Feeling hopeless: Is there room for moderation on police reform?

Via Twitter

A few weeks ago, Grits was on a Zoom call with local activists asking Austin city manager Spencer Cronk to fire his police chief, Bryan Manley. There are many reasons, but the proximate cause was an APD officer murdering Mike Ramos, an unarmed black man whom the cops assaulted while he stood before them with his hands in the air, then shot to death when he fled. Cronk refused, but said he might reconsider as the situation developed.

Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition and I both tried to impress on him that the folks on the call represented the faction of the movement that was willing to work within the system, but that there was a wide swath of people in the community who were so angry they would soon eschew calls for systemic change in favor of straight up retribution. People are really mad, I recall Chas telling Cronk, and "things are about to boil over."

Now they have boiled over. Would there still have been protests yesterday if the police chief and assistant city manager who have thwarted change over the years had been already been fired and authorities had shown they were willing to hold Mike Ramos' killer accountable? Probably. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis drew a national response. But would the reaction in Austin have been less intense if local officials had already demonstrated their commitment to reducing police violence in this city? Of that I have little doubt. Tension over the Mike-Ramos episode already was on a knife's edge. George Floyd's murder gave people permission to openly express rage that had been simmering under the surface.

Grits gets accused a lot of being too angry and unreasonable. I'm told by state and local officials repeatedly that I'm asking for too much and must understand that change takes time. But I've been involved in efforts to effect change at the Austin Police Department for fully a quarter century and objectively, we've achieved very little. From my perspective, I've been incredibly patient. Almost certainly too patient. Yesterday, Austin officials got a taste of what it looks like when a community runs out of patience.

What those officials don't hear are all the folks who think people like me, Chas Moore, and others who work within the system are simply sell outs. But I hear them. All the damn time. Many, many people think the system is so violent and corrupt that it can't be changed for the better, that it must be burned to the ground. And when folks like Spencer Cronk, who is perhaps the most reasonable city manager we've seen in my 35 years in Austin, snub widespread community calls for change and protect the people responsible for the worst harms, it's awfully hard to make a convincing case to the contrary.

Grits doesn't regret working all these years to change the system, but I also can't escape the fundamental truth that incremental change has been profoundly insufficient. I'm not sure burning a police car would accomplish more, but I'd be hard pressed to conclude it would accomplish less.