“People’s impressions of the police are influenced by the police. The greatest influence is [an individual’s] personal interactions and the personal interactions of their friends and families," says Darrel W. Stephens, MS, co-director of the Policing, Security Technology, and Private Security Research and Policy Institute at Florida State University.
Individual policemen interacting with individual community members are the core of the conflict. No police chief will keep his job who would condone racial harassment or violence against any community member. It is individuals who are unqualified to serve as policemen who are the core of the problem. And as one social work professor said to us off the record, "why do we have so many of these angry, violent men serving in our police departments across the country?"
"One thing I know is that by the time a police killing is happening, there are thousands of times that people have been stopped, people have been harassed. They’ve been profiled. Then, you get a police killing,” says Rashawn Ray, PhD, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and a professor of sociology and executive director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Recruiting:
The image of the rough-tough gun-toting Old West sheriff who shoots bad guys on site is imbedded in America's cultural imagination. This is the artificial profile we hold up as our ideal law-enforcement professional to this day. Unfortunately, it was invented by Hollywood writers and never represented either true Old West history or the profile of an effective modern-day law enforcement professional. Many police recruits are ex-military who were trained to use weapons readily and to fight "bad guys" at the risk of their own life. This personality type is still considered a most desirable recruit. Most of them are excellent policemen but some are addicted to power and force and our psychological testing doesn’t sort out these exceptions.
Training:
Too often the training in community relations and respect for individual rights and personal dignity are left to the "Oh, and by the way" class in the police academy. If the system can be held accountable for the racism and violence that police are guilty of, it must start with training individual policemen/women in internalizing the "protect and serve" mission often painted on the side of police cars across the country. The key to turning the corner on police violence and racism is to recruit more carefully and test more deeply to weed out the bullies and to train each individual recruit in the true meaning of "to serve and protect".
Operations:
Troubled individual policemen/women harass and murder individual citizens, not police departments. We need to do a much better job of recruiting, training, and supervising the brave men and women who protect and serve.
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, we have some other wonderful recommending readings that highlight the benefits of social workers working in collaborative roles:
Forensic Social Work...A Little Deeper Dive
Social Workers Fight for Juvenile Justice...Part 2 How We Got Here
Police Reform...Forensic Social Work