Too many routine police encounters are ending with unarmed citizens being killed, with people of color disproportionately being targeted. Two shocking videos released last week, one depicting the shooting death of an unarmed 13-year-old boy, underscore the need for a radical rethink of the way police forces in St. Louis and around the country respond on the streets. Instead of resisting reforms, politicians and police unions should recognize the problem and work to restore the public trust by holding cops accountable for their actions.
Most of the police officers involved in deadly shootings of unarmed civilians receive light disciplinary action or go unpunished entirely. Just as our democracy has come under threat in recent years, America’s system of law enforcement is also being threatened by a massive loss of trust.
When NFL players began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to bring attention to police violence against Black Americans, many vilified the players, missing the message entirely and instead focused on what they perceived as disrespect for the American flag. But the video last year of a uniformed police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd in Minneapolis for 9 minutes and 29 seconds — well past the point Floyd’s last breath had left his body — more than justifies the take-a-knee protest by Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players.
Final arguments begin today in the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for Floyd’s death. In terms of holding police accountable, that’s at least some measure of progress. A jury never even got to weigh in on the 2014 killing of teenager Michael Brown by former Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson.
But even video starkly depicting police abuse doesn’t necessarily mean officers will be held accountable. An acquittal of Chauvin would be certain to spark the same reaction of the deadly protests following the infamous Rodney King verdict in 1992.
In the past week, two more haunting videos have been released, one involving 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and the other showing 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago obeying police commands to show his hands before he is shot.
The need to restore the public’s trust in policing shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Pro-accountability is not anti-police. Republicans and Democrats alike should recognize the value in reforming a clearly broken law enforcement system.
State lawmakers in Missouri and Illinois should be working with leaders in their states’ urban and suburban cores to enact reforms to limit the presence of guns on the streets, make it easier to hold law enforcement accountable and improve relations with communities of color. And police chiefs across the country should be prioritizing better training and de-escalation tactics to prevent the next minor traffic stop from becoming a deadly encounter, further eroding the already-damaged image of the American police officer.
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
