The Dangers of Turning Police Officers into Revenue Generators

I have long believed that we have far too many police officers who due to temperament, racism, and general bigotry have absolutely no business wearing a badge and carrying a gun.  It is a recipe for disaster and the result is that we see more and more unarmed individuals - especially blacks and other minorities - abused, mistreated and all too often killed.  Lurking behind all of this is a factor that is often overlooked: as cities and municipalities have faced budget shortfalls, the police have been used to generate cash flow by increasingly stopping and ticketing people so that revenues from the fines and court fees help finance the municipality.  The result is that police are on the hunt for those they can stop and ticket in order to keep the desperately needed cash rolling in.  This allows politicians - typically Republicans - to boast that they have not raised taxes as court fines and fees help close deficits and fund the police and court systems. A piece in Mother Jones looks at the perverse and dangerous situation.  Here are highlights:

In April, several days after North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager stopped Walter Scott for a busted taillight and then fatally shot him, the usual cable-news transmogrification of victim into superpredator ran into problems. The dash cam showed Scott being pulled over while traveling at a nerdy rate of speed, using his left turn signal to pull into a parking lot and having an amiable conversation with Slager until he realized he'd probably get popped for nonpayment of child support. At which point he bolted out of the car and hobbled off. Slager then shot him. Why didn't the cop just jog up and grab him? Calling what the obese 50-year-old Scott was doing "running" really stretches the bounds of literary license.

But maybe the question to ask is: Why did Scott run? The answer came when the New York Times revealed Scott to be a man of modest means trapped in an exhausting hamster wheel: He would get a low-paying job, make some child support payments, fall behind on them, get fined, miss a payment, get jailed for a few weeks, lose that job due to absence, and then start over at a lower-paying job. From all apparent evidence, he was a decent schlub trying to make things work in a system engineered to make his life miserable and recast his best efforts as criminal behavior.

Slager had a record for gratuitously using his Taser. Timothy Leohmann, who leapt from his car and instantly killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, had been deemed "weepy" and unable to "emotionally function" by a supervisor at his previous PD job, who added: "I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies." Ferguson's Darren Wilson was also fired from his previous job—actually, the entire police force of Jennings, Missouri, was disbanded for being awful.

When you ask why such "bad" cops are nevertheless armed and allowed to patrol the streets, one begins to see that lurking beneath this violence is a fiscal menace: police departments forced to assist city officials in raising revenue, in many cases funding their own salaries—redirecting the very concept of keeping the peace into underwriting the budget.

We saw a glimpse of this when the Justice Department released its report on Ferguson in March.  . . . . Even as he was jailing black ladies for parking tickets, Brockmeyer was allegedly erasing citations for white Ferguson residents who happened to be his friends. After the report's publication, he resigned so that Ferguson could "begin its healing process."

But consider: In 2010, this collaboration between the Ferguson police and the courts generated $1.4 million in income for the city. This year, they will more than double that amount—$3.1 million—providing nearly a quarter of the city's $13 million budget, almost all of it extracted from its poorest African American citizens.

Evidence also suggests that this new form of raising revenue—policiteering?—goes far beyond Ferguson. . . .  "Essentially, these small towns in urban areas have municipal infrastructure that can't be supported by the tax base, and so they ticket everything in sight to keep the town functioning," said William Maurer, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice who has been studying the sudden rise in "nontraffic-related fines."

Take the St. Louis suburb of Pagedale, where, among other Norman Rockwell-worthy features deemed illegal, "you can't have a hedge more than three feet high," Maurer says. "You can't have a basketball hoop or a wading pool in front of a house. You can't have a dish antenna on the front of your house. You can't walk on the roadway if there is a sidewalk, and if there is not a sidewalk, they must walk on the left side of the roadway. They must walk on the right of the crosswalk. They can't conduct a barbecue in the front yard and can't have an alcoholic beverage within 150 feet of a barbecue. Kids cannot play in the street. They also have restrictions against pants being worn below the waist in public. Cars must be within 500 feet of a lamp or a source of illumination during nighttime hours. Blinds must be neatly hung in respectable appearance, properly maintained, and in a state of good repair."

A different strategy in San Diego simply tacks on various fees to an existing fine. A 2012 Union Tribune investigation revealed that while speeding is a simple $35 fine, other government agencies can tack on as many as 10 other surcharges, including: a state penalty assessment, $40; county penalty assessment, $36; court construction, $20; state surcharge, $8; DNA identification, $16; criminal conviction fee, $35; court operations, $40; emergency medical air transportation penalty, $4; and night court, $1. When it's all said and done, that $35 ticket comes to $235.

There is still no comprehensive study to determine just how many cities pay their bills by indenturing the poor, but it is probably no coincidence that when you examine the recent rash of police killings, you find that the offenses they were initially stopped for were preposterously minor. 

"Once the system is primed for maximizing revenue—starting with fines and fine enforcement," Holder said apropos Ferguson, "the city relies on the police force to serve, essentially, as a collection agency for the municipal court rather than a law enforcement entity."

In Alabama, a circuit court judge, Hub Harrington, wrote a blistering opinion three years ago asserting that the Shelby County Jail had become a kind of "debtors' prison" and that the court system had devolved into a "judicially sanctioned extortion racket."  
When the poor come to understand that they are likely to be detained and fined for comically absurd crimes, it can't be a surprise to the police that their officers are viewed with increasing distrust. In this environment, running away from a cop is not an act of suspicion; it's common sense.

[W]hen budgetary whims replace peacekeeping as the central motivation of law enforcement, who is more likely to write up more tickets, the good cop or the crummy one? When the mission of the entire department shifts from "protect and serve" to "punish and profit," then just what constitutes good police?

Stopping Police Abuse of Black Men

Eric L. Adams, Brooklyn borough president and a retired New York Police Department captain, has an op-ed in the New York Times that is a must read.  It looks at the ongoing problem of police brutality against black males, many of whom lack the resources to take effective action against abusive police, assuming they survive the encounter.  Just as the police (all of whom were white, by the way) I encountered in Norfolk 10 years ago thought harassing a gay was fine - good sport even - too many police see blacks as targets they can abuse with impunity.  They see them - and in some cases, gays - as "other" and less than human and deserving of abuse.  Some of the comments made by Darren Wilson about Michael Brown exemplify the problem.  What's equally disturbing is the fact that police internal affairs departments seek first and foremost to protect the police officers and care nothing for the rights of the abused citizens.  I learned this truth first hand. Here are op-ed highlights:

I CAN recall it as if it were yesterday: looking into the toilet and seeing blood instead of urine. That was the aftermath of my first police encounter.

As a 15-year-old, living in South Jamaica, Queens, I was arrested on a criminal trespass charge after unlawfully entering and remaining in the home of an acquaintance. Officers took me to the 103rd Precinct — the same precinct where an unarmed Sean Bell was later shot and killed by the police — and brought me into a room in the basement. They kicked me in the groin repeatedly.

For seven days after that, I stared into the toilet bowl in my house at the blood I was urinating. I kept telling myself that if it didn’t clear up by the next day, I would share this shame and embarrassment with my mother, although I could never bring myself to start that conversation.

As I attempted to put that shame and attack on my manhood away, new horror stories kept compelling me to relive those memories: the nightmare experiences of Randolph Evans, Patrick Dorismond, Abner Louima and countless other young men have reminded me of my own secret. Think of all the secrets that young men of color are hiding. How many are concealing some dark truth of the abuse they endured, and what is that darkness doing to them?

In order to finally bring this darkness into the light of day, our nation must address the foundation of this crisis. That starts with acknowledging that the training taught in police academies across the country is not being applied in communities of color. After six months in the police academy, that instruction is effectively wiped out by six days of being taught by veteran cops on the streets.

They started their shift on the defensive, thinking about protecting themselves, as opposed to the communities they served, regardless of the complexion of those communities. One of my white fellow officers once told me that if he saw a white individual with a gun, he took extra care for himself and the individual. When he saw a black individual with a gun, he took care only for himself.

These are the lessons to which I was exposed, and the reality of what policing communities of color has been, not just in New York City but across America. There is a legacy of inequity that did not just appear overnight, but was carved into the culture of law enforcement over decades.

There is reluctance on the part of police leadership, which has long believed in the nightstick and quick-trigger-finger justice, to effectively deal with officers who have documented and substantiated records of abuse. These individuals need to be removed from the force. That is an essential component of the larger response we must have to address this history of abuse.

We cannot continue to approach policing in an antiquated fashion, and that certainly includes technology. Technology has been used as a crime-fighting tactic, but not as a tool to determine what happens during a police action. New York City has taken the right step in putting body cameras on police officers, but what about cameras on guns themselves?

Equally important, especially in the wake of what has taken place after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, is reform to our grand jury system. Grand juries were established in England in the 12th and 13th centuries, a vestige of a time when people needed to be protected from unfair prosecution from the king and others. There was a necessary element of secrecy — one that need not apply in cases involving police misconduct.

Open, preliminary hearings in court can and should determine if a case should be stepped up to a trial. Additionally, the handling of police shootings should be wholly separated from local grand juries. These bodies cannot handle cases involving local police officers on whom they rely every day.

Special grand juries should be convened for police-related incidents, and independent agencies must gather evidence even before they convene, at the time of police encounters where a death has occurred  . . .

All of these ideas need to be moved forward under the leadership of our president, our governors, the mayors of our major cities and our law enforcement leadership. If we fail to take advantage of this moment that history has laid on our doorstep, we are doomed to more abuse, more division and more chaos.

When my son was 15, he was stopped by the police in a movie theater for no apparent reason. He showed his ID and explained that his father was a retired police captain and a state senator. The response was “So what?” It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter who he is. He shouldn’t have had that experience at all. And until that changes, for all men of color, real reform will never come.

I have a good friend who is black and in local law enforcement and even he has said that when he is out of uniform he worries about what could happen to him because of his skin color should he encounter the wrong police officers, especially late at night.  That is very frightening. 

How Many Americans Are Killed by the Police Each Year?

The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and other recent shootings of unarmed individuals by police may have the much needed benefit of forcing a rethinking of the deference too often given to police office.  Yes, there are many good and honest police officers, but from my own experience there are a number of "bad apples" who sadly are protected by police departments rather than expelled.  From my dealings with police internal affairs departments, most are more worried about protecting police officers rather than determining the truth and disciplining police officers who damage the image of the police in general and who too often seem only too ready to trample on the rights of citizens.  A piece in FiveThirtyEight looks at the question of how many Americans are killed by police each year.  What is disturbing is the fact that this question cannot be easily answered.  The impression, however, is the answer is too many.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this month, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. The shooting and the response have reignited concerns about racial profiling, police brutality and police militarization. The incident has also drawn attention to a remarkable lack of knowledge about a seemingly basic fact: how often people are killed by the police.

Some reporting has put forward one of the only figures available: the approximately 400 “justifiable police homicides” each year since 2008, according to the FBI’s annual Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). That data point has appeared with heavy caveats in a string of media reports, including in USA Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Washington Post.

But these estimates can be wrong. Efforts to keep track of “justifiable police homicides” are beset by systemic problems. “Nobody that knows anything about the SHR puts credence in the numbers that they call ‘justifiable homicides,’” when used as a proxy for police killings, said David Klinger, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri who specializes in policing and the use of deadly force. And there’s no governmental effort at all to record the number of unjustifiable homicides by police. If Brown’s homicide is found to be unjustifiable, it won’t show up in these statistics.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, which compiles the SHR, relies on voluntary involvement of state and local police agencies — a fact that may raise some questions about the integrity of the data.

But the bigger issue is that the basic UCR reports don’t include any information on victims or offenders. That data is provided to the FBI via a separate form, also called the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). The circumstances of each death are supposed to be recorded here, with classifications like “gangland killings” (code 46), “lovers triangles” (code 40), and “felon killed by police” (code 81).

The “400 justifiable police killings” figure comes from these SHR forms. This is a problem, for four main reasons:

1. Fewer local police agencies report SHR data than report standard UCR data.
2. “Felon killed by police” refers narrowly to justifiable police homicides, and “unjustifiable homicide by police” is not a classification. This means it’s difficult to combine unjustifiable police homicides — which could be listed as crimes elsewhere in the database — with “justifiable” police homicides.
3. If the legality of a police homicide is in question, it may not be reported to the FBI SHR until the investigation is resolved. If the investigation concludes in a new reporting year, the old SHR data may not be updated, regardless of whether the killing was found to be justifiable or not. Criminology professor Geoff Alpert of the University of South Carolina, an expert on police violence, said he has “never seen a department go back and audit their numbers and fix them.”
4. Killings in federal jurisdictions, such as federal prisons or military bases, are not included in the database.

Account for all that, and you would have the true number of police homicides each year.   It’s more than 400.

Obviously, with the militarization of police forces, the chances that more Americans will be unjustifiably killed by police officers increases significantly.