Case Studies in Humane Policing

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. Can the police be reformed? Many people are losing faith in the idea that police reform as opposed to just reducing police presence can work to stop crimes and tragedies like the killings of George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, and so many others. That's the point of the Defund the Police movement. It's from despair that police-community relations can never actually be strong enough in heavily-policed communities to really protect public safety.

Safety from civilian street crime and safety from police violence and mass incarceration that destroys communities at the same time. A new book by a former police officer makes the case that police reform is possible. The author and former police officer is Neil Gross, now a sociology professor at Colby College. His book is called Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture. Neil, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Neil Gross: Brian, thank you very much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Would you tell us some of your own story first? Where did you grow up? What made you want to become a cop?

Neil Gross: Sure. I grew up in San Francisco Bay Area, in the East Bay. I got interested in policing in the late '80s and early '90s. This was a time when crime was really high in the country, much higher certainly than it is now, and it was particularly high in California and in my city. In high school, I got the notion, as many young people do who go into policing, that I could do something to protect the community by going into law enforcement and set that as my goal. I had that as my aim in high school, worked part-time for various police departments while I was in college, ended up going to UC Berkeley.

I graduated there and got hired by the City of Berkeley Police Department. I went to the academy and served about 11 months on the street before heading off to graduate school. It was a long time ago, but certainly an eye-opening experience into the world of law enforcement.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly not our stereotype of people who go to UC Berkeley, graduate, and become a cop. You tell the story of yourself as a 21-year-old rookie on the Berkeley police force, and a traffic stop that could have become one of those tragedies with one of those names that we, unfortunately, will always remember. Would you describe that incident and the effect it had on you?

Neil Gross: Sure. This is something that I've thought about a lot over the years, and it's really stuck with me. This was a warm, late spring evening and I was patrolling in a high crime district that I was assigned to in Berkeley near the Oakland border and made a routine traffic stop, one of a dozen that I'd probably make that night. The driver of the car didn't pull over, so I gave chase for a couple of blocks, eventually found the car and pulled up behind it and the passenger started walking away from the car.

I went to the police academy in Sacramento. The City of Berkeley like many smaller agencies is small enough that it doesn't have its own police academy, so I was sent to police academy in Sacramento, which was held on the grounds of the California Highway Patrol Academy. Their recruits were taught that car stops can be really dangerous for cops and that the cardinal rules were, you had to keep passengers and drivers contained and hands had to be visible to you at all times. I recall that there was a poster that hung in the gymnasium where we did defensive tactics.

That poster said, "Don't let them kill you on some dirty freeway." All this was going through my mind as the passenger got out of the car. I'm white, the passenger was Black. I should say that I went into policing not only to make the community safer but also as a Berkeley graduate I closely followed the Rodney King case, the beating of Mr. King, and the subsequent trial. I had as a secondary goal to try to make policing more fair, more equitable, to address some of those racial inequalities, but I wasn't really thinking about any of that, that night at the traffic stop.

The passenger started walking away. I said, "Get back in the car." He refused. I went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder and told him to get back in the car again and he turned and clocked me in the cheek. Fight ensued, a long story that I get into the book. He ended up going to the porch of the house trying to throw rocks at me and my partner as we were struggling to take him and the driver of the car into custody. I ended up drawing my handgun and telling him to put the rock down. He did.

I wasn't faced with the choice of whether I had to shoot him or not, but it was a very difficult situation. It very quickly escalated out of control. I think he had some blame in the situation. He should have gotten back in the car when asked him. I was just trying to write his friend, the driver of the car a ticket. As I described in the book, I also wasn't blameless. I think also the police institution that molded me into the cop I was wasn't blameless either. I thought a lot about that incident over the years.

Brian Lehrer: How were you not blameless? The way you just told the story, you didn't pull your gun until the guy was throwing rocks at you? How were you not blameless?

Neil Gross: I think that the language that I used to try to de-escalate the situation wasn't as effective as it could be. One of the things that we learned in the academy, and certainly, it's something that was impressed on me when I was going through field training was that it's important to not really take flak from anyone on the street. If someone challenges you, the response isn't to back down and take more time. The appropriate response is to become more aggressive. I think that's what I did.

It's possible that if I had learned and used of different de-escalation tactics, maybe that would have resolved the situation more quickly, but I was trained in a police culture that was more or less aggressive. Now, the Berkeley force was certainly far more progressive than many other surrounding departments. You said it's not usual for Berkeley graduates to go into the policing, but actually, a fair number of cops on the City of Berkeley police force were UC Berkeley graduates, which is in sharp contrast to surrounding communities like Oakland.

Nonetheless, there was a relatively aggressive culture in some parts of the Berkeley department. I think I absorbed that. That really became the focus of my subsequent research and that's what the book is about. It's about how to change police culture. My general insight is that if you want to reform policing, and there's certainly good reason to do so, changing policies is important, getting accountability is important, but without a change in culture and the norms and values of the profession, the norms and values that I subscribe to and that were present in my experience that night, it's going to be hard to produce real change on the ground.

Brian Lehrer: You have three case studies in the book from pretty small places, but you tell us, there are lessons from bigger cities like New York, Chicago, LA, et cetera. Your three are Stockton, California, Longmont, Colorado, and LaGrange, Georgia. We can get into each one a little bit individually, but does something tie all these examples together?

Neil Gross: I chose these places after a pretty exhaustive look at what was happening in policing nationally. I remember having lots of conversations with experts in policing. I'd say, "Tell me some cities that you think are really doing a lousy job with the police." It wasn't hard for them to give examples, but then when I asked, "Tell me some cities you think are doing a good job, where things are moving in the right direction," it took them a minute to come up with something.

These three cities fill out both of those conversations and of my parsing the data on racial equity in traffic stops, for example, or in a use of force, those sorts of things. At the end of the day, what the three cities have in common is that in all three police chiefs really were able to move the needle on cop culture, that culture of 'us versus them' attitude, don't take flak from anyone on the street, that culture of protect your brothers in blue at all costs. In very different ways, the chiefs in all three of these departments were able to push the culture of the department in a better direction.

Toward something that was more socially responsible, more humane, and with more of an emphasis on equity. Not a complete change in any agency, none is a perfect police department, but they were able to generate a really significant movement over the course of 10 years, 20 years in some cases.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for a few phone calls with former police officer, now Colby College sociology professor Neil Gross whose new book is Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture. I want to invite police officers or retired police officers to get first priority on the phones for this one. Is police reform possible? 212-433-WNYC. Police officers and retired officers, we want to hear from you first in this segment. What makes a good or a bad police culture, in your opinion?

What can bring about the best practices for policing that keep communities safe from police brutality and mass incarceration as well as civilian crime. Or you're listening to Neil Gross's story and premise and thinking, "Yeah, right." 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. First priority to current or former police officers on the phones. 212-433-9692. Neil, I want to let you just brief a little here on one of the three cities of your choice and police chiefs you write about. You want to just pick one because I know they're all a little different from each other. Pick one and go into a little bit of detail about the police chief and what they changed and how?

Neil Gross: Happy to do that. I'll maybe talk about Stockton, California. You said before that these are smaller communities and they are. I guess I want to point out to listeners in New York and I'm in New York right now, that 90% of police departments in this country are small. Depending on how you count between 15 and 18,000 different police agencies in the US. Certainly, big city agencies New York, Los Angeles, Chicago serve a substantial number of people. There are many, many other departments around the country that are also in need of reform.

Stockton is a city of about 300,000. It's an hour East of the San Francisco Bay Area. It's a blue-collar community with a very serious gang violence problem that goes back decades. In Stockton, I tell the story of a police chief named Eric Jones. Jones took the helm at Stockton PD in 2012. Stockton suffered really heavy losses during the financial crisis. Lots of homes there went into foreclosure. The city's budget took a huge hit in terms of tax revenue. The city was forced to lay off 100 of its officers, which was a quarter of its force.

Jones ascended to the position of chief right at that moment. He was a long-serving Stockton cop, he actually went to the police academy a year after I did. His first job was just to tamp down violence. The city's homicide rate had skyrocketed in those years when the number of cops on the ground was diminishing and the city was suffering financially. His first job was to tamp down that violence. He set out to do so, he implemented a program that was started in Boston. It's now tried in other cities. It's a group and gang violence reduction problem.

There was called Operation Ceasefire. The idea was can you bring in to the police department people who are most heavily involved in gang shootings, gang activity, the people who are the most likely to either be shooters or to be shot? Can you tell them, on the one hand, "We're watching you, if you do something wrong we're going to bring every effort to bear or to bring you into custody"? On the other hand, "Can we help you get out of a life of crime? Can we offer you job training or whatever support you need to step out of gangs?"

Jones did this and he found that the gang members that he brought in didn't trust him because the Stockton Police Department had a horrible relationship with the community. Lots of problems of mistrust and instances of brutality and racism and what was sometimes described as a cowboy department. Jones got into the police reform business through the back door. Didn't go in with the goal of really changing the department, but he found that unless he worked on building that community trust he wouldn't be able to really bring down the crime rate.

That's what he did. He really leaned into something that's called procedural justice. It's a philosophy of policing that many agencies have tried over the years, including Minneapolis and Chicago. Jones got into it in a big way. The idea of procedural justice is that if citizens are of the view that cops and judges are treating them fairly, treating them equitably, then they're going to be more likely to cooperate with the law. More likely to obey the law and more likely to cooperate with authorities giving them information if a crime occurs.

Jones trained all those officers in procedural justice. They went through extensive trainings. He built procedural justice into officer evaluations. He conducted lots and lots of community conversations between cops and citizens where the cops would hear from citizens about instances of police mistreatment. He even got the very conservative police union on board with the idea of procedural justice. There were some market changes that occurred. There's great survey data that shows that over the course of just a few years when Jones was really investing tremendous energy and procedural justice trust in the police among Stockton's poorest residents increased dramatically.

Stockton today isn't a policing nirvana, as I say in the book it's still a rough and tumble city, still a heavy gang violence problem. As I described in the book, it's better. The police department there has improved. I think most people there even critics of the police acknowledge that policing in Stockton today is markedly better than it was before Jones became Chief.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Paul in Smithtown, you're on WNYC. Hi Paul?

Paul: Hi, how are you? I think things can happen not just with police training, but with laws changing. Resisting arrests has to become a felony. They have to know that resisting is worse than a traffic violation. A lot of people get hurt during the resisting arrest. Eric Garner was resisting arrest. I think education, not just for the six-month police academy, but throughout the career, more education, de-escalation like your guests were saying, just everyone can calm down. Wait for more police officers. Don't just try to get every--

If you can't get them arrested, just wait for 10 more police officers. It can take 10 cops to arrest someone who's not even on drugs. If someone doesn't want to get arrested, they don't. It could take up to 10, even a 100-pound woman it might take who's jus-- I think training throughout their career, don't just stop with the police academy. Try to push to get bachelor's degrees and, again, more training on de-escalation. That's a really good point. Everyone is always in a rush. I think if everyone can just calm down a little bit, wait for more police talk, wait for more sergeants and even on lieutenant, even a captain if possible.

Resisting arrest is a big thing.

Brian Lehrer: Paul, let me ask you as retired NYPD and bringing up resisting arrest. You're saying that should be increased in the seriousness with which it's perceived to a felony. I think the trend among the progressive prosecutors is going the other way. That resisting arrest without an underlying crime should be treated less seriously. Give us your argument on the other side of that.

Paul: These lawyers may not have seen what goes on. Like I said, when in the academy they used to say how many cops you think that they would pick 100-pound woman and they would say, how many cops you think is-- Now, this is a police officer in training how many cops do you think it's going to take to get her in handcuffs? Someone would say, two and three and just raise your hand if you need more help. It could be eight, nine, even someone who's not on drugs or not upset, it's really dangerous resisting arrest.

Eric Garner, he was resisting arrests, he was committing multiple felonies and the store owner didn't want him selling cigarettes. When someone resists arrest, it goes from just normal to just chaos. It's extremely dangerous to the community, to the alleged defendant, to the police officers. Resisting arrest causes a lot of problem and it really makes it worse real fast.

Brian Lehrer: Paul, thank you for your call. I appreciate it a lot. Here's Ben in Fairview, New Jersey who says he once served as a police officer in Cincinnati. Cincinnati, is that where you were on the force?

Ben: Yes, I was a student in Berkeley in the '60s and I interacted a lot with Berkeley Police and Oakland Police. Now, at that time as I recall, the Berkeley Police had to have a college degree to be an officer, but Oakland only had high school degree. Watching the two different-- they were the Black Panthers there's a lot of problems in that area.

Brian Lehrer: Talk to me about your experience on the force if you were a police officer.

Ben: My experience on the force in Cincinnati was very variable because you didn't know whether you could rely on other cops. That was the whole big problem, why I quit. More interesting was the officers in Berkeley, how they used their superior education to coordinate and avoid violence and avoid confrontations. Even though the situation Oakland and Berkeley was almost similar, when you get to Shaddock Avenue, I'm sure you would know what I'm talking about. I think really, the biggest part of it is the education of a police officer.

The cognitive senses that he develops and uses to diffuse the situation and take care of it.

Brian Lehrer: Ben, I'm going to leave it there because we're almost out of time in the segment, but thank you very much. You heard those couple of callers, Neil. I'm curious to get your take on the first caller, the retired NYPD officer's position on resisting arrest, but they both certainly brought up education and ongoing training as essential to reforming police culture.

Neil Gross: I guess I'd make two points. Certainly resisting is very dangerous, I think the caller is right about that. I think that that relates partially to police training education. It also relates partially to trust, which is very briefly one of the other communities that I talk about. Is a community called LaGrange, it's in Georgia. It's about 30,000 people half Back, half white. It's a community with a long history of racism and they're a Republican police chief named Louis Dekmar. Really worked extensively on efforts at building community trust.

I can tell you from having spent a bunch of time with LaGrange cops and watching in action resisting happens there, it's still a high crime community but it happens less than it does in surrounding places that haven't put in that effort at building trust between the police and the community. If you want to increase cooperation with the police, that effort at building trust and cooperation's important, but also the education and training piece, it's so crucial. One of the issues with policing is not just that we're not necessarily giving cops the amount of education they need.

Say, another issue is that we hire cops really young in this country. As you mentioned, I was 21 when I started, and that's not at all uncommon. When you're 21 you don't necessarily have a fully mature emotional brain. Your ability to de-escalate things might be pretty limited. That might not develop in you until you're in your mid-20s, maybe even a little bit later. In addition to increasing education, at least in several of the departments that I profiled, the chiefs tried to hire officers who were older, had some professional life experience under their belt before they put on the badge.

That can be really helpful as well in de-escalation.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, I think it's important to say that Eric Garner did not die because he was resisting arrest. He died because he couldn't breathe, and they didn't believe him when he said he couldn't breathe and kept compressing his chest. Just making that point to the previous caller's assertion. We're just about out of time, but on a big-picture question to end, the whole thing that you're trying to accomplish here, police reform by writing this book and laying out these models, the tension goes two ways when we say police reform.

Conservatives think it'll make communities less safe because the police will be constrained from doing their real jobs and it'll make them as police officers less safe. Activists on the left say, "Reform has shown itself to fail." Body cams, more training, all those things. We still had as many fatal police encounters last year as before George Floyd or Michael Brown or Eric Garner those last two, almost 10 years ago. They just want disengagement, that's defund the police. Why do you still believe reform is even possible on a large scale in our last minute?

Neil Gross: I wrote the book because, in my view, the conversation around policing this country is wrongheaded. Police reform isn't something that has to tie the hands of police. It's not something at odds with public safety. Done right, done smartly, police reform enhances public safety because it creates trust between police and citizens and reduces crime, and increases cooperation. I know police reform is possible because if you look at departments around the country that have invested in it seriously, not just as a window dressing thing, but the departments like the ones that I've focused on, you see real change over time.

The data supports it and talking to citizens, talking to activists supports that it's possible. If it's possible in places as diverse as Stockton, LaGrange, Georgia, and Longmont, Colorado, I think it's possible in many other communities. I think we've just lost the faith that it's possible. I wrote the book partially to give people that sense of faith, we can do policing better places are doing policing better. We need to learn lessons from what they're doing and broaden them to the rest of the country.

Brian Lehrer: Former police officer, now sociology professor at Colby College, Neil Gross, his new book is Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Neil Gross: Thank you.

 

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