Exploring Ferguson’s impact on policing, this op-ed delves into ongoing debates and dialogues shaping future community and law enforcement dynamics.
Two months after the protest marking the ten-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, a Ferguson police officer is still hospitalized. Brown’s death led to a much-needed examination of the relationship between police and African Americans and the start of many important reforms. However, to put pressure on Ferguson, the Department of Justice mischaracterized the actions of the Ferguson Police Department. I can’t help but think that this mischaracterization is why some protesters seem to feel violence against the Ferguson police is justified.
Brown’s death unleashed decades of pent-up frustration with policing in our country. African Americans and other minorities often had their rights blatantly disregarded, and sometimes far worse. Brown’s death finally shined a light on this gap between the protections of our Constitution and how the police often treated minority communities.
This attention and anger offered a unique opportunity for our country to begin meaningful police reform, starting here in Ferguson. The Department of Justice proposed a sweeping transformation of the Ferguson Police Department, changing everything from how officers were hired, trained and supervised to how they interacted with the public and the laws they were allowed to enforce.
Ferguson was and is one of the most diverse, progressive cities in Missouri. While supporting the need for police reforms, the proposed Consent Decree was so disproportionate to what actually happened that every member of the Ferguson City Council, Black and White, initially voted against it. Ferguson only approved the Decree after DOJ agreed to a side letter noting the city’s very real concerns about its size and cost.
The DOJ used its report on the Ferguson Police Department to put pressure on Ferguson. There were certainly examples of real bias in the report. However, there were also numerous examples of the DOJ leaving out information that would have undermined the DOJ’s narrative.
As an example, the report repeatedly noted that African Americans received 95% of citations for Manner of Walking in a Roadway, suggesting that the police were arbitrarily harassing young Black men. Left out was that the FPD received scores of calls from residents, primarily African Americans, complaining about teens blocking streets and making residents drive around them or even to turn around and go the other way. The police weren’t randomly stopping Black teenagers, they were responding to valid complaints from residents – Black residents. It wasn’t an example of racism – it was an example of racial progress. Historically police ignored Black on Black crime and made little effort to protect African American neighborhoods. The FPD was actually doing its job, affording African American homeowners and renters the same responsiveness and protections afforded white neighborhoods.
This is what we want the police to do. There’s an old saying: the right to swing your fist ends at my nose. The role of the police is to protect the rights of citizens, to ensure that we don’t get punched in the nose by other members of society. Certainly, the police don’t always get it right, and yes there are still those officers that are poorly trained or even bad. However, the police play a critical role in creating the civil society we all hope for and benefit from, including Ferguson’s African American homeowners and renters.
The DOJ, in its efforts to advance police reform, set a pattern that to a degree continues to this day. There are certainly periodic examples of bad policies and bad officers. However, there are also reasonable police policies that sometimes have disproportionate outcomes that are questioned in a manner to suggest that the police must have been motivated by racial animus. Undoubtedly racial animus still exists and does distort some police actions and policies. However, because of the pattern started in Ferguson, we rarely have a fully honest conversation about policing and the social circumstances which necessitated the police policy.
Having a more honest conversation about policing isn’t turning back progress or denying there’s still more to do. Instead, it’s to move real reform forward. Bad data will always produce bad policies. We need to get back to a more balanced, and accurate, conversation on policing and its role in society. That conversation needs to begin where it all started, here in Ferguson, Missouri.
Blake Ashby served on the Ferguson City Council and on the Ferguson Neighborhood Policing Steering Committee. He is running for Missouri’s 1st Congressional seat under the Better Party, a newly formed Missouri political party.
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