“I don’t know there is any law that can stop this evil that we have seen,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R – Ohio) said on NBC. Meet the pressshortly after a video emerged of five Memphis police officers brutally beating Tire Nichols during a traffic stop.
Jordan misused his remark, which was generally interpreted as crude and nihilistic. But while Jordan has said a lot of silly things for many years, he’s almost right about this one. Members of Congress know better than anyone that simply passing a law guarantees nothing, and that making something illegal is not the same as eliminating it.
Three years after the death of George Floyd – and two years after the death of George Floyd Police Justice Act, which passed the House in 2021 but stalled in the Senate — many of the same police reform proposals are still debated endlessly. Some states and cities have implemented new use of force guidelines with similar language, along with other piecemeal reforms. The results are mixed. Even if the federal bill’s ban on chokeholds had been passed and universally adhered to, for example, it wouldn’t have saved Nichols, who died three days after suffering almost every assault imaginable other than choking. Memphis is in the midst of several other reforms, including efforts to diversify its police force. But all of the officers accused of beating Nichols were black.
Defunding the police – the rallying cry of angry summer 2020 – has proven an unpopular idea. Most people don’t want to abolish the police; they just wish they could trust the officers in their neighborhood to do the right thing when they need it.
Congress micromanaging the rules of engagement between cops and citizens isn’t the only way forward, and it probably isn’t the best. Instead of focusing primarily on prevention, the best way to forestall future abuses may, against all odds, be to systematically and publicly punish law enforcement officers who cross the line after the fact.
There is a technocratic temptation to think that the problem of police brutality can be solved by making or attracting better cops. Proposals range from requiring a college education for police officers to simply increasing the number of hours of training required from the current average of 650 to something approaching Finland’s 5,500 or at least 1,000 of Canada.
Both of these proposals were touted by Noah Smith, who called for “Professionalize the policeon his Substack. He bluntly admits that he “cannot find any good causal studies on the impact of total hours of police training on police brutality”, but notes that there is evidence that some under -types of training are effective.Unfortunately for Smith’s case, one of these types of training is the same de-escalation training that the Memphis police received.
“The worst that can happen,” Smith writes, “is that we waste money.” But efforts to mandate college training for a growing number of professions – including child care workers – have largely succeeded in making labor scarcer and prices higher, with no clear gains in quality or of security. Proponents of more training like to cite the hours of training required for other professions, especially the thousands of hours required of cosmetologists. But anyone who’s ever had their hair done at a dodgy salon might wonder if many of those hours were, in fact, a costly waste of time and money for all parties.
If you get a bad dye job, of course, you can leave a one-star Yelp review. And if, Aphrodite forbid, you’re disfigured by bleach burns, you can file a complaint. At this time, these two options are very limited for victims of police misconduct.
Too many American police officers believe it is acceptable, even necessary, to react extremely aggressively to perceived threats. Until there is an external reality check on this belief, it is unlikely to change.
The five officers who attacked Nichols were accused of murder and other offences. But since criminal prosecutions against the police are rare, it should also be possible to hold law enforcement officials accountable in civil proceedings, where ordinary citizens can sue and seek justice.
Too often, legislators and activists focus on creating elaborate licensing standards, codes of conduct, educational requirements, etc., when what is most needed is to prepare the field to make a time-tested system work as intended. We already have a system in which those who cause harm to others in the course of their work can be held accountable, but decades ago the Supreme Court ruled out the “qualified immunityexception, which often blocks prosecutions for patently unconstitutional abuses.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis told the Sales call that she supports reform qualified immunitybut Tennessee police have benefited from the doctrine’s incredibly broad shield in recent years, including in 2020, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case in which a state court found that a man bitten by police dog bad luck, because “the use of the dog to apprehend [him] did not violate a clearly established law.”
The consequences for the officers who beat Nichols were quick and severe. Their quick expulsion from the police force and the Fraternal Order of Police’s reluctance to defend them will likely do more to make the next officer think twice about brandishing his Taser and baton than any specific set of rules. than Jim Jordan and his pals can imagine. The increase in civil liability will help make this type of clear resolution more common.
Some of the same developments that make it possible to hold violent and brutal police accountable in court will also allow innocent and effective police to defend themselves. Carefully acquired and preserved body camera footage will exculpate officers who did the right thing. Unions that find it untenable — for reputational and fiscal reasons — to reflexively defend repeat offenders will ultimately be stronger and more helpful to cops who need to be defended against unscrupulous bosses, frivolous complaints, or poor working conditions. when the need arises.
That all five officers responsible for Tire Nichols’ death are suffering is probably cold comfort for the 4-year-old daughter he leaves behind. But convincing law enforcement officials that those who commit wrongdoing will face consequences is by far the most powerful (and cost-effective) tool for changing police behavior in the long run.