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Adrian Sese

English 1A, Hall

Police Reform and America Today

In the wake of George Floyd's death, there has been a worldwide eruption of protests and

movements against police brutality and for police reform. This isn't anything new for the United

States, especially with people of color dating back to the slave patrols of the 18th century, the

Jim Crow South, the Civil Rights movement, and now to the newly invigorated Black Lives

Matter movement. Black and indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by the

current policing system, and there needs to be more community-oriented police reform to mend

the severed bonds between the police and our communities. The lack of accountability, use of

racial profiling, and police corruption under police brutality are criminal. If we want to tackle

criminal justice reform, a priority should be on the roots of it - law enforcement agencies like the

police.

Police accountability is to be able to hold the police officers and law enforcement

agencies responsible for doing their job in maintaining public order while also treating the

citizens fairly within the law. However as riots occur across the country over police misbehavior,

it doesn’t seem that accountability is being taken seriously in the eyes of the community. More

people of color feel as if they’re the ones affected and see current accountability practices as a

joke. As the current system goes, police departments conduct internal investigations on

complaints on their police officers. This is not sustainable for accountability because a say is not

given to the community, the ones who the police are supposed to protect. Research has suggested
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that “the public prefers independent review of complaints against law enforcement”, and that

“public perceptions relating to the control of police officer conduct should be considered when

assessing the predictors of attitudes toward toe police (De Angelis & Wold)”. This would

suggest that more citizen oversight is necessary to ensure that citizens are treated fairly and

within the law, as it shouldn’t only be up to the police departments to decide if what they’re

doing is right but also up to the citizens being directly affected by them as well. This would take

in the form of a model where a civilian investigator is tasked with conducting findings and

investigations on civilian complaints, or a citizen board with limited investigation abilities but

both having the ability to refer their input to elected officials. The officers involved in the

killings of George Floyd would probably not have been charged if it weren’t for the role of the

community in recording or protesting against it, though unfortunately not all of Breonna Taylor’s

officers have not yet been convicted. The important thing here is for the community to be more

inclined to be more proactive in keeping law enforcement agencies like the police accounted for

and to acknowledge oversight agencies, which will be vital in building trust between the police

and the community overall.

Still on the topic of accountability, is that police unions are too powerful to have any real

change in police departments on keeping bad cops accounted for. The job of a police union is to

“protect the job of the worst worker as much as the best one (Burrus)”. These police unions try to

ensure that the officer can keep their job, just like any other unions do. However, police unions

are different from other unions in the sense that they’re protecting the means of how they’ve

always been run - they want to retain their status quo. This can be seen in police union contracts

how hard it is to hand down accountability to officers in question. It was found in a 2018 study
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of 646 police unions that “the vast majority of these departments give police officers the ability

to appeal disciplinary sanctions through multiple levels of appellate review. At the end of this

process, the majority of departments allow officers to appeal disciplinary sanctions to an

arbitrator selected, in part, by the local police union or the aggrieved officer (Rushin)”. This

creates a sturdy barrier on accountability of an officer that benefits the bad apples, as the

difficulty in actually calling them out is being hindered by the police unions. This is as bad as

having only internal police investigations as mentioned in the first paragraph, as it adds to the

problem of only police keeping each other accountable instead of the community. These police

unions are in need of dire reform as well as a new mindset for its workers and communities.

Using the basis of race for arrest has been a staple part of law enforcement ever since the

conception of this country, disproportionately affecting people of color and further contributing

to the mass incarceration problem we now have. Practices of stopping individuals, questioning,

and searching them for no valid reason has led to many arrests, negatively impacting the

relationship between the communities and police. It should never be the case to use the color of

one’s skin as a basis for suspicion, as well as a call for violence. Implicit bias on the police’s part

has led to an increased amount of incidents involved with people of color, whether it be through

a simple stop or through use of force by the officer. Opponents to this notion argue with the fact

that more white people have been killed by the police, but people of color are the ones that are

disproportionately affected by having high death rates by the police despite making only 27% of

the US population. A study by Harvard finds that “black people are more than three times as

likely as white people to be killed during a police encounter (Schwartz, Jahn)”. The police are

more likely to think of people of color as the more dangerous demographics, and police
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departments are fortunately starting to be more aware of this implicit bias after the Ferguson

riots. However, racial profiling should be directly addressed if we want to mend the separations

between our police and communities. Communities believing their race plays a part in negative

perceptions by the police will not want anything to do with the police, making cooperation to

solve anything crime-related much more difficult. We need effective racial profiling policies that

understands that racial profiling is unconstitutional and that suspicion should never be drawn

about from race and ethnicity.

Police brutality and corruption is a serious hindrance for American democracy and

communication between the police and our communities. The instances of excessive force that

seem racially biased and go unaccounted for deprive the communities’ attitudes of legitimacy

and trust towards the police. As it should, because it betrays the oath of honor that every police

officer must swear to: “On my honor, I will never betray my integrity, my character, or the

public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions.

I will always maintain the highest ethical standards and uphold the values of my community, and

the agency I serve.” We see these oaths being betrayed in the George Floyd incident, where

Chauvin used excessive amounts of force by having his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes.

What makes this even more unethical is that Chauvin may have been aware of what he was

doing, as his superior the Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo claimed that Chauvin

“had been trained in the dangers of positional asphyxiation”. The bystanding officers also

betrayed their oath by failing to hold Chauvin and themselves accountable by actually preventing

this incident. The three officers associated with the killing of Tony Timpa betrayed their oath

when they not only failed to administer help for an unconscious Tony Timpa, but by having their
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knee into Tony’s back and zip tying his legs together with no concern. They also betrayed their

oath by lying that Tony was aggressive, when there’s clear evidence of footage contradicting

what they claimed. To add salt into the wound, all three officers were acquitted from their

criminal charges and are still on active duty. There’s also an unofficial rule of law that police

officers have, and that’s the “blue code”. This blue code states that police officers cannot report

misconduct from their peers, and that they should not step in whenever their peers do anything

illegal. This is yet another betrayal of oath that should not be, and further complicates the

problem of accountability in police departments. These countless instances of oath betrayals are

more than enough for the community to start to lose trust in their protectors, because no one likes

people who don’t take their own word. Though we cannot blame every officer for betraying their

oath without clear evidence, we need to keep them accountable whenever it is suspected they

have to promote anti-corruption and reduce police brutality overall.

Overall, we need more accountability measures to combat against racial profiling, police

corruption, and police brutality. Police unions are a huge factor against that, blocking

accountability by giving the bad apples an easy way out from their misconduct. The constant

betrayals of oath that lead to police officers being seen negatively in public opinion, and the

racial profiling that disproporatiately affects Latinos and African-Americans. These factors and

many more are dividing the community and our belief of legitimacy in the ones that are sworn to

protect us, which cannot stand. Police reforms that keep police officers in check as well as

promote community-oriented policing will definitely have a positive effect on public opinion,

and it must be done for the police and communities to function together effectively.
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WORKS CITED

1. Burrus, “Here’s Why Bad Cops Aren’t Held Accountable”. CATO Institute, June

4, 2020 / November 15, 2020 /

(​https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/heres-why-bad-cops-arent-held-a

ccountable​)

2. De Angelis and Wolf, “Perceived accountability and public attitudes toward local

police”, Taylors & Francis Online. Published 17 Mar 2016, Accessed 15

November 2020

(​https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1478601X.2016.1158177?journal

Code=gjup20​)

3. Rushin, “Police Disciplinary Appeals”, SSRN, Published 13 Mar 2018, Accessed

15 Nov 2020, (​https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3134718​)

4. Schwaratz, Jahn. “Mapping fatal police violence across U.S. metropolitan areas:

Overall rates and racial/ethnic inequities, 2013-2017, PLOS ONE. Published June

24,2020, Accessed November 15, 2020.

(​https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/06/24/Study-Black-Americans-3-time

s-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-police/6121592949925/​)