EDITORIAL: Progress in policing possible
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May 26—Revulsion that followed the slow-motion murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin, a year ago Tuesday, clearly has been translated into momentum for reforms.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Black people comprise 13% of the U.S. population but 33% of the prison population and 21% of all encounters with police.
Blacks are three times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police.
Conditions that lead to those statistics are not limited to policing.
And, because policing mostly is a local government responsibility, there is no uniform reform, although there are common threads.
A Brennan Center survey has found that, since Floyd's death, 30 states and the District of Columbia have adopted reforms.
Most changes are in three areas: limiting use of force, requiring other officers to intervene when another officer uses excessive force, and ensuring that officers fired for inappropriate conduct are not simply recertified elsewhere.
Some local reforms have been more ambitious.
San Francisco, for example, now dispatches crisis management teams rather than police on most mental health-related calls.
Some reforms haven't worked, however. Los Angeles reduced police funding and scope of duty, for example, but now is considering restoring both due to a rise in crime.
Policing is like everything else. It isn't perfect and can be improved.
And police departments are public agencies that should be answerable to the public.
But deeper progress in this area, as in so many others involving social justice, still depends on progress toward equality in the broader society.
