Police reform long overdue

By Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Tribune News Service

The unjustified shooting in South Carolina yet again demonstrates the necessity of police reform.

We only know the truth about the encounter between Officer Michael Slager and Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C., because of a video by an unseen bystander. The video reveals that Slager lied in his initial recounting of the shooting and that he tampered with evidence.

Obviously, this is not an isolated event. The Slager video has been preceded by other recent shocking footage, including documentation of the shooting of mentally ill camper James Boyd in New Mexico, the strangulation of Eric Garner in New York and the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Blacks and Hispanics are far more likely to be wrongful victims.

Over the past 10 years, the Justice Department has conducted numerous investigations of police municipalities, documenting a pattern of transgressions nationwide. The reports make recommendations such as the additional use of surveillance cameras, mandatory supplemental police training and the establishment of independent review boards with real decision-making powers.

But often recommendations that take away authority from police chiefs and district attorneys are ruthlessly resisted, and police departments refuse to relinquish internal control. Too often, Justice Department proposals are negotiated down to mere words.

In response to the controversial deaths of Garner and of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., President Obama suggested fitting police officers throughout the country with body cameras and requiring all police departments to undergo racial sensitivity training, yet both ideas were rejected by his own police reform task force. The panel did recommend that every case involving police fatally shooting civilians should be handled by independent prosecutors who have no bias toward protecting the local force.

Rule-of-thumb

But this admirable “recommendation” remains that, only that. It will not become a rule-of-thumb for police forces across the nation until and unless politicians, leaders and activists push for it and the public rises up to demand it.

Transforming the police ultimately means enabling independent oversight. It’s time to establish independent prosecutors — and more. It’s time to give community-led review boards the powers to hire and fire officers, establish policies and recommend sanctions. These ideas are neither unrealistic nor unachievable.

We need to initiate comprehensive police reform right now.

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is a poet and journalist living in Santa Fe, N.M. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.