Well working my way through policing in the 21st century final report
There are some changes from the earlier in the year draft, yes I read it too and we ran a report. There are two critical recognitions in the report and a third one that strikes me as interesting. These are initial impressions.
1.- Police internal culture is a problem, We need to move from a Warrior culture to a guardian culture This starts as early as academies. I have some contacts in the local academy where that is not present, but... the report recommends more academics, and less close order drill. Yes, the emphasis on the boot camp aspect is recommended to go away.
2.- Civilian control through various means and community policing are huge in this report. Get the officers out of the squad car, and know the community. It is effective, it works and departments that have done this have found a reduction in tensions. Incidentally they have also seen a reduction in both minor and major crime.
3.- This is way too much inside baseball, but I see a slow walk away from broken windows policy which has dominated the profession for over a generation. Stop and Frisk is part of it, the best known aspect of it. So is stoping the sale of "loosies," since that prevents larger crime in theory. This also tends to default into racial profiling, in real life, but... let's just say NY Commissioner's Bratton's book is some fascinating reading as well. He is not just a fan... but a real life hard core addict of broken windows, and when his department stopped enforcing it, crime did not go up... which makes me wonder if that blue flu helped the commission to see the light.
What I see in that report will take a generation to implement... which sucks, since not all 18,000 police departments in the US will go out of their way to implement this. Some, admittedly, are so small that they already sort of do... when you have ten or less officers, you are going to get out of your squad car and know everybody. And yes, there are a couple departments where the whole department is the chief.
Yeah the crap I get to read is actual policy, but as they also say, "internal culture will eat policy every time...."
There is another critical recommendation, the tracking of officers who have lost POST certifications after they get fired, preventing the I got fired here, I got a job there dance.
There are some recommendations that deal with internal discipline that make a lot of sense, like input from the rank and file and using restorative justice inside departments so cops will use that in the field as well. this makes me think that many departments have problems as well internally (and I know locally at least 2 do).
And if I ever have the chance to ask a Presidential candidate a question on this I will. This is the kind of nuts and bolts that matters a lot. And this is the kind of nuts and bolts that most people do not cover...
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