Police Reform

I found this Frontline/Washington Post report on the effectiveness of police reform a little odd. The report finds that the results of enforced police reform is highly mixed, with some departments improving and others not, that it’s really expensive, and that it might deter quality policing. That may all be true but what it doesn’t attempt to answer is what the heck the alternative to fighting for ways to force police to change their tactics. The biggest problem with all of this is police culture because they resist change, force the investigators to stick around longer because of that resistance, and then just choose not to be good cops if they are going to watched. So the alternative is what? Allow the police to continue slaughtering black people and sexually assaulting people? No, I don’t think so.

Certainly understanding the effectiveness of police reform efforts is important, but the tone of the report was awfully odd in that it seemed to be questioning the entire idea without offering anything to replace it.