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A Blue Wall of Silence
With James J. Fyfe,
Professor of Criminal Justice, Temple University
Tuesday, July 3, 2001; 3 p.m. EDT
Prince George's County police officers shot and killed people at rates that exceeded those of nearly any other large police force in the United States from 1990 through 2000. Almost half the people targeted by police were unarmed. Police officials declared all of the shootings justified but kept details about them secret.
James J. Fyfe is a former New York City police officer and is now a professor of criminal justice and senior public policy research fellow at Temple University in Philadelphia. He has served on the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and is a former senior fellow of the Police Foundation and professor of justice at American University. Currently, he is directing a federally funded study of officers dismissed or forced to resign from the New York City Police Department.
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College Park, Maryland:
Prof. Fyfe,
Many factors obviously go into a pattern of misconduct, from excess use of weapons to slights. I'd like to hear your comments on how an attitude of distain for poor people or immigrants leads to misconduct. If such distain is key, then I wonder if there can be much optimism for the needed psychological and cultural change.
Thanks,
Cal
James J. Fyfe: Class and social differences are a real issue in policing, because new cops intearct with lots of people with whom they would not otherwise have contact,and whose cultures are often foreign to the police. This makes the police agency responsible for educating cops to culturaland social differences, and no police department is doing its job if it does not do this well. This is a problem, by the way, regardless of cops' backgrounds -- white officers from suburban backgrounds do not know much about inner city black culture, and young African-American cops often do not know much about other people of color. It is up to the police agency to educate and sensitize cops, but they cannot always eliminate prejudice. All they can do is see that prejudices are not acted out.
Bladensburg MD:
Is Prince Georges County an unusually bad police department, or are most police departments engaging in behavior that would pretty well shock civilians? The marathon interogations and the apparently casual shootings, the cover-ups, is this what we have to expect out of the people we hire to deal with criminals and protect society?
James J. Fyfe: A good question. There are about 20,000 US police departments, and their quality varies enormously. We tend to read and hear about the bad ones and, in working on about 600 civil rights cases involving police, I have come to see that problems are fcused in a relatively few agencies. Much of this has to do with the nature of the community -- in proseperous and homogenous suburbs, police have only one set of expectations to meet. In places like the District and PG, however, policing is a real challenge because the communities are so diverse, cultural conflict, and the cops oftenm have littelin common with those they police. All that said, I am pretty disppointedf that PG has apparently not come further than it has. Controversy about policing has been common there since at least the 1960s.
Washington, DC:
Do current training programs place an unrealistic emphasis on dangers to officers, making them hyper-vigilant and overactive?
Is there a lack of training on steps officers can take to prevent putting themselves in harms way by contributing to the creation of a scenario that may require the use of force?
Are officers trained in making an accurate threat assessment?
James J. Fyfe: This is a great question. The answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Policing is far less danbgerous than we and the police have been led to believe. About one in 8,000 officers is murdered at work every year,one one cop is murdered by a motorist about once in every 135,000 person years pof policing. Any construction, fishoing, bartending, cabdriving, firefighting, and sanitation work are all much more dangerous than policing.
Yet, many training programs focus almost exclusively on "officer survival" and the like. This leads impressionable young officers to believe that they are patrolling Kosovo rather than US streets. This leads them to be overly aggressive, and to perceive danger wherher there is none. Without going into a lot of detail, the best way to train officers to deal with the risks of the street is to present them realistically rather than to exaggerate them , and to teach officers tactics that keep them out of harm's way without offending citizens. Some agencies do that much better than others, anbd it shpws in thenumbers see Sunday's Post)
Sunnyvale, California:
Has any study ever been conducted to
determine the number of times, nationwide,
officers kill an obviously dangerous
person, thereby saving lives of the public,
versus killing unarmed and uncharged
persons to protect the lives of officers?
In other words, on balance, do police
shootings relatively increase or decrease
the threat of violent death to the average
citizen?
James J. Fyfe: Another good question. I published a study in 1979 which showed that NYPD was able to reduce the number of police shootings by imposing some realistic guidelines on officers' discretion. This eliminated shootings that were not clearly in defense of the lives of officers or other innocent persons, and had no effects on the safety of officers or the public, or on crime rates or any measure of police effectiveness. It did not eliminate allmistakes, however. Thus, the short answer is that there is little or no relationship between the number of people police shoot and how safe they or the public are. Since the most important police job is to protect life, this puts the police under a responsibility to use their guns as little as possible.
Mount Rainier:
What is the most effective way to bring a rogue department under control? How can we encourage good cops to stay? How can we identify and get rid of bad cops? And how can we convince the police hierarchy to stop sweeping stuff under the rug?
James J. Fyfe: If citizens are apathetic or divided, they have little impact on police policies, and police agencies tend to make it up as they go along. Thus, the most important control on the police is a community that lets the department know what it wants, and that it will not tolerate anything else. This means that you need strong elected officials who are willing to take on the police when necessary. One of the most important things that the public and politicanscan do on this point is to insist that police report fully and publicly on any controversial matter. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Finally, I think that civil suits that challenge police policies and practices, and that dent the public treasury are a great way to get the message across that misconduct willnot be tolerated.
Washington DC:
Police Officers are persons with authority to handle crisis in the community, if this is the case how come so many officers pull their guns to shoot before trying to handle situations?
How come the officers who pull their guns so fast are white?
Why isn't proper training given to both white and black officers concerning mentally ill patients and homeless people?
Why aren't officers given training concerning people of different backgrounds?
Apparently many white officers pull their guns for any given situations why isn't training given regarding precautions of these type of situations?
I am a criminal justice major with a masters in community counseling, in my classes with officers in undergraduate school, a lot of the officers thought that in order to handle a situation and because the officers is a cop they could handle situations any way they so please whether pulling their guns to show authority or playing the bully cop to show power. Today's streets are not designed for neither the bully cop or the authoritative cop with a badge. Officers need to learn how to deal with situations on a psychological perspective. by that I mean talk a person through a situation or assist a person in need through situations. An intelligent way of pursuing individuals and the violence would never even come into play. Cops today feel pulling that gun is justified when it is not.
James J. Fyfe: A cop's most important skill is the aboility to defuse violence, rather than to escalate it by relying too quickly on guns or other force. This is not an esay skill to teach, and I simply do not believe that most police agencies do a good enough job preparing cops to do their work with as little force as necessary. Even today, most police departments send impressionable, inexperienced, and naive young officers to six months or less of formal training, and then expect them to be street level experts. That is simply unrealistic. The situations a cop faces are much more challenging than those faced social workers or school teachers, but cops are much more porly trained than either. I believe Being a GOOD patrol officer in a diverse US jurisdaiction is far more challenging than being an FBI agent -- but we continue to belive that a GED and six months in the academy are enough to prepare one to make decisions that mmay take lives and cause riots. No way. As long as we continue to believe that,we will have wrongful deaths and riots caused by police action.
The argument that it is only white cops who pull their guns too quickly, by the way, is not borne out by the data. Virtually all the research shows that there is little or no difference in the propensity of white or black, male or female officers to use force, including guns. Still, most of the controversial police incidents involve white cops, simply because most cops are white.
LAPD is a good case in point. Just before the Rodeny King incodent, scholar George Felkenes didaa study of the attitudes of LAPD cops tword their work and the public. He found that, regardless of race or gender, they all felt pretty much the same way -- that thecops regarded the public as lowlifes and thought of themselves as an under appareciated thin blue line. That showd me that the LAPd culturewas so stroing that it overwhelmed individual differences among offoicers.
Cottage City, Maryland:
The cops are saying they have to protect themselves. And the department is saying all these shootings are in self-defense. Yet a lot of these people being shot are not armed at all, and the cops are frequently going into the situation knowing what they have to deal with. How can the department justify so many shootings? The cops are murdering people who aren't guilty of ANYTHING.
James J. Fyfe: A common problem among police officials is that, having provided cops with inadequate preparation to do the job without unnecessarily hurting people, they then feel compelled to "support" their officers when things go wrong and somebody is unnecessarily hurt.
In other words, if you do not properly train people to do the job without causing unnecssary bloodshed, you can't blame them when they make mistakes. We need to rethink the whole issue of police policy and training,and to redefine what good police work is. Lots of proggrss has been made in that areawhere, for examp,e, hostage and barricade situations are concerned. My old colleague, Frank Bolz of the NYPD, resolved nearly 300 hostage and barricade situation without any injury to anybody -- citizen, cop, or suspect. He did that because he knew pe]=recsiely what he wanted tpo accomplish -- ending these situations without bloodshed -- and he did everuything possible to do so
Washington, DC:
When do you think officers of the law started to think that it was okay for them to play God? I know that officers of the law have always had a disciplinary role, but they did not always have to resort to gunfire to take control of a situation. In my opinion shooting an unarmed man is just plain unacceptable and an officer at least should lose their badge. If this rule had held true than many many lives would have been spared these past couple years, especially in Prince George's county. And the thought that officers who have constantly been violent get raises is beyond me. If we can not even count on officers of the law to serve and protect who the hell can we count on? The way things are starting to look pretty soon its going to be every man for themselves. The bottom line is people are loosing a lot of trust in the police department and until things change respect for officers is going to consitantly decline causing crime to increase. What do you think needs to be done in order for officers of the law to get the point that their behavior is unacceptable and will not, under any circumstances, be tolerated?
James J. Fyfe: I was a cop for 16 years, and have worked with them for 22 more. Most cops do not come into the work with a God-complex. Instead, in many departments, they are poorly trained and not sensitized to their role. As a consequence, some come to learn that the easy way out of tough situations is to deal with them quickly and forcibly. This is not true of the great majority of cops, but those who do follow this "kick butt" creed damage the community and the police immeasurably. I believe that we need to redefine the cop's job -- which, in terms of the need for employees to make important decisions, is much more like that of assistant prosecutors, socialworkers and teachers than it is like the firefiughters and sanitation workers to whom we usually compare police. Once we do that, we will see that we need to greatly improve police training.
On a final point: it is almost certain that the police today use force MUCH less than they did a generation ago. What has changed is that we are much more aware of how much police use force, and are much less tolerant of needless force. That is a good thing
Rockville, MD:
Is anybody supporting the law enforcement officers in these situations besides their own? Are the findings in Prince George's County a result of media spotlight on a few bad apples? I'm distraught and mistrustful of the media considering their generally unsubstantiated "statistical findings" on juvenile crime and police misconduct. Any comments?
James J. Fyfe: I see that "bad apple" problem this way -- in every police agency, the great majority of officers know the law and the rules and do their best not to violate either. In those same agencies, however, there is a small percentrage of cops who, frankly, should not be in the job. In every police agency, everybody knows who these bad apples are -- but, in most police agencies,nobody is willing to do anything about them. Consider the Rodney King incident: it is true that four bad cops beat up Mr. King. How were they able to do this without being reported -- or stopped -- by any of the 20 or mpore "good" copswho were on the scene?
Sure, there are bad apples in policing. But, until the police and officials who know who the bad apples are deal with them, ALL police can expect to be tarred by the accusations against them. Read some of the Post shooting accounts again. Assuming they are accurate, how can any "good cop" say that some of these events were justifiable?
SE DC:
While I am sympathetic to the dangers faced by police officers, many times they use the self-defense argument to justify the incident, even when the "victim" turns out to be unarmed. My problem with that is that they are being PAID to willfully subject themselves to that danger, and should be held to a much highter standard than the citizens they are sworn to protect. The burden should be on the officer to justify the shooting, beating, what have you, rather than the other way around. "Protect and Serve" is a nice motto, but the officers in the news lately seem to think that they have permission to use this excessive force.
James J. Fyfe: I have trained a lot of cops, and have always told then that they are not paid enough to be hurt at work. This doesn't mean, however, that they should take preemptive action to eliminate any potential danger. It does mean that they need to employ tactics that keep them out of harm's way, and that they do not have to let the other guy get off the first shot before they are authorized to shoot back. The great majority of cops understand this, but some are "badge heavy" and must be corrected or put out of the police service.
The officers in the news are the exception, and that is why they are newsworthy.
Alexandria, VA:
As a former police officer yourself, wouldn't you say that the split-second decisions you had to make were among the most crucial? I don't see how we - the public, the citizens - should expect police officers to wait until shot at to attempt to defend themselves and the lives of other citizens. Unarmed doesn't necessarily mean that the suspect is not implying to the officers that he/she is carrying a weapon.
James J. Fyfe: I agree with your premise, which is why I agr4eed last year to testify in defense of the NY officers who shot Amadou Diallo. Theirs was a terrible mistake, a train wreck, rather than a murder. There was plenty wrong with Mr. Diallo's death but, as most cops recognize, in those circumstances, anybody could easily have doen what those officers did.
That said, too many officers force unnecessary confrontations, and then have to make some split-second decision about how to get out of them without being hurt. A few e-mails ago, somebody asked about the police and the emotionally disturbed -- that's what typically happens in these cases. Ill-prepared and/or insensitive officers back an obviously disturbed man up against a wall at gunpoint and surround him. Then they are surprised when he tries to escape. But because they have surrounded him, he can only escape by running in the direction of one or mopre officers -- if he does this and has a knife or other weapoin in his hand, they pereceive themsleves to be in danger, and they make a "split-second decision" to shoot him. In such cases, split second decisions are the consequence of poor tactics and insensitivity. We need ti getoff the focus on the instant at which the cop pulls the trigger and to look more closely at how he or she got into that situation. If it was the result of bad tactics, we need to hold police accountable for taking lives unnecessarily.
Iowa City Iowa:
It saddens me to read about things like what is happening in Prince George County. I live in a community where police corruption runs rapant and just a few years ago we had a citizen gunned down by police, he was unarmend and working late at night on his own property. The Cop who did it was only fired and the city sued. Today the corruption most consists of cops being untruthful in their reports etc. I would like to know why, in times like these, it seems as though cops are allowed to do whatever they want, why are good things like Miranada watered down to such an extent as to have little effect anymore? Cops are allowed to kill without consequences it seems to me. They should have to serve jail time just as anyone else would. The bottom line is they are taking human lives with impunity. I would like to see this type of series done in other communities. I am sure D.C. is not the only place were cops are getting away with murder. It is almost at a point, if not at that point, where citizens seem to have to fear the police just as much, if not more than the criminals. I wonder, who is who? Thank you.
Mark A. Smith
Iowa City, IA
James J. Fyfe: It is very diffoicult to prosecute a cop for a line of duty shooting. To doso, a prosecutor must prove a negative -- that, at the instant he or she poulled the trigger, the officer did NOT reasonably perceive a threat to his or her safety. That's why, except in cases like Rodney King or Abner Louima (the Brooklyn toilet plunger case) where the evidence of bruatlity is absolutely clear, the best way to get rid of cops who use force unnecessarily is to fire them. Some police departments, I belive, are unwilling to do that because they belive that to do so reflects badly in the whole agency. This is a short sighted view that an active citizeny should not tolerate.
Officer Survival:
Does the recruitment policies of police officers also contribute to the "survival first" mentality? Many departments recruit former military members, especially those that may have tactical special training.
James J. Fyfe: I greatly fear the militarization of the police. Especially in smaller jurisdictions, it seems, I hear officers talking about "officer survival," "officer safety," "zones of safety," and other terms that were foreign to nme when I worked on New York streets. The hardware that has become available in recent years (especially since the end of the cold war, which I suspect is no coincidence) is also scary, because some young officers seem to be just itchoing for achance to try it out.
In the US, police have often overrelied on hardware -- on guns, radios, fingerprint equipment,911 systems. But the best police tool remains the street cops's ability to size up people and to interact with them in ways that make force unnecessary. Sometimes, this involves talking and,on other occasions, it involves cops who structure their confrontations with potentially violent people in ways that prevent the use of force.
When I was a new cop in 1963, I was trained to go to the doors of places in which robberies were reported in order to check them out. This virtually guaranteed that, if there was a robbery in progress, there would be a shooting becaue the robber would know that he would have to go through me to escape, and because I had made myself an easy target at the door. Today, cops are trained to covertly take positions of cover outside places in which robberies, to make very small targets of themselves (like on the street side of parked cars) and to wait for a few minutes to see if robbers run through the door to them. When this happens, shootings are rare because robbers see immediately that they are sitting ducks and that they have virtually no chance of winning against cops they can hardly see.
This is not a hardware issue. What we need to do is to convince young officers that brains are better than crazy-bravery and that the best outcomes to dangerous situations are are bloodless,and to reward them for putting these principles into play. In too many places, cops have gotten medals for winning gun duels, but have been ingnored when they have succeeded in avoiding gun duels. That should change.
PS I notice that I use the term "cop"an awful lot. Nobody should interpret that as a term of disrespect. Instead, it is a high accolade, and was the way my NYPD peers and I alwasy referred to the best among us.
washingtonpost.com:
Thanks for joining us today, James Fyfe. Any parting observations?
James J. Fyfe: The Post has done a great service with this series. There is no other paper that has shown so much intelligent concern about police use of force, and I am honored to have contributed to this discussion.
Excelsior!
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