Public Comment

Recent experiences of police behavior with respect to demonstrations, students, and people of color have called for city review of policing procedures. A special open session of the City Council will be held on Jan 17, to address the issue of police actions and misconduct (at a location to be announced). This proposal is submitted as part of the discussion at that special session. 

It is the purpose of this proposal to suggest that certain principles fundamental to justice and social order in this society need to be remembered, and re-established. And those principles cannot be remembered without considering the more general issue of the democratization of policing. 

Principles that must not be abandoned by police

1- No denial of due process  

Here are two examples of current routine violation of due process: 

Handcuffing anyone stopped, who questions or objects to this, amounts to denial of due process because it is an arbitrary deprivation of liberty. 

Asset forfeiture must be prohibited (including confiscating the belongings of homeless people), as a denial of due process. 

To grant due process means to grant both respect and space for dialogue. No demand for obedience in a public place should be made of civilians without allowing questioning and opposing views that should have equal weight with a police officer’s view. That is what due process means. 

2- No collective punishment  

If someone damages property during a demonstration, then it is the perpetrator who should be arrested, and not the demonstration collectively punished for the damage (by a dispersal order, e.g.). Dispersal orders, the use of general constraints (like kettling), or general retaliation against the group (e.g. with tear gas) for any vandalism committed by an individual should be prohibited. If there is damage to property, it is up to the police to find and arrest the individual who did it, and charge them properly under the law. 

Collective punishment is outlawed by the Nuremberg Decisions, and the treaty conditions that evolved from them. It therefore violates international law. 

3- Arbitrary commands, and insistence on obedience, are not law enforcement.  

Police impunity depends on victimless crime laws, which allow the police to dispense with a complainant. In the absence of a complainant, the police then substitute their own suspicion about a civilian’s wrong-doing. The requirement for absolute obedience to a police command transforms police suspicion into law. Impunity renders the police a law unto themselves, rather than agents of law enforcement. Police impunity has no place in a democratic society. 

4- Racial profiling must be ended.  

Racial profiling is the opposite of law enforcement. In law enforcement, when a crime is committed, the police look for a suspect to charge with that crime. In racial profiling, the police commit an act of suspicion, and then look for a crime to charge the person they suspect. 

Racial profiling has deep roots in the US. Born of an era of enslavement, and given social validation by an era of racial segregation, it is the child of the most egregious violation of fundamental democratic principles. To have maintained the reverberation of those violations even up to the present is to subvert all pretense to democracy. This society has the responsibility of stringently ending any vestige of those violations. 

It should be impermissible for the police to stop and question or detain or arrest people from different racialized groups in numbers different from the proportion of those racialized groups in the general population. To exceed that proportion with respect to any one group should mean a cessation of any action against members of that group until the proportions of such actions are equalized again. If African Americans are 15% of the population, then police actions against African Americans should not rise above 15% of their total. Careful records and tallies of such procedures should be kept and overseen by a civilian review board. 

The motivation for this proposed measure: the principle in this proposal is that, if the police wish to leave operational space for themselves to deal with real criminals who happen to be African American, they must cease harassing African Americans in their daily routines and social space. 

It is unfortunate that equality still has to be raised in this way, but until those who construct a white privilege for themselves through their racialization of others have stopped doing so, equality will have to be couched in racialized terms. 

5- All use of weapons to enforce obedience must be condemned and prohibited  

All use of weapons, whether beating a person, using any kind of gun, pepper spray or tear gas, or electronic forms of torture (tasers, for instance), to enforce obedience to an arbitrary police command should be prohibited. All use of instruments of torture, and use of any weapon as an instrument of torture, should be prohibited. All use of any weapons should be regulated and judged by a civilian review board. If arrest is warranted at any time, then arrest should occur. But violently enforcing obedience for its own sake through police commands on people not warranting arrest, or using police commands and possible disobedience as a reason to arrest, is not the function of policing. A police department that goes beyond policing is assuming a power of state that is not theirs. 

6- End vicarious responsibility  

The police cannot use a situation they have created in order to hold a civilian responsible for what the police do in the course of policing. The police should not be able to hold one civilian responsible for an act committed by another civilian. That is not justice, and though it is permitted by state law, it must be prohibited by any city that values justice. Example: collective punishment. 

7- The police should not be self-propagandizing, self-justifying, or self-enforcing.

The police should be barred from explaining in the media why they have committed a certain criminal action, such as kill a person, or beat or torture a person. If there are reports to be made public of an action hurtful to a civilian (such as choking, beating, or killing), they should only be from witnesses. If the police wish to make a statement justifying their action, they should only do so in a public meeting called for that purpose in which the public can question and argue with them, and present alternate testimony. Both officer and victim should be able to make their case in a public civilian review board hearing. But for police to be self-justifying in the media, without the public having equal time, is discriminatory. 

If police actions are within the law, then they need no self-justification. If police actions violate the law, then the perpetrators must be prosecuted. They should not have an opportunity to propagandize civil society about what they have done. 

Neither should the police be able to hide behind personal feelings or privileges (such as “feeling threatened”), nor peremptory departmental review (Police Bill of Rights). If anyone is injured or damaged or killed at their hands, it is up to civil society to investigate and rectify this malfeasance. For this, a strong civilian review board is needed. It is up to civil society to enforce the law on the police. 

Immediate steps the city can take

1- A psychological test should be given to present members of the police force to determine if they can be trusted to respect the citizen, to obey the law, and to handle weapons responsibly. Those that cannot be so trusted should be dismissed. 

2- Neighborhood meetings should be organized throughout the city to get suggestions for what policing should ideally be (and not be) in each local neighborhood. 

3- Conferences should be organized, constituted by representatives from neighborhood assemblies and associations, that would begin the process of rewriting rules and procedures for the police. 

4- A civilian review board with access to all personnel files and personal records of all members of the police department should be empanelled. All incidents in which a police officer uses a weapon shall be brought before this board. The board shall have the power to call witnesses, and to judge if the officer acted properly. If the officer acted improperly, or in violation of the law, s/he shall be dealt with in the same manner as a civilian who committed a similar offense. That is, the civilian review board should have the power to demote or to fire an officer, and to call for charges or indictment against the officer. 

 

Long range steps for democratizing the police department:

1- Hiring should be on the basis of a psychological examination in which each prospective employee scores high on respect for human beings and human concerns, with a willingness to enter into dialogue with any individual. They should also score high on psychological stability, intelligence, and willingness to abide by the Constitution, the Nuremberg decisions, and all treaties signed by the US. 

 

The primary principle of the Nuremberg Decision is that simply following orders, or following established routine, is no excuse for illegal behavior. If a officer is given an illegal command, it is that officer’s social responsibility to disobey (and similarly with civilians). 

2- Training procedures and internal rules of the department should all be made public and discussed, with possible modifications ratified by neighborhood assemblies. 

3- The Police Bill of Rights should be abandoned. This is inimical to police officers being public servants. If the police are public servants, then they must be known fully to the public. All that they do and are should be open to public scrutiny, and available for criticism, judgment, and correction by civil society and/or its appointed representatives. 

4- If the police are to carry firearms, then they must submit to extensive background checks by civil society (not by the police department itself) to make sure they are safe to carry such weapons – as a model for everyone else. 

5- All aspects of policing should ultimately be discussed, modified collectively, and ratified by all the communities in the city.