Several slides into his PowerPoint presentation on police use of force, criminology professor Richard Rosenfeld gave a frustrated sigh and said no accurate information about officer-involved deaths exists in this country.
“We know next to nothing about police shootings,” said Rosenfeld, a professor at University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL.) “None of us know what we are talking about.”
On Monday, February 23, Rosenfeld was among more than 20 people who presented to the Missouri Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The 12-member committee’s goal was to hear testimony on civil rights concerns related to community and police interactions in Missouri.
On Wednesday, April 1, the committee held a conference call to discuss preliminary findings from the all-day meeting, held at UMSL. From what he heard from panelists, committee member David Rose, an UMSL professor, said it seems hotspot policing is not an effective strategy.
“We are getting too far away from community-based policing, and now we are suffering the effects of that,” Rose said.
The committee voted Wednesday to send an advisory memo to the U.S. commission, recommending that they look into eight areas of concern raised by the panelists. Those include insufficient data on police shootings, municipalities’ reliance on court fees to fund governments, and hotspot policing becoming a priority over community-based policing. All the recommendations aligned closely to what they heard from local community and academic leaders earlier this year.
In February, Rosenfeld joined three other area experts for the “academic panel.” Other panels included leaders from the community, law enforcement and government. And although Michael Brown Jr.’s death and the Ferguson unrest were central to the conversation, the overarching goal is to create a report of recommendations that would impact police interactions on a national scale.
Saint Louis University law professor Justin Hansford agreed with Rosenfeld that the faulty data from the F.B.I.’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program on deadly use of force makes it difficult to have a national conversation. A U.S. Commission representative said that building a national data system is an apparent first recommendation.
Marva Robinson, of the Association of Black Psychologists, said her organization’s members have been working on the ground in the Ferguson area to address “psychological stressors” that have impacted the community.
She said children are twice as likely to experience depression after a traumatic experience. “It will take a decade or more,” Robinson said, to address the trauma of seeing “militarized vehicles and smoke bombs” in their neighborhoods.
She pointed to a study that found police are more likely to see and treat African-American children as if they were four years older. This impacts their decisions on use of force, she said. Committee members said this study or idea should be included in police training.
Several community leaders spoke about police interactions in the community – including Pastor Traci Blackmon of Christ the King Church, James Clark of Better Family Life and Charli Cooksey of the Young Citizen’s Council of St. Louis.
Pamela Meanes, president of the National Bar Association, said her organization goes into the community to educate residents on their basic rights, including the right to remain silent and to not be detained unnecessarily. However, she said she must also speak to them about the reality for African-American residents – that they may do everything correctly and “still end up dead.”
“As an African-American lawyer, I should not have to go into a community of African-American children and educate them on their rights,” Meanes said, “but tell them in the same breath that they are not allowed to exercise those rights because there may be a fear or possibility that if they do that, they may not come home to their parents.”
She said the National Bar Association believes that legislation, training on de-escalating use of force and serious conversations about race are necessary steps to addressing the nation’s current crisis.
Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis City NAACP, Marius Johnson-Malone of Better Together St. Louis, Alfredo Chavez of Latinos in Axion and David Nehrt-Flores of the Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates also testified before the committee.
Policing community
Police chiefs from the St. Louis city and county police departments spoke about their strategies in addressing crime and improving community relations. Their speeches were similar to those they have given at recent meetings, including the Ferguson Commission and SLU Law symposium on February 20. They talked about their efforts to have officers “roll down windows” more and have more friendly interactions with residents.
They also both said that recruiting for minority officers was a top priority. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson said that more than 40 percent of their new recruits in 2014 were African-American. However, St. Louis County Police Chief Belmar said his department is struggling to find minority talent.
Less than 3 percent of Missouri Highway Patrol officers are African-American, said Colonel Ronald Replogle. Finding recruits for the patrol is also difficult, he said, because officers have to be willing to move anywhere in the state as part of their contract.
During Rosenfeld’s presentation, he spoke about Dotson’s claim recently that the Ferguson protests have caused crime to increase in the city. However, Rosenfeld said in his research, the number of homicides increased “well before” Brown’s death.
Capt. Mary Edwards-Fears, of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police, spoke about the need for more transparency.
She said if there is one thing that the Ferguson unrest has taught them, it’s that, “people will not tolerate being kept out of the information loop,” especially regarding use of force.
Residents also had an opportunity to speak, and that allowed committee members to get a “full picture” of the civil rights violations across the state regarding use of force, said committee chairman S. David Mitchell.
“The real goal, to be honest, is not to be ‘let’s blame the police,’” he said, “but to come up with something so that we can address what seems to be a deep-seated problem.”
