The Policing Strategies Working Group, a bipartisan team made up of members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, met with community leaders Friday in Atlanta to discuss their goals and to receive feedback on the steps they’ve made to improve the relationship between law enforcement and local communities.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) led the press conference following the private roundtable, flanked by several Congressmen including Georgians Doug Collins (R) and Hank Johnson (D) to address the media.
Also in attendance at the Georgia State Law School library were many of the aforementioned community leaders, including City of Atlanta Police Chief George Turner, Georgia State University Police Chief Jospeh Spillane, and Morehouse University Student Body President Johnathan Hill.
The relationship between law enforcement and the public they are tasked to protect has become a testy one in recent years, particularly among minorities. Several high profile shootings of unarmed suspects by officers have made headlines, and the often-violent protests that have followed have kept the stories in the media cycle for many of the wrong reasons. Likewise the number of police being shot has skyrocketed, often by criminals motivated by what they feel is a ‘corrupt’ law enforcement system. On Sunday alone four officers were shot in three different states nationwide.
That wave of violence has obviously deepened the rift between citizens and the police in many parts of the country, particularly in areas with a high minority population. The question that the Policing Strategies Working Group hopes to answer, as posed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), is “What can we take back to our national legislature, and how will we be able to improve the relationship between law enforcement and our citizens, particularly minorities?”
There is clearly no easy answer to that question, but the consensus among Congressman in attendance was that the place to start must be criminal justice reform.
Criminal justice reform on its own is a topic that deserves a study committee, but the panel of speakers were able to point to several steps that can be taken to improve the relationship between law enforcement and an often mistrusting public.
Representative David Reichert (R-Wa.), a former police officer and Sheriff, pointed to four steps that law enforcement agencies can take to improve their own ability to interface with the community. Starting by increasing hiring standards, following that process with improved training, then raising pay for officers, and providing better officer-wellness aid following traumatic events. Of course many precincts, already strapped for cash, lack the funds to implement those steps. Aid from the Federal Government, particularly to low-income police departments, could be an option according to Reichert.
When posed with the question of “Where are we now on the issue of police escalating situations?”, Georgia’s Doug Collins was particularly cogent. As the son of a police officer, he viewed the issue from the perspective of someone with family in law enforcement. Police officers deal with unimaginably stressful situations on a near-daily basis and have to come home to their families after every single one. It is important, said the Congressman, that we look at these incidents from the eyes of the officers involved. On the other hand, Collins recognized that communities need to feel as though their voices are heard. If a police officer breaks the law, he should be punished swiftly and justly. The idea that officers are protected by the ‘blue shield’ is one of the biggest reasons why mistrust from the public is so high.
The panel was confident that the impending Trump administration would be amenable to continuing the dialogue begun by the group, particularly when much of his campaign centered around increasing public safety. Goodlatte shrugged off a pointed question about the ‘nationwide stop and frisk’ policy that Trump brought up during his campaign, saying that there was no set definition and that local authorities would still have the ultimate say in the policing of their communities. Likewise the group was lukewarm on the idea of body cameras, saying that there was much more to that process than simply buying cameras, including data storage, chain of command for possessing the videos, and of course the prohibitive cost of installing such a system in the first place. Again, said Reichert, it is a process that has to be rolled out locally and over time.
Approval ratings for congress in recent years has been at an all-time low, but groups like this working bridge the gap between their constituencies and the law enforcement officers who serve them should give faith to even their most ardent doubters. Hopefully as President-elect Trump takes the oval office in January the Congressional Policing Strategies Working Group can take their message back to Washington D.C. and begin to implement some of the solutions they’ve discussed.
