We asked our Be the Bridge Training Team some questions regarding the history of policing and policing reform in the United States. We hope this provides a helpful resource for you as you navigate this topic internally and with your communities.
Can you provide an overview of the historical roots of policing in the United States, particularly in relation to communities of color?
Because police are so ubiquitous in our lives, it’s understandable that many assume it’s an institution that has always existed. While law enforcement of some variety has always existed in various forms, the modern conception of a professional police force has racial origins.
When America was a colony, policing was fairly informal. There were neighborhood watch groups and private, volunteer militias for instance. But the first police forces that were created were not called such, they were called slave patrols. Their job was to enforce enslavement. By law, white men had to serve their time upholding the system of slavery whether they owned slaves or not. The law also spelled out exactly what their role was – enforcing slave codes and utilizing corporal punishment. This was intentional, as it reinforced a social structure where white people were given power over Black people.
The slave patrols didn’t go away, they simply morphed in post-Civil War America. The slave codes were rewritten as Black codes, creating slavery under a different name, and upheld by these patrols. The Black codes were a way of usurping the 13th amendment and its provision that slavery could be used as punishment for a crime. They made laws that were hard to NOT break, and then were able to make arrests accordingly. They continued on with informal policing while building a criminal justice infrastructure, so groups such as the KKK did the work of enforcing the Black codes.
The violence the klan and other militias enacted led to federal troops being sent to the south. The south adjusted by abandoning Black codes and putting Jim Crow laws in place.
The north was much more influenced by European ideas, such as the Metropolitan Police Act that was passed in London in 1829. It created a police force whose job was far different from that of volunteer, informal militias. The new role of police officer would come with a militarized uniform and an expectation of patrolling the everyday lives of citizens to prevent crime. As this came to the shores of America, the social hierarchy enforced by northern police was only slightly different than in the south. While Black people were certainly surveyed and heavily policed, there were far fewer of them, so the focus was more on recent immigrant communities. This would change during the mid-1900’s with the Great Migration, and the focus of police in the north would shift to the newly arrived Black population.
How have historical injustices, such as slavery, segregation, and systemic racism, influenced the development and practices of law enforcement agencies in the US?
We see in history the role of slavery to influence police, but segregation would also increasingly play a role as those targeted by police were forced to live in segregated communities. This allowed the patrolling of everyday life by police to be focused on particular areas of the city – those where Black residents lived.
Police were utilized not just to uphold laws, but to uphold racial hierarchy. First through the enforcement of blatantly racist laws such as Jim Crow laws, but that focus on Black residents didn’t disappear when a law was repealed. That heavy focus and punitive response was part of the creation of a cycle of trauma and disenfranchisement for Black communities.
What are some key moments or events in history that have shaped the relationship between police and minority communities?
Today we think of high profile police shootings, but there have been a lot of events throughout history that directly impacted the way in which the Black community experienced police officers. The violence wasn’t always directly from the police, but was often a lack of response by police when Black families were being terrorized by the white residents in their community. Looking away (or participating in) as lynchings were occurring, not prosecuting those who bombed the homes of Black people moving into white neighborhoods, or standing by while white residents burned down a school that was allowed to integrate. It does not create a great relationship when a Black resident can be jailed for being unemployed while a white resident can commit murder without consequence.
In your opinion, how does the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws continue to manifest in policing practices today?
It’s incredibly hard to change the culture of a system or institution. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann have a great way of explaining this, calling it the construction of social reality. A system, in this case policing, is created via externalization of the values of the individuals founding it. We have briefly covered what that looked like. Once created, institutions take on a life of their own through what they call institutionalization. A culture is created, and a value system takes hold that no longer has to be a mirror of the beliefs of the individuals. It also, then, doesn’t progress at the same rate as the individuals and culture around it, but often continues to perpetuate the injustices it was set up to enforce.
The final piece of this construction though is internalization, and that is where the values of the institution are internalized by those who exist within it. Whether they want it to happen or not, as you exist within a system, you absorb what is around you. There are individuals within this system trying to push back, trying to make progress, but externalizing their beliefs into a system that has a strong culture and identity and has been around for a long time is a tall order.
We can see this play out in the professionalization of policing that occurs during the mid 20th century. Policing becomes a science, and the research and data used for how to police is drawn from crime statistics of the era – statistics that include racist laws that target communities of color. Assumptions of Black criminality influence training practices as well as beliefs of individual officers. Those assumptions are institutionalized into how police are trained and what is deemed normal policing behavior. Even if the officer joining the force doesn’t come in with those beliefs that are internalized by being part of this system, and then externalized back into it as they engage in this manner of policing.
This continues to play out in our modern era via excessive use of force, assumptions that a Black person is a threat that must be neutralized, stop and frisk, etc. But also legislatively with laws such as the Crime Bill of 1994 that would in many ways do the work of reinforcing the criminality of Black people in the way of Black codes and Jim Crow laws that preceded it did.
Can you discuss the concept of community policing and its potential to build trust and improve relations between law enforcement and marginalized communities?
Community policing is a broad term that means different things to different communities, but at its core is the conception of those enforcing laws being seen and experienced as fellow members of the community. Research on it has shown mixed results, largely because there are assumptions built into it that are too often left unaddressed.
It has potential in that it may humanize the inhabitants of a community to those in law enforcement. There is an accountability present when a community knows you and you see yourself as part of that community. It relies on what is known as proximity bias where people in positions of power tend to favor those who are more proximate to them. So community policing could positively impact the way officers interact with those they are policing.
At its core though, it doesn’t do the work of seeing, understanding, and addressing the long history that makes broader reform necessary. It has also been a championed model since the 1990’s, and I don’t think we are seeing the hoped for results.
What are some examples of successful initiatives or reforms aimed at reducing police brutality and promoting racial equity within policing?
Some of the best reforms have actually been in redirecting funds. San Francisco for instance redirected part of the police budget to crisis response teams so that mental and behavioral health issues could be handled by those who are specifically trained to do so, and aren’t showing up armed. Since 1 in 5 deaths of civilians by officers include someone having a mental health crisis, taking deadly force off the table and instead offering trained support could make a large difference if implemented more broadly.
We have also seen reforms be helpful surrounding issues such as qualified immunity, banning the use of deadly force, and laws that require the rendering of medical aid if a suspect needs it. While helpful, piecemeal reforms are challenging as they don’t address the history and culture of policing.
How can individuals, communities, and policymakers work together to address systemic issues within law enforcement and promote accountability?
It’s increasingly challenging to address these issues as they have been taken up by those who are comfortable with a firm partisan divide. Too often they are framed as supporting or not supporting the police. Our largely segregated lives mean we not only have different experiences with police, but don’t witness the experience of others until a video becomes viral. It is then picked apart and assumed to be an aberration rather than the culmination of events.
We need to engage in the work of reconciliation that allows us to truly see and hear one another. To engage the history, engage the feelings it brings up, and work together on what a path forward looks like that doesn’t just attempt to reform unjust systems, but rather makes amends for the wrongs of the past and builds just systems instead.
In your work, how do you center the voices and experiences of those most affected by police brutality and advocate for meaningful change?
We center the voices of the marginalized by having the first step in the reconciliation process be awareness. Awareness requires deep listening, and it hands a mic to those who have a story to tell. While hearts and minds are often cold to lists of statistics, it’s much harder to be unimpacted by someone sharing their personal experiences.
By centering the voices of those experiencing harm, you awaken those with a different lived experience to the homogeneity of their own circles, and privilege of their circumstances. We find that once people truly see it, with a disposition of humility and openness, they want to engage in advocacy. They don’t see how they could move forward any other way.
There are two words we like to use a lot in our work: mutuality and solidarity. We focus on creating communities where the lived experiences of the most marginalized are witnessed regularly by those in more privileged positions because they are living in mutuality. This produces solidarity that has the potential to lead to true systemic change.