A watchdog report finding that the New York Police Department was “not missing a clearly defined strategy” and used excessive force during the George Floyd protests of the summer was an early step in the right direction, criminal law experts said, but they offered sobering thoughts on what to do. would have happened. the following happen so that there is meaningful change.
The 111-page report, released Friday by the Department of Investigation in New York City, said there were systemic failures in the NYPD’s response to the Minneapolis Police Department’s protests against the murder of Floyd that “went beyond bad. judgment or misconduct by some individual agents. ” It also provided a range of policy recommendations for the department.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea thanked the Department of Investigation for “20 logical and thoughtful recommendations that I intend to include in our future policies and training.”
But experts said lasting change would take longer and longer than policy updates.
“Culture eats policy for breakfast, so there are a lot of things that need to be done before a police station changes,” said Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.
“Policy is important and having written policy is important, but that’s like step one, which is low hanging fruit,” said Stoughton, who studies police work and is a former officer himself. “The agency must communicate throughout the chain of command why a particular change is being made.”
Nancy La Vigne, the executive director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, said the report looked “ really thorough and well researched and very prescriptive. ”
“What remains to be known is the extent to which these regulations are being applied in policy and practice, which is where things can often fall apart,” she said. “You can release any reports you want, but if you don’t change the underlying structure, create incentives, or are truly accountable that makes sense to a law enforcement agency, it’s hard to promote the change you want.”
The report found that “the department itself had made a number of significant errors or omissions that were likely to escalate tensions, and certainly contributed to both the perception and reality that suppressed the department rather than facilitating its legal assembly and expression. of the first amendment. “
It found the NYPD “lacked a clearly defined strategy aligned with the large-scale police and police protests” and that not enough officers were deployed in the early days of the protests.
It also discovered some of the department’s tactics to control crowds and use of force, such as mass arrests, batons and pepper spray, surrounding protesters and other tactics “reflected the lack of balance between valid public safety or the security interests of officers and rights of protesters to come together and speak their mind. “
“The NYPD’s use of force and crowd control often did not distinguish between legal, peaceful protesters and unlawful actors, and contributed to the perception that officers used more force in some cases than was necessary under the circumstances,” said it. report.
In fact, apart from informing evidence, the report said “the fact that the purpose of the protests was police themselves does not appear to have been incorporated into the ministry’s response strategy in any meaningful way.”
It also felt that police oversight “would be strengthened if the existing functions were merged into a single body, led by an independent council,” as opposed to the creation of the city with three agencies overseeing the department.
Stoughton said controlling mass protests can be difficult because so many things can go wrong. He said he felt the report did a fairly good job of “threading the needle between explaining the context and why police response to protest situations is challenging, while also very honestly and directly identifying agency failure.”
“Context is very important in protests,” he said. “I fully agree with this report that there was a strategic failure here.”
“It is not enough today that police agencies just have a crowd control or riot response plan, but a peaceful protest strategy,” he added.
In the summer, thousands of people protested in a nationwide movement against the murders of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed in a botched raid on her home by white agents.
“Anyone paying attention could have seen this,” said Stoughton, after years of massive protests against the murder of colored men and women by police.
“The strategy needs to be more nuanced, which shocked me, not only in New York, but also in agencies across the country, this was very predictable,” he said.
