A call for police accountability

The gears of justice are grinding slowly in Ferguson, Mo. The grand jury investigating the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, now has until January to determine if charges should be brought against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot him. News of the four-month extension was met with anger among some Brown supporters already skeptical that the process would deliver real justice.

They have good reason to be concerned; securing accountability for police misconduct is no easy feat, and police officers involved in lethal force incidents in the U.S. are rarely indicted, let alone convicted.

{mosads}The facts of the Brown case remain in dispute, including the question of whether Wilson targeted Brown because of his race and whether he used lethal force improperly. But there’s no disputing that throughout the U.S., even in cases of clear police wrongdoing, overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for the officers involved to escape due punishment.

In 1998, Human Rights Watch documented police brutality and barriers to accountability in 14 large U.S. cities and concluded that “The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses.” Among the obstacles to accountability were a reluctance by government officials to condemn and prosecute police misconduct; racial bias in law enforcement; an increasing acceptance of aggressive policing methods by the public; weak oversight and reviews of police misconduct; and a lack of access to reliable data related to police abuses.

That list is very similar to what we’ve seen in Ferguson, from concerns that the county prosecutor, who has deep family ties to law enforcement, may not be willing to aggressively investigate the shooting; to a history of tension and mistrust between a virtually all-white police department and a majority African-American community; racial disparities in enforcement such that, for example, black drivers are far more likely than white ones to be pulled over; weak oversight of police misconduct, with no independent body empowered to investigate or review complaints; and a failure to keep track of use-of-force incidents. Indeed, many of the obstacles to justice in police brutality cases identified in 1998 remain in place today.

Government accountability is a core human rights concern. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty to which the U.S. has been a party since 1992, victims of abuses by the authorities have the right to an “effective remedy,” and the government has an obligation to investigate and appropriately prosecute those responsible. Without accountability for abuse, basic civil rights become illusions.

The events in Ferguson should be a wake-up call to the federal and state governments to overcome those barriers and make a strong commitment to accountability.

State lawmakers should pass legislation requiring that investigations into deaths by police be automatically referred to an outside, neutral party, as Wisconsin has. They should also begin to systematically collect and disseminate data on the use of excessive force by law enforcement. States should update and intensify training for law enforcement personnel on community relations, biased policing, and de-escalation of violence techniques. (Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon [D] has announced the establishment of an agency to improve community relations, but its powers are limited to providing advice and it appears to have little ability to compel change.)

At the federal level, the Department of Justice has played an important role in investigating local police departments that engage in a pattern and practice of excessive force or discriminatory policing. (The agency is conducting such an investigation in Ferguson, and the FBI is investigating the Brown shooting.) The Justice Department has helped to craft agreements that could help local police departments move past such practices.

Federal lawmakers, too, could do a great deal. They could begin by making funding to local police contingent on compliance with best practices (possibly drawn from the agreements the Justice Department has crafted) around use of force and biased policing. If they passed the End Racial Profiling Act — which has been pending in Congress for over a decade — they could also push local police agencies to eliminate practices that result in discriminatory policing.

Whether Ferguson will embrace accountability or not is still an open question. Other communities and policymakers nationwide would do well to look at Ferguson and then hold a mirror up to themselves. Justice should be more than an illusion.

Ginatta is the advocacy director for the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch.