[In reference to citation quotas] "The numbers game shaped us as police officers, indeed it defined us as police officers. As I observe in my current consulting, training and expert-witness work and note in federal investigations into police departments like Ferguson, there is abundant evidence that the numbers games survives to this day. In fact, many supervisors believe that counting and recapping activity is the only way to evaluate police performance."
"There was zero assessment of the quality of my relations with the citizens I'd been hired to protect and serve. The people on my beat were, in a word, irrelevant. As long as I stopped enough of them, handed them enough tickets, arrested enugh of them, I would, at am minimum, keep the sergeant off my back. And, optimally, get him (there were no hers at the time in any of the supervisory, much less managerial or executive ranks, or, for that matter, in uniform) to support my aspirational career track."
[in reference to DOJ investigation to Ferguson Police Department] "The 102-page document is a searing indictment of a Midwest police agency whose cops--aided and abetted by their chief of police, the city prosecutor, the municipal court judge, the court clerk and virtually every elected official in town--systemically violated the constitutional rights of its citizens. And did so in the most blatant, public, unapologetic way imaginable. It was almost as if they didn't know any better--a theory worth pursuing."
"What they found confirmed 'a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson Police Department that violates the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments in the Untied States Constitution and federal statutory law."
"Speaking personally, the anger comes from a realization these these government officials knew or should have known that not onyl were they harming the very people they'd been hired to help, they were methodically breaking the law."
"As I have acknowledged previously, I behaved badly as rookie cop, sometimes spectacularly so, especially in my disregard of civil liberties. Nevertheless, I amassed a personnel file full of brownie points and other accolodes, and I was rewarded with plum assignments and promotions."
"And that makes me wonder about the silent men and women of official Ferguson, those singled out for praise in the Department of Justice investigation."
"The conversation is not about farming. Or cosmetology, or food service, or retail sales. It is about life and death, peace and freedom decision-making. About enforcing the law of the land and ensuring justice."
"What exactly did the investigators find wrong in Ferguson?:
Focus on Generating Revenue."
"The DOJ found that virtually every branch and tributary of the city's bureaucracy--the mayor, city council, city manager, finance director, municipal court prosecutor, court clerk, assistant clerks, police chief--all were enmeshed in an unending race to raise revenue through municipal fines and fees:
City officials routinely urge Chief Jackson to generate more revenue through enforcement. In March 2010, for instance, the City Finance Director wrote to Chief Jackson that 'unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year....Given that we are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall, its not an insignificant issue.' Similarly, in March 2013, the Finance Director wrote to the City Manager; 'Court fees are anticipated to rise about 7.5%. I did ask the Chief if he thought the PD could deliver 10% increase. He indicated they could try.' The importance of focusing on revenue generation is communicated to FPD officers. Ferguson police officers from all ranks told us that revenue generation is stressed heavily within the police department and the message comes from City leadership. The evidence we reviewed supports this perception.'"
"Let's say a young cop has joined the local PD to give back to her community, to make a positive difference in the lives of her fellow citizens. But pressure for more tickets (or more field investigations, more arrests) transforms her into a hunter and the citizens on her beat into prey. The young, idealistic cop, yielding pressure from her boss, wanting to get ahead, starts targeting motorists and pedestrians. Soon, she is pulling over cars with flimsy or no justification, writing bad tickets; stopping people without reasonable suspicion; arresting them without probable cause. And, if you're the one being cuffed or cited, don't even try to explain yourself to her. She's too busy, she has other numbers to collect.
An officer trained in a system where people are reduced to numbers is very likely to dehumanize the people on his or her beat, and once that happens there's little hope for decency, mercy or even something resembling objectivity. The people are simply a means to a self-centered end: good performance appraisals, choice assignments, a succession of stripes, bars,a nd stars and other insignia or tank as one advances up the rungs of the hierarchical ladder, taking home fatter and fatter paychecks.
Governments need money to operate, of course. Fair and equitable taxation, reasonable service fees, other irreproachable, transparent sources of revenue make sense. Excessive reliance of fines, fees and forfeitures wrung from the criminal justice system does not. The former has legitimacy; the latter--policing for profit--lacks it."
POLICE PRACTICES
"Variables too numerous to count affect the development and durability of the cop culture. Each police department is different but only, I submit, in minor, usually cosmetic ways: the cut of the uniforms, the color scheme of the cars, the argot, jargon and patois of cops on the beat."
"Renowned sociologist Jerome Skolnick wrote the definitive book on police culture. Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society provides foundation wisdom about the extent to which danger and authority combine to produce a cops working personality and foster social isolation and solidarity within the ranks. In fact, Skolnick maintained that any job description that called ona person to exercise discretionary decision-making authority in the face of physical danger (think police officer) was simply demanding way too much of the practitioner. Add to the mix certain organization pressures, like the numbers game, and you have the makings of a department whose members are all but guaranteed to act with indifference, if not hostility, toward outsiders, namely, the people they've been hired to protect and serve."
"I know of no law enforcement agency, certainly no local PD or sheriff's department, whose members have escaped these influences--and their behavioral manifestations and consequences.
In Ferguson, for example, the DOJ investigation found the City's emphasis on revenue generation has a profound effect on FPD's approach to law enforcement. Patrol assignments and schedules are geared toward aggressive enforcement of Ferguson's municipal code with insufficient thought given to whether enforcement strategies promote public safety or unnecessarily undermine community trust and cooperation."
" A cop playing the numbers game in earnest will inevitably develop tunnel vision, along with a distorted understanding of the limits of his authority: the 'sanctioned right to order the actions of others':
This culture within FPD influences officer activities in all areas of policing, beyond just ticketing. Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence. Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints or officer misconduct. The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probably cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression, as well as retaliation for protected expression, in violation of the First Amendment; and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The report relates to the story of thirty-two year old African American man who'd been playing basketball in one of the city's public parks. Seated in his car, cooling off, he noticed a police vehicle pull in behind him, blocking his own car. The officer got out, demanded ID, accused the man of being a pedophile, ordered him from his car, and patted him down--not one discrete action of which was justified, legally or otherwise. The cop asked for permission to search the car. The man, asserting his constitutional rights, declined--which evidently, in the officer's mind, now justified an arrest.
At gunpoint, reportedly. The man was charged with eight violations of the Ferguson Municipal Code, including 'making a false declaration' (for telling the officer his name was Mike when it was actually Michael), not wearing a seat belt (even though he was in a parked car), having no driver's license and having an expired license. The man told federal investigators he lost his long-term job as a contractor with the federal government because of those charges."
MUNICIPAL COURT PRACTICES
[From DOJ report] "The court primarily uses its judicial authority as a means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance the City's financial interests. This has led to court practices that violate the Fourteenth Amendment's due process and equal protection requirements.'
"Returning to Ferguson. The DOJ report states tat in just one year (2013), the court issued over 9,000 warrants for minor violations such as traffic and parking tickets and housing code violations (another big money-maker for the city). 'The court's practices...impose unnecessary harm, overwhelmingly on African-American individuals and run counter to public safety."
RACIAL BIAS
"The evidence is in. The FPD has engaged for decades in systemic racial discrimination.
The city's African-American population stands at roughly 67% but as the departments own statistics show, from 2012 to 2014, African-Americans accounted for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of all citations, 93% of all arrests. Blacks were more than twice as likely as white motorists to be searched during traffic stops, even though such stops were 26% less likely to yield contraband (than for the traffic stops of white motorists). During that same period, the department wrote four or more citations to blacks on 73 occasions; only twice did non African-Americans receive four or more citations. There was an acknowledged, ongoing contest to see who could write the most tickets and tallies were posted on a stationhouse wall to spur officers to ever-increasing heights of productivity."
"Police use-of-force figures are equally problematic. Almost 90% of documented force was applied against African-Americans. And topping them all at 100%, in all fourteen documented dog bite cases (there are four canines on patrol), the person on the receiving end was an African-American."
COMMUNITY DISTRUST
"Many city officials and police officers, along with some (mostly white) Ferguson residents, maintain the public outcry against their police department was caused by outside agitators--a woeful defense heard often during civil rights demonstrations of yesteryear in the South."
"As the Justice Department concluded its report, 'our investigation has shown that distrust of the Ferguson Police Department's is longstanding and largely attributable to Ferguson's approach to law enforcement. This approach results in patterns of unnecessarily aggressive and at times unlawful policing; reinforces the harm of discriminatory stereotypes; discourages a culture of accountability and neglects community engagement.
The report documents numerous examples of unlawful stops, unlawful arrests, unlawful force, unlawful discrimination. It chronicles ticket fixing for friends and relatives. It describes neglectful police practices, including a slow, apathetic, occasionally abusive response to victims of crimes, particularly domestic violence. It enumerates racist, sexist and other offensive e-mail exchanges between department supervisors and court personnel, one depicting President Obama as a chimpanzee, another referring to bare-chested dancers, presumably in Africa, as Michelle Obama's high school reunion."
THE BRUTAL, THE CORRUPT, THE RACIST, THE INCOMPETENT.
"It's been going on for a long time, since the days of the early eighteenth century slave patrols. The problem of police abuse in this country is systemic, it runs deep and wide and it is getting worse. And when people in charge cling to that "vast majority" sound bite they advance a solitary diagnosis and a sole prescription: bad cops? Fire them. Why bother with a costly, systemic reform if 'inappropriate' behavior is merely an anomaly?"
"How do we get our cops to understand that citizens are entitled to respect, while cops need to earn it?"
"Today's law enforcement agencies, including Bratton's [NYPD], are even more distant and disengaged from the communities they serve. They are certainly more militarized, coming across as soldiers rather than domestic peacekeeprs, with almost everything about them being military--their uniforms, vehicles, weapons, jargon, tactics and so on. Reflecting the reality that increased militarization does not represent progress, American law enforcement today is arguably corrupt, bigoted, brutal and trigger-happy as it was during the 1960s and 1970s, not to mention earlier eras."
Norm Stamper.
My Commentary:
The system of policing is not broken. Therefore, I am in the school of thought that it cannot be fixed. Rather, it would have to be abolished and completely built back up from scratch. What I mean when I say it isn't broken is this: it is working exactly as it has been designed to. It is working to maintain a status quo that works in favor white supremacy, male superiority and affluence. Essentially, as Ruth Beltran says, it maintains the guardianship of oppression.
That being said, the information is still useful because when we think about how our society should be and we work towards it, we have options. While we live in the current system, we have angles to work toward systems of relief. Relief means that it doesn't absolve the oppression system but rather, while it is still a working institution, it creates a system that is categorically less harmful. As we work toward revolution, these tools and knowledge can help build systems that actually work by changing the intentions and design of the institutions.
For profit policing is a system of that is addressed both by Dr. Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow" and a component in Campaign Zero.
The culture described by Stamper is very much in line to the capitalistic nature of this system. Money motivates. Policing is not about actually serving and protecting the people but rather about serving and protecting the pockets of the city or state. In the work of campaign zero, they propose:
- Ending police quotes for tickets and arrest. An example is given by referencing Illinois statute.
- Limiting fines and fees for low-income people.
- removing fines/fees/warrants for those who fail to appear for traffic citations.
- ban generating more than 10% of municipal revenue from citations.
- allow judges discretion to waive fees for low-income people and/or initiate payment plans.
- prohibit courts from enacting probation/parole fees.
- Prohibit police from taking the money or property of innocent people. Prohibit police from:
- seizing property of civilians (civil forfeiture) unless they are convicted of a crime AND the state establishes convincing evidence that the property is subject to forfeiture.
- keeping property that has been forfeited. (instead, such property goes back to the general fund.)
- participating in the Equitable Sharing Program that allows police to engage in civil asset forfeiture.
- Require police departments to bear the cost of police misconduct.
- Require the cost of misconduct settlements to be paid out by the police department budget instead of the City's general fund.
- Restrict police departments from receiving more money from the general fund when they go over-budget on lawsuit payments.
Another aspect that is relevant to this chapter is the end of broken windows policing as proposed by the Campaign.
In the past, I have seen proposals that eliminate the patrolling done by police altogether, including traffic policing. As I learned in "The New Jim Crow", traffic policing is fundamental to maintaining the war on drugs. As unrelated as they may seem, traffic policing allows the officer to invade the space of drivers. It is commonly based on racial bias. Traffic laws are so abundant and it is seldom in the interest of public safety. I was once pulled over because my tag light was out. How, exactly, does that enhance public safety? In this school of thought, the police would serve the community in a similar way to that of firemen. They would remain in their precincts until they are called instead of patrolling for trouble. This would effectively, in my opinion, eliminate much of the problems established in this chapter and the for-profit policing model with citations.
What are your thoughts?
