Stop and Frisk Gun Reduction Breeds Disguised Harms

© 2001, 2010 Peter Free

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Similarly, there were divergent views on how the poor were treated.  More than half of African-American officers felt that police were more likely to use force against poor people than they were middle-class people in similar situations.  Less than one-fifth of non-black minority officers and less than one-tenth of white officers agreed. [59]

Despite these responses, the officers sampled believed police departments strongly oppose improper behavior. [60]  They also thought that investigations of misconduct are not biased in their favor. [61]  Almost 85 percent of the officers believed that the police chief's strong stand against abuse deters abuse of authority.  Nearly 90 percent believed good first-line supervision is effective.  However, only 55 percent thought most abuse could be prevented by more effective methods of supervision. [62]

Even if the perception about strong departmental intervention is correct, the "code of silence" tends to negate it.  Though more than 80 percent of officers did not believe that the "code of silence" was necessary to building mutual trust, 24.9 percent said whistle blowing was not worth the personal cost. [63]  More than half said it was not unusual for officers to turn a blind eye to bad conduct, and two-thirds said officers who did report misconduct were likely to get the "cold shoulder."  [64]

If the department consistently lacks information from on-the-scene witnesses, either officers or citizens, and is actively foiled by its officers in investigating alleged wrongdoing, how can it be expected to effectively deter unlawful conduct?  At some point, officers must take responsibility for supervising themselves according to a code of honor that goes beyond duty to self and colleague.  It may be that the department must take responsibility for actively inculcating such an ethic in a manner analogous to that the Marine Corps uses in building its code into its people.  There comes a time when a profession must grow up.  Law enforcement must stop making excuses, see what needs to be done, and do it.

Shaping Police Discretion

            Part of the problem with stop and frisk is that it gives officers too much unguided discretion as a result of ineffective training and absent situational guidelines.  George Kelling, an originator of broken windows policing, recently observed, "[P]olice are almost uniformly unable to articulate what they do, why they do it, and how they do it." [65]  Simply telling officers what they can't do has not improved policing. [66]

 

"The gaps in police training and guideline development that are so typical ...retard the development of police knowledge, impede the development of genuine professionalism, diminish the quality of police services, invite the use of personal whim as the basis for discretionary judgments, and unnecessarily expose police officers and departments to liability suits." [67]

 

Liability is compounded by the fact that most law enforcement conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and order maintenance in not subjected to record keeping.  Many of these activities only come to light when someone complains. [68]

Though law enforcement is too complex for management to address each potential circumstance, Kelling suggests that administrators teach officers how to think about what they do.  If the officers then take action and talk about what happened, they can improve their practice and "share their emerging values, knowledge, and skills with their colleagues and the profession." [69]  Consequently, police officials should focus on the substantive content of police work and clearly define and describe it. [70]

Even so amorphous an area as police discretion can be shaped.  Discretion has limits departments can articulate and enforce.  Explicitly stated values "remind officers that...choice is circumscribed, help them to say 'no' to inappropriate demands...and provide wide administrative authority to discipline [the] unethical and inappropriate use of discretion." [71]  If departments articulate ultimate values, officers can maintain idealism even in the face of messy and distasteful tasks. [72]

            Situational values also need to be articulated.  These address the concrete circumstances that officers encounter in day-to-day activities.  For example, what should be done with the homeless when the temperature is cold?  Should they be evicted from subway cars, from subway tunnels, from city parks?  To where?  How should officers handle the conflict between noisy young people out late at night and older neighborhood residents concerned about sleep?  What should be done with unlicensed street vendors who don't have the resources to get licenses?  How does a conscientious and humane officer balance their interests with those of competing, established shopkeepers? [73]

            Most important, in the context of stop and frisk, numerous examples of reasonable suspicion need to be explicitly set out in training materials and watch discussions.  Only officers who have demonstrated consistent competence, integrity, and ethnic even-handedness in assessing the constitutional requirements underlying Terry and its progeny should be allowed to serve on stop and frisk details.  Before sending these officers out, police departments must ask an ultimate "discretion" question: Is the tactic worth the cost in ethnic and socioeconomic repression and the injury and death that it has caused and is likely to continue to cause?

 

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