by SARAH CHILDRESS Senior Digital
Reporter, FRONTLINE Enterprise Journalism Group
Newark, N.J. city officials
signed a comprehensive agreement with the Justice Department on Wednesday to
overhaul their police department. It’s the culmination of a lengthy negotiating
process and a deal that federal officials hope will transform the beleaguered
department into a national model.
The question is whether it will
work.
Over the last 21 years, the
Justice Department has investigated 68 departments for a pattern or practice of
civil rights violations. But a recent analysis of the resulting agreements by
FRONTLINE and The Washington Post found that the DOJ hasn’t been able to to say
which reform efforts work, and it has had no clear way to measure success.
Older agreements relied on monitoring teams to produce evaluations that were
sometimes more subjective than data-intensive. There was also little effort to
ensure that the community was benefiting from the new policing procedures — or
that it even understood what was supposed to change.
Several recent deals struck by
the Obama administration have sought to change that, and a closer look at
Newark’s agreement — officially termed a consent decree — suggests that it’s
among the more comprehensive in recent years. Several of the included provisions
are intended to address one of the shortcomings of the DOJ’s police reform
process: evaluating success.
“The Justice Department, in the
course of enforcing this statute, has learned a lot about what works and what
doesn’t work,” Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told
FRONTLINE in an interview for an upcoming film. She added: “You can’t get
culture change with a process where you just issue a report and hope that it
does the work.”
Newark’s agreement mandates both
in-car and body-worn cameras for officers, a revamped process for investigating
use-of-force incidents, including additional scrutiny for those involving death
or serious injury.
But perhaps most strikingly, the
agreement includes three primary data-gathering requirements: annual surveys of
police, residents and other stakeholders to evaluate the reform process;
regular tracking of demographic data on stop, search and arrest rates, as well
as use of force and other police actions; and a mid-point evaluation to see
what’s working, and whether the deal should be tweaked accordingly.
The data will provide important
insight into how well the changes are working. But whether any reforms last
will also depend in large part on city and police officials’ commitment to the
deal.
The DOJ launched its
investigation of the Newark, N.J. police department in 2011, saying that it had
received “serious allegations of civil rights violations,” including the use of
excessive force, unwarranted stops and arrests, and discriminatory policing.
The Justice Department said it
found that a full 75 percent of stops by Newark police had no justifiable
basis. It also found that police used excessive force against residents and
stole their belongings. Another troubling pattern: Officers sometimes arrested
people for criticizing or questioning their actions, the DOJ said.
Unlike many departments, Newark
police didn’t dispute the findings. In fact, the day the DOJ announced its
findings, the city released a signed statement announcing that it would ultimately
agree to a formal consent decree.
That was nearly two years ago. By
the time Newark announced its deal on Wednesday, nine of the 13 cities the DOJ
investigated after it started looking into Newark had already entered into
agreements, including inFerguson, Mo., where DOJ officials had to threaten a
lawsuit, and inCleveland, Ohio, where findings were met with more public
skepticism by city officials.
Newark has taken some steps
forward. Mayor Ras Baraka said the city has been working since the findings were
announced to improve the police department’s relationship with the community
and improve oversight. Last year, Baraka signed off on a civilian complaint
review board, which it had agreed to implement after the federal investigation.
The city council voted to approve the board earlier this month.
“We looked at it as an
opportunity,” Baraka said of the agreement. “An opportunity to begin to make
our police department better more efficient, stronger, more trusting and more
effective.” He said the reforms “will get Newark to the place where it needs to
be.”
Anthony Ambrose, the city’s new
public safety director, said the agreement comes at a time of change for the
Newark police. “This comes at a time when we have a new department, new
officers being hired,” he said. “Bad habits can become old habits, and a
culture can be changed. So we welcome it. … My team will work tirelessly to
enhance transparency in enforcing the laws and build trust in the community.”
Additional reporting by James
Jacoby and Anya Bourg of FRONTLINE’s Enterprise Journalism Group.
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