The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) hosted The Future of Policing in America: A Moderated Panel, during which the speakers discussed measures that could be taken to improve policing policy in the United States.
The panel, hosted on Tuesday in Shriver Hall, featured Baltimore City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, Pulitzer-prize nominated investigative journalist Mark Puente of The Baltimore Sun, Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York and co-founder of Muslims for Ferguson Linda Sarsour and District 7 Council Member and Democratic mayoral candidate Nick Mosby.
Journalist and public-policy fellow Donovan X. Ramsey, who was slotted to attend, was not present. Margaret Huang, the interim executive director of Amnesty International USA, moderated the discussion.
Huang opened the panel by asking each speaker to share his or her thoughts on the past, present and future of policing in America.
Puente discussed the 2014 Sun investigation, titled “Undue Force,” which details citizens’ allegations of excessive police force in Baltimore.
“Between 2011-2014, the city settled 102 lawsuits for about $6 million. Within those findings, we reported that most of these encounters that led to arrests and lawsuits were questionable,” he said.
Puente was particularly troubled by the alleged treatment of some of those who sued the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), citing examples of an 87-year-old grandmother who called the police because her grandson was shot and left with a broken shoulder after being attacked by an officer, as well as a 26-year-old pregnant woman who called to report a beating she had witnessed and a hostile encounter she had experienced.
Davis’ opening comments focused on the history of the BPD.
“The Baltimore Police Department, not unlike other big-county police departments in America, has experienced several lapses over the last several years,” he said. “We realize that 2015 has defined American policing and its future in a very different way... We’re the nation’s eighth largest police department and for far too many years, our agency, like other agencies that struggle with violence, really turned into a one-dimensional police department where the only thing that mattered was reducing violence.”
Davis found the “zero-tolerance” approach to policing problematic because it did not reduce violence on a large scale and only widened the gap between the BPD and poor, minority communities. He stressed that as commissioner he does not count numbers of arrests, field stops or citations, which many police departments do in order to reward officers. Davis wants to change the way police officers interact with communities.
Mosby agreed with Davis that the zero-tolerance approach and the related “War on Drugs,” which has led to many felony convictions for crimes like marijuana possession, have not been effective in reducing violence. He emphasized that police should target repeat offenders who are the most violent and dangerous offenders.
Sarsour talked about the role of the police in New York City where she works as a social and political activist. She disagreed with Davis when he said that 2015 was a defining year for policing in America. She attributed the spotlight on police violence to an increase in iPhone videos of police brutality, social media campaigns and public outcries for change rather than any actual differences in policing.
“Who polices us from the police?” she asked.
Huang then shifted the conversation toward the legal problems associated with excessive police force, specifically the use of lethal force. She referenced a June 2015 Amnesty International report titled Deadly Force: Police Use of Lethal Force in the United States which found that U.S. state laws did not comply with international laws and standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement.
“What would it take to get our state legislators, including here in Maryland, to take action to actually base police policy on when to use lethal force on the most protective of life standards?” she asked.
Sarsour claimed that it is difficult to legislate against the culture of policing that is prevalent in our nation today.
“What police officers understand from the culture of policing in this country is that they can use lethal force, they can kill unarmed people, they can beat you bloody, and they know they aren’t going to get in trouble for it,” she said.
Mosby discussed the importance of hiring police officers who have a stake in Baltimore. He stated that only 23 percent of BPD officers live in the city of Baltimore. He said that employing officers who are invested in the community will change the relationship between citizens and law enforcement.
“The one thing that we must do a better job at, and I commend the police commissioner on this, is recruiting and attracting folks who understand and know what Baltimore City is and what Baltimore City is about,” Mosby said.
Huang then asked how panelists believed the U.S. could address the problem of race in policing.
Davis discussed efforts on behalf of the BPD to increase cultural sensitivity and educate officers about the community.
“Some of the things we’re doing to talk about race differently within the Baltimore PD, as opposed to having a traditional classroom-style lecture on what cultural sensitivity should look like, is we’ve introduced a speaker series curriculum titled “The History of Baltimore.” We’re introducing Baltimore cops to each and every aspect of the city that defines this great place,” he said. “If you’re not from here and you don’t understand how this city evolved over the years, you’re likely to look at people who don’t look like you differently, and the police department has an obligation to train differently.”
Sarsour pointed to statistics regarding people of color and policing.
“When we look at police departments across the country, we know for a fact through information, through quotas, that they are disproportionately impacting and policing communities of color,” she said.
Sarsour dissented from the view that police departments should try to hire more individuals from the community. She stated that all police officers have to work under a system, so focusing on the individual officer’s origin fails to address the core problem. Sarsour highlighted the need to change the current system in which police unions, prosecutors and district attorneys are embedded into politics. She further emphasized that in her experience, people of color do not cite the police as a component of a safe community.
Puente acknowledged the intersection of race and culture in policing. He explained that in Undue Force, out of around 40 published mugshot photos of citizens alleging police brutality, only one contained a white individual.
“It wasn’t white cops versus black citizens. It was white, Hispanic and black cops against black citizens, so it’s not a black and white issue, it’s black-white-brown against blue,” Puente said. “The problems in Baltimore didn’t happen overnight, and it’s going to take years, I believe, to solve the cultural problems where the police believe they can commit wrongdoing... It’s not going to be solved overnight.”
During the question and answer session, audience members posed several questions about the reasons behind an increase in homicides and fall in arrests, how police departments can be held more accountable for their actions, current methods of detainment and the prison-industrial complex.
A News-Letter reporter as the panelists about the lack of common sense exhibited by some police officers in their treatment of suspects, specifically recalling the reckless treatment of Freddie Gray after his arrest. In response, Davis discussed ways in which police departments can improve their behavior.
“When you look at police departments in Baltimore or elsewhere, if there is a significant gap between standard operating policies and standard operating practices, that’s where you run into trouble. [In] healthy police departments, those two things are really, really close, if not side by side, if not one in the same,” he said. “Everything that we do is an effort to ensure that what we say, what we preach, what we mandate and what is practiced on the street, get closer each and every day.”
After the event concluded, Puente said that he valued the discussion and respected his fellow panelists’ opinions.
“I liked the fact that people are talking and getting into the problem, especially in a city like Baltimore that has so many problems,” he said. “It’s refreshing to hear, and for people to realize, that the status quo won’t sustain this city.”
Puente explained that while pursuing the investigation he did not know what effect the Undue Force series would have on the city of Baltimore.
“I went into the story with a mandate, ‘Hey go check this out. We hear there are some issues with police brutality in Baltimore.’ There was no proof, there were no records. I started pulling report files, searching on the case search. I compiled thousands of pages of records,” Puente said. “It was a six-month investigation... I thought there could be some impact, but you can never predict impact on a newspaper story. The Undue Force series produced immediate impact. It was published on a Sunday. The mayor called for a press conference on Monday and said they were against brutality. Two days later they announced the Department of Justice was intervening.”
Students appreciated the range of opinions presented in the panel and the relevance of the topic of policing in America to the Hopkins community. Junior Haziq Siddiqi, president of the Jail Tutorial Project, was able to connect his own work with the various speakers’ remarks.
“I work with Jail Tutorial, so a lot of the things that were talked about in the panel were things I have witnessed myself... I think this is a conversation that is really needed, especially in light of what happened last year,” he said. “What I really liked about the panel was the diversity in opinions. You had the police commissioner, and you also had Linda [Sarsour] who was advocating for the removal of police. I think it’s exciting because we touched on a lot of important issues like mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex. I hope that this is a conversation that continues to happen.”
