The un­rest (sparked by Po­lice bru­tal­i­ty) go­ing on in many oth­er coun­tries is some­thing that we can avoid by mak­ing changes to the way Po­lice op­er­ate.

Body cam­eras should be manda­to­ry for all po­lice, es­pe­cial­ly for re­spons­es in­volv­ing use of force. What is the dis­ci­pli­nary process for of­fi­cers who con­ve­nient­ly “for­get” to turn on the cam­era? Are dis­ci­pline, sus­pen­sion and ter­mi­na­tion records pub­lic? If not, why?

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has pub­licly spo­ken about “non lethal” weapons such as tasers, pep­per spray, rub­ber bul­lets. “Rub­ber” bul­lets have a met­al core cov­ered by a thin rub­ber lay­er and are ca­pa­ble of death or se­ri­ous in­jury.

A study on rub­ber/plas­tic ki­net­ic pro­jec­tiles found that 71 per cent suf­fered in­jury cat­e­gorised as se­vere and 15 per cent of peo­ple were per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled, es­pe­cial­ly when fir­ing dis­tances were less than rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er or tar­get­ed the head or neck. Sim­i­lar­ly tasers have been im­pli­cat­ed in the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple, same with pep­per spray or CS gas. We should not con­fuse “less lethal” with “non lethal”!

Some of these prob­lems are a re­sult of the whole train­ing process and mind­set im­part­ed to re­cruits dur­ing train­ing, ei­ther of­fi­cial­ly or “off the record.” In Ger­many it takes 3 years to be­come a cop. How long does it take lo­cal­ly? What are the min­i­mum en­try re­quire­ments —do we train in­tel­li­gent men­tal­ly healthy peo­ple or what­ev­er we can get? What is the per­cent­age of time spent on de-es­ca­la­tion and com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing strate­gies com­pared to firearms and self-de­fence? Does train­ing cov­er po­si­tion­al as­phyx­ia that was like­ly a con­trib­u­tor in George Floyd’s death?

The mil­i­tari­sa­tion of po­lice (ar­moured ve­hi­cles, SWAT teams) ul­ti­mate­ly does noth­ing but wors­en ex­ist­ing prob­lems.

It’s un­re­al­is­tic to ex­pect that with shiny new toys the po­lice are go­ing to choose de-es­ca­lat­ing a sit­u­a­tion rather than have any rea­son to “test out” their toys. In fact, it would ap­pear that po­lice are taught to keep es­ca­lat­ing un­til com­pli­ance is achieved! But there should be “use min­i­mum force nec­es­sary” rule for con­flicts and de-es­ca­la­tion should be the first re­sponse. The May­or of Chica­go has an­nounced many di­rec­tives for im­proved po­lice train­ing in light of George Floyd’s death—will we do the same?

Po­lice need to be held to ac­count to a high­er stan­dard than civil­ians, be­cause they are en­trust­ed with au­thor­i­ty and weapons that the rest of us don’t have. This means that they should self po­lice and not be com­pla­cent when oth­ers cross the line, oth­er­wise they are just as guilty. Bad ap­ples must be pros­e­cut­ed and face jus­tice just as a nor­mal per­son would.

The whole idea of “paid leave,” “trans­fer” and “sus­pen­sion” must not be op­tions for of­fi­cers who have a his­to­ry of com­plaints or break laws. The of­fi­cer who killed George Floyd had 18 com­plaints against him, yet these were ig­nored by the po­lice de­part­ment he worked in!

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty should be giv­en ad­di­tion­al pow­ers to fa­cil­i­tate in­ves­ti­ga­tion as they are best po­si­tioned to serve as an in­de­pen­dent check and bal­ance on the ser­vice. Un­for­tu­nate­ly I don’t think the Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion cares about pub­lic in­ter­est as much as the rights of its mem­bers (like many oth­er Pub­lic Sec­tor Unions). They should be not al­lowed to dic­tate fu­ture di­rec­tion.

R Sama­roo