The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-25)

A4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022

BY DAVID NAKAMURA

los angeles — T hirty years after
four officers were acquitted in the
beating of motorist Rodney King,
Associate Attorney General Vani-
ta Gupta arrived at Los Angeles
police headquarters to make a
pitch for police reform.
King’s case spurred Congress to
grant the Justice Department
landmark powers to investigate
police departments that show a
pattern of misconduct. But Gupta
was here to make an appeal, not a
threat. In a nation of 18,000 police
agencies, she said, the federal gov-
ernment can’t force broad change
solely through enforcement or lit-
igation. That can only come with
collaboration.
“Together,” she said, “we’re go-
ing to tackle the most pressing
issues.”
Gupta was urging police to seek
help from a new Justice Depart-
ment resource center. Her mes-
sage highlighted the failures and
limitations of the police reform
movement over the past three
decades.
Despite federal probes of more
than three dozen jurisdictions,
police still fatally shoot about
1,000 civilians a year, a dispropor-
tionate number of them Black and
many unarmed, according to data
collected and analyzed by The
Washington Post. The killings in
2020 of George Floyd in Minneap-
olis and Breonna Taylor in Louis-
ville, in particular, were followed
by widespread public outrage
over police violence and the rela-
tive lack of consequences for
many who commit it.
The question is how to change
that reality at a time when rising
gun violence and deep political
polarization have complicated the
Biden administration’s push for
greater police accountability —
and after the collapse of legisla-
tion in Congress that would have
banned chokeholds and no-knock
warrants, prohibited racial profil-
ing and eliminated qualified im-
munity for officers.
A big piece of the answer, Jus-
tice officials say, is persuading po-
lice to take ownership of the push
for change.
A longtime civil rights lawyer,
Gupta oversaw many of the
Obama administration’s “pattern
or practice” investigations into
systemic police misconduct — in-
cluding in Ferguson, Mo., Balti-
more and Chicago — while serv-
ing as the head of Justice’s civil
rights division from 2014 to 2017.
Those probes led to court-man-
dated consent decrees that placed
each jurisdiction on a detailed
reform plan.
While the Trump administra-
tion essentially banned consent
decrees — launching only one pat-
tern-and-practice investigation in
four years — Attorney General
Merrick Garland has revived
them since President Biden took
office, opening investigations into
police agencies in Minneapolis,
Louisville, Phoenix and Mount
Vernon, N.Y., so far.

But Gupta cautions that policing won’t fundamentally change if federal efforts are primarily “an- tagonistic.” Police agencies, she said, must feel invested in their own success, and getting there requires “more than a single tool.” “Usually, pattern or practice is when there’s systemwide break- downs,” Gupta said in an interview. “But there’s a lot of police departments that are looking for guidance on best de-escalation policies and use of force. We’ve got to have a way to reach many more police departments.” The police resource center Gupta unveiled last month — called a “knowledge lab” — is supposed to do just that: compiling best practices, including data, reports, training programs and aca- demic research, for broad distri- bution to police and the public. Gupta called it a “potential game changer.” Justice officials also have high hopes for a collaborative reform initiative developed by the Obama administration, shut down under Donald Trump and revamped once Democrats returned to the White House. Under that program, run by the office of Commu- nity Oriented Policing, police chiefs can voluntarily sign up for targeted help on specific issues, such as reducing gun violence or supporting officer wellness — or they can seek technical assistance with crisis management, use-of- force policies or a broad organiza- tional reassessment. Some police leaders expressed relief that the Justice Department has been less heavy-handed than they expected when Biden took office. “I’m encouraged that this administration is trying to find a balance,” Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said. “They have a bully pulpit to influence through edict, but also through guidance and through financial incentives and through collaboration.” In a meeting with Gupta, Moore detailed his efforts to hire hundreds of officers at a time when police departments are struggling with severe staffing va- cancies and low morale. Moore said his department is working with a police foundation on a two- year rent subsidy program for re- cruits to help offset the high costs of housing in Los Angeles. Gupta suggested they follow up on the issue and indicated the Justice Department is interested in promoting effective initiatives. “This is a problem we’re hearing about everywhere,” she said. Justice officials said it is too early to tell how many departments will sign up for the collaborative initiatives, and some community activists have expressed skepticism. A voluntary partnership Justice struck with the Balti- more Police Department in 2014 was derailed eight months later, when Freddie Gray, a Black man, was fatally injured in police cus- tody. Federal investigators then opened a pattern-or-practice in-

vestigation, leading to a court-ap- proved consent decree in 2017. “I feel like nothing that we put on paper can change the culture of policing until the federal govern- ment calls for consequences for misconduct,” said Ray C. Kelly, executive director of the Citizens Policing Project, which advocates for police reform in Baltimore. “We can write whatever we want on paper; does that actually lead to police doing something different on the street? The point is, it’s voluntary.”

Support for police — and for policing changes The Justice Department has significantly increased grant funding for police agencies, dis- tributing $750 million this year — much of which targets hiring — up from $580 million in the final year of the Trump administration. Biden has proposed doubling funding for local police hiring in fiscal 2023. In his State of the Union address, he pointedly re- jected the “defund the police” message pushed by Black Lives Matter. Republicans, however, still ac- cuse him of being soft on crime. At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in April, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) pressed Garland on gang violence in Chicago, demanding that the attorney general vocalize support for stop-and-frisk strategies to “get guns off the street.” Garland, who visited Chicago last summer to announce a new program to target gun trafficking, told Kennedy that the federal gov- ernment’s role is to offer technical expertise and resources. Local leaders should determine policies, he said. “ There’s no one solu- tion that fits all.” Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said Justice leaders have occupied a middle ground in the law-enforcement debate, including helping to negotiate details of

an executive order on policing that Biden is expected to unveil Wednesday — the second anniver- sary of Floyd’s death. “You’re actually seeing a lot being done, but you’re seeing it be done in a far more sophisticated way,” Pasco said. “My sense is that it’s not all about picking winners or losers, but about improving the relationship between the officers and the communities they serve — but not at the expense of public safety.” At the same time, civil rights advocates have grown frustrated over the pace of reform. In March, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — where Gupta served as president from 2017 to 2021 — wrote that the Biden administration “has failed to deliver on its campaign promis- es to enact true accountability and transformative change.” The report praised Garland for reinstating consent decrees and allowing some prisoners to remain on home confinement after the end of the coronavirus pan- demic emergency. But it said the administration “must do much more to prioritize policies and agency changes that would end harms caused by the federal criminal-legal system.” Advocates across the country have petitioned Justice to open more police investigations. Last fall, Roc Nation, the social justice group founded by entertainment mogul Jay-Z, published an open letter addressed to Gupta in major newspapers, pleading for a federal probe into the police department in Kansas City, Kan., o ver decades of alleged misconduct by former detectives. Justice officials said they review all requests and consider a host of factors, including media reports and public records, before making decisions. Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, praised Justice officials for successfully prosecuting three

former Minneapolis officers in February for violating George Floyd’s civil rights. But he pointed to the lack of federal charges in the police killings of Taylor and of Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl in Columbus, Ohio, who was shot last year as she threat- ened to stab a housemate. The sole officer charged by Kentucky state prosecutors in connection with Taylor’s shooting was acquitted in March of endan- gering her neighbors. At the request of Columbus officials, the Justice Department is conducting a review of the city’s police policies. But that probe is being handled by the Office of Community Oriented Policing, which lacks litigation authority. “Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and in that category, we knew it would take some time,” Mitchell said. “But progress has moved at a glacial pace.”

The struggle to build trust Garland views bolstering public trust in police as crucial to developing effective crime-fight- ing strategies, a lesson he says he learned while prosecuting violent drug crimes as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s. “You can’t get witnesses to tes- tify if they don’t trust the police,” Garland said. “We speak to police agencies constantly here ... because our whole model for pro- tecting the community is partnership.” Wade Henderson, who served as interim president of the Lead- ership Conference until stepping down in April, said civil rights leaders remain supportive of Jus- tice’s efforts. After an internal policy review led by Deputy Attor- ney General Lisa O. Monaco, the department banned federal agents from using chokeholds in most cases and began requiring them to wear body cameras on preplanned operations, hoping to

set an example for local police agencies. Garland “acknowledged that his hope going forward is that they would be able to address some of the issues our report has identified,” Henderson said. He added that “there is a recognition that Congress is a barrier to ad- dressing many of those concerns.” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the civil rights division, said the department has been strategic in weighing opportunities for pattern-or-practice investigations, which are resource-intensive and typically take up to 18 months to complete. She noted that investigators are probing departments that range in size from Phoenix, with 2,775 officers, to Mount Ver- non, N.Y., with just 200 — suggest- ing the approach sends a message that no jurisdiction is outside the scope of federal scrutiny. “I don’t think we can ignore the moment,” said Clarke, who previ- ously served as head of the Law- yers’ Committee for Civil Rights and, like Gupta, faced nearly unanimous opposition from Re- publicans over her nomination. “We are on the heels of some of the largest demonstrations and protests that we’ve seen in modern history. I understand the sense of urgency.” The federal investigations have had mixed results, taking years to complete and costing local jurisdictions millions of dollars in fees for federal monitors. Last fall, Garland announced new rules to cap costs and limit the length of the consent decrees, hoping to bolster public confidence. “I always try to tamp down expectations,” Gupta said. “At the press conferences, I say, ‘Change doesn’t happen overnight.’ ... Ulti- mately, the work has to happen in local communities, and folks have to be committed for the long haul.” One example is the partnership formed by the Los Angeles police and civic activist Connie Rice, who helped represent Rodney King’s family after his death in

During Gupta’s trip to Los
Angeles, Rice described how she
spent years suing the police in
court before shifting strategies
and pursuing projects with police
leadership. Those efforts helped
lead to the launch of the Commu-
nity Safety Partnership in 2010, in
which officers provided addition-
al services to public housing resi-
dents as a way to build trust.
In an interview, Rice called the
Justice Department’s efforts at
collaboration “the art of the possi-
ble at a time when we’re not able
to get anything done” in Con-
gress.
“This is about the hearts and
minds of policing — and no court
order can change that. It has to be
done by cops,” Rice said. “We have
to become partners with the peo-
ple who have the cultural and
professional and internal clout
and influence to point the depart-
ment in a different direction.”

In a polarized nation, Justice Dept. police reform depends on p artnership

ALLISON ZAUCHA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta in Los Angeles on April 26. Last month, Gupta u nveiled a police resource center c alled a “knowledge lab,” which is supposed to compile and distribute data on best practices to police agencies and the public.

Biden’s order on policing follows months of negotiations

since a sweeping policing over-
haul bill failed in Congress last
year. The bill was named for Floyd,
a Black man whose death under
the knee of a Minneapolis police
officer in 2020 prompted mass
social justice protests across the
country.
Civil rights leaders, police offi-
cials and family members of Floyd
and Breonna Taylor, a Black wom-
an killed by police in Louisville in
2020 , are expected to join the
president at the White House on
Wednesday for a 4 p.m. ceremony
at which the order will be signed.
“If you had asked me six
months ago, I would have said it’s
not time for an executive order yet
because we should be focused on
federal legislation, the George
Floyd bill in particular,” Damon
Hewitt, the president and execu-
tive director of the Lawyers’ Com-
mittee for Civil Rights Under Law,
said on Tuesday. “But once that
effort was sabotaged, the adminis-
tration has stepped up as much as
it could via executive action.”
Biden’s bid to act unilaterally
comes amid a rise in violent crime
and concern among civil rights
groups that the White House has
lost a sense of urgency around
police reform. Yet the president
has little direct authority over the
nation’s 18,000 state and local law
enforcement agencies. In addition
to setting new guidelines for fed-
eral officers, the executive order
aims to offer a template for the
broader policing community, ask-
ing state and local agencies to
embrace the document’s goals.
“It’s the nature of American po-
licing. We don’t have a national
police force, no national stan-
dards and no way of making every
department comply with national

POLICING FROM A

standards,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Exec- utive Research Forum, which has consulted with the White House on policing issues. “What this does is, when you don’t have Congress acting on a police bill, you have the president of the United States setting the tone: ‘Here’s what I expect of federal agencies and, therefore, I think state and local will follow.’ ” The executive order will au- thorize the Justice Department to use federal grant funding to encourage local police to tighten restrictions on the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants — steps that federal law enforcement agencies have already taken. It also will set new restrictions on the transfer of military equipment

to local law enforcement agencies, the White House officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the an- nouncement. The executive order also will say federal agents have a duty to intervene if they see other law enforcement officials using exces- sive force — language that echoes changes made by the Justice De- partment last week in its use-of- force policy, which was updated for the first time in 18 years. “We feel that this executive order should lay the groundwork for moving forward in a manner which will standardize training and procedures and hopefully standardize police across the country,” said Jim Pasco, executive

director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who was involved in negotiations with the White House and was briefed on the contents of the order. “And we hope it will be an element in heal- ing the rifts that exist in some places between police officers and the communities they serve.” The White House aides acknowledged that Biden does not have direct authority over local or state police. But they said the order will encourage all law enforcement agencies to participate in the new misconduct database and to adopt de-escalation policies similar to those federal agencies will put in place. “This empowers advocates on the ground to press for changes,”

one senior White House official said. Biden announced he would pursue police reform through executive authority last September after the collapse of the federal legislation, which would have banned chokeholds and no-knock warrants, prohibited racial profil- ing and eliminated qualified immunity for police officers. In a nation polarized over discussions of race and criminal justice, however, negotiations were fraught. Police groups denounced a leaked draft in January that said, in a preamble, that there was “systemic racism” in the criminal justice system. Pasco said the final version of the order includes “allusions to racism.” “But it’s all in the manner in which it was presented,” he said. “Significant changes have been made in the phrasing, in the policy statement.” The senior White House official said the executive order went through several iterations based on broad input from police groups and civil rights advocates. Asked whether the language in the preamble had changed, this official said the document “does not hide from the truth — that we need reform in policing and in the larg- er criminal justice system.” “That includes systemic racism,” the official said. “The president has spoken to that before. We’re not hiding from that, not backtracking off that.” The White House does not have the power to make some changes long demanded by advocates, such as getting rid of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued individu- ally for misconduct and was in- cluded in the federal bill. Dozens

of statehouse bills that would eliminate such immunity have also been defeated. Other changes, like banning chokeholds or adopting stricter policies about when police can use force, similarly require action on the state or local level. But Marc Morial, a former New Orleans mayor who is president and chief executive of the Nation- al Urban League, called the order “a very important step.” “We recognize that this process is not going to be easy,” Morial said. “This is a long fight. I’m going to accept this first important step by the president because it’s a powerful statement, and it reflects what he can do with his own executive power.” Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Offi- cers Association, said the order will have the most direct impact on the nation’s 100,000 federal officers, given that Biden’s ability to act unilaterally on policies for local and state police is limited. But Cosme said the document could serve as a “national role model for all law enforcement around the country. We’ve en- gaged in hundreds of hours of discussions, and this can inspire people in the state and local departments to say: ‘This is what we need to do.’” He emphasized that the order will include sections aimed at pro- viding more support for officer wellness, including mental health, and officer recruitment and retention at a time when many departments are facing low morale and staffing shortages. “No officer wants anyone, not the suspect or the victim, to lose their life,” Cosme said. “We want the maximum safety for everyone in the country.”

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST Attorney Ben Crump, center left, and members of George Floyd’s family raise their fists at a news conference after meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris l ast May 25.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-25)

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