America’s Policing System Goes Beyond A Few Bad Apples – It’s Rotten To The Core

This image from police body camera footage shows officers approaching Quadry Sanders after they shot him on Dec. 5, 2021.

If police are ever reliable for one thing that’s not in their job description, it’s to make the news for dubious shootings and excessive force. 

Greg Capers, a sergeant for the Indianola, Mississippi, police department, was suspended without payfor shooting and wounding Aderrien Murry, an 11-year-old unarmed Black boy, on May 20 when Capers responded to a 911 call that the child made himself. 

Suspended Newark, New Jersey, police officer Jovanny Crespo recently made opening statements at his trial, where he’s facing charges of aggravated manslaughter and assault for fatally shooting driver Gregory Griffin and injuring passenger Andrew Dixon in 2019. Prosecutors will attempt to prove that Griffin was speeding away from Crespo in a vehicle when he fired shots. 

Last week, arbitrators determined that two former Oklahoma police officers, Nathan Ronan and Robert Hinkle, can go back to work after shooting Quadry Sanders, an unarmed Black man, a dozen times and killing him in 2021. 

Police shootings nationwide have ramped up significantly in recent years, which seems to coincide with the wild rise in homicides during the early COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, U.S. law enforcement officers killed at least 1,200 people, the deadliest year on record since the nonprofit research group Mapping Police Violence started recording police violence in 2013.

Determining unnecessary police killings is, by nature, a rather complex notion, which is why so many cases ferment in litigation interminably. But, like cardiac surgeons, people who carry guns for a living can’t afford “off nights,” because then people die. And enough officers make the news for being on trial for questionable shootings and general brutality that it’s reasonable to suggest we’re not dealing with just a “few bad apples.” 

Though they’re not yet universally implemented across the country, police body cameras can be an effective check and balance on police officers. Combined with the fact that we all now have high-definition video recorders in our pockets, officers have some real-world accountability for the first time in the history of policing — we can only imagine the shit they were getting away with when there was nothing to record them.  

Cops are expected to pass a psychological exam before hitting the streets in most districts, but that process could be useful or nonexistentdepending on the department, and even the most balanced officer can bring baggage to the office on a bad day, resulting in consequences far more tragic than, say, dropping an order of fries on the floor by accident.   

When cops do make mistakes, they’re shielded by so many levels of legal protection that only a small percentage of them get charged for the same behavior that would have the rest of us locked up. 

It’s not provable, but I’d argue that it takes social-media-driven public outrage to secure convictions, as was the case for former Minnesota officer Kimberly Potter, who was convicted of manslaughter for “accidentally” using her gun instead of her Taser to kill Daunte Wright, a Black man, in 2021. Post-George Floyd, Black Twitter simply wasn’t having it — an acquittal would’ve flooded the streets in protest.

Speaking of Floyd, let’s keep it a band: It took the perfect cocktail of a video showing police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and an unprecedented national response, driven in part by pandemic boredom, to get Chauvin convicted. If either had been missing, he might still be rocking a badge today. 

Of course, “unnecessary police shootings” and “Black people” are inextricably linked in America. We still catch the short end of the stick:Black people are 2.9 times more likely to be killed by police than white people, according to Mapping Police Violence.

I’m not an “abolish the police” advocate — I recognize the necessity of law enforcement in the absence of better options. I also realize that their work is inherently dangerous and that every beat cop must worry about making it home to their family every time they clock in. 

But something feels wrong watching these bodycam videos of cops shooting to death people holding knives at their side at several yards out. I understand that “shoot to wound” is a tactically unsound proposition, but I struggle with the idea that there’s simply no better way to neutralize threats in the moment. 

We are in need, as a society, of a seismic shift in how we police that can protect cops and citizens. For example, if police are killing an unarmed driver more than once a week on average, it’s probably worth examining alternatives to traditional traffic stops for things like rolling right turns at a red light, or — and I’m getting dry heaves just by typing this — relying more on those terrible traffic cameras. 

Also, police kill a lot of folks dealing with untreated mental illness. No surprise there, considering most officers have a fraction of the training dealing with mentally ill assailants that they do in using firearms. A mental health hotline and nonprofit crisis intervention programs are out there as alternatives to dispatching trigger-happy badge holders. 

Community policing is perhaps the most controversial — yet potentially the most transformative — alternative to traditional policing. Police officers form a symbiotic relationship with their community in lieu of a cop from the other side of town swooping in to bust heads. 

In addition, this type of policing relies on community elders to leverage their respected status in a community, including with gang members and people at risk of becoming involved in crime.

It’s still a relatively nascent concept being worked out in cities like Chicago. On its face, it seems to be potentially effective if the right people are willing to drop the right number of coins to execute. 

Really, that’s what this all boils down to: a willingness to spend money in the right direction. Funneling money into troubled communities to stimulate job growth. Injecting resources into schools. Fixing up visible blight. Diverting money away from the prison industrial complex.

But that would involve a pesky little thing like acknowledging institutional racism and caring enough to eradicate it. Heaven forbid. 

However you carve it up, policing in America needs fixing. I’m just afraid it might take a few more George Floyds to get us there.