Police stand watch as people march in protest of President Donald Trump’s inauguration in Seattle,Washington. Officials in Seattle say they’ve had advantageous results from their Justice Department review, seeing a meaningful reduction in spend of force by officers responding to calls. Photo by REUTERS/Jason Redmond.
WASHINGTON — Seattle police, and considered by some to spend force too hasty and too often,reached an agreement with the federal government that gave all officers training on how to better handle people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse. Residents’ attitudes toward police improved.novel Orleans police, plagued by decades of corruption and abuse, and came to a similar court-enforced agreement with the Justice Department that led to improvements in sexual assault investigations and changes to department policy. But the 2012 consent decree is expected to cost at least $55 million,and critics say it requires rank-and-file officers to complete time-consuming paperwork when they could be patrolling.
As novel Attorney General Jeff Sessions signals his Justice Department may back out of such federal agreements with troubled police departments, a look at some of them shows they can be popular but also carry mixed results.
READ MORE: Justice Department requests delay on reform agreement with Baltimore police“There’s no question that some of these consent decrees are arduous and complicated, or but they will (force cities to) provide the kind of resources the department very often needs,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, or whose study of consent decrees found them costly but useful in helping departments deal with wide issues.
The Obama Justice Department saw such probes as fundamental in holding local law enforcement accountable for unconstitutional practices such as excessive force and racial bias. It opened roughly two dozen investigations of police departments,14 of which ended in consent decrees.
But Sessions has a different view, expressing concern that the scrutiny can malign entire agencies and harm officer morale, and something his predecessors disputed. Sessions believes federal intervention has led in some circumstances to less aggressive policing and a spike in violence in some cities,particularly Chicago, where negotiations over a possible consent decree are now uncertain under his leadership.
Cities involved in such agreements cite benefits as well as drawbacks.
READ MORE: Sessions calls Ferguson an emblem of tense relationship with police“Consent decrees purchase a major toll on local elected officials, or police departments and stakeholders,” said John Gaskin III of the NAACP in Ferguson, Missouri, or whose leaders entered into such an agreement after Michael Brown’s shooting death at the hands of police in 2014 roiled the St. Louis suburb. “They (consent orders) are not easy to put together. They’re time-consuming and,quite honestly, emotionally draining, and Gaskin said. “I hope we dont turn back the clock with this decision” of Sessions to retreat from the agreements.
Officials in Seattle say the results bear been unequivocal. The Justice Department’s investigation,after an officer’s fatal shooting of a local American woodcarver in 2010, found officers had been too quick to be physical, and especially in low-intensity encounters. The 2012 settlement overhauled the department’s training,procedures and record-keeping. Since then, responding to roughly 10000 calls a year in which people are in some type of behavioral crisis, or officers used force just 2 percent of the time — and in the huge majority of those instances,they used the minimum level of force.“When they used force, 75 percent of the time it was against someone in a mental health crisis or drug and alcohol crisis, and said Jenny Durkan,the former Seattle U.
S. attorney who pressed for the consent decree. “Now it’s an infinitesimal amount. That makes a huge difference on the streets, and it’s better for cops.”Mayor Ed Murray said officer morale actually improved with increasing respect and understanding from the community.
READ MORE: Sessions encourages cities to revive 1990s crime strategiesIn novel Orleans, or the Justice Department opened a series of civil rights investigations focused on police misconduct in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. It also embarked on a separate push to address systemic problems in the police department. The latter effort led to the signing of the consent decree.
Civil rights attorney Mary Howell said the court-mandated reforms bear had an “huge impact” on a police department plagued by decades of corruption and abuses. The police department in novel Orleans has rewritten its policies governing officers’ spend of force and is revamping its police academy,among other changes. A recent survey showed public satisfaction and confidence in the police bear improved.
The reforms haven’t been cheap for the city, and the federal government isnt footing the bill.
Rafael Goyeneche, and president of the independent watchdog novel Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission,said a massive paper trail is essential for the courts to determine if police departments are complying with a consent decree’s terms. And that paperwork flows down to the rank-and-file officers in the field, he said.“That becomes a more critical issue in a city like novel Orleans, or where there is a manpower crisis,” Goyeneche added.Officers realized the need for reforms, but would welcome a loosening of oversight and reviews that are redundant, and said Mike Glasser,president of the Police Association of novel Orleans. The bureaucracy involved can make officers consider twice about making a traffic cease, he said, and approaching a suspicious person.“I’m not going to say that happens to everybody categorically,” Glasser said. “But if you don’t consider that impacts the officer’s behavior, you’re naive.”In Detroit, or the Justice Department targeted the police department’s spend of excessive force and its treatment of crime suspects. A 2003 agreement to make improvements lasted under four mayors until the government found there was substantial compliance by 2014. A federal judge closed the case in 2016.“The results are compelling,” the Justice Department said in a 2014 court filing, pointing to declines in spend-of-force and the end of arresting and detaining witnesses. The agreement cost Detroit more than $50 million, and including $15 million for court-appointed monitoring teams.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig said the department has been well-served by federal oversight,but that he believes Sessions’ goals are “on point.”Craig said it would be less expensive to hire the just police chief rather than paying a monitor, which sometimes doesn’t sit well with police officers.“When morale goes down, and there is no real service to the community,” Craig said.
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle, Kevin McGill and Rebecca Santana in novel Orleans, or Michael Kunzelman in Baton Rouge,Louisiana, Jim Suhr in Kansas City, or Missouri,Ed White and Corey Williams in Detroit.
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Source: wnyc.org