e was forty-three, a father of six, on his way to dinner with a friend. That night wouldn’t end at a Buffalo Wild Wings, as planned, but on a New York City sidewalk, where a police officer held Eric Garner in a chokehold until he died.
He was forty-six, one of many Americans looking for a job during the COVID-19 pandemic. He may not have known that a $20 bill he passed at a convenience store was suspected counterfeit when officers showed up outside the Minneapolis store to arrest him for the alleged offense. Before George Floyd died with a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck, he repeated some of the same words said by Eric Garner six years earlier: “I can’t breathe.”
In the United States, the death of yet another unarmed Black man at the hands of a white police officer has resulted in a wave of riots that have spread across the country like wildfire. Worldwide, protesters from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro to Amsterdam have joined American demonstrators in solidarity. Protests have sparked conversations about what should be done to prevent future incidents of police brutality. Community based police reform, practiced in countries as widespread as Canada and Burundi, offers one potential solution to the problem.
Under community policing, a police force’s priorities shift from crime control to community needs. UN Women reports that community policing “is based on the premise that no one organization can solve local security problems.” Rather, community policing posits that government agencies, activists, community-based service providers, and private businesses can work with law enforcement and other community members to keep people safe.
Community based policing takes different forms depending on where it’s being practiced. It might take the shape of a specialized unit to address the concerns of a minority population. In Canada, the Vancouver Chinese Community Policing Centre works to connect law enforcement to Vancouver’s Chinese speaking population through translation and interpretation services. The center was founded by a variety of organizations in Vancouver’s Chinese community and maintains the support of a large group of volunteers. Since 2000, the Chinese Community Policing Centre has coordinated a neighborhood watch where community volunteers contribute to hands-off security efforts and report illegal activity to the police.
In Bujumbura, Burundi, community policing has been used to address women’s security needs. When community discussion indicated that women in Bujumbura were worried about gender-based violence, representatives from over 30 women’s organizations came forward to develop a community-based approach that prioritized this concern. Recommendations made under this initiative included making sure police training included information on violence against women and ensuring that women feel comfortable speaking up in meetings between police and the local community.
Plans for community engagement in policing, however, often fall short of achieving justice for vulnerable populations. In the Burundi case, for example, the efficacy of suggestions to provide officers with domestic violence training and encourage an environment where women can speak up in police meetings is unclear. Such policy recommendations may only offer a weak attempt at preventing violence against women in a country where survivors of sexual violence typically don’t report rape and sexual assault to law enforcement.
Most importantly, community policing is not enough to stop police brutality in minority communities. In the U.S., a 1993 community policing program which operated in the form of regular community beat meetings and district advisory councils worked to create less fear of crime in Chicago’s communities of color. When researchers at Northwestern University studied the program, they found that the program had a substantial impact on crime between the 1990s and the early 2000s. However, in the 2010s, financial support for community policing dwindled while other Chicago policing problems remained the same. Specifically, a 2017 U.S. federal report found that Chicago’s police officers were quick to use excess force against Black and Latinx residents and face few repercussions for doing so. This investigation came at the tail end of what The Chicago Suntimes identifies as “three decades of shoddy investigations that insulated officers from accountability.” And though the city has been discussing an independent oversight board, which would promise Chicago residents a voice in policing practices, no such body has been created.
Clearly, current concerns of police brutality call for more than just community-based police reform. Some policy theorists suggest an independent police oversight board, as suggested in Chicago, to stop police from harming communities of color once and for all. Others in the United States, citing the long history of white supremacy and racial violence associated with police forces, call for the abolition of the police altogether in lieu of a set of social institutions to respond to the large array of social problems that currently send individuals to prison. No matter the policy solution, the wave of protests sweeping across the globe underscores the necessity of effectively addressing police brutality in the U.S.
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America’s Twin Pandemics
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash.
June 7, 2020
Considering community policing in the wake of police brutality.
H
e was forty-three, a father of six, on his way to dinner with a friend. That night wouldn’t end at a Buffalo Wild Wings, as planned, but on a New York City sidewalk, where a police officer held Eric Garner in a chokehold until he died.
He was forty-six, one of many Americans looking for a job during the COVID-19 pandemic. He may not have known that a $20 bill he passed at a convenience store was suspected counterfeit when officers showed up outside the Minneapolis store to arrest him for the alleged offense. Before George Floyd died with a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck, he repeated some of the same words said by Eric Garner six years earlier: “I can’t breathe.”
In the United States, the death of yet another unarmed Black man at the hands of a white police officer has resulted in a wave of riots that have spread across the country like wildfire. Worldwide, protesters from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro to Amsterdam have joined American demonstrators in solidarity. Protests have sparked conversations about what should be done to prevent future incidents of police brutality. Community based police reform, practiced in countries as widespread as Canada and Burundi, offers one potential solution to the problem.
Under community policing, a police force’s priorities shift from crime control to community needs. UN Women reports that community policing “is based on the premise that no one organization can solve local security problems.” Rather, community policing posits that government agencies, activists, community-based service providers, and private businesses can work with law enforcement and other community members to keep people safe.
Community based policing takes different forms depending on where it’s being practiced. It might take the shape of a specialized unit to address the concerns of a minority population. In Canada, the Vancouver Chinese Community Policing Centre works to connect law enforcement to Vancouver’s Chinese speaking population through translation and interpretation services. The center was founded by a variety of organizations in Vancouver’s Chinese community and maintains the support of a large group of volunteers. Since 2000, the Chinese Community Policing Centre has coordinated a neighborhood watch where community volunteers contribute to hands-off security efforts and report illegal activity to the police.
In Bujumbura, Burundi, community policing has been used to address women’s security needs. When community discussion indicated that women in Bujumbura were worried about gender-based violence, representatives from over 30 women’s organizations came forward to develop a community-based approach that prioritized this concern. Recommendations made under this initiative included making sure police training included information on violence against women and ensuring that women feel comfortable speaking up in meetings between police and the local community.
Plans for community engagement in policing, however, often fall short of achieving justice for vulnerable populations. In the Burundi case, for example, the efficacy of suggestions to provide officers with domestic violence training and encourage an environment where women can speak up in police meetings is unclear. Such policy recommendations may only offer a weak attempt at preventing violence against women in a country where survivors of sexual violence typically don’t report rape and sexual assault to law enforcement.
Most importantly, community policing is not enough to stop police brutality in minority communities. In the U.S., a 1993 community policing program which operated in the form of regular community beat meetings and district advisory councils worked to create less fear of crime in Chicago’s communities of color. When researchers at Northwestern University studied the program, they found that the program had a substantial impact on crime between the 1990s and the early 2000s. However, in the 2010s, financial support for community policing dwindled while other Chicago policing problems remained the same. Specifically, a 2017 U.S. federal report found that Chicago’s police officers were quick to use excess force against Black and Latinx residents and face few repercussions for doing so. This investigation came at the tail end of what The Chicago Suntimes identifies as “three decades of shoddy investigations that insulated officers from accountability.” And though the city has been discussing an independent oversight board, which would promise Chicago residents a voice in policing practices, no such body has been created.
Clearly, current concerns of police brutality call for more than just community-based police reform. Some policy theorists suggest an independent police oversight board, as suggested in Chicago, to stop police from harming communities of color once and for all. Others in the United States, citing the long history of white supremacy and racial violence associated with police forces, call for the abolition of the police altogether in lieu of a set of social institutions to respond to the large array of social problems that currently send individuals to prison. No matter the policy solution, the wave of protests sweeping across the globe underscores the necessity of effectively addressing police brutality in the U.S.
