3. Any resolution of the issues raised by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson must respond with changes to the theories and practices of police organization and operations within communities with large numbers of African-Americans and other, especially low-income, minority groups. Such changes must involve a significant expansion of formalized cooperation with community leaders (especially clergy), increased recourse to non-traditional methods in responding to a range of domestic disputes and non-violent criminal activity, and enhanced specialization by departmental sections to manage the intelligence capabilities of local departments and better respond to chronic sources of violent crime. More emphatically, such transformations in the organization and operations of police require a revolutionary transformation to democratize local control over police forces and create an overriding conformity between the interests of citizens and the mission of their police forces.
Over the last two weeks, since the decision of a Missouri grand jury to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for his actions in the killing the Michael Brown, we have seen a brief and punctuated return to violence in Ferguson, followed by a more subdued continuity of more or less non-violent protests, including a march to the state capital at Jefferson City. More significantly, protests have arisen across the country in response to the failure of a New York City grand jury to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for his role in the death of Eric Garner, who died from cardiac arrest induced by asphyxiation after Officer Pantaleo used a chokehold to subdued him. In addition to the ubiquitous "hands up, don't shoot" chants of the Ferguson-inspired protests, the "I can't breath" uttered by Eric Garner, with his head shoved to the ground by officers, appears to be reappearing in new protests. Likewise, protests against the grand jury non-indictment in the Garner case have featured the appearance, in public places and often blocking traffic in major urban thoroughfairs and highways, of the "die-in" (i.e. lots of protesters lying down and playing dead in the middle of the road). A criminal investigation may be forthcoming but, as in these previous cases, an indictment is unlikely to be issued in the case of Cleveland, Ohio police officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally shot 12-year old Tamir Rice, in the possession of an air gun suspected to be an actual firearm. Finally, and conversely, a White former police chief in Eutawville, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Richard Combs, has just been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of an African-American male, Bernard Bailey, in May 2011, who had apparently become agitated at the Eutawville Town Hall where he was protesting a traffic violation against his daughter.
As a summary of progress or non-progress over the last few weeks within the legal system, responding to violence by police officers against African-American men, these events suggest to me that the larger problem of antagonistic relations between law enforcement officers and racial minority communities in the U.S. is not going to be resolved through recourse to the criminal justice system, if only because we are running squarely against a racial divergence in the conception of what constitutes justice and, moreover, a fundamental denial on the part of most White Americans that such a divergence either exists or that a rational basis exists for African-Americans to believe that the use of lethal violence by the law enforcement community has disproportionately and wrongly targeted African-American men. To assume that presumptive concerns of excessive use of violence by police against African-American men could be adequately addressed by the prosecution of a spattering of officers involved in certain cases across the country would tend to reduce such concerns to the problem of "a few bad/racist cops," and, in my opinion, this does not adequately address either the scale or the nature/origins of the problem. These origins are to be located at a foundational level in American cultural/ideological processes and can only be addressed by systematically bringing into question the nature of race in the U.S. As such, in the case of law enforcement and criminal justice, we need to approach current theory and practice with an expressed admission that race shapes and determines how we go about policing communities and how we go about incarcerating and/or rehabilitating/reintegrating criminals - it will not do to approach these questions from a race-neutral perspective because our culture is emphatically not race-neutral.
(For the alternative view, see (or listen to) the interview by National Public Radio's Rachel Martin with Dallas Deputy Police Chief Malik Aziz, the Chairman of the National Black Police Association in "Police in Other Communities are Consumed by Ferguson," NPR, 7 Dec. 2014, at: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/07/369108503/police-in-other-communities-are-consumed-by-ferguson. Succinctly, Deputy Chief Aziz not only suggests that the problem can be reduced, in part, to the presence of a tiny handful of racist police officers in the larger law enforcement community, but also argues that the civilian population bears responsibility for a "cultural disconnect," arising when individuals stopped by police do not fully comply with the direction of officers. Conceding that Deputy Chief Aziz is quite correct in arguing that it might pose adverse effects on an individual's health to resist arrest or otherwise challenge a police officer in his/her duties, his perspective demonstrates of a limitation of the perspective of police professionals in relation to the political processes through which they are conferred responsibility to maintain the peace and order. We need to recognize the subjective positionality of such perspectives and acknowledge that law enforcement practices are a subject of continuous political contestation within any democratic social formation. That is to say, while I can't fault Aziz for his steadfast professionalism and objectivity, there is something about its disconnection from the culture and politics of racialism that I both find distasteful as an ardent democrat and, ultimately, at the root of the racialist problem that we are awakening to!)
This section of my comments seeks to briefly address one particular set of questions involved in what needs to be a broad, revolutionary transformation of law enforcement and criminal justice theory and practice. Specifically, how must law enforcement change in order to accomodate a continuous engagement with racialism and, in so doing, embody a stronger commitment to democratization in the organization and direction/oversight of law enforcement, particularly in communities with large numbers of African-Americans, other racial minorities, and, more broadly, low-income groupings (insofar as the dynamic of race is intermingled in questions of income-based stratification and the continuous rise of income inequality since the 1970s)? In true Marxist form, I do not have any all-encompassing, universal solutions to this inquiry. Moreover, at this point in U.S. history, it seems that, notwithstanding the possible benefits that could manifest themselves in a federal Justice Department investigation of local police departments to evaluate the systematic nature of police practices against African-American and other racial minority communities, the federal government has little to add to the conversation on how local police departments need to change in order to address racial disparities in law enforcement practices. We are not necessarily dealing with an inadequacy of good laws/statutory standards on the national/federal level but with a divergence in the commitment at the local/municipal level to engage with racialism and to stop denying the reality of race as an underlying and, to some degree, unconscious factor in local law enforcement practices.
First, police departments in communities like Ferguson need to incorporate formalized connections to individuals within the larger community that can function to both facilitate enhanced cooperation in particular law enforcement initiatives and enhance the general level of trust conferred on the police department by the community as a function of its embedded character within the community. Such connections, of course, rely on the existence of individuals capable of acting as leaders within the larger community, exerting a degree of moral force over the community transcending legal authority. For that matter, it demands that the community exists as a cohesive entity or a network of associations, with or without leaders. Talking about the "African-American community" in Ferguson, Missouri or in other places takes for granted that such an entity actually exists, that individuals within it embody a sense of belonging to the community, and that the community can be marshalled by leaders to respect the authoritative direction of such individuals. Such considerations are foundational to what I am arguing here, and it is by no means clear that the African-American community of Ferguson actually exists as something other than a rhetorical device in the machinations of the American mass media! We might argue that, as a result of the events since the Michael Brown shooting, an African-American community in Ferguson has congealed around the broader sentiment of discontent toward police brutality. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether such a community would remain intact in the absence of collective discontent or, rather, whether a community could be forged to act permanently in Ferguson on its own behalf as a discrete segment of the democratic sovereign, acting, in part, over the municipal government and the police. In a more broadly democractic sense, I am asking whether a collective body, among the residents of Ferguson, exists to take permanent ownership over the government and police department in a way that they can both command the organization and operations of law enforcement authorities and accept ownership of its practices by virtue of consent to their outcomes (i.e. everyone recognizes that when a police officer tells someone to stop, they stop, because, in the end, that officer is just enacting the will of the community, demanded by the community, to maintain the peace and order of the community).
Realizing, to some extent, that this initial argument unpacks a demand on the police and municipal government of Ferguson to find ways to interact cooperatively with residents, it more critically makes a enormous demand on the residents of Ferguson and, especially, on its African-American "community" - that they have to start acting collectively like a democratic sovereign and demand that their government act on their behalf. That is to say, any real transformation of the relationship between the African-American community and law enforcement in Ferguson and elsewhere is going to be a multi-dimensional process, involving the reassertion of democratic will by a disempowered and apathetic or otherwise frustrated African-American community, the willingness of local government and law enforcement to cooperate with newly self-empowered citizens, and the openness of White neighbors to engage in a broader cultural and political conversation on race in a manner that supports the larger transformative process and recognizes the equality and interconnectedness of all citizens as a requisite to democracy and justice for all members of the community, Black and White.
Dispensing, for the moment, with the larger question of mass organization to promote political transformations and returning to the limited concern of how police departments like that of Ferguson need to change, such police departments need to "deputize" (for lack of a better term) community leaders and influential individuals within the community to undertake a range of law enforcement duties unlikely to result in the need to subdue, arrest/detain, or otherwise employ repressive violence against individuals. In this regard, I have in mind a range of activities that might be characterized as "community interventions," intended to manifest a profylactic impact on individuals who might otherwise subsequently become involved in criminal activities. Domestic household disturbances and youth involvement in "gang" activity would certainly fall within this range of police interventions. The idea of introducing such a formal role for individuals who would, by expectation, not be vested with the authority to detain/arrest individuals or to carry firearms or other lethal or non-lethal means of physical violence is to create a division of labor within the formal apparatus of state repressive processes between activities that axiomatically demand the use of police detention/arrest (with or without subsequent recourse to the criminal justice system) and possible recourse to means of lethal violence and activities that strictly demand intervention, mediation of disputes, surveillance, and/or prolonged contact/mentoring/direction of individuals (without any expectation of recourse to the criminal justice system).
Moreover, by formalizing such a role by non-uniformed individuals within the community, direct consultation and joint consultation with uniformed police officials on individual cases would tend to reinforce a cooperative ethos between the community as a whole and uniformed law enforcement authorities, lending further weight to community education through non-uniformed consultants around broader law enforcement issues, like drug control. Finally, the establishment of networks of non-uniformed community consultants might serve as a building block to the development of further community policing networks. An introductory conception of my meaning here might be constituted by neighborhood watch programs, but community policing networking must go further to incorporate broader intervention on a range of individual and community development issues, recognizing a range of cultural and economic processes at the local level contribute to the creation of individuals "at risk" for criminal activity.
Investing a significant weight behind the notion of formalized community involvement in policing, certain questions remain. Notably, if community leaders are to be deputized as non-uniformed consultants and direct intervening authorities in place of uniformed law enforcement authorities, should such individuals be compensated by municipalities for their official duties and, if so, what impact would such processes have on municipal police budgets? Offering a short answer, I do think non-uniformed consultants/authorities need to be compensated for their involvement with law enforcment insofar as their activities represent a formal substitution of uniformed officers for non-uniformed conflict mediators, educators, and community organizers. Developing a formula for such compensation involves more complicated issues that need to be approached on a case by case basis. As suggested, however, the introduction of an alternative, community-based model of policing with a division of labor between non-uniformed and uniformed law enforcement components will certainly mandate a reconsideration of fiscal management by municipalities, if only because greater involvement in day-to-day law enforcement by non-uniformed individuals will make particular activities by uniformed officers redundant and, thus, maintenance of more extensive numbers of uniformed officers in certain municipalities would be both unnecessary and fiscally prohibitive. Again, if the idea is to partially substitute one kind of law enforcement by uniformed officers for another form, undertaken by non-uniformed community mediators and organizers, then we need to play out the ramifications for municipal fiscal management in order to recognize that municipalities would have to reorganize their law enforcement budgets, possibly in ways that might save municipal tax revenues relative to models of law enforcement restricted to utilization of professional uniformed officers in traditionally organized departments. On the other hand, the merit involved a major rethinking in the organization of law enforcement cannot be limited to the potential fiscal benefits of a reduction in the size of police budgets - if application of alternative models actually raised expenditures on law enforcement because the range of activities with which community consultants/mediators/organizers concerned themselves expanded significantly in relation to traditional law enforcement, such a transformation would still be worthwhile for the fact that it achieves of more fundamental regrounding of law enforcement at the level of the community.
Another obvious question to be approached here concerns the sort of individuals that might be integrated as non-uniformed consultants/mediators/organizers. The immediate thought that enters my mind, to these ends, especially in regard to African-American communities, is that cooperation with pastors/clergy and highly involved lay church members, as the primary moral pillars of local communities, is critical. Beyond the churches, educators within both public and private schools, especially at schools located within the community, would significantly aid community intervention activities related to the individual development of children and young adults and the identification of households in need of intervention and support by social service professionals. We should also consider individuals involved in diverse ranges of community organizing activity (e.g. anti-poverty organizations, labor organizers, etc.), as individuals invested with a certain degree of locally-specific knowledge and abilities consistent with the sort of network building that a successful transition to a community-based model of law enforcement would require. Finally, I would be amiss if I did not also include local entrepreneurs and other individuals within the business community capable of exerting some moral force in their interactions with others in the community.
Beyond the integration of a more community centric, non-uniformed law enforcement model, we have to consider how uniformed components in law enforcement have to change, per se. To the extent that what I am arguing for is a new division of labor between non-uniformed, deputized community consultants/mediators/organizers and uniformed police, it stands to reason that uniformed law enforcement officials would become much more specialized in a range of practices that will require highly trained, professional officers, handling lethal and non-lethal means to subdue, detain/arrest suspects and operate in cooperation in non-uniformed consultants to deal with public disturbances that cannot be adequately addressed by non-uniformed personnel. Moreover, cooperation with non-uniformed consultants will offer to uniformed police new and better resources for surveillance and collection of intelligence on criminal activities within neighborhoods, better enabling police to handle organized crime and other endemic problems. Finally, uniformed law enforcement components would constitute a logical point of contact and coordination between upper level law enforcement authorities (e.g. state police, FBI and other federal authorities) and non-uniformed community consultants to manage larger law enforcement strategies and effectively ensure a flow of information/intelligence. Succintly, the point is not to eliminate traditional police forces in the present-day conception but to truncate the range of things that traditional uniformed police do in order to enhance their effectiveness in a law enforcement model that places new stress on the role of non-uniformed community mediators.
As an organizational and fiscal matter, if traditional uniformed police were to become more specialized in a range of duties that did not require continuous day-to-day involvement/interaction with the community outside of contact with non-uniformed consultants, then I would expect that the scale of uniformed components within local police departments would be diminished. Again, if we are replacing the "beat patrolman" with a non-uniformed, unarmed community mediator, then we would be replacing existing patrolman positions with a smaller number of detective positions, specialized "SWAT"-type units (assuming a role would still exist for the latter and local forces cannot be substituted for, say, state-level resources), and available responders to a diminished range of situations in which armed officers would be indispensible (e.g. addressing organized criminal activity).
To conclude this section, the realization of such changes to law enforcement is fundamentally predicated on the transformation/democratization of local government and control/direction over law enforcement authorities. If local communities do not possess the substantive electoral means to legislate the character of municipal government, including the organization and doctrinal policies of police departments, then we will never realize a transition to new law enforcement models of a more community-centric form. Emphatically, enhancement of the democratic process is at the heart of what I have offered in this section, and, in communities like Ferguson, it seems that a deficit in democratic control by the African-American community over the direction and organization of the municipal government coincides with its mismatch against a police department whose organization is ill suited to the needs of the community. In the end, beyond asserting the need for an alternative, community-centric model of policing, the deeper problem for Ferguson remains in articulating the meaning and purpose of community and translating this articulation into the demand for a revolutionary democratic transformation of municipal government and law enforcement consistent with its needs.
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