Sunday, May 31, 2020

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. 

24 comments:

TexasYankee said...

Most big cities have been run by liberals, generally Democrats, for 50 to 100 years. Austin has the most liberal government in Texas. Yet the polcie forces are more out of control than ever. Why?

Anonymous said...

I believe the change that MUST happen has go begin with Everyone taking a good look at what's really going on in our individual hearts. If THATS not right, then thoughts, decisions and behavior will be guided by that. And vice- versa for what Is right. I still believe that God only can change our hearts from bad to good, if that be the case. Then we take our good hearts into EVERY aspect of our life influencing others in our world to do the same. Even when that means speaking TRUTH ( and righteousness) to Power, teaching those good honorable heartfelt morals and values to our Children and all we have an opportunity to influence, for the good of humankind.

Anonymous said...


Police are the reflection of our community, as prisons are, change will evolve with the changing values of the community and leadership.

https://www.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/executive-session-pdf-ACallforNewCriminalJusticeValues_ArthurRizer_Final.pdf

Gilbert G. Garcia said...

I have been a criminal defense lawyer for many years. The problem is cultural. The electorate believes in punishment rather than rehabilitation. The Texas Penal Code itself has an entire title named "PUNISHMENTS" applicable to every "OFFENSE". Unless that wrong thinking is culturally changed, there will be no progress.

Oil Lease said...

Yes, Gilbert, the Texas Penal Code wants suffering more than anything else. Instead of trying to help people who have been convicted, it punishes them so hard they often have to turn to crime just to pay the fines of probation and they seem to want to make it so recidivism is as high as possible.

It's not funny in any way but it's ironic that so many who wrote it and enforce it seem to hold the "good book" in one hand and a whip in the other. The costs to society isn't just an increase in crime but a huge cost in outright taxes.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

@3:45, in my experience, policing isn't a liberal vs. conservative issue. There are both liberal and conservative critics of overpolicing, but they're a minority in both camps. The majority of liberals AND conservatives value order over freedom or personal liberty, much less black people's lives.

That said, a baseline level of security is necessary for freedom. In the 80s and 90s, black leaders were among the biggest proponents of the Drug War and tuff-on-crime approaches because their neighborhoods were victimized by crime the worst. But even then, when incidents like the Rodney King beating happened, it became immediately evident that large chunks of their base were more critical of police than they were. There's a split. There's ALWAYS been a split.

Anonymous said...

I had an idea a long time ago. But, its one of those things that you could never really do. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. I think we really need to get government back to the people as much as possible. I think this applies to both policing and education. Years ago you heard a lot about "community policing." Sounds nice but the way it was implemented, I guess it was good in some ways but didn't accomplish that much. I think, instead of large municipal police departments, and large school districts, we need community police departments and community schools. For police, have small community departments which are staffed by people who live in the community and are overseen by some type of community council. Of course you may want some overarching organization that would provide some services such as forensics, homicide investigation, etc. But, the day to day policing would be handled by the community department. The officers would live in the community and get to know the people. I think that alone, would make a huge difference in how they treated people. WOuld be nice if someone would try it. Probably won't though.

LI Ashtangini said...

Responding to Texas Yankee, I'm not sure I would call Austin's government "the most liberal in Texas." Third or Fourth at best.

Les Smith said...

Establish a Community Justice Council: A broad-based Community Justice Council is needed to address these complicated issues, review and discuss the data and develop an action plan. The Community Justice Council (CJC) works collaboratively to ensure a fair, efficient and effective social and criminal justice system and is focused on community partnerships. Governmental and community-based meetings are scheduled on a regular basis to seek input and collectively discuss social and criminal justice system issues. A core set of values can weave together different segments of the community with diverse perspectives and biases. (Rizer, 2018)

https://www.milwaukee.gov/EN/MCJC/About
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin has an established a Community Justice Council. This type of collaboration improves the dialog between politicians, practitioners, researchers, and the public as well as an improved understanding of the issues.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Idk, Les, there have been a lot of councils, commissions, etc., over the yeas, going back to the Kerner Commission 50+ years ago. They come up with recommendations then the politicians and police fail to implement them. There's been decades of research and field work identifying better ways to handle mass protests, for example, and most police departments including Austin did the opposite. Should we endlessly talk about it, or should they just be required to change practices? I've been to many, many meetings over the years and given tons of "input," now I want them to stop shooting kids in the back of the head with rubber bullets or gunning down unarmed black folks like Mike Ramos when there's no good reason to do so.

Anonymous said...

I think the media, politicians and others are hurting the cause by focusing too much on the racial aspect of the problem. Sure, that's a part of it. But, the bigger and deeper issue is the culture, training, and attitudes that exist in a lot of police departments. An even bigger and deeper issue is how much control over our lives we have ceded to the government. Let me back up just a second to the race aspect. I recall a while back a lady whom I believe was from Australia was shot by a police officer who was sitting in his car. I don't recall any rioting then. Let me just pose the question, if you only get upset when the victim of such an incident is of a certain race, what is your real concern? If you ignore the murders of those of a certain race occurring every day in city's like Chicago because they are committed by members of the same race, what is your real concern? Do those lives not matter as much? When the fact that a black police officer is killed by rioters gets very little of your attention, what is your real concern? I may sound a little like a conspiracy theorists here, but I believe there are those behind the seen trying to distort things to stir up certain things to cause chaos in an effort to destroy this country. Let's attack the real problem. See through the smoke screens. We need to really look at how much power we've ceded to the government at every level. We need to take a good hard look at the policies, cultures and practices of police in general. Is race factor in some of this? Yes. Are there bigger and deeper problems that are being ignored every time something like this happens? Yes.

Linda Curtis said...

The good news is time has now arrived to embrace the abject failure of liberalism v. conservatism and the systemic underpinnings of that paradigm -- Democrats v. Republicans. The fracturing going on in both parties -- with people out on the streets -- poses this new possibility: chaos or a structural change in the conduct of politics in our country.

I love the US Constitution, but the founding fathers were far from perfect. I'm not just referring here to their slaveholder status or, as property holders, their inability to resolve the conflict between property and freedom. I refer here to their failure to enshrine the right of Americans to have more than two electoral choices.

Voting is where we're supposed to be able to resolve conflicts peacefully and powerfully. But we are now at a place when there is no "justice" or "peace" to be found in a thoroughly corrupted and calcified two-party arrangement.

I have come to sympathize with those who sold us out to the big money in Austin -- the Mayor made his choices. But, I do not envy him or his allies. You have one helluva mess on your hands, but you're going to have to own it.

More and more Americans call themselves "independent", but we have no place to go but the streets. The Mayor and his allies have attacked the right to petition, for god's sake.

tiapa said...

My God, that picture you posted. It is all about power, votes, and money. Get rid of qualified immunity for government, especially law enforcement, the judiciary, and politicians, and watch them all behave. And how about making it a crime to lie to the American people?

Anonymous said...

8:18 here. Justin Amash is introducing a bill to end qualified immunity. This is one of the problems I was talking about. There are many others but maybe this is a start. A lot of judges seem to have an attitude that they need to be protective of police. They need to just apply the law. Qualified immunity was judge made law that never should have been implemented to start with. Judges need to stop adding things to statutes. That's Congress' job.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Justin+Amash+police&filters=tnTID%3a%224676D8D5-404E-4529-928B-31CFD9B6F034%22+tnVersion%3a%223551498%22+segment%3a%22popularnow.carousel%22+tnCol%3a%222%22+tnOrder%3a%2258b45f94-77fc-4c7a-a98e-e834d947ee22%22&FORM=CNTPNH

Here's something more that some won't like but if we can't have difficult conversations, we'll never solve anything. As I said, race is a part but what happened to Mr. Floyd could have happened to anyone, regardless of race. The media has a tendency to blow up the race issue. I mentioned the woman from Australia, that case didn't get near the attention, let alone the riots. Does this type of thing happen more often to black people? I haven't seen statistics but, I'd say probably yes. Okay, why? Black people tend to have more interactions with police, I'm guessing, again no stats. Why? That's a good question that we need to be asking. I think there are some cultural issues within the black community that need to be discussed but those subjects are taboo. I think Bill Cosby tried to address some of those at one time but was skewered for it. Education is not valued in general in the black community (not all, but in general). I think there is a sense of entitlement and victimhood being passed down generationally. Children are being taught that the world owes the something, that they shouldn't work hard or better themselves because someone is always out to get them. That needs to stop. Today, in this country, anyone can succeed and that is what children need to be taught. I could go on and on but no one wants to have these conversations. Instead they want to smash windows, steal stuff, and hurt people. Until we can have these conversations, nothing will change.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

@8:18/9:50, your second comment in particular reveals some ignorance, biases and thinking errors about the black community that you'll probably want to reconsider. Also, maybe Bill Cosby isn't the champion you want to get behind.

While black folks are disproportionately victimized by police violence (you haven't seen the stats, but I have), the solutions being proposed aren't race specific. They're exactly the sort of systemic reforms you're pretending aren't being promoted. Take a look at the most comprehensive agenda on police reform coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement from Campaign Zero and it's all about systemic change, not race-specific approaches. Your take is simply a mischaracterization.

Anonymous said...

@10.02 if we can't have these conversations........

Anonymous said...

Okay 10:02, I know it will be a futile effort but let's try to have this conversation (Btw, I will refrain from using words like ignorance and would ask that you do the same). Why are blacks disproportionately victimized by police? Is it simply racism? Do blacks have more interactions with police? If so, why? Is there a difference in the number and type of crimes committed according to race? If so, why? Is education undervalued in the black community? If so, why? Does that have anything to do with crime? Why is there little concern that many, many, many more blacks are killed by other blacks than by police? Why are there not riots over all the deaths of African Americans in Chicago? Do black lives only matter when they are killed by police? Why were there no riots when the Australian woman was killed? What role does the lack of intact families in the black community play in the crime rates? As long as we just say racism, racism, racism and don't start having the difficult conversations, nothing will be solved.

Anonymous said...

One more thing 10:02 - do just black lives matter or do all lives matter? Do black lives only matter if they are shot by police but not if they are shot by another black person?

g said...

Grits, you'd be more effective if you addressed the issues instead of commenting negatively on the individual.

After all, I'm sure many of your comments reveals some ignorance, biases, and thinking errors about subject matter. I'm guilty of the same.

Personally I believe the it's more of a socio-economic issue than a race issue, but that's an opinion, which by the way most of what you put out is also an opinion.

Linda Curtis said...

I would urge that those who are "anonymous" or not identified, do so.

I would only add that Scott Henson's "Grits" are cooked just fine. Don't boil 'em over, people. Identify yourselves, unless you have something to share that comprises you. That doesn't seem to be the case.

G said...

Linda, I urge you to let others interact as they see fit. You don't get to set the rules. Grits can require it if he chooses to do so.

Linda Curtis said...

This is an open comments page, so Grits has opened this up to all, so I am stating my preference -- which you're free to ignore.

Anonymous said...

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Anonymous said...

Because unlike the rest of us who work for our money the police everywhere have Unions