Introduction
These are chaotic times marked by political, economic, and social upheavals that have resulted in war, genocide, mass refugee resettlement, and global and regional terrorism. Between the time of ideation of this book (2018) and its edition, international events seem to support our questioning about policing in an age of reform. As we begin this journey, we point out that simply living in an age of reform may or may not call for police reform. But, it does mean that the police institution is impacted by political, social, economic, and environmental turmoil in ways that impend over its stability. The French yellow vests ongoing protest could be seen as a first relevant incentive. As we wrote and collected colleagues’ papers, a global pandemic killed thousands, and may threaten the long-term economic stability of the world. At the time we concluded this book, a “defund the police” trend was spreading in the United States following George Floyd’s death, which also sparked worldwide a diffuse movement coalescing anti-racism, social inequality, and also various obvious political agendas. It only confirmed our stance that the police, as an institution, does not stand isolated from these events or from the many other institutions bearing the brunt of their combined force.
Later in this chapter, we describe varying perspectives on police reform. But first, the authors will briefly and broadly describe the conditions under which reform of the police is considered in Great Britain, the United States, and France.
Conditions for Reform in Great Britain
For people in Great Britain the impact of contemporary events has been profound. In March 2020, the British prime minister in a bold effort to combat the COVID-19 viral pandemic introduced what looked to many citizens very much like martial law (It is important to clarify that Britain was not under martial law, there were no troops on the street and the country was still fully under the control of a democratically elected government). Everyone in Britain was ordered to remain at home, to stay indoors and only to venture out to buy essential items such as food or medicine. The public was informed that these measures were mandatory not advisory and that the police had been given instructions to take enforcement action in the event of non-compliance. At the same time as these restrictions were being announced, very similar curtailments on citizens’ lives were being implemented by governments across Europe, most notably in France, Italy, and Spain.
These sudden policy changes had major implications for policing in Britain. There is no national police force in Britain, policing continues to be delivered by a multiplicity of separate regional and provincial forces. Many are small, deploying only a thousand or so police officers. Police officers in Britain are still largely unarmed, an arrangement that most officers wish to continue. Unlike neighbouring countries in Europe, Britain’s police forces are not backed up by a fully armed quasi-military force such as a gendarmerie, carabinieri, or civil guard. Police numbers in Britain have reduced by 20,000 over the period 2009–2016 (Disney & Simpson, 2017) and the country has a very small standing army. So, for police leaders in Britain as well as the British public the imposition of effective martial law by the government had some major implications. It quickly became clear that the police in Britain had neither the resources nor the intention of maintaining this martial law-lite by force or coercion. The aim was to use the well-honed policing techniques of politeness and persuasion, a markedly different approach to that being used in some countries in Europe where rigorous enforcement was the preferred tactic from the start. This approach had further relevance after the incidents of public disorder in London, Bristol and elsewhere in Britain that followed directly from the televised killing of George Floyd, a black man by police in Minnesota, USA on 25 May 2020. This highly controversial incident occurred while Britain was still under strict restrictions on public movement introduced to suppress the global pandemic. Nevertheless, crowds of disorderly and often violent protestors assembled in Central London where officers were violently attacked, property was damaged, and public monuments defaced. In the city of Bristol police officers stood by and watched as the mob toppled a statue and threw it into the nearby river Avon. Such lawlessness and inaction by the police was applauded by liberal news outlets and left-wing politicians. For many in Britain though these events provided an ugly portent of violence and political instability still to come. Under mob rule no one is safe and no property is secure.
It is too early to predict how these drastic changes may affect the longer-term relationship between the British public and their police. With falling numbers and shrinking budgets both police and the public have been forced to adapt to a shrinking police presence on the streets. That said, crime rates in Britain continue in the main to follow a downward trajectory (Crime in England & Wales, 2019). While there have been more recent upward trends in knife crime, firearms offences, and fraud, there are reasons to be optimistic about the ongoing police capability in reducing and suppressing crime. Where the system is quite clearly letting down the public is in the political prioritising of police resources. The introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) in 2012 was an initiative by the government that intended to democratise policing and increase local accountability. In reality these positions have been quickly monopolised by placemen and women installed by the main political parties. These party hacks take their lead from national politicians and offer nothing but banal platitudes to voters. Inevitably this leads to an absence of local leadership and the entrenchment of a political structure that draws vital funds away from operational capabilities and funnels them into bureaucracy and partisan politicking. As the events briefly outlined above serve to illustrate, when police intervention is driven by political expediency rather than the criminal law, there are major ramifications for public safety in the future.
Sir Robert Peel’s vision for a modern police service in Britain, the outline of which was set out nearly two centuries ago has all too often been misunderstood, misrepresented, and misquoted. British policymakers must seize the initiative and undertake a wide-ranging review of the Country’s policing arrangements and introduce a comprehensive programme of structural reform, thereby creating an opportunity to preserve the most desirable aspects of the British policing tradition while facilitating the discontinuance of old, long-obsolete practices, processes, and procedures that cannot be adapted to fast-changing societal needs.
Conditions for Police Reform in the United States
In spring 2020, widespread rioting occurred in many US cities following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, who died while being taken into custody by the Minneapolis Police for a non-violent crime. Raw video footage showed four police officers placing Floyd face down on the ground in handcuffs while one of these officers had a knee on his neck. Floyd was seen on the video struggling in pain while telling officers “I can’t breathe”. He can be heard calling out for his mother with his dying breaths. This horrifying scene ignited international outrage. But, incidents like these, unarmed and non-violent African American men being killed by the police, have become commonplace in the United States. There was Eric Gardner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Freddy Gray in Baltimore, LaQuan McDonald in Chicago, Antwon Rose in East Pittsburgh, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Philando Castille in Minnesota, Walter Scott in South Carolina, and many more.
Decades of aggressive enforcement for minor crimes under programmes such as the “war on drugs” and “broken windows” policing, has all but destroyed trust in the police in many places, and has contributed to a violent code of the street in which gun violence threatens both the police and the community. Each year in America about 1000 people are shot and killed by the police. This is more than the number of US soldiers killed annually in Iraq during the most violent years of the war. Since late November 2014, when 12-year-old Tamir Rice was gunned down by police while playing with a toy pistol in a Cleveland city park, there have been 162 people with toy guns shot and killed by police. In 2019 in Fort Worth, Atatiana Jefferson was home playing video games with her nephew when the police, who were responding to a call of an open door, fired a shot through the window, killing her. This lethal gun violence—with nearly 300 unarmed people shot and killed by police during the last four years—is significant, but only a fraction of the total police violence at issue.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement initially formed in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, an armed member of a Florida neighbourhood watch group, in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teen. BLM was the epicentre of protest following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York City. It has helped organise street protests in these and many other US cities following the deaths of unarmed African American men at the hands of the police. The message from BLM reformers easily connected to the chronic discontent many people felt about the police due to decades of aggressive enforcement in their local communities (Levin & Nolan, 2017).
The heavy emphasis on law enforcement outputs, such as arrests and the seizure of illegal gun...