Serious question. It seems there is a general sense that policing reform as it pertains to racial discrimination is very needed, and even some ideas on how to go about it; but how will we know when it has happened, or even things are headed in the right direction?

Most of the outrage seems to circle around rare, sensational anecdotal stories. And given just our sheer population size and number of law enforcement officers (1 million+) it seems naive to think there will never be isolated, anecdotal horror stories. So what are the metrics where we will determine things are headed in the right direction.

For example, it seems pretty obvious that racial and sexual equity in the police department and local government offices in itself is not going to be a solution, as many of the most criticized departments have a relatively high % of minorities and females, included in very high positions.

In hindsight thread title should probably be "is being achieved?"

WN, could you help out with that.

Good timing. I just linked this twitter thread in the citations needed thread:



Seems like the answer is basically that we can track the kinds of metrics presented in the research linked by the author (use of force, shootings, complaints, etc.)

In the title can you change Been to Being?

I looked at the headers and the article seems very interesting and comprehensive, but does not seem to address racial inequity at all (specifically as it pertains to the black community) which seems to be the major sociological concern of our time. Do you know, does the author address this topic specifically in any of the sections?

Given the concern of our times, I am skeptical we will consider it "Mission Accomplished" if there is still racial inequity, even if total crime and police misconduct goes down significantly.

what a concept

so whatever metric you pick should show there is an actual issue now

I haven't read the articles yet, I just saw the thread. But given how much more frequently black Americans interact with the police, I'm not sure it matters whether the papers are organized around race specifically. If we were to improve policing outcomes across the board then it would presumably have a big impact on racial justice.

You also asked about measures, and for the specific areas mentioned it's certainly possible to look at racial distributions (of complaints, in use of force, etc.). But no quantitative study is ever going to definitively answer questions about the justice or fairness of specific interactions. It seems like you're pivoting a little towards asking how you will ever convince everyone that you've achieved a more abstract goal, but that's a very different question, I think.

Well, it seems the disconnect seems to be that having actual meaningful reform, and perception of reform, are 2 different issues that may have different solutions?

I guess I am more concerned with the latter? I assume in a nation of 350M+ with 1 million police officers there is going to be another horrible, anecdotal story sooner or later; and how do we get to a point where we are satisfied reforms are occurring and we can just accept it as an anecdote and not feel the need to viscerally react as a result?

Doesn't seem like it's that hard to measure improvement. From that thread:

I'm in lock step with that guy, on every single point.

The only outstanding issue is, what do you do when people riot?

I assume you're saying what I'm thinking. The question in the title is almost rhetorical to anyone who's not brainwashed by the current narrative. The stats aren't hard to find—more whites are killed by police than blacks, despite blacks committing more violent crime. I don't mean the rate either—blacks are like 13% of the population and commit half the murders. So you'd expect blacks to comprise about half of the deaths from cops, and if you watch the news, it certainly seems like it's nearly always blacks who are killed by cops. But of course that isn't true—statistically, cops have a racial bias against whites when it comes to killing. But good luck conveying this to the masses raising their fists in solidarity with the people looting stores and vandalizing cars. Nothing will ever be good enough them. Blacks are already a protected class in the media and in our laws. But it will never be enough. And I'll probably get banned just for expressing this factually correct opinion. That's how bad it's gotten.

this is a rant but i think we start with two things that dont even require actual tangible changes just thought changes.

rejecting the "few bad apples"/"there are more good than bad" narrative. i predict we're all gonna get to see how this is a mostly false narrative. if it's true that there are more good than bad, then we will see a whole lot of response and consequences to the dozens if not hundreds of video evidence of police brutality this past weekend. these so called "good cops" were there and know what happened, and apparently outnumber the bad ones, so we should have quick identifications on the bad ones and see meaningful consequences (immediate dismissal/investigations into charges), because the "good ones" dont want them disrespecting the badge.. but i have my doubts. they will close ranks around the bad ones and protect them. which leads into my second point.


getting past the "hero cop" worship narrative. everyday we are spoon fed this narrative that they are sacrificing and brave and risking their lives for us and worthy of respect(salute the blue). but the second any of them have to actually be any of those things its well we shot that unarmed kid 27 times because that cell phone looked like it might be something and we feared. or the 12 yr old had a plastic toy and we FEARED.. guys, you cant expect us to not be scared..

you ****ing told us every single day in every single passing moment how ****ing brave you supposedly are, yeah i feel like i can expect that

So step 1 is accepting that cops are actually mostly bad human beings. So what is step 2 now that we have this information?

Posts like this massively tilt me. We actually have decades of experience enforcing and evaluating consent decrees.

Diversity in police force, prevalence of fatal encounters, crime rates, opinion polls, and a whole list of other indicators have proven to be effective. LAPD post Rodney King riots have made a lot of progress (not as much as I'd like but the LAPD of today is very different from the LAPD that beat up Rodney King.)

When the military occupation ends?

The inaction of the “good” cops and indifferent “cops” is even a bigger part of the problem.

The police have the ability to reign themselves in but they mostly refuse and refuse strenuously.

We can say “all protesters” are bad because of a handful but not “all police are bad” because of a handful.

The murder of black people isn’t the totality of the issue though. The stanning for white murder victims in this thread are accurate.

Police should not be murdering anyone regardless of color. That more whites get murdered by police so we should not do anything about blacks being murdered is a saucy take but certainly ignorant.

US police training standards are a mess with little in the way of oversight, many of them of very low quality both in content and selection. There is also some weird artifacts on the books for various types of law enforcement (sheriff system for example) that makes it even more of a mess at the local level. It seems inevitable that this will lead you into a lot of poorly handled law enforcement situations.

Couple this with lax gun laws for civilians, high rates of violent crime and a popular culture that has enshrined violence as the epitome of conflict resolution, and the end result is fairly predictable.

Somewhat ironically you also have some of the best law enforcement in the world, so the know-how is there. You should probably start talking national training and selection standards (which I'm sure is a legal quagmire, being a federation and all).

Of course, one can debate for years how expensive this would be, how slow it would be, how difficult it would be to measure and how long it takes to change culture. Or you could start to do do something about it.

Mandatory recording of every justice system interaction with the public

No lying to the public or misleading them about their rights.

Disciplinary action and prosecutions against police who break the rules/laws

It's actually not that tricky to make massive improvements. Then harder stuff like not putting everyone in jail, banning guns, ending plea bargaining etc etc

step 2 would then be to treat them like normal people. no immunity. arrest them at the scene of their crimes. no letting them go home with deference giving to their version of events to start. prosecute them to the fullest extent. dont allow other jurisdictions to just hire them in the next county after they kill unarmed civilians which is what happens..

body cams at all times, if there is an incident while an officer has his body cam off, immediate termination, zero tolerance.

people are looking for accountability.. because there has been none in most cases.

Interesting how the main concern right now (and more or less always) that targeting black men specifically is the problem, yet all the reform suggestions are very general.

Is there a general belief that generalized reform will solve the racial equity problem?

Does anyone have an example of a department that had reforms which significantly caused the equity gap in policing to decrease?

This is an interesting article that discusses some of the academic debate around interpretation of statistics related to police violence.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/...e-data/595528/

the main concern is that black lives matter. which encompasses more than just targeting. it also means that police seem to routinely face less accountability for black lives lost to police misconduct and general indifference. more accountability will likely lead to less targeting.

reform strategies of course include better training in dealing with the community, better community outreach, and more inclusive and diverse involvement.

Perhaps you should reply to what people write instead of your own imagination, and this would be less interesting.

But yes of course. Poor training standards, little in the way of uniform standards and poor selection is of course extremely problematic when it comes to matters of bigotry and prejudice. Law enforcement personnel are vested with authority and powers that civilians do not have, so you obviously need education and selection that ensures a very high standard.

Two out of a hundred being an aggressive idiot in in a civilian population is unfortunate. Two out of a hundred being an aggressive idiot in a police force is a catastrophe.

The numbers above are arbitrary and meaningless, they are merely meant to illustrate the importance of high standards of police training and selection.

i mean we could also start with the chief of the largest or 2nd largest police force(LA)in the entire country not trying to blame protesters for the killing of mr. floyd

For the first one, the good cop doesn't mean noble selfless saint of a cop - just does his job in a decent way. They just punch a clock and do a pretty good job, not really going to solve society's problems. So your expectation on them is not a very good test of their goodness.

So you're trying to dispel the hero narrative right? Because I agree that's another unrealistic view. That's why I give them leeway in these life and death scenarios - there just trying to get through the day safely - they shouldn't have to be brave superheros on a daily basis. These are pretty average people who have been trained to do a job.