{"id":2228,"date":"2016-02-10T14:19:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T14:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/?p=2228"},"modified":"2016-03-08T03:59:56","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T03:59:56","slug":"hlpr-2016-symposium-day-2-the-evolution-of-policing-police-militarization-a-conversation-with-chief-edward-flynn-and-kara-dansky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2016\/02\/10\/hlpr-2016-symposium-day-2-the-evolution-of-policing-police-militarization-a-conversation-with-chief-edward-flynn-and-kara-dansky\/","title":{"rendered":"HLPR 2016 Symposium Day 2: The Evolution of Policing & Police Militarization: A Conversation with Chief Edward Flynn and Kara Dansky"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By HLPR Staff<\/em><\/p>\n

When we talk about \u201cthe police,\u201d what do we mean? On February 9, the second day of the 2016 HLPR Symposium, the focus was on the evolution of American policing. Moderated by Christine Cole, Vice President of Community Resources for Justice<\/a>, the panel featured\u00a0 Milwaukee Chief of Police Edward Flynn<\/a> and Kara Dansky, founder of 1,000 Arms<\/a> and former ACLU Senior Counsel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe police\u201d is not one singular entity, according to Milwaukee Chief of Police Edward Flynn. Chief Flynn, the first speaker, talked of the over 10,000 departments<\/a> operating in the United States today. Chief Flynn emphasized good management and community policing. He noted that the police are an important social institution governed by different administrative, cultural, and historical environments.<\/p>\n

We need to \u201cmove beyond rhetoric,\u201d according to Chief Flynn, and instead fix policing in the cultural, social, and historical environment in which it exists. For Chief Flynn, \u201cill-defined problems are the worst type of policy mistake. Ill-defined problems come up with bad public policy options.\u201d As such, Chief Flynn advocated greater context and understanding of the extraordinary array of police cultures and police management strategies. According to Chief Flynn, different threat environments necessitate appropriate tools deployed sensibly with government oversight in support of specific mission.<\/p>\n

Kara Dansky\u2014the second featured speaker\u2014was the primary author of a landmark 2014 ACLU report<\/a> on police militarization. She agreed with the difficulty of standardization across 10,000 departments. Dansky\u2019s remarks focused on what \u201cpolice militarization\u201d means and what its ramifications are. In her research with the ACLU, Dansky found that police were employing military weapons \u00a0and strategies for law enforcement activities. According to Dansky, police departments were able to obtain money and equipment from federal programs with inadequate oversight.<\/p>\n

Investigating police incident reports, Dansky and her team identified that:<\/p>\n