way for this to happen is for departments to look at the current consent decrees that have been entered into with various law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Justice Department. There are currently 26 active consent decrees.
Police departments must develop or change policies in areas such as bias-based policing, use of force guidelines, community policing, citizen complaints and crowd management. A department must be forward-thinking enough to look at these issues themselves before someone else has to do it for them.
Policies should also remain fairly consistent across departments. In this regard, the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police makes sample policies available through its website to any member department.
The use of new technology, such as police-worn body cameras, should also help in making interactions between the police and the public more professional, while also fully documenting these encounters. This will help in several areas. Video footage of these encounters can be used to support police in their investigations, document when they make mistakes, and as a training tool to teach officers proper and improper ways to interact with the public.
However, the public has expressed concerns regarding their expectation of privacy, such as who can ask for a copy of the video under our state’s Open Records Act?
Policing agencies must also involve the public by allowing their input. This can take place by having community education sessions, holding citizen academies and clergy academies to educate the public and our spiritual leaders on how police agencies operate and why. Hopefully, those attendees will view precarious situations from the eyes of a law enforcement professional who often has to make split-second decisions.
The implementation of all of these strategies will ensure officer safety while building trust within the communities they serve.
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