Greater transparency needed for law enforcement
By Victoria Middleton
SEPT. 4, 2015 | This year, we saw a Columbia man shot by a police officer after reaching for the very ID the officer was asking for. We watched a bystander video of Walter Scott’s shooting in North Charleston. We read of a Seneca teenager’s death in a drug sting. These and a number of other South Carolina victims of police shootings — 32 in our state already this year, 13 of them fatal — were unarmed.
At the time of Walter Scott’s shooting in April, approximately 209 people had been shot in the past five years, and 79 of those had died at the hands of police. Only three police officers have been charged with a crime in connection with any of the 209 shootings, according to The State newspaper.
In other communities — Ferguson, Baltimore, and many more — the breakdown of police-community relations as a result of police shootings has been devastating. Protests in our state have been peaceful, but community trust in local police departments has been shaken.
This is an opportunity to delve into what has gone wrong and what needs to change. We need to jump-start dialogue about police practices, particularly those that harm the community, and talk about reforms. A starting point is to look at how we got here.
The legacy of the “war on drugs” launched in the 1970s came out of the legacy of criminalizing communities of color. Measuring the success of drug enforcement efforts too often was based on arrest figures and metrics that didn’t focus on overall public safety.
In fact, aggressive policing of low-level offenses can erode community safety by increasing adversarial relationships and distrust. “Broken windows” policing, pretextual stops, unregulated surveillance and ‘militarization’ of police units supplied with surplus Pentagon equipment – all these policies contribute to over-policing. And they are being increasingly discredited.
Of course, communities of color are vulnerable to violent crime, and police are not the enemy. At the same time, the problem goes deeper than abuse or excessive use of force by a handful of officers.
We need to promote a culture of greater transparency. Law enforcement and civilian authorities need to ensure that police do a better job of collecting, examining and publishing data on stops and arrests to investigate possible bias. The body cameras being mandated for law enforcement by our state officials could help deescalate encounters between the police and citizens – but only if the public has appropriate access to what the police are recording. Since release of video is currently at the discretion of law enforcement, it remains to be seen whether this measure will increase public confidence.
One way to build greater trust is to engage all community residents. Civilian review boards should could be created that are endowed with substantial authority, which could include subpoena power and independent disciplinary authority. These boards could be charged with regularly analyzing data on a range of police department practices to determine if there are any unjustified racial disparities or other system-wide problems in enforcement practices. In a number of cities around the country, community coalitions are pressing for a strong local police-civilian oversight system that would identify patterns of misconduct and hold officers more accountable.
The issues raised by Walter Scott’s death and other shootings in South Carolina can’t be managed by a public relations campaign. If we’re serious about eliminating racial bias and creating a fairer and more equitable climate in our communities, we need system-wide change in our institutions.
Here in South Carolina, the ACLU is joining with other advocacy and civic groups to urge a review of police practices statewide. One conversation will go on during the “Days of Grace” rally in Charleston on September 5-6. What will we be asking for?
- A zero-tolerance policy toward racial profiling, and an increase in training, including implicit bias training, to end discriminatory practices.
- A review of use of force and training in deescalating situations.
- Greater transparency and better data collection so everyone knows what the police are doing and how they are doing it.
- Greater accountability, with the police being held responsible by the community.
- And police departments made up of more people from the communities they serve. Real community safety depends on it.
Victoria Middleton is executive director of the ACLU of South Carolina, which is based in Charleston.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!