Judicial system reform

Like it or not, even with reform, the police are not going anywhere. While I do think reform needs to be on a Federal level. There is also work that needs to be done at the local and city level as well in conjunction with that reform. Each community is different, faces a variety of distance challenges and so it requires a different lens from place to place. This is not an attack on police officers. Of course there are the ones who do their job with integrity and uphold the law and citizens they swore to protect. But we are not talking about them. We are talking about the other officers. The ones who use muscle memory as an excuse to shoot someone, the ones who show up and start shooting and asking questions later, the ones who profile.

On the topic of reform and integration police need to be properly integrated into the community that they serve. If I sat here long enough, I could think of a laundry list of things, but at the most basic and human level of things, reform needs to include:

• Who are the community groups that work with and serve the community at large and as an officer how can I help collaborate with them and serve the community?
• In other words, instead of responding aggressively and with unnecessary force. Work with that group when they are having an event to provide barricades, traffic safety,etc. 
• Police officers should have to live in the communities that they serve just like any other politician etc. When you live in the community you serve, you have a higher tendency to want to see it do better because you have a direct stake in it. Your wife would be there and your kids. What higher stakes are there than wanting your family to live in a safe neighborhood?
• Have programs where the officers come into the schools in the communities they serve and talk to the kids so they can build trust and compassion for the issues they are facing.
• Police should have to wear a camera with live feed that is monitored. 
• Provide immediate and on-going cultural, sensitivity and de-escalation training. 
• Increased and improved communication training 
• Crisis intervention and emergency readiness

When you do your research, you will find that for all minor and major offenses, when you compare Caucasian arrests to Black ones, apples for apples, the Caucasians get lesser sentences and either avoid jail time altogether or they have a much lesser sentence. Why is that? It can be direct or indirect, in other words a subconscious decision or conscious. Ultimately all people serving people should live in that area. Why? If you are disconnected from the community it is hard to think holistically and look at the crime, the impact it had, if anyone was harmed, their individual history, and their potential for rehabilitation. I truly believe that all of those things should be considered. I see no reason why someone with enough marijuana for themselves to consume, a tablespoon, should get 5 to 10 years in jail. And Caucasians do not see it either because it does not happen to them as often. The same goes for media portrayal. When Caucasians shoot up a church, a school, a government building and they are a child or very young themselves-- They are made to look like a victim of circumstances. Words and phrases like loner, troubled, from a divorced home, depressed are used... the list goes on. But when anyone else commits the same crime, we hear words like, thug, ghetto, urban and inner city. All words that are not associated with compassion but rather with violence or trouble.  In fact, black men go to jail for about 20% to 60% longer than their Caucasian counterparts. Part of that may be due to judicial discretion. There are all kinds of articles that suggest the former but some point to the latter which is that judicial discretion actually mitigates racial disparities in sentencing. We also have to remember that we only see the high profile cases and celebrity cases. We do not see the day to day decisions or numbers for how this looks for our nation as a whole. But in a lot of ways, we do not have to. We live it. Geographically, we know there are differences in that respect too. What I see, to include just my general perception, is going to be different than someone who loves in the heart of the south, a new yorker, and a mid-westerner for example. Judges have to use discretion as it is part of their job. Where it gets scary or complicated is the basis for that discretion: the context. life experience, political party affiliation- all of that can play into how that discretion is applied and delineated. One could easily say that more people of color are in jail because they commit more crimes. I mentioned holistic approaches and rehabilitation. That word is important because that is what prison is supposed to do. The system is set up for people to fail. Felons cannot vote once they are released, cannot find employment which means they cannot make an income. Do the math here, the odds of them returning to crime as a means of eating and providing is great. The logic of don't do the crime if you cannot do the crime is ridiculous. They do the time and when they are released they are just in a new type of prison. What is being accomplished?

 The following is specific to my state but you can go to this website and view these same statistics for any state. 

My husband has been harassed in our neighborhood several times by the police. When I say harassed I mean waiting for our children at the bus stop, playing with our sons at the part, or just standing outside of our house. It can be very scary and a lot of people wonder what the police can and cannot do after the incident. Know your rights! Be proactive! I hear and see some of my Caucasian friends say things like "He should have just waited and taken it up with the precinct later", "He would be alive if he would have just stayed quiet". This institutional racism and violation of rights cannot be tolerated. It can be a slippery slope but ultimately, you should know your rights and be prepared to say what they are. You can view this FAQ for specific details regarding your 4th amendment rights and how to handle different situations from ICE, being pulled over or being searched without a warrant. The sad thing about all of this is that this environment creates a situation where people feel they cannot trust the police. People try to handle things themselves and potentially make a dangerous situation worse because they fear calling the police will only make it worse and someone may end up dead. There used to be an old joke if you call the police, someone is going to jail. These days it is more like if you call the police, someone is going to the morgue.

So what does any of that have to do with police reform? It is all one big system and each section of the judicial system feeds the other. The school to system pipeline is really what begins it. Our children need to be in school. We separate the at risk youth and put them in juvenile detention centers. The downward spiral continues from there. Our police force needs to work with communities to  help prevent that from happening. If we truly a community, we have to act like it. The system is not going to fix itself. We have to be proactive and invite the right people to the table to start and foster the conversations. 

The context for the statistics above can be read here.