What Should Law Enforcement Reform Look Like?

Before the readership gets upset, this is in NO WAY a criticism or indictment of how law enforcement today does the job. That said, evolution is inevitable and resisting it only results in greater headache, heartache and—all too often—financial distress for the few who end up in the spotlight. While plenty of people who have never worked in law enforcement, both politicians and journalistic pundits alike, like to criticize how law enforcement officers did something, they seldom seem to offer a reasonable suggestion for how that something could be done differently or better. News outlets love to sensationalize an event and several news outlets have been caught carefully editing what they show to make an ugly situation seem even worse, always painting the law enforcement professionals in the worst possible light.

Reality is quite different from what we see on the news anymore (unfortunately). Journalistic integrity is challenged (HUGE understatement). But since there seems to be such a large societal conversation going on about “police reform,” we at the Officer Media Group thought it would be a good idea to find out how law enforcement professionals themselves felt reform could happen. What could be done or changed that would actually benefit the community and be within contemporary controls for how we do our job?

To that end, we crafted a very short and simple survey to solicit such opinions. In less than one week we received almost 800 replies. Below is a review of the responses and discussion on the options for reform in the order they were ranked by our respondents. Of interest to note is that the number one response we received has nothing to do with reforming police at all (see below). The next six are all changes that would have to be made at the agency level while the next one finally addresses individual officer performance—and even that is dependent on agency empowerment. Let’s take a look at the data.

Just to identify those taking the survey, we asked three questions: type of agency, position within the agency and whether the agency size is over or under 100 sworn officers.

Two-thirds of the respondents work for police departments. One-sixth work for sheriff’s offices and the rest were mixed between federal, military and private or other. This may seem inconsequential but it’s of note for one reason: The difference between police departments and sheriff’s offices. Sheriff’s offices are Constitutionally mandated and sheriffs themselves are elected. They are directly responsible for the deputies under them. Police departments are created by governmental bodies—states, counties or cities. The police chief is an appointee of the chief executive officer of the given government unit (i.e. the governor, the county executive or the mayor). It’s an important difference and there are many examples of sheriffs behaving in the best interest of their constituents/citizens, while police chiefs do as they are directed by the governmental body they serve. To be fair, they have no choice if they want to stay employed.

Fifty-seven percent of the respondents were of supervisory or command rank with the remainder listing themselves as “line officers.”

The size of agency was a near even split between over 100 officers (54%) and below 100 officers (46%).

The fourth question was about what types of “police reform” would be most effective in the respondent’s opinion. Let’s list out the options for response in the order of popularity, top to bottom. They were:

• Increase accountability of mainstream media outlets
• Increase minimum hours of required annual training
• Return to heavy focus on Community Oriented Policing
• Increase training focus on community relations
• Increase investment in less-lethal tool development/ deployment
• Increase foot patrols/get officers out of their cruisers more
• Increase length of basic police academy
• Increase officer discretion in all misdemeanor criminal cases
• Increase training in social assistance topics
• Add certified/trained Social Workers to police & Sheriffs agencies
• Increase training on racial diversity/social morays and customs
• Increase racial diversity within agencies/departments
• Increase gender diversity within agencies/departments
• Increase college requirements prior to hiring
• Increase funding for education in prisons
• Redefine "law enforcement" into "peace keeping" for performance expectations
• Decriminalize streets drugs
• Change/modify laws concerning/controlling use of force
• Reduce funding for law enforcement as a whole

Remembering that the largest sampling group response came from police supervisors and command staff with agencies over 100 officers in size, it’s telling that the first most popular response was “Increase accountability of mainstream media outlets.” With over 75% of all respondents having selected that option, it was the number one most selected answer. Keep that in mind as you read through the rest of the commentary on other responses.

The next six most popular responses all deal with agency policy, direction and funding. Increasing training, whether it’s basic, social topics, community relations, etc.—all increases in training require an increase in funding. This is directly opposite of what so many people are demanding: “defund the police.”

When you get to the eighty item on the list—“Increase officer discretion in all misdemeanor criminal cases”—there is finally something impacted by the individual officer. It occurs to us that this is the item the public most needs to understand doesn’t exist as much as it probably should. It’s the item that the mainstream media would have you believe FULLY exists but only as prejudice. Think about it…

When the media says a white officer shot an unarmed black man, there are two implications: one, that the incident was racially motivated, and two that the officer had a choice. The third implication is that the officer made the wrong choice based on prejudice. Now, let’s not confuse the issue: if an officer (of any race) is under immediate potentially lethal threat and defends himself (or herself) by using lethal force against a suspect (of any race), then the action is justified both legally and morally. Yes, there is discretion used on the part of the officer: he obviously had the option of NOT using defensive lethal force and risking dying. In many cases, the officer uses force to protect an innocent and not using force would sacrifice the innocent in favor of protecting the life / well-being of the violent perpetrator. This really is a dialogue that needs to be had at the national level and with full disclosure from all involved.

Several of the options listed included increasing diversity either by gender or race. Diversity is a laudable goal but the question is this: Should an agency—police or sheriff or other—be MORE diverse than the community served? Further, should the pursuit of diversity be place of greater priority than competence of the people hired? Let’s play Devil’s Advocate and look at two examples:

If a community has a perfect racial balance between two given races (i.e. “black” and “white”), then should the police department also be perfectly balanced? The obvious answer is yes. Neither race should be represented to a greater balance. The same can be said of gender. If the community is perfectly balanced male and female, then the police department should be the same, correct?

So, here’s the second part of that question: should the standards of hiring be sacrificed to insure balanced diversity? What if one race or the other doesn’t have enough qualified applicants to fill the necessary positions and keep the agency balanced? Should the agency then operate at reduced staffing levels to maintain the balance? Or should the qualified applicants be hired even though it will offset the balance?

The answer is one dictated by both federal law, many states’ laws, county personnel policies and the same in cities. The nationwide cry for police reform assumes a few very wrong “facts”: It assumes that all law enforcement are police and will be changed accordingly. It assumes that all departments operate exactly the same and that all budgets are the same. It assumes that all races, genders, sexual orientations and education levels are equally proportioned in every community.

None of those “facts” are actually true and trying to reshape law enforcement in compliance with false facts is… well… ludicrous. Let’s start with holding the mainstream media accountable for their misrepresentations and increase funding for training. It would be a great foundation for law enforcement reform moving forward.