Down Comes the Wall

[Crazy Eddie]

Militarization of the police and the "war on crime" mentality created a culture among law enforcement where officers are encouraged to shoot first and ask questions later, a system that excuses or sometimes even celebrates their incompetence, that demonizes and intmidates law-abiding citizens and convicts law breakers in a court of street violence. The consequences of those developments have been manifest all around the country by now, and people have noticed. What it basically amounts to is a massive confrontational wall between police departments and the communities they're supposed to be serving: militarization of the police creates an adversarial climate that makes the cops' jobs harder and puts the citizens at risk.

Now it looks like the police (some of them, at least) are seeing that the wall needs to come down. Better late than never.

It took six days for the Ferguson Police Department to name then-Officer Darren Wilson as the man who fatally shot Michael Brown last Aug. 9. It took the police department in Virginia’s Fairfax County more than a year and a half to name the officer that shot and killed an unarmed man who others say had his hands up on his own doorstep.

Nearly two years after the Aug. 29, 2013, death of John Geer during a tense standoff at his home in Springfield, Va., a special grand jury on Monday indicted Adam Torres on a second-degree murder charge. The indictment and Mr. Torres’s subsequent arrest point to post-Ferguson cracks in the “blue wall of silence” at some police departments nationwide.

The Torres case gained national attention, with Sen. Charles Grassley (R) of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, writing Fairfax Police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. to demand a full accounting of the internal investigation. Senator Grassley reminded the chief that “questions about the use of deadly force should be handled in a manner that reinforces public confidence in law enforcement.”

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The movement in the Torres case follows a series of more recent cases from Portsmouth, Va., to Los Angeles in which police leaders, realizing that lack of public trust in police ultimately puts officers at risk, have favored transparency over political expediency or concerns about officer morale. Gallup recently found that public trust of police is at a 22-year-low.

“Many police chiefs are now reacting [by offering transparency] when it comes to procedures after a police shooting,” says Laurie Robinson, a law professor at George Mason University in Fairfax and co-chair of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. “Part of it is self-protection, but it’s also from a professional standpoint, to ensure that the community finds any investigation a credible one.”

Also:

A Baltimore police officer who authorities allege shot a burglary suspect in the groin at close range after he'd been subdued is being charged with attempted first- and second-degree murder, the city's top prosecutor announced Wednesday.

State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced the charges against Officer Wesley Cagle on the same day that news emerged of a lawsuit against the police department claiming abuse in a separate case. That suit was filed on behalf of a client by the lawyer who represents Freddie Gray's family.

The latest problems to affect the troubled police department come just three-and-half months after six police officers were indicted in connection to the death of Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died a week after suffering a critical spinal injury in the back of a police transport van. Gray's death prompted near-daily protests in Baltimore, and served as a catalyst for the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation into whether the department's officers routinely use excessive force and participate in illegal arrests.

According to the statement of probable cause, Cagle and three other police officers responded to a report of a commercial burglary on Dec. 28, 2014. As the suspect — Michael Johansen, who has also been charged — tried to leave the building, two of the officers stopped him and told him to show his hands. When Johansen reached downward, the two officers fired their guns, striking Johansen multiple times and causing him to collapse on the floor. That's when Cagle approached Johansen with his gun drawn, the statement said. According to charging documents, Johansen asked the officers whether what they had fired at him had been bullets or beanbags.

"No, a .40-caliber, you piece of s---," the documents quote Cagle as saying to Johansen before firing one shot, striking him in the groin.

Johansen was transported to Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment, and survived his injuries. No weapon was recovered from Johansen, Mosby said. The three other officers involved were cleared of any wrongdoing.

In addition to the attempted-murder charges, Cagle faces charges of first- and second-degree assault, and use of a handgun in a crime of violence.

"No police officer, no police chief, likes to report that one of our own engaged in criminal misconduct," said Interim Commissioner Kevin Davis at the news conference Wednesday. "That's a punch in the gut. It doesn't make me feel very good at all. It doesn't make police officers feel very good. But what's important here is that the integrity of our profession and the integrity of our agency wins out."

According to police, Cagle is a 14-year veteran of the department, assigned to the Eastern District. Cagle was placed on routine administrative leave following the incident in December of 2014 and in early January, his police powers were suspended. As of Wednesday, Cagle had been suspended without pay.

When asked if firing one shot at a suspect's groin warranted an attempted-murder charge, Mosby said she would "let justice run its course."

"It will be up to a judge and a jury to determine," she added.

And then there's this guy:

Police Chief George Turner is facing, once again, questions about whether the “noble profession” he loves has lost its legitimacy. As his top brass meet for a weekly management meeting at police headquarters in downtown Atlanta, they recount the most serious crimes of the past week – two murders, six rapes, and a spree of carjackings. This segues into a discussion of how to prepare for the next protests about police brutality, which have been going on regularly here and across the country since a white police officer shot an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Mo., last August.

The chief knows who most of the organizers of any demonstration would be. He has their names and cellphone numbers, and they have his, an exchange he made to improve communication and to try to keep the protests peaceful. It’s an openness policy with drawbacks: After some of his officers arrested protesters disrupting shopping at a local mall over Christmas, one of the organizers gave out Chief Turner’s number, and he was suddenly inundated with protest calls from across the country.

The chief’s main concern on this day is whether demonstrators plan to disrupt the annual Martin Luther King Jr. march. But more deeply, chants of “black lives matter,” he says, are a message that has come to affect daily police work: a female officer in his department who says she recently shot a man who was stabbing someone hesitated before pulling the trigger, she says, because she thought about the Ferguson protests.

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Where to strike the balance between using potentially lethal force and holding back is something that beat cops and chiefs are struggling with across the country in the wake of the most searing debate over police tactics in a half century. Top cops such as Turner want to make sure that their rank-and-file officers are using the necessary force to keep the public and themselves safe, but they also want to avoid the excessive policing practices that have stirred racial unrest and frayed police-community relations nationwide.

It’s a fine blue line that some experts think Turner is walking as well as any chief in the country.

Over the past five years, Turner has helped change the culture of a force that was reeling from misconduct scandals and the stern reprimands of federal judges. He has dramatically diversified the face of his department, discouraged racking up petty arrests that fall disproportionately on minorities, tapped the power of big data to institute preventive policing, and tried to create a more humane force. While critics still believe the Atlanta Police Department (APD) has a ways to go, Turner, by many accounts, has created one of the more professional departments in the United States.

“For many years, we’ve had reactive, traditional policing, including here in Atlanta, which distances itself from the community, and where there are quotas for tickets and arrests, and that is a mistake,” says Robert Friedmann, a criminal-justice professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “The citizenry is not stupid – they know when they’re being harassed.”

In contrast, Turner “came in with a vision to move the department forward in terms of community policing, in terms of improving morale, and [to residents] he really portrays a very good balance of being inquisitive, wanting to learn, and wanting to make a positive difference,” he says. “He listens, and he cares.”

And also this thing:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – The Metro-Nashville Police Department announced Wednesday it is planning a two-day “Fugitive Safe Surrender” event.

Chief Steven Anderson will join Nashville community members and the city’s justice system Thursday to share the details.

A press conference will be held at 12 p.m. at the Galilee Missionary Baptist Church at 2021 Herman Street in north Nashville.

More of the good cops are coming out of the wood works, breaking ranks on the side of Right.
More police departments are cleaning up their act and realizing that they can't do their jobs if they make an enemy of their own communities.

We push from our end and they pull from theirs. This wall has got to come down.

 

[Rhea]

Thanks for posting that. It's good to hear the news of progress.