Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Most Corrupt Police Forces Are In Most Violent Cities

Studies that show how corrupt police departments are, and whether or not they're more likely to lead to higher violence in the communities they claim to protect, are extremely hard to find, if they exist, and a lot of the data may be unreliable. One study on law enforcement officers arrested, which doesn't focus on whether or not police corruption contributes to higher violence in their cities, says "Surprisingly little is known about the crimes committed by law enforcement officers, in part because there are virtually no official nationwide data collected, .... or available for research analyses."

Another investigation led to the release of "a list of nearly 12,000 cops and applicants who’d been found guilty of all categories of offenses, ranging from disorderly conduct to sexual assault to manslaughter." Instead of trying to reform the police, the establishment responded by trying to covering it up and implying those exposing it may have committed a crime, saying "The list came from the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training, or POST. In response, California’s top law enforcement officer threatened to take legal action against the reporters if the list wasn’t destroyed. Attorney General Xavier Becerra said it had been released by accident, and he asserted that merely possessing a copy was illegal."

This means that, not only are they avoiding collecting information that could help researchers of police corruption, but they often pass laws to make it illegal to disclose some of the best research information they do have. This means that regardless of how much evidence good researchers have about police corruption, it's almost certainly even worse, perhaps much worse.

However, even without cooperation from many of the most powerful institutions, many researchers have been able to put together a significant amount of information about police corruption, and there's good reason to believe that it's worse in some of the poorest and most violent cities in America. Several organizations have made lists of what they consider the most corrupt police forces, including BET which lists 7 of the Most Corrupt Police Cities in History 01/25/2020; one of these is in Mexico, and little information is available about it; but, the other six are all from the USA and they're all above the national average murder rate, with four of them at least three times the average murder rate. Another one covers the 15 Most Corrupt Cities in America, including corruption from other city officials, in addition to the police, and all of them are also have above average murder rates with ten of them more than triple the national average, one more more than double and another two almost double.

If you look through enough of the highest profile stories about police corruption and check to see if they're in cities with high rates of violence, you'll find that almost all of them are, one collection of stories going back several is Marshall Project latest stories on police corruption, and except for a few stories about corruption in Honolulu and a couple more in small towns few have heard of, they're all in very violent cities, often the ones listed above as the most corrupt cities. Another way to cross check this conclusion is to search for police corruption in less violent cities, like El Paso or Sand Diego, etc., and there's no doubt you'll find corruption there as well, but there doesn't seem to be nearly as many stories about it as in more violent cities. On article that turns up in a search for San Diego police corruption is Dozens of Police Officers Across San Diego County Have Been Convicted of Crimes 11/11/2020, which certainly sounds bad, and is bad; however the article refers to a list of nearly 12,000 cops that were found guilty of crimes. If San Diego had there share based on population, then it would be close to 1,000 police officers convicted of crimes, implying the rest of California is even worse.

If you look at the current murder rates for New York, which is historically considered one of the most corrupt police forces in history, this may seem to be an exception, since they're among the lowest murder rates for big cities in the country; however, consideration of the size and history of it may explain this. Some of NYPD's worst corruption took place before at least two major reform movements, on led by the Knapp Commission, in the early 1970s, and the Mollen Commission, in the early 1990s; it wasn't until after the second one when their murder rates began a steady decline that continued over twenty-five years, before this New York was one of the most violent cities in the country. If you figure the average murder rate for 2002-2016 it's 5.81, which is still above average.

It's only the past eight years that it finally went below average. Also, it's the biggest city in the country so many parts of it, often the poorest are still much higher than average, and that's almost certainly where the most corruption is. The first investigation was headed by Whitman Knapp, a Wall Street lawyer, who was presumably concerned with how epidemic levels of police corruption impacted Wall Street profits. It is widely recognized among the best researchers that those with the least amount of political power are most likely to be targeted by corrupt police. When corruption impacts Wall Street profits the political establishment is much more likely to act. These good researchers also know the most effective solutions to this problem; unfortunately their work is often only distributed in the academic community or on alternative media outlets including Rachel Kleinfeld who describes some of the most effective solutions ignored by traditional media in the following article:

These Countries Reformed Their Brutal, Biased Police. The U.S. Can, Too. 07/02/2020

In Bogotá, the moment for long overdue reforms finally came after police raped and murdered a nine-year-old girl at a police station. In Monterrey, Mexico, it arrived years after locals began calling officers polizetas—a mash-up of policía and Los Zetas, the violent drug cartel with whom they often colluded. In the United States, the moment may have come after the brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

The United States is far from the only country where police brutality, corruption, or biased treatment of parts of the population have driven demands for reform. Success, however, has been rare—not because reformers don’t know what policies to implement, but because the required reforms were blocked or didn’t stick. To increase the odds of successful police reform, U.S. activists and reformers would be wise to look at lessons from countries and communities where changes succeeded and stuck.

Luckily, what works for fair and effective policing is well known. Decades of research confirm that trust between law enforcement and communities is essential, because controlling crime requires community help. In the United States and Britain, for instance, the vast majority of the crimes that people fear the most, such as homicide and rape, required public tips to solve. Building trust, however, is based less on bringing down crime (the metric many police monitor) than on treating people with respect and fairness. Trust is enhanced by recruiting a force that resembles the community it serves (although sadly, diversity doesn’t necessarily reduce police violence). Finally, hiring more women in law enforcement—a strategy Peru used to break perceptions of widespread corruption—results in more trust and less use of force.

Once officers have gained a community’s trust, they can use public tips to implement policies proven to drastically reduce crime, such as targeting hot spots (the small number of places where most violence happens), and focusing deterrence on the tiny percentage of people responsible for the vast majority of violent crime to prevent them from resorting to violence. Executing both strategies with respect and fairness is, needless to say, essential to their effectiveness.

The problem is getting police—and political leaders—to make these changes and make them stick. In the past few weeks, the United States has taken the first steps. Politicians are on notice from the vocal, voting middle class. That step is crucial—even in Venezuela, one of the world’s most violent countries, it is the most marginalized communities with the least political power that bear the brunt of overly violent and underresponsive policing. In every democracy where systemic police abuse has been tackled, change usually began when the broader public started to care. As a result of this pressure, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a police reform bill; various U.S. states and communities are making changes as well.

........

One reason for the more extreme strategy of mass firing is that it can be among the few ways for reform-minded politicians to disband police unions that, in their quest for workers’ rights, prevent corrupt and abusive agents from being fired. Unions play an awkward role: While they are essential for democracy, in the area of law enforcement they are often obstacles to policies that enable cultural change—such as promoting best performers or putting new recruits at the cutting edge of reform so that they are immediately acculturated to where the organization wants to go.

The key to accountability is for policymakers grappling with reform to be independent from the police themselves and from ongoing political pressure. The most committed politicians prevent slippage by ensuring that their own fortunes rise and fall with the success of police reform. In Bogotá, former Mayor Antanas Mockus ran on a platform of creating a more civil, less criminal police. He demanded daily briefings from the police force and experimented with policies from mass firing to hiring mimes to regulate traffic. In Medellín, Colombia, former Mayor Sergio Fajardo required police statistics to be maintained by an independent agency and made public monthly. Such pressure kept the reform agenda front and center.

Growing crime, however, can undermine the ability of even the most reform-minded politicians to hold the line. Often, police and politicians erroneously view efforts to improve the treatment of citizens as inherently at odds with police effectiveness. Increased crime leads to public clamor for “toughness”—and tough-on-crime policies nearly always offer greater impunity for the use of force by police. Despite actually causing crime to increase, these tough-sounding policies are election winners in nearly every democracy. If crime rises, reform will backslide, even if reform is the best way to bring crime back down. While labor unions are essential for democracy, in the area of law enforcement they are often obstacles to policies that enable cultural change. Complete article

In all fairness, the reforms she cites haven't been completely successful, but they have taken major steps in the right direction. A major part of the reason why reforms often don't stick, is because it's the corrupt people in power implementing them, and the media doesn't inform the public about the best research teaching how to stop police corruption. In many cases when they do point out some of the biggest problems, they only report in in a low profile manner then forget about it while deceptive propaganda is often repeated over and over again. This is why tough on crime politics sounds very good to many people, even though it doesn't work and leads to increased impunity for use of excessive force, often even for the wrong people.

One clear indication of the corruption of both the police, and the political establishment is the union contracts they negotiate, usually in secret without the knowledge of the public supposedly being protected by police. When Wall Street corporation negotiate a contract with unions their CEOs and stockholders know what's in it; however, citizens don't know what's in the contracts supposedly negotiated on their behalf, as reported in Police contracts can stand in the way of accountability 07/19/2020, which says:

Collective bargaining agreements for officers provide protections that stand in the way of accountability, even when the federal government is overseeing an agency through a consent decree, experts said. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer ignited protests and calls for change, but experts say police contracts threaten to undermine those efforts.

Contracts designed to ensure officers receive fair wages and benefits have spilled over into public policy.

"We're ignoring the purpose of the bargaining rights and we're allowing them to step outside of what they were originally supposed to cover," said Ayesha Bell Hardaway of the Case Western University School of Law.

"When talk about discipline, accountability and use of force protocols, we should not be talking about collective bargaining rights because those terms have no business inside of the contracts in the first place."

When contracts are written in private negotiations, that means little input from communities. ......

“A substantial number of these agreements limit officer interrogations after alleged misconduct, mandate the destruction of disciplinary records, ban civilian oversight, prevent anonymous civilian complaints, indemnify officers in the event of civil suits, and limit the length of internal investigations,” he said.

Few if any citizens would ever agree to ban accountability for the police to the citizens they're supposed to protect, yet politicians who negotiate on their behalf routinely do just that, in secret! Nor do they know that they're being stuck with the tab for hundreds of millions if not well over a billion dollars in lawsuits against the police every year as I went into in Duopoly Is Trying To Indoctrinate The Public Like A Cult including some cases where tax payers are stuck with lawsuits from both the victims of police brutality, and the police that are responsible for it, including Philly’s police misconduct cases drain taxpayer money, which says, "the city paid 26 officers at least $1.2 million in back pay and other payments. In addition, the city has paid nearly $4 million to settle federal lawsuits involving 15 of these officers." I also found examples in Florida where cities were forced to pay both the victims of police brutality in one lawsuit, and for back pay to the police responsible for it, often allowing them to rejoin the force again, possibly leading to more lawsuits.

If these funds were going into education, child care, or other social programs that address the root causes of violence then there would be far less violence in these cities and the police often do more to make it worse than to protect the public. For example in New Book Explores Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Force 07/15/2020 Brandon Soderberg says:

"I think the easiest way to put it is that they created crime. By committing crimes themselves, but also because robbing drug dealers leads to violence (people get shot when the count isn't right) and dealing drugs disrupts the underground economy. .... And divesting from law enforcement and giving more money to groups such as Safe Streets and other community-facing efforts would go a long way."

For some reason, the same authors of that article and accompanying book, which does offer some good solutions also argued that Police 'reform' doesn't work. Baltimore proves it. 06/18/2020; however, this isn't quite true, and some of the reforms that they recommend are similar to the ones that Rachel Kleinfeld cited as being partly successful in other countries. There have also been partially successful reforms in New York, Detroit, Camden, NJ, New Orleans, and Richmond California, have all implemented major reforms that have had success in dramatically reducing the rates of violence, although they all still have more work to do. It would be more accurate to say that reforms don't work, when neither the police or the politicians want them to work.

I went into this more in Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit which covers Richmond California, which is probably the city with the biggest drop in crime of them all, and it continued to drop since I first wrote this. A major part of the reason for this seems to be that the people educated themselves at the local level, despite lack of media coverage of the most effective research to reduce violence, and rejected establishment politicians that weren't sincere elect Gayle McLaughlin, of the Green Party, Mayor for a while. Due to term limits she wasn't able to stay on, but establishment politicians learned that they would have to adopt more rational programs, based on good research or lose elections to other progressives.

Not only are police and politicians incredibly corrupt, but there should be no doubt that the media is also incredibly corrupt and incompetent! In a functioning Democracy, we need diverse media coverage, at least some of which covers the best research on any given academic subject, including into most effective ways to reduce violence, and hold police accountable; as well as coverage for all candidates running for political office, including those basing their campaigns on good research, not just the ones that collect enormous donations from corporations. In our country over 95% of the media is controlled b y 6 corporation, and they ignore the best research on any given subject so we base decisions on lies and propaganda; they also refuse to cover the most honest candidates, ensuring they can't get the name recognition to be viable, effectively rigging elections for corrupt candidates that don't address the needs of the people.