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7 Positive Solutions to Rein in Our Out-of-Control Police State

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

01 December 14

he decision to not indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown was a catalyst for a mass movement all over the country for police accountability. Citizens in over 170 U.S. cities took to the streets last week to protest violent and out of control police forces in the wake of the grand jury decision. The solution won’t come from one specific policy, but from a wide array of reforms that will address the systemic issues that result in police acting with impunity.

1. Repeal the Pentagon’s 1033 Program

Since the War on Drugs began during the Reagan administration, police departments have become increasingly militarized. The Department of Defense's Excess Property Program (DoD 1033) allows surplus military equipment to go to local and county police forces. This program is chiefly responsible for streets looking like war zones during national political conventions, global trade meetings, G8 summits, the Occupy movement and, more recently, the streets of Ferguson. NPR examined Pentagon records for the 1033 program and found that an alarming amount of armored vehicles, grenade launchers, assault rifles, helicopters, airplanes, and other high-tech military equipment is landing in the hands of improperly-trained local cops in towns with low crime rates. Repealing this program will result in local cops looking like local cops rather than soldiers patrolling Fallujah.

2. Mandate Body Cameras for All Police Officers That Can’t Be Turned Off While on Duty

Over 154,000 people have signed on to a campaign to equip all police officers with body cameras. If a police officers have to wear a body camera and have their actions recorded on video for all to see, it will result in those officers acting with more professionalism, knowing that their actions can’t be hidden from civilian eyes. This will result in less racial profiling, fewer instances of killing unarmed civilians, and more professional community policing as a result. These cameras must not be turned off while police are on duty, and strict penalties must be in place for officers who turn off body cameras while on the clock. Chief Tony Farrar of the Rialto Police Department, in California, conducted a study of police departments that used body cameras, and learned that there were 50 percent fewer uses of force with body cameras in place, and complaints against officers were down to 10 percent of what they were before the cameras were used.

3. Require Strict Training for Use of Lethal Force

When a Cleveland cop shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death in a park for playing with a toy gun, he did it within two seconds of arriving. There was no conversation asking him to put the gun down, no attempt to call for backup, and no attempt to subdue him with pepper spray or a taser. There’s no reason to give anyone a badge and a gun to keep the peace if they aren’t trained to know when it’s appropriate to use deadly force. Whether there’s an active shooter who’s threatening to hurt people, or a kid playing with a gun that may or may not be fake, it’s the officer’s job to know when to start shooting and when to de-escalate. Cities and states need to mandate that police go through additional training that teaches when lethal force is necessary and when it's not.

4. Make Police Officers Run for Office

Among the 75 U.S. cities with the largest police forces, 60 percent of those officers commute to work from another town and don’t even live in the community they serve. For example, the 53-member police force of Ferguson, Missouri, has only three Black members. This is in a community that’s 70 percent Black. And in 2013, those officers issued 32,975 arrest warrants in a town of only 21,135 people. When a police officers don’t live in the community they serve, they have no motivation to invest in the community and help it grow, only in meeting their own arrest quota. This fuels racial profiling, brutality, and unnecessary killings like the shooting of Mike Brown.

However, if police officers had to win the support of the people at the ballot box, they would naturally be more invested in the citizens they served and take a more community-based approach to policing. Imagine having someone knock on your door, tell you they’re running for one of the several police officer positions in your city ward, and try to convince you to vote for them. Police officers running for re-election would get to have their records examined in the public eye, and be forced to defend their actions to keep their jobs. It would truly make the position of police officer more devoted to public service, and help bridge the huge gap of distrust between citizens and police officers.

5. Form Civilian Review Boards with Power to Fire and Indict Police Officers

The mayor of Ferguson just established a civilian review board to monitor police in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, but that should be just the beginning. This mass movement for police accountability should go to city councils and boards of aldermen everywhere, demanding local governments form a civilian review board to hold police officers accountable. These boards should include both male and female representatives of all ethnicities, and be proportional to the racial makeup of that city. And if you’re a current or former police officer, or have immediate family members who serve as police officers, then you aren’t allowed to serve on the board. Citizens with particular grievances present their case to the board, and the board looks at all available evidence to see if that grievance has merit. To have any power, these boards have to be able to suspend, fire, and/or indict police officers once a decision has been reached. Police in cities with effective civilian review boards will definitely think before pulling the trigger.

6. Do Away With Felonies for Nonviolent Crimes

California just passed a statewide ballot initiative to do away with felony charges for nonviolent offenses, which immediately qualifies nearly 10,000 incarcerated Californians for early release. California’s Proposition 47 reclassified low-level offenses like shoplifting, drug possession, and check fraud of $950 or less. Now, the state will hand out approximately 40,000 fewer felony convictions each year.

When fewer people are in jail, more people get a chance to live their lives without a jail sentence on their record. This logically means fewer people in desperate situations, who are locked into a cycle of having to commit economic crimes in perpetuity because of having to do time from one mistake that blemished a career for good. And as an added bonus, private prison companies will build fewer facilities, as many of them are only built with the promise of a 90 percent constant occupancy rate.

7. Impose Strict Penalties for Racial Profiling

In 2011, a friend and I were visiting a friend in Brooklyn when, out of nowhere, a police car pulled out in front of us and three officers pressed us up against the car and searched us at random. My friend, who is Black, was frisked for several minutes longer than I was. Neither one of us had any drugs or weapons on us, and the police left unceremoniously. As a White man, I can say I’ve never been stop-and-frisked by the NYPD since, despite visiting the city numerous times over the last three years.

The statistics back me up – out of every 10 stop-and-frisks conducted by the NYPD, 9 of those yielded no results. And data from the New York Civil Liberties Union shows that year after year, 80 to 85 percent of those unsuccessful stop-and-frisks are perpetrated against Blacks and Latinos. If cities everywhere were to penalize officers with unpaid leave who conduct 3 or more traffic stops, stop-and-frisks, or sudden detainments against non-White citizens that didn’t result in any charges filed per month, police would be much more careful who they target while on patrol. Call it the three-strikes rule, but for cops.

Too many police act as unaccountable paramilitary forces, and citizens who have taken to the streets to protest this are rightly upset. But these solutions will go a long way in turning police officers into community servants again. Let’s make our rage productive and meaningful and turn our protests into action.

Carl Gibson, 27, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nonviolent grassroots movement that mobilized thousands to protest corporate tax dodging and budget cuts in the months leading up to Occupy Wall Street. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary We're Not Broke, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Carl is also the author of How to Oust a Congressman, an instructional manual on getting rid of corrupt members of Congress and state legislatures based on his experience in the 2012 elections in New Hampshire. He lives in Sacramento, California.

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