Judson L. Jeffries: Police reform failed Tyre Nichols. Complete overhaul may be only answer

Judson L. Jeffries is professor of African American and African studies at Ohio State University and a regular contributor to the Columbus Dispatch.

As the number of unarmed people, whose lives have been cut short, by malicious police officers, increases, so does the number of panels, roundtables, and workshops at some of the country’s most prestigious academic conferences.

As editor-in-chief of an academic journal, a large portion of scholarly papers I have received over the past three to four years have focused on police-community relations. In nearly all of them, one finds the words police reform sprinkled throughout. But are reforms sufficient?

We have become so accustomed to viewing footage of out-of-control white police officers choking, beating, kicking, tasing, shooting and kneeling on Black motorists and pedestrians that the video of multiple Black officers doing the same to Tyre Nichols was shocking and heart-wrenching, especially to members within the African American community.

For years now, debates have revolved around what can and should be done to curb police brutality.

On Jan. 7, everything was seemingly in place that was designed to guard against what unfolded on the streets of southeast Memphis that wintry night.

With the murder of numerous American citizens over the past few years, at the hands of police officers, discussions galore have been had in academia about the need to reform police agencies.

First, the city’s police director is Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, the first African American woman in history to lead the Memphis Police Department.

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Nearly three years ago, in the wake of Floyd’s murder and the deadly attack on Taylor, Davis appeared on "Good Morning America," calling for “sweeping changes and police reform.”

If, as some students of organizational behavior suggests, followers take their cues from their leaders and oftentimes adopt their characteristics, this theory did not hold true the night of January 7.

Second, the percentage of African American police officers in the Memphis police department is robust at nearly sixty percent.

Third, the officers who stopped Nichols, supposedly for reckless driving, despite the absence of corroborating evidence, were not white, but African American.

Fourth, among the officers on the scene, multiple were college graduates. Scholars like me have long advocated the need for police departments to recruit college graduates, believing that the formally educated are less likely to engage the kind of sadistic force seen in the Nichols video than high school graduates.

I still believe that.

Fifth, a similar argument has been made about deploying officers to neighborhoods who understand the social and cultural dynamics of that community rather than assigning officers to neighborhoods with which there is no familiarity.

Finally, many departments require officers to wear body cameras. The thinking here is that doing so increases transparency and deters bad behavior on the part of the officer.

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With these things in place, the system still failed Nichols. Perhaps what is needed are not more reforms but a complete overhaul of the system.

Judson L. Jeffries is professor of African American and African studies at Ohio State University and a regular contributor to the Columbus Dispatch

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Judson L. Jeffries: How did police reform fail Tyre Nichols.