Policing:
Race and Reform

Charles M. Katz, Edward R. Maguire, January 20, 2020

Are you concerned about the future of policing? Forty leading police researchers and police executives reflect on police reform. Book

On December 18, 2014, President Barack Obama signed an executive order establishing the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The task force met with more than 100 individuals with disparate interest, from law enforcement officers to academics, to discover how “policing practices can promote effective crime reduction while building public trust.” The task force established recommendations organized around their six main topic pillars and provided two recommendations for President Barack Obama. PDF

Rachel A. Harmon, F.D.G. Ribble Professor of Law, University of Virginia

In this Essay, Professor Harmon contends that First Amendment law fails to address the challenges posed in policing contemporary protests. When protestors seek to bring about social change by disruption in addition to speech, the First Amendment allows police broad latitude to suppress the protests. The result is that police responses to contemporary protests will vary with each community's views about the value of free speech, the costs of employing police coercion, and the ongoing consequences of distrust of law enforcement. Legal doctrines will often be less important than political will and participant preferences in determining what our system of free expression looks like when it hits the streets. PDF

Frank Rudy Cooper, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law

In this article, Professor Cooper examines the Blue Lives Matter movement, providing an explanation for police resistance to criticism from movements such as Black Lives Matter and #SayHerName. Specifically, it draws analogies between the narratives that the Blue Lives Matter movement employs and the theory of white fragility, which rests on a false belief in objectivity and an overly narrow definition of racial subordination. Drawing on a proven methodology to overcome white fragility, Professor Cooper proposes that police departments engage in mediated listening sessions with their communities in order to identify reforms that can rebuild community trust in the police. PDF

Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia Law School and Alexis Campbell, Columbia Human Rights Law Review

In this article, Fagan and Campbell analyze data on policing killings to examine whether police disproportionality use deadly force against nonwhite suspects. They find that Black suspects are more than twice as likely as any other racial or ethnic group to be killed by police, even when controlling for the types of circumstances that could make the use of force legally "reasonable." They propose revising police officer training programs to explicitly emphasize the role race plays in officers' perception of risk and their decision-making. PDF

Seth W. Stoughton, University of South Carolina School of Law

In this forthcoming article, Professor Stoughton explains why the Constitution does not successfully regulate the use (and sometimes abuse) of force by police. He proposes that both state law and internal police department policies are better mechanisms to regulate police violence, but only if state lawmakers and administrative policymakers stop merely adopting constitutional standards as their regulatory frameworks. PDF

I. Bennett Capers, Brooklyn Law School

In this article, Professor Capers highlights a troubling phenomenon in the adjudication of police-misconduct cases. Courts, including the Supreme Court, frequently decide criminal procedure cases based on embedded assumptions about how a "good citizen" should behave. The assumed behaviors include not talking back to police, not waiving their rights, and not questioning the boundaries or lawfulness of police conduct. These behaviors are not only troubling in that they encourage citizens to waive their rights, but also in that they operate to chill dissent and entrench racial inequality in its burdens. Professor Capers calls on legal actors, including lawyers and judges, to imagine and respect a pluralistic model of citizenship that tolerates (if not welcomes) dissent and opposition. PDF

Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP)

The recent murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are among many horrifying episodes of police brutality and excessive force that have long targeted and devastated Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color across the nation. These incidents – and persistent problems with police misconduct – lay bare the unbroken link between slavery and modern raciallybiased policing and elevate the urgent moral imperative for a reset of the justice system. Structural reform is necessary to promote a justice system that lives up to its name. PDF

Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP)

District attorneys’ relationship to local law enforcement, including their response to allegations of officer misconduct, is often an area of profound community concern and increasing public scrutiny. This FJP “Issues at a Glance” brief addresses how district attorneys can best ensure constitutional and legal policing in their jurisdictions and seek criminal accountability where appropriate for police officers who have violated the law in a manner that supports public safety and builds community trust. PDF

Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP)

We are elected prosecutors from communities across the United States. We are charged with upholding justice and protecting the safety of all members of our community regardless of the color of their skin, whether they wear a badge, or the neighborhood where they live. We denounce the murder of George Floyd as a profound tragedy and an affront to justice everywhere. We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Floyd and the entire Minneapolis community. And we say loudly and unequivocally: Enough. PDF