In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's death, police reform gained momentum across the country. But six years later, some of those efforts have lost energy.
In the Capital Region, police review boards have faced obstacles as of late, from recruitment trouble in Albany to a loss of subpoena power in Saratoga Springs.
Bureau chiefs Grant Ashley and Aaron Shellow-Lavine sat down with Justin Pickett, a University at Albany School of Criminal Justice professor, to talk about what the recent setbacks for the local boards say about police reform more broadly.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Pickett: They're an important part, but a small part of the reform. Most of the evidence on reform has boiled down to largely two pockets. One is trying to get body cameras on officers and then examine how they are used. Do they get turned off? Does the evidence from body cameras get disseminated quickly, regardless of what it shows? The procedural justice training is also interesting. It maybe is the hottest topic academically. That's the idea that it doesn't really matter what the outcome of an interaction between a civilian and an officer is. Like, do you get a ticket? Do you get arrested? What matters is how they treat you during it. Do they treat you fairly and justly? Do they listen to you? Do they explain what they're doing? Right? Do they basically treat you nicely?
Ashley: I went to the most recent CPRB meeting in Albany, and there was a, you know, woman who complained about a domestic dispute involving her teenage children. The incident happened in January. She didn't get to you know go before the board until July, and then they upheld one allegation that the officer was you know swearing at her and rude basically, and you know they didn't uphold the use of force policy complaint, and she was you know very mad about that, having to wait, go through this really long process, and now the board is trying to do some community outreach initiatives, try to you know help people understand how the board works. Could you talk a little bit more about how some of these reforms or boards can get community buy-in? What they need to do?
Pickett: Well, community buy-in breaks into do people support it, and then what is the process of it actually functioning? And the do people support it? Yes, there's there's high public support for all sorts of policing reforms, from procedural justice to to civilian oversight. That's true for many things. Tony Ching, who I believe now is at Duke, went and sat in on police community civilian meetings for years and watched what happened when civilians raised questions or criticisms about local policing, and essentially found that it was illusionary that it would actually ever work out in any sense.
Shellow-Lavine: Specifically here in the Capital Region, I mean, what are you seeing as far as you know our current moment? How would you define where we are in our current moment with police reform efforts?
Pickett: It's far better now than it was 20, 30, years ago. So after George Floyd's murder, there was a drastic change in public opinion in the months after it, but it was largely temporary. That led to publicity and calls for police reform that have - they're not as loud anymore. And I think partly because it wouldn't shock me at all if some of the attention that went to it is now going towards immigration enforcement. But what we know is that in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, most Black Americans, the vast majority of Black Americans, were personally afraid of being hurt by police officers. Most white Americans were not. We know that years after that, that remains true. That most Black Americans are either very afraid or afraid that they personally or someone in their family will be hurt without good reason by police officers, right? And we know that most White Americans are not, and that is the largest gap that I have ever seen racially in the United States is in fear of police officers. And we know that there are things that reduce fear, like body-worn cameras and changing the demographics of policing to include more women, which reduces fear, and to include more officers of color, which significantly reduces Black Americans' fear, and we know that both of those efforts to diversify officers have stalled, and that the modal police officer remains a white male.
Ashley: You know, you're saying overall, like over the 20, 30 year time frame, you feel kind of optimistic about police reform. But then, you know, when we're talking about some of these specifics, it's like you know, diversity initiatives have stalled. Some of these boards are you know Kabuki theater and kind of toothless. Could you talk a little bit about more about why you feel optimistic on the you know larger timescale?
Pickett: For a number of reasons. One one of the reasons that I feel more optimistic is that there have been technological advances that just weren't here several years ago. From body-worn cameras to civilians being able to record police-civilian interactions, to news media being able to quickly report on what happens from multiple perspectives, have made it so that the incentive environment around policing, independent of policing, is pushing everyone involved to want to get better. And then, lastly, the policy proposals. Two things about them. There's a lot more of them in the sense of things like procedural justice training, and we are now, even if it's slowing down, very well aware that we need to have a more diverse police workforce. The second thing is that evidence-based policing is now the dominant form. It wasn't 30 years ago, that is, police chiefs across the country want to work with academics to test what works, what doesn't work.
