Harvard Law & Policy Review

Archives for February 2016

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Another perspective on Community Policing, Part Two

By Ronald E. Hampton*

Critics of community policing say that the idea of a friendly beat officer acting as some magic bullet solution for serious crimes such as murders, rapes, assaults, big-time, sophisticated drug dealing and the rising tide of violence fueled by drugs, is laughable.

Yet community policing techniques are appropriate for more serious crimes. Once one starts analyzing who commits crimes, one finds that to the extent people do experience serious crimes—especially assault, rape and murder—often the crime is committed by someone they know and sometimes quite intimately. Yet, police departments are built around responding to predator/stranger crime, in spite of the fact that when we break down serious crime, the predator/stranger often turns out to be a date, an acquaintance or someone in the community.

Community policing advocates have called for a rethinking of both the nature of the crime and the role of the police in crime control and prevention. Rethinking the crime problem means shifting away from the predator/stranger strategies and focusing on crime indices. It requires moving towards notions of what constitutes disorder and how it can be contained and reversed before it leads to serious crime. Rethinking the role of the police includes abandoning traditional notions of what it means to fight crime.

Police today seem to hold back and wait until something happens. Then they go in with their lights flashing and sirens screaming. As a matter of fact, this reactive mode is relatively passive in comparison to the community policing model, which allows the officer to work very aggressively, but in a pro-active fashion, to stop or reduce the problems before they start. Moreover, community policing can, if implemented well, be cost effective in many ways.

All of this is, of course, diametrically opposed to the standard military style of instruction that police officers receive. Police training tends to view the officer as a vessel to be emptied and then filled and indoctrinated with precisely the knowledge that the institution wishes to convey. Moreover, the military style of training is closely reflected in, for instance, language such as “war on crime” and “war on drugs”. So, does an emphasis on community work and building problem solving skills adequately prepare officers for what they have to face on the street?  Or, do police have to be tough as nails to do the job?

Frankly, one thing that is rarely communicated in training is the level of fear experienced by the police officers themselves. Police officers encounter the worst elements of criminal activity in a community. This explains, in part, the degree of fear and anxiety experienced by the police. Therefore, reintroducing the police into the neighborhood as part of the community has to be done in close collaboration with the citizens for the safety of the community and the police.

On closer examination, the community model seems genuinely tough and radical in ways that would appeal to conservatives and liberals alike. When all is said and done, community policing emphasizes grass-roots networking and citizen empowerment. It also suggests a radical decentralization of power in police bureaucracies, shifting authority away from hierarchical chains of command, out toward the precinct houses and line officers working with communities to develop local strategies.

People are going to have the opportunity to patrol with the police, introducing them to the law-abiding citizens and helping to alleviate the fear experienced when entering new neighborhoods. Also, whenever officers work within a community policing framework, they develop a sense of satisfaction and real accomplishment. Finally, both the citizens and the police can repossess their community from criminals.

The health and welfare of a community is a collaborative and collective responsibility. It is only with a genuine sense of responsibility and action that our neighborhoods can be transformed from being killing fields to fertile fields of human potential.

 

Click here to read the articles in HLPR Volume 10.1, with the symposium topic “Policing in America on the 50th Anniversary of Miranda v. Arizona.”

 

* Ronald E. Hampton is a twenty-four year retired veteran of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and served as the Executive Director of the National Black Police Association for over twenty years. Currently, he is serving as the Convener/ Chair of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century Police Reform and Accountability Task Force. The mission of the task force is to identify evidence-based practices and develop recommendations related to the restructuring of law enforcement as well as criminal justice policies and practices designed to address the mistrust and extra-legal behavior exhibited by police personnel in communities of color throughout the USA.

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Another Perspective on Community Policing

By Ronald E. Hampton*

Many African-Americans today believe that law and order is not being kept in their communities. The average African-American citizen is terribly dissatisfied with the police and their services in his/her neighborhood. However, in some parts of America, there is an ongoing effort to dramatically reshape the roles of both police officers and the communities they serve. This effort has been led by a handful of police officers, chiefs, criminal justice experts and community activists.

The days of the distant, aloof, and remote police officer are over—the days when the officer’s duty simply consisted of getting the information and making the arrest. This approach required little concern for dealing with the conditions that gave rise to the crime in the first place or for minimizing psychological damage to the individuals.

Community policing is much more that simply putting officers back on the beat. Community policing is a strategy that emphasizes collaboration with citizens in the identification and resolution of neighborhood problems. Community policing places the police with the citizens they are supposed to be serving. This is a radical change from the traditional police citizen relationship. Community policing calls for a paradigm shift from a mindset of “just us” to justice on both the part of the police and the community.

No longer does the community sit idly by while the police do it alone. In community policing, the citizens are an active partner in the development of crime fighting and prevention strategies. The key to understanding the concept of community policing seems to lie not with the police, but with looking at crime in a different way.

The advocates of community policing downplay statistical measures of crime. Instead, they place a premium on community perceptions. Disorderly conditions in a neighborhood may or may not show up in crime reports and numbers of arrests, but they undermine the community’s sense of confidence and hasten its decay. When you go out into the neighborhood and talk to people, you realize that their primary concern is the lack of order. Citizens are concerned with how their neighborhood appears to inhabitants and outsiders alike.

For example, when drinking youth, drugs and prostitution are rampant, the area is filled with abandoned buildings, and residents are unable to use public spaces like parks, most citizens are troubled by such disorderly circumstances. These are often the precursors of crime. In old police bureaucratic thinking, disorder is unimportant. The handling of these disorderly circumstances does not show up on statistical crime indexes. Neither does the media, politicians or the police brass, for that matter, focus on the importance of disorder—particularly when developing policies.  In addition, police officers have typically not advanced through the ranks by attacking the underlying conditions or working to solve the problems caused by disorder.

Eliminate the disorder, advocates of community policing say, and you can alleviate crime. An effective community policing concept with strong participation, trust and support from the community would give the police officer the political, moral, and social authority to work on these problems. This, in fact, would result in both the community and the police being truly empowered. Also, it would be in the best interests of the officers, as well as the citizens, to keep disorder and other problems away from the neighborhood.

 

Click here to read the articles in HLPR Volume 10.1, with the symposium topic “Policing in America on the 50th Anniversary of Miranda v. Arizona.”

 

* Ronald E. Hampton is a twenty-four year retired veteran of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and served as the Executive Director of the National Black Police Association for over twenty years. Currently, he is serving as the Convener/ Chair of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century Police Reform and Accountability Task Force. The mission of the task force is to identify evidence-based practices and develop recommendations related to the restructuring of law enforcement as well as criminal justice policies and practices designed to address the mistrust and extra-legal behavior exhibited by police personnel in communities of color throughout the USA.

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HLPR Volume 10.1 is Here!

HLPR is excited to announce that Volume 10.1 has been published and is now available online. This volume’s symposium topic is Policing in America on the 50th Anniversary of Miranda v. Arizona, featuring a foreword by Senator Cory A. Booker and Roscoe Jones, Jr. and articles by Elizabeth Joh, Franklin Zimring, Kara Dansky, Katherine Beckett, and Chief Edward Flynn. Volume 10.1 also includes two general essays–about collateral punishment (Joshua Kaiser) and insubordination in Title VII cases (Susan Carle)–as well as two student notes–about the impact of Airbnb on the Los Angeles housing crisis (Dayne Lee) and the third-party doctrine in the context of modern technology (Joshua Vittor).

Click here to read all of the articles!

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On Senate Divisions, Carbon Emissions, and Appointment Decisions

By Robert Seaney*

The passing of one of America’s most prolific jurists has sparked a fierce debate over Constitutional interpretation in an entirely different branch of government. Senators Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell immediately took to Twitter to express their intentions to block any nomination advanced by President Obama; Senator Elizabeth Warren responded that such efforts would be “abandoning the duties they swore to uphold.”

In the likely event that the Senate does elect to obstruct a confirmation, Obama will be left with limited options. He might try an appeasement approach with an agreeable nominee like Sri Srinivasan, an India-born DC Appellate judge approved unanimously by the Senate less than three years ago. Alternatively, if he perceives any confirmation attempt to be futile, he may nominate someone he likes but knows would be D.O.A. in any Republican Senate: Pam Karlan, for example, an outspoken and celebrated liberal law professor who – if she were somehow confirmed – would become the first openly gay justice.

But as we face the increasing likelihood of an eight-person court, it bears considering the ramifications of a split judiciary. Notably, while we’ve been inundated in the past couple days with shortlists and punditry, surprisingly little has been said about what may pan out to be one of the most consequential elements of Justice Scalia’s passing.

Just one week ago, Justice Scalia joined the majority in issuing an unexpected “stay and postponement” of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. While an important step forward in America’s efforts to reduce domestic carbon emissions, the Plan was most significantly a means of securing international cooperation at last year’s historic Paris Agreement. A perceived slip in the United States’ commitment could jeopardize the tepid international consensus in a manner redolent of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

On this particular issue, an understaffed court may serve the President’s interests. The challenge to the Plan (beyond the temporary stay decided February 9, 2016) is led by over two-dozen states and numerous energy companies, and will be heard by a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court in oral arguments beginning this June. Fortunately for the President (and, arguably, for the planet), the panel is composed of judges likely receptive to the EPA’s regulatory efforts. Judith Rogers, a Clinton appointee, and Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, have each stood in favor of the EPA in the past. The third judge, Sri Srinivasan (referenced above), has a limited corpus of environmental decisions, but is a recent Obama appointee. Thus, an early fall decision in favor of the emissions standards appears likely.

If the DC Circuit finds in favor, the Supreme Court will then consider whether or not to grant certiorari. If they did, a vote from Justice Scalia would have probably struck down the regulations along the same partisan divide as Tuesday’s stay and postponement. Instead, if the Court grants certiorari before a replacement is confirmed, they will likely split 4-4, with Justices Thomas, Alito, Kennedy and Roberts opposing the EPA regulations and Justices Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor supporting. Such a split would uphold the lower court’s ruling (without generating precedent), and the Clean Power Plan would proceed as law.

In 2006, Justice Scalia famously said, “I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.” For a generation not afforded the option, there may just be a route forward without the late great ninth justice.

 

* Robert Seaney is a 1L at Harvard Law School.

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HLPR 2016 Symposium Day 4: Prof. Katherine Beckett: Toward Harm Reduction Policing

Speaker

Katherine Beckett, Clarence and Elissa M. (“Lee”) Schrag Faculty Fellow at the University of Washington

 

By Isaac Saidel-Goley

Summary

Prof. Beckett discussed some of the problematic uses of police discretion, while also arguing that there are ways to channel police discretion to promote social and racial justice. As a case study, Prof. Beckett outlined an innovative diversionary program in Seattle called the Law Enforcement Diversion Program.

Discussion

To begin her talk, Prof. Beckett outlined research on the inevitability and ubiquity of police discretion in modern policing. Prof. Beckett then highlighted two examples of highly problematic applications of police discretion: 1) the war on drugs, and 2) broken windows policing.

The war on drugs was a concerted campaign, led by the federal government, to steer police discretion toward increased arrest levels for illicit drug use. This application of police discretion proved counter-productive in numerous ways; most notably the war on drugs led to dramatically racially disparate arrest levels and contributed to mass incarceration. Broken windows policing was another concerted campaign to steer police discretion, this time to crack down on minor legal infractions of all types. This use of police discretion also proved counter-productive, contributing to mass incarceration and racially disparate arrest levels, with young black men facing highly disproportionate criminal justice outcomes compared to other populations. In sum, Prof. Beckett argued that both the war on drugs and broken windows policing contributed significantly to mass incarceration and racial inequality within the criminal justice system, while largely failing to reduce crime.

With these problematic uses of police discretion in mind, Prof. Beckett introduced the purpose of her research: investigating ways to channel police discretion to promote social and racial justice. The exemplary model of police discretion on which Prof. Beckett’s research focuses is Seattle’s innovative diversionary program called the Law Enforcement Diversion Program (LEAD), which was premised on the idea that police discretion could be diverted from the war on drugs in Seattle toward a more productive and socially beneficial application of police discretion. LEAD is a pre-booking diversion program, where police are encouraged to refer minor offenders (usually drug offenders) to LEAD case managers instead of arresting and booking them. Once the minor offenders are referred to LEAD, the LEAD case managers begin intensive social intervention to help the new clients obtain access to intervention programs. LEAD has led to numerous social benefits including reduced arrest and incarceration rates among clients, reduced client recidivism, significant cost savings for the state, and increased stakeholder (e.g., police) openness to criminal justice reform. LEAD has since been successfully replicated by a number of other localities.

Prof. Beckett ended her talk by recognizing some of the structural challenges Seattle faced in establishing LEAD, as well as some of the ongoing challenges in maintaining LEAD, and argued that those challenges are not insurmountable and ultimately pale in comparison to the systemic and individual benefits of LEAD.

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HLPR 2016 Symposium Day 3: Prof. Franklin Zimring on International Comparisons of Killings of and by Police

Panelists:

Franklin Zimring, William G Simon Professor of Law at U.C. Berkeley

Philip Heymann, James Barr Ames Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

 

By Kate Epstein

“Every year there are dozens of articles in law reviews about capital punishment, and there are none about the use of lethal force,” said Prof. Frank Zimring. The third day of the HLPR Symposium focused on that lethal force, centering on a discussion of police killings in the United States through a comparative international lens. Prof. Zimring described his article, Can Foreign Experience Inform U.S. Policy on Killings of and by Police?, which compares the rate of killings of and by police in the United States to other countries like Germany and the U.K. Prof. Phillip Heymann responded.

The talk began with Prof. Zimring comparing the handfuls of police deaths in England, Wales, and Germany to the approximately 1,000 deaths in the United States. His article contains a statistical analysis of these numbers, controlling for variables including the United States’ higher level of overall violence based on the national homicide rate. His ultimate conclusion is that “the elephant in the living room when you do international comparisons … is that there are 60 million concealable handguns in the United States.” The existence of concealable guns, he argues, accounts for higher rates of casualties in police interactions. In altercations without civilian gun ownership, the risk to police officers is much lower. “Only one thing other than a bomb can kill a police officer, and that is a gun.” In his comparison countries, the level of handgun ownership is much lower, and without guns, interactions turn violent less often, and fatal even more rarely.

Prof. Heymann followed up, asking whether alternative explanations—anger of police or civilians, cultural differences, or civilian actions—could account for the different numbers. Given the scale of difference, Prof. Zimring thinks not.

Prof. Zimring had two concrete suggestions, centering on effective administrative controls within police departments. He suggested that, like the U.K., we should publish statistics from each police department about violent encounters which can be used to hold individual departments accountable. His other major suggestion was police management. Based on analysis of seven years of shootings in Chicago, he noted that fatality rates were much lower when police fired fewer shots in a given encounter. Policies to stop shooting earlier—for example, when a civilian is running away, or already on the ground—could prevent a number of deaths each year. By recognizing the effect of gun ownership on police killings, Prof. Zimring proposed that we can make simple, concrete changes to minimize use of lethal force. The talk was cosponsored by ACS and the DOS Grant Fund.