George
Hunter
Detroit—
The Detroit Police Department is close to ending 10 years of U.S. Justice
Department oversight, federal monitor Robert Warshaw said Tuesday.
“You’ve
done well, and I think you can cross the finish line,” Warshaw said during the
quarterly Command Accountability Meeting at police headquarters.
Warshaw
and officials agreed most of the reasons the department entered into the
consent decrees, including excessive force and deplorable conditions of
confinement, have been addressed.
“Am I
going to sit here and tell you 2,600 officers do everything right every day?
No,” Assistant Police Chief James White said. “But we’re a better police
department than we were in 2003.”
Instances
where officers used force dropped from 1,124 in 2011 to 905 in 2013, while
citizen complaints about the department fell from 1,820 to 1,675, according to
figures released Tuesday.
“Along
with these reductions, crime is also down,” Police Chief James Craig said. In
2013, there was a 7 percent drop in crime, including a 14 percent reduction in
homicides, according to figures released by the department.
When
citizens were asked to give their input at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Ron
Scott, director of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, said the
culture of the police department still needs to change, to which Craig replied:
“If you were to poll these captains, they’d tell you there’s been a major
culture change.”
“With a
few exceptions, there’s a completely different command staff in place now,” he
said. “A big reason for that was a concern about the lack of accountability in
the old DPD.”
The
department’s stop and frisk policy was discussed during the 90-minute meeting,
in which it was disclosed officials picked two days — Jan. 9 and 10 — and
conducted an intensive review to see if officers were stopping citizens for
just cause and documenting the stops.
Warshaw
noted there are problems with cameras in squad cars — an issue that surfaced
recently when police stopped City Council President Pro Tem George
Cushingberry. The camera on the squad car involved in the Jan. 7 incident
wasn’t working.
Police
officials are investigating why a supervisor let the councilman off with just a
ticket after sources say he drove erratically and had an open intoxicant and
marijuana in the car when he was stopped in northwest Detroit. Cushingberry
claims he did nothing wrong, while Craig reiterated Tuesday officers were
within their rights to stop him.
“My
patience is running out on that issue,” Craig said about the cameras.
