Welcome to the class blog! The John Jay - Vera Fellows Program is a collaborative effort between John Jay College and the spin-off agencies of the Vera Institute of Justice, combining an internship and participation in a seminar taught by faculty from John Jay's Interdisciplinary Studies Program. (To see a video about the John Jay - Vera Fellows Program, click here.) Part of the seminar experience is weekly participation in the class blog, which keeps the conversation going from week to week and will be a place for you to share your thoughts and concerns about the materials discussed in seminar as well as the internship experience. The opinions expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Vera Institute of Justice or its spin-off organizations. While the blog is open to the public and anyone, theoretically, can comment, only class members and invited guests will be able to post. You can also look for us on our student and alumni page on Facebook.
Each student has been assigned one week to write the "post." Please post within 24 hours after class. Every week, each student must comment on the post (feel free to comment more than once). Please comment by Monday afternoon to allow time for further questions and responses and so that we can read all the entries before class.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Alex's Post

As fate would have it, I have been the first "poster" during the previous semester and am the final poster this year, so I have been lucky enough to start and end this year's blog. I hope I will do it justice.

We discussed in class several ways to minimize the a critical social justice issue from occurring: police brutality. It is unlikely that the problem will ever go away, because it is inherently tied in with someone's temper and hence can never be completely preventable, but we were able to come up with several changes that can help prevent further occurrences of brutality:
-identify under which circumstances instances of brutality most likely occur, allowing the NYPD to try different approaches to policing such as with domestic disturbances
-changing the Compstat system
-creating workshops for the police and the public to teach them how to better interact with one another
-trying to create, or reestablish the respect between police and high-crime neighborhoods
-increasing the relations between the police and high-crime neighborhoods to lessen the stress experienced by police when they go into the neighborhood, hopefully allowing things to not get out of hand due to tempers

Personally, while I understand one very important aspect to solving the problem is fully understanding it, I believe the key to decreasing police brutality is to increase how well an officer knows the neighborhood he or she is policing. If an officer grew up in the area they police, he or she will feel comfortable in the neighborhood, high-crime rate or not, or at least be more comfortable than other unfamiliar officers would be. Such a familiarity would decrease the chances brutality would occur because the officer would not be under excessive stress, the officer is more likely to know the people he or she interacts with--lessening the chances of brutality further--and the people would know the officer increasing the chances of cooperation so long as there is no personal animosity between them.

Has anyone came up with any more solutions?
Posted by at

9 comments:

Jessica Rivera said...

Dear Alex,


Great class!

Although I didn't say anything in this class, I did have a lot of answers to your question. Being raised in East New York in the early 90s I am sure we all know the various types of crimes that came about in this area. For those who don't know, this area was filled with gang wars, drug dealing, various amounts of domestic abuse occurring like clock work, and worse, little to no help of officers coming into the neighborhood and trying to defuse situations. I must say, for the 5years I lived there it shocked me to know that American's even looked up to officers, for me it was the opposite, I loathed them. From what I saw, it was officers being on friendly terms with the criminal and letting them go, it was horrible. Now perhaps this happened because the criminals were minorities and the officers too, were minorities, but still, how can one forget the oath they took in becoming an officer and promising to pursue justice? It's mind blowing.

Well to cut this short, all I saw were friendly interactions with the police and criminals and I just thought this needs to change. However, when my mom became a victim of domestic abuse, what killed me more was to see the officer do nothing for my mom and let my dad get off the hook, just because the officer and my dad were of the same ethnicity. To know that happened just made me lose total respect for these officers; perhaps this perception will change later in life, but as for now, I just feel unless there isn't a WHOLE change with in law enforcement, all is lost.

I know my recommendation to re-change the whole law enforcement system is too vague, but I can't see any part of it improving, I just feel all of it needs to start from scratch.

Once again thanks for the class, sorry if my recommendation is far from reality (if it is).

May 15, 2011 at 2:06 PM
Katie Spoerer said...

I can see where it would make sense for a PO to have a beat within the neighborhood that they grew up in but I see a problem with this. I feel as though this could open more doors to corruption. Individuals that the PO knows might begin to expect to be let off the hook, or to get special treatment. My understanding is that not only are PO not supposed to take any free food, gifts, etc. and I can imagine that this might be difficult at times; the added pressure of favors, and such coming from friends or life long acquaintances would probably only make the situation worse. I know teachers who often avoid living in the town that they teach in and I would imagine that the reason for this is to avoid seeing people that are part of their professional life. I think it is important to separate your personal life from your professional life and if your beat is located in an area related to your personally life it might make your job unnecessarily more difficult.

In countries around the world the qualifications to be on their police force are much higher than they are in the U.S. The age to become a police office also is typically higher. And most importantly, at least in my view, the transition when someone is promoted is longer and involves actual training. In the U.S. it is not uncommon, or more likely the norm, for someone to be given a promotion with essentially no training on how to be in a managerial position. This is a huge problem. Imagine if an intern in the ER was promoted to being the head doctor without training, clearly this would be catastrophic. I huge problem with our police force is the low standards that we set in order to join the police force and climb the ladder.

So I guess to answer your question Alex another plausible solution to decrease the amount of police brutality would be to increase the credentials to become a police officer, increase the amount of training an entering police officer receives (which should be specific to the area that the cop is going to be working in, this is another problem, some training facilities are not even located in the same state as where the police officer will be working and as a result their training is not tailored to the area they will be working in), and to increase training when someone is promoted.

May 15, 2011 at 3:53 PM
Alex.nechayev said...

An overhaul of the entire police structure is of course, as many of the proposed solutions to the problems we have discussed this semester, a good but unrealistic, and yes vague, solution. But as we discussed, I think, an identified issue is a solvable one. So perhaps if we identify each singular flaw within the system we may, one day, overhaul the entire system.

Katie, both good points. I had considered the possibility of corruption but not the favor part. In regards to the first I suspect there may be a problem of being a corrupt cop in a neighborhood which thoroughly knows you. Gossip spreads fast and I suspect such news will not stay quiet too long. The favor part, however, I believe may cause problems.

Your suggestion may certainly work. A psychological evaluation of any officers during the training is a good idea as it would weed out those prone to commit acts of brutality. Training would also be beneficial teaching officers how to keep their cool under pressure--I suspect that such training probably takes place but more would only be for the best.

May 15, 2011 at 5:18 PM
Nadiya said...

Wonderful class Alex! And a nice conclusion to the Vera Fellowship Seminar!

I agree with Katie that we need to increase requirements for those who want to become police officers. It is important to include some psychology (e.g. social work) classes in their curriculum. It would help them to learn how to deal with the diverse population of the U. S., and especially of NY.

I value Katie’s point about bribery and favors (that might or might not occur). But I like Alex’s idea that police officers should patrol the neighborhood they live in. I would like to use Japan as an example where police officers live and work in the same neighborhood. In Japan, they regularly visit residents’ apartment and receive their feedback on the safety of the community they live in. Also, if a new person moves into the neighborhood, she needs to register with a local police office and provide her basic information (e.g. her name, age, place she works at, and others) to a police officer who is responsible for safety of the neighborhood. Japan uses community policing for many decades; therefore, the level of crimes is very low in this country. Definitely, one may argue that community policing has nothing to do with police brutality. But I think that relation is evident: the lower crime level is, the less incidents of police brutality occur.

May 15, 2011 at 6:31 PM
Anonymous said...

Great class Alex!

I agree with your statement: "Personally, while I understand one very important aspect to solving the problem is fully understanding it, I believe the key to decreasing police brutality is to increase how well an officer knows the neighborhood he or she is policing." Familiarity does have great potential to help in that regard.

I have a question: do you think officers would be more willing to police the neighborhoods in which they grew up or more averse to it?

May 15, 2011 at 6:59 PM
Professor Reitz said...

A question for Jamie: you said in seminar that part of your perspective on this question was shaped by being the daughter of a police officer. Do you think community policing would help lessen incidents of police brutality? Does that make psychological sense to you when you think of the mindset of the police officer, the stresses of that job and the kinds of responsibilities they have?

I've been going back in my mind to Lenny's point that so much of the extreme end of the spectrum of police response (brutality) is related to the prevalence of guns on our streets. My personal beliefs about how to address criminal justice problems are admittedly extreme (I believe in decriminalizing drugs and outlawing guns) and as unlikely as Jessica's call for "starting from scratch." But I don't think a solution which does not deal with the factor of potential gun violence (so much deadly force just floating around out there) can help. I was wondering if there are any virtual solutions. In the same way that the military uses video games now to train soldiers to deal with the new realities of war (and perhaps to create more problems, but that is for another class), they also use video games to help soldiers recover from PTSD. I see police brutality as having some similarities with PTSD. Maybe there could be ongoing virtual programs that help police process their experiences in a way that keeps them from making horrible decisions in the field.

May 16, 2011 at 11:41 AM
Prof. Stein said...

Thanks for a great class, Alex. I wanted to respond to a few things that have been proposed as potential solutions, and one or two that have not.

New York City does require officers to live in one of the five boroughs or a surrounding county once they are accepted onto the force. (The geographical range was slightly expanded when police officers complained that they could not afford to live in the city proper.) Many jurisdictions have similar requirements for police officers.

Prospective officers are screened with the MMPI (The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) to, among other things, determine their vulnerability to environmental stressors and their ability mange anger. The test, though, is only a rough screening device that tends to “catch” extreme cases.

Although some of the research has been contradictory, the effect of a college education has been reported to increase professionalism among police officers, in particular with regards to measures of dogmatism, authoritarianism, and views toward people considered “deviant”. Even more importantly, education lessens the degree to which officers feel that organizational loyalty should be measured by silence in the face of fellow officers’ misbehavior. While a college education has not yet been statistically demonstrated to decrease brutality, it seems to me that proceeding in the general context of greater flexibility of attitude and the broader examination of options that college seems to impart might lessen the frequency of resort to violence.

In a more prosaic mold, I learned in class-particularly from Katie-how the most vaunted tools of enforcement (e.g. Compstat; “broken windows” policing) can contravene attempts at more credible methods that examine individual accountability. When arrest is exclusively a quota game (with punishments affixed for low numbers) then crime climbs, the wrong people are fingered, and tensions on both sides grow to incendiary levels. We birth an environment that is likely to push individual cops and citizens to the wall, acting out the anger of their citizen fellows.

May 16, 2011 at 12:49 PM
Alisse Waterston said...

I still think we need to know what already exists or has been documented to “work” in terms of these policy and practice solutions, and understand the political economy of why these are not more fully support before we propose solutions. Professor Stein is directing us towards this process by pointing out existing policy and/or research on specific aspects of the issue at hand. This is not to discourage creativity, but it is to encourage that we have a good handle on what are the actual obstacles so we’re not naïve in our proposed solutions.

In light of the great discussion in class (thanks Alex!) and on this blog, I share with you two provocative quotations from David Cole in the hope it will inspire you to read his classic book, “No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System” which is a rich, rigorously examined, data-driven assessment of just these issues.

Quotation 1:
As any wise ruler knows (and many ineffective despots learn), the most effective way to govern is not through brute force or terror, but by fostering broad social acceptance for one’s policies. Where a community accepts the social rules as legitimate, the rules will be largely self-enforcing. Studies have found that most people obey the law not because they fear formal punishment—the risk of actually being apprehended and punished is infinitesimal for all crimes other than murder—but because they and their peers have accepted and internalized the rules, and because they do not want to let their community down. The rules will be accepted, and community pressure to conform will be effective, only to the extent that “the community” believes that the rules are just and that the authority behind them is legitimate. Thus, although the double standards I discuss in this book were adopted for the purpose of reducing the costs of crime associated with protecting constitutional rights, I argue that in the end they undermine the criminal justice system’s legitimacy, and thereby increase crime and its attendant costs.”

Quotation 2:
“I argue that while our criminal justice system is explicitly based on the premise and promise of equality before the law, the administration of criminal law—whether by the officer on the beat, the legislature, or the Supreme Court—is in fact predicated on the exploitation of inequality. My claim is not simply that we have ignored inequality’s effects within the criminal justice system, nor that we have tried but failed to achieve equality there. Rather, I contend that our criminal justice system affirmatively depends on inequality. Absent race and class disparities, the privileged among us could not enjoy as much constitutional protection of our liberties as we do; and without those disparities, we could not afford the policy of mass incarceration that we have pursued over the past two decades.”

May 16, 2011 at 5:42 PM
Chad Infante said...

Great class Alex.

I think your last point about police officers policing their own community is a wonderful idea. I never really thought about it that way, particularly in an urban setting. It would even make more sense when one adopts a “community policing” style that uses people from the actual community rather than police officers from different locations. While this is by no means an easy task, I like that idea.

I also think that just a general air of mutual respect goes a long way to bridging gaps. The police need to take an active interest in addressing the issues of areas that they dislike, and those areas need to open themselves to the possibility that the police is there to help rather than harm. Hopefully this could aid in helping to prevent police brutality.

Unfortunately this is the last time I will be saying: Chad Out!!!!

May 16, 2011 at 11:46 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)