Rethinking Policing
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Our minds are often fertile landing zones for data that confirms our prior assumptions and beliefs.
Proponents of police reform point to the rates that US police kill civilians compared to other countries.
US rates dwarf other developed countries like Japan, Germany, Australia, and Canada.
In addition to being too frequent, there is a significant racial disparity in who will be killed.
African Americans are 2.8 times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts.
On the other side, proponents of maintaining something close to the status quo will often compare rates of police killing to rates of civilian-on-civilian killing.
An example from the Wall Street Journal Op-ed section.
See how easy it is for opposing sides to talk past each other?
I do not envy the job the folks responsible with designing policy and getting it passed by legislatures.
While, we do need to address the crime rate, that is not the point of this note.
For now, we simply must acknowledge the reality that the police, who are responsible for ensuring the safety of our community, are killing too many people.
If you harbor doubts about the racial bias in policing, you will have to find some mental gymnastics to traverse.
Data reveals that black victims of police homicide are 50% more likely to be unarmed.
The status quo is broken. It is not delivering justice to the standard that we should hold for our communities.
That does not mean that every single cop is evil. It does not mean that we should embrace anarchy.
But we must swiftly embrace reform before the more extremist voices calling for such action can grab the mic.
Here are some clever ways to address the issue of police violence and brutality.
We take for granted that police are responsible for road safety. Yet, we'd think it was odd if a city started asking cops to handle restaurant inspections.
Many police homicides occur during traffic stops. Could we just reduce the number of traffic stops?
Computer vision is well past the point of being able to monitor speeding violations and out of date registrations to serve in this role.
Let's relieve the armed enforcers of these patrols and reduce the number of times civilians come into contact with police.
This would remove one of the two primary reasons Americans come into contact with police.
It would probably also save money for state and municipal budgets that have been eviscerated by the pandemic.
It's a start.
But what do we do when police are called to investigate and/or deal with a crime?
Campaign Zero has spent the last few years researching which policies affect police homicides and which do not.
By cross-referencing the policies enacted at different large metro police forces with data of civilians killed by police, they've arrived at a policy platform backed by results.
Their conclusions may surprise you.
Body cameras on officers and increased bias trainings have both been shown to have little effect on outcomes.
Instead, Campaign Zero advocates for their #8CantWait platform.
The list includes:
1. Banning chokeholds and strangleholds
2. Require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance
3. Require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
4. Require police to exhaust all other reasonable means before using deadly force
5. Require officers to intervene and stop excessive force by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor
6. Ban shooting at moving vehicles
7. Develop a "force continuum" that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
8. Require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians
Leaders of the campaign DeRay McKesson and Samuel Sinyangwe have a commitment to following the data on policy recommendations.
They assert that adoption will lead to a 72% reduction in police violence.
In response to public outcry, mayors and city councils are moving to implement this platform.
I'm hopeful and excited to see the data in 3-4 years when we can measure the impact of the implementation.
The missionaries and evangelists of mainstream media are quick to pull us apart and define this as an issue of the left vs the right.
One side painting protestors as dangerous, unhinged looters and the other side declaring their opponent a collection of racists (and their collective apologists).
It's a damn shame.
This is something that has the capacity to unite us.
Ignore the extreme voices that ad-supported media is incentivized to highlight.
Focus on the massive public mobilization to peacefully protest by people of all races and creeds.
This is rare. It's meaningful. It doesn't need to be polarized.
National Review (a 64-year-old conservative publication) published a thoughtful piece on the history of racism against blacks and the need for police reform.
The Wall Street Journal's podcast brought on the chief of Camden, New Jersey's police department to talk about how the disbanded and reformed themselves into a unit that lowered violent crime, drug trade, and police killing in their community.
We can do this. Together.
