I don’t understand what you mean by a strawman. Or an anecdote?
Ferguson’s black population as of the 2010 census was 67.4%. By 2015, it would have been even higher…I’ll try to find some stats for 2015, but the number of people who were black and pulled over may be closer than you care to think and down below I have another reason why that 90% would be so.
Areas with higher incident rates are patrolled by police more frequently and by more police cars in a day and day to day to protect those areas from further incidents. I don’t know at this point where the higher crime rates in Ferguson are, but if they are in predominantly black areas of the town, then more patrol cars are going to pull over more people in those areas for legitimate reasons either traffic/safety violations or problems with vehicles like missing headlights or expired license plates. How would you ever prove that racial profiling of blacks occurs in black areas? Common sense says that blacks are going to be the people in black areas of town and when in a black area of town where few white, Hispanics, or Asians live, there won’t be many or maybe any pulled over for they do not frequent that area. So I say that the discrepancy between the 70% black population and the 90% being pulled over for traffic stops being black has to do with the area of Ferguson the stops were made which were predominantly inhabited by blacks.
What I find interesting about a lot of the data on Ferguson, it doesn’t bring up criminal histories, like someone who has not paid several fines, gets zonked more than someone who is a first offender and pays it. Common sense says that repeat offenders receive harsher fines and sentences which was not mentioned evidenced in Ferguson.
Ferguson did have an very white police force back in 2015 that may have been totally white which didn’t help the racial accusations any.
Below is a part of the US Dept. of Justice Report on Ferguson’s Police Dept., the recommendations
- Focus Stop, Search, Ticketing and Arrest Practices on Community Protection
FPD must fundamentally change the way it conducts stops and searches, issues citations and
summonses, and makes arrests. FPD officers must be trained and required to abide by the law.
In addition, FPD enforcement efforts should be reoriented so that officers are required to take
enforcement action because it promotes public safety, not simply because they have legal
authority to act. To do this, FPD should:
a. Prohibit the use of ticketing and arrest quotas, whether formal or informal;
b. Require that officers report in writing all stops, searches and arrests, including
pedestrian stops, and that their reports articulate the legal authority for the law
enforcement action and sufficient description of facts to support that authority;
c. Require documented supervisory approval prior to:
- Issuing any citation/summons that includes more than two charges;
- Making an arrest on any of the following charges:
i. Failure to Comply/Obey;
ii. Resisting Arrest;
iii. Disorderly Conduct/Disturbing the Peace;
iv. Obstruction of Government Operations; Why are these hot ticket items? Could it be a trend in black communities to not comply, to resist arrest, and to perpetrate disorderly conduct? I say it is, but it came to a head in Ferguson with the Michael Brown case. BTW, the officer was not charged for any criminal behavior and the whole Justice Dept. Report on the Ferguson Police Dept. was to appease the angry liberals who were screaming racial bias without legitimate proof. - Arresting or ticketing an individual who sought police aid, or who is
cooperating with police in an investigation; - Arresting on a municipal warrant or wanted;
d. Revise Failure to Comply municipal code provision to bring within constitutional
limits, and provide sufficient guidance so that all stops, citations, and arrests based on
the provision comply with the Constitution;
e. Train officers on proper use of Failure to Comply charge, including elements of the
offense and appropriateness of the charge for interference with police activity that
threatens public safety;
f. Require that applicable legal standards are met before officers conduct pat-downs or
vehicle searches. Prohibit searches based on consent for the foreseeable future;
g. Develop system of correctable violation, or “fix-it” tickets, and require officers to
issue fix-it tickets wherever possible and absent contrary supervisory instruction;
h. Develop and implement policy and training regarding appropriate police response to
activities protected by the First Amendment, including the right to observe, record,
and protest police action;
i. Provide initial and regularly recurring training on Fourth Amendment constraints on
police action, as well as responsibility within FPD to constrain action beyond what
Fourth Amendment requires in interest of public safety and community trust;
j. Discontinue use of “wanteds” or “stop orders” and prohibit officers from conducting
stops, searches, or arrests on the basis of “wanteds” or “stop orders” issued by other
agencies.
- Increase Tracking, Review, and Analysis of FPD Stop, Search, Ticketing and Arrest
Practices
At the first level of supervision and as an agency, FPD must review more stringently officers’
stop, search, ticketing, and arrest practices to ensure that officers are complying with the
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Constitution and department policy, and to evaluate the impact of officer activity on police
legitimacy and community trust. FPD should:
a. Develop and implement a plan for broader collection of stop, search, ticketing, and
arrest data that includes pedestrian stops, enhances vehicle stop data collection, and
requires collection of data on all stop and post-stop activity, as well as location and
demographic information;
b. Require supervisors to review all officer activity and review all officer reports before
the supervisor leaves shift;
c. Develop and implement system for regular review of stop, search, ticketing, and
arrest data at supervisory and agency level to detect problematic trends and ensure
consistency with public safety and community policing goals;
d. Analyze race and other disparities shown in stop, search, ticketing, and arrest
practices to determine whether disparities can be reduced consistent with public
safety goals. - Change Force Use, Reporting, Review, and Response to Encourage De-Escalation and
the Use of the Minimal Force Necessary in a Situation
FPD should reorient officers’ approach to using force by ensuring that they are trained and
skilled in using tools and tactics to de-escalate situations, and incentivized to avoid using force
wherever possible. FPD also should implement a system of force review that ensures that
improper force is detected and responded to effectively, and that policy, training, tactics, and
officer safety concerns are identified. FPD should:
a. Train and require officers to use de-escalation techniques wherever possible both to
avoid a situation escalating to where force becomes necessary, and to avoid
unnecessary force even where it would be legally justified. Training should include
tactics for slowing down a situation to increase available options;
b. Require onsite supervisory approval before deploying any canine, absent documented
exigent circumstances; require and train canine officers to take into account the nature
and severity of the alleged crime when deciding whether to deploy a canine to bite;
require and train canine officers to avoid sending a canine to apprehend by biting a
concealed suspect when the objective facts do not suggest the suspect is armed and a
lower level of force reasonably can be expected to secure the suspect;
c. Place more stringent limits on use of ECWs, including limitations on multiple ECW
cycles and detailed justification for using more than one cycle;
d. Retrain officers in use of ECWs to ensure they view and use ECWs as a tool of
necessity, not convenience. Training should be consistent with principles set out in
the 2011 ECW Guidelines;
e. Develop and implement use-of-force reporting that requires the officer using force to
complete a narrative, separate from the offense report, describing the force used with
particularity, and describing with specificity the circumstances that required the level
of force used, including the reason for the initial stop or other enforcement action.
Some levels of force should require all officers observing the use of force to complete
a separate force narrative;
f. Develop and implement supervisory review of force that requires the supervisor to
conduct a complete review of each use of force, including gathering and considering
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evidence necessary to understand the circumstances of the force incident and
determine its consistency with law and policy, including statements from individuals
against whom force is used and civilian witnesses;
g. Prohibit supervisors from reviewing or investigating a use of force in which they
participated or directed;
h. Ensure that complete use-of-force reporting and review/investigation files—including
all offense reports, witness statements, and medical, audio/video, and other
evidence—are kept together in a centralized location;
i. Develop and implement a system for higher-level, inter-disciplinary review of some
types of force, such as lethal force, canine deployment, ECWs, and force resulting in
any injury;
j. Improve collection, review, and response to use-of-force data, including information
regarding ECW and canine use;
k. Implement system of zero tolerance for use of force as punishment or retaliation
rather than as necessary, proportionate response to counter a threat;
l. Discipline officers who fail to report force and supervisors who fail to conduct
adequate force investigations;
m. Identify race and other disparities in officer use of force and develop strategies to
eliminate avoidable disparities;
n. Staff jail with at least two correctional officers at all times to ensure safety and
minimize need for use of force in dealing with intoxicated or combative prisoners.
Train correctional officers in de-escalation techniques with specific instruction and
training on minimizing force when dealing with intoxicated and combative prisoners,
as well as with passive resistance and noncompliance. - Implement Policies and Training to Improve Interactions with Vulnerable People
Providing officers with the tools and training to better respond to persons in physical or mental
health crisis, and to those with intellectual disabilities, will help avoid unnecessary injuries,
increase community trust, and make officers safer. FPD should:
a. Develop and implement policy and training for identifying and responding to
individuals with known or suspected mental health conditions, including those
observably in mental health crisis, and those with intellectual or other disabilities;
b. Provide enhanced crisis intervention training to a subset of officers to allow for ready
availability of trained officers on the scenes of critical incidents involving individuals
with mentally illness;
c. Require that, wherever possible, at least one officer with enhanced crisis intervention
training respond to any situation concerning individuals in mental health crisis or with
intellectual disability, when force might be used;
d. Provide training to officers regarding how to identify and respond to more commonly
occurring medical emergencies that may at first appear to reflect a failure to comply
with lawful orders. Such medical emergencies may include, for example, seizures
and diabetic emergencies.
Mostly the report seems like a fluff piece which ramps up the paperwork factor for the department and slows police from doing their jobs efficiently. I do like the part of the report to provide more training to the officers to recognize people with medical conditions such as mental illness, autism, etc.
The officers in that department should have been reviewed and passing a review assigned positions in other town’s police departments. New officers should have been hired to proportionately reflect the racial populations, essentially starting from scratch, implementing the recommendations.
Carleas, do you believe that the cops routinely as policy pull people over for NO reason? Or that they follow a black driver around while they run a plate check on the vehicle trying to find some reason to pull the car over?
Also, do you believe that hispanics are racially profiled by white police officers? If so, why? If not, why?
Yikes, this is my longest post ever. Let me know what doesn’t jive.