“If we aren’t viewed as legitimate…we aren’t going to be effective,” Says Police Chief

Before Ferguson erupted into violent protest
against the police shooting of an unarmed man, Mike Davis
(pictured), then Police Chief for Brooklyn Park, Minnesota,
told
a survey of law enforcement professionals:

I think that the work we’ve done over the past 30 years has been
good, but some of the things we’ve done have only resulted in
ephemeral changes. Many of our historically challenged
neighborhoods are still structurally distressed. In our inner
cities—in Camden, Philadelphia, Minneapolis—look at who is being
killed. It’s young black males—the same people that most often view
the police as illegitimate.

Davis concluded, “If we aren’t viewed as legitimate in these
communities, we aren’t going to be effective.”

The comments by the former chief (now the director of Public
Safety at Northeastern University) were published in June of this
year in a roundup of professional opinion on Future
Trends in Policing compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum
(PERF) and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing
Services (COPS).

The rest of the publication is mostly devoted to gee-whiz
technology, evolving approaches to management issues, and some
strategic innovations including greater use of intelligence and
“predictive policing” (future crime, anybody?). There’s even some
worry about how courts will interpret the civil liberties
consequences of sticking cameras hither and yon.

But, in a short section that mostly quoted him, Chief Davis
voiced concern about legitimacy within the community. The
conclusion mentioned that he wasn’t the only law enforcement
professional to raise the issue.

In the last few years, police chiefs have been discussing the
ideas of “legitimacy” and “procedural justice” in policing. These
concepts have to do with the judgments that members of the public
make about their local police, and whether citizens believe they
are being treated fairly and respectfully by the police. Legitimacy
and procedural justice sometimes are seen as a new, high-powered
version of community policing.

The Justice Department’s COPS has already raised concerns about

militarized policing and police
encounters with dogs. Specifically, an analyst for COPS fretted
that garbing police in camouflage and allowing them to act as
occupation troops is ruining relations between law enforcement and
the people they supposedly serve. COPS also put together guidance
urging police officers to find means other than bullets for dealing
with family pets.

So some law enforcement professionals were aware of
problems even before Ferguson. Maybe recent events will spread the
wisdom—and lead to an attempt to rebuild legitimacy.