Police reforms can save lives, save money, and strengthen law enforcement

Last month, police officers in Memphis, Tenn., ordered motorist Tyre Nichols to pull over — and then beat him so badly he died three days later. Police initially indicated Nichols had been stopped for “reckless driving,” but Chief Cerelyn Davis subsequently acknowledged that after looking at cameras, “if something happened prior to this stop, we’ve been unable to substantiate it.” Five officers have been charged with second degree murder.

No other child should “suffer the way my son” and other victims of police violence have, RowVaughn Wells, Tyre’s mother, declared. If members of Congress do not pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, she added, “blood is going to be on their hands.”

In his State of the Union Address, President Biden agreed that police officers who violate the public trust “must be held accountable.”

A few weeks ago, the Memphis City Council passed ordinances disqualifying officers who misuse cameras from promotion and making excessive use of force a firing offense.

Much more comprehensive reforms of police practices are long overdue. Legislators in cities, states, and the federal government should feel an obligation to enact them.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House of Representatives and stalled in the Senate in 2021, mandated a national database with allegations of misconduct that could prevent officers removed from misconduct in one police department from being hired by another one. It also would have limited use of no-knock warrants and chokeholds in federal law enforcement and reduced or eliminated grants to localities and states who did not follow suit; it restricted use of qualified immunity by individual officers to make it easier to bring charges against them and reduced the criminal intent standard from “willful” to “knowing and reckless” to convict a police officer in a federal prosecution.

Negotiations in the Senate in 2021 broke down over differences between Republicans and Democrats over the importance of protecting officers from liability in litigation brought against them. Politicians on both sides of the aisle should return to negotiations on a substantive reform package.

Whether or not Congress gets to yes, best practices in policing should be implemented in many more cities and states.

Pulling over vehicles for minor infractions (expired registration, broken headlights, not wearing a seatbelt) does little to reduce crime or improve public safety, involves a disproportionately large number of Black drivers — and sometimes escalates into violent confrontations. Between 2017 and 2021, more than 400 motorists who were not being pursued related to a violent crime or wielding a knife or gun have been killed in altercations with police during traffic stops. Such stops have also resulted in the deaths of more police officers than any other activity initiated by them.

And so, a number of jurisdictions have ordered police to stop motorists only when they are speeding or driving recklessly. In many instances, violations can be identified by surveillance cameras and fines can be imposed by mail.

Deciding when and whether police should pursue fleeing subjects or use deadly force against them is also being rethought. “Am I creating more of a danger by chasing this person than if I let this person stay at large?” Chuck Drago, a police practices expert and former police chief in Oviedo, Fla., has asked.

Rayshard Brooks provides an illustrative example. Following complaints that Brooks had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through lane of a Wendy’s in Atlanta, Ga., police arrived, questioned him for 40 minutes, and conducted a sobriety test. When officers moved to arrest Brooks, who was unarmed, he grabbed a Taser, fired it wildly as he ran away, was shot twice in the back and killed. Since authorities had Brooks’s address and his car, they might have let him go and apprehended him later — or taken him up on his offer to walk to the home of his sister, who lived nearby, with them. In any event, in November 2021, Atlanta officials paid $1 million to settle a lawsuit with Brooks’s widow.

Non-law enforcement personnel now also play a role in some situations previously assigned exclusively to police: 1 in 10 calls for help, it’s worth noting, involve a mental health crisis. People with untreated mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by police officers than other members of the public. And so, some municipalities pair an officer with a paramedic, a therapist, or a social worker.

Non-law enforcement personnel deal as well with inebriation, abandoned vehicles, accidents with no serious injuries. These initiatives free up police officers to deal with higher priority issues. Requests for police back-up are minimal.

A substantive start to what must be a sustained effort, these reforms save money and save lives. As Isaiah Thomas, a Councilman in Denver, Colo., indicated, they may also help change perceptions of and realities about “law enforcement and law enforcement relations.”

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”