Police Reform
by TChris
The latest entry in the American Constitution Society's series of white papers is Police Reform: A Job Half Done (pdf) by Richard Jerome, a former Deputy Associate Attorney General who now provides legal and consulting services that include police and civil rights issues. The paper examines the need for police reform (shining a spotlight on racial profiling), explores the federal response to police misconduct, and questions whether the Justice Department's enforcement efforts have weakened in recent years. It concludes with an overview of policies that law enforcement agencies should implement to help officers comply with professional standards.
Readers who have followed TalkLeft's coverage of the Taser controversy might be interested in this snippet from the paper:
While Tasers may substitute for other types of force, it appears that at least in the first year or so that Tasers are distributed to patrol officers, the total number of force incidents often goes up, suggesting that Tasers can become the "option of first resort" in encounters. Tasers certainly should not be used in situations that could have been resolved using means other than force. If providing officers with Tasers results in decreasing their use of communication skills to resolve incidents, the community will be ill-served.
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