Even if I were not a political scientist who
understood both the importance of what police officers do every day and the
dangers they face in their job, I would have a very personal reason for
appreciating their work. Years ago, police officers put their bodies on the
line to protect my father, when he was a justice of the peace in upstate New
York.
So like most Americans, I'm not
inclined to criticize police officers who use force to protect themselves and
others.
At the same time, the deaths of
Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner remind us that sometimes police
officers use deadly force in questionable circumstances. And there is dramatic
statistical evidence that institutional racism plays a role in who is killed by
the police — black men die at disproportionate rates. But very rarely are
police officers held accountable for what they do.
They should be.
We need a criminal trial
I reach that conclusion not
because I know all the details of these three cases — but, rather, because I do
not. None of us does, for the very simple reason that the evidence in these
cases has not been brought forward and tested in public, by the process we
believe best enables us to get the truth, a criminal trial. In the Brown and
Garner deaths, a grand jury declined to indict the police officers involved. We
are still waiting to see what happens in the Rice case.
I don't think police officers
should be indicted in these cases because I think they are guilty. I don't know
if they're guilty. An indictment is not a judgment of guilt. Someone indicted
is still innocent until proven guilty in a trial. I think they should be
indicted both so that justice is done in the individual cases and because it is
critically important to hold the police accountable for their actions, both for
the public that relies on the police, and for the overwhelming majority of
police officers who do their job well and want the rest to be held to the same
standard.
There are a number of ways to
reduce unwarranted police shootings. It appears that new training programs in
Philadelphia have reduced them dramatically. Such programs should be broadly
adopted.
And putting video cameras on
police officers is an idea that has merit as well — even if, as we saw in the
Garner case, the meaning of a video is subject to dispute.
But neither training the police
to do well nor watching what they do is enough. It's a settled principle of
American Constitutionalism, and implicit in our practices — not just in
politics but in business, medicine, education and other fields — that the best
way to insure that people do the right thing to institute some form of
oversight or check on their misbehavior.
The criminal justice system is
the appropriate oversight when people are killed. It is for civilians. It
should be for the police. But it is not today.
How can we make it effective?
Here are five suggestions
1. Appoint special prosecutors
to investigate police killings.
We have ample evidence that
even the best district attorneys need to be concerned about protecting their
relationship with the police, without whom they cannot do their jobs. They are
thus very much disinclined to do what they usually do before a grand jury,
which is to make a case for an indictment. So let's take them out of this
difficult situation and let a specially appointed attorney investigate deaths
at the hands of the police.
I would suggest that judges —
say the president judge of Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia — be empowered to
recruit a pool of lawyers with extensive experience to serve as special prosecutors
and that they then be chosen at random to investigate particular cases as they
arise.
2. Give special prosecutors
adequate resources.
Special prosecutors need a
guarantee that they will have the resources and tools needed to carry out a
thorough investigation. Perhaps the state police should be empowered to take
the place of local police forces.
3. Make the grand jury
proceedings public.
All of these cases should come
before a specially empaneled grand jury that holds its sessions in public.
Private grand juries allow selected and unbalanced evidence to be leaked.
Unlike most criminal cases, the names of the police officers under
investigation are already public. So there is no reason to hold these sessions
in private, except in the rare situation when this is the only way to secure
testimony. Public sessions will enable the media and public to evaluate whether
the DA is making a proper case.
4. Empower the families of the
deceased.
Resources should be provided to
the family of those killed by the police sothey can make some kind of legal
pleading at the grand jury.
5. The public should pay for
the proceedings.
The legal fees of those police
officers investigated by the special prosecutor and brought to trial should be
paid by the public. And while they should not be allowed to act as police
officers during their trial, they should continue to be paid until it is over.
The point of these new
procedures is not to create an investigation or trial biased against the
police. That would be as unfair to the police and as dangerous to the public as
the current situation. The point is to create the oversight that, along with better
training and video recordings, can restore confidence in the police among a
public that very much needs to work with law enforcement in order to keep our
communities safe.
—
Marc Stier is a writer and
political activist from Mt. Airy. He’s finishing a book titled “Civilization
and Its Contents: Reflections on Sexuality and the Culture Wars."
