A History of Violence

What’s happening with police reform in America? Ed Maguire on how cities across the country are navigating between abolition and immunity. “It’s not like an innovative police chief can come into a law-enforcement agency and just do whatever they want.” Changing of the Guard What’s happening with police reform in America? Ed Maguire on how cities across the country are navigating between abolition and immunity. After Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd in May 2020, weeks of demonstrations worldwide addressed the injustice of his death, police brutality, and structural racism broadly. Activists pushing for police reform adopted the slogan Defund the Police, and their movement won changes in police departments across the United States. More than 20 large cities cut about [$870 billion]( from their law-enforcement budgets, sometimes cutting the numbers of officers or shifting funding to social services. But as the pandemic wore on, [violent-crime rates surged]( across most U.S. metropolitan areas, public opinion [shifted]( toward increasing police spending, with many Democrats rejecting the Defund the Police slogan. [Polling]( by the Pew Research Center in June 2020 had found that more Democrats and Blacks wanted police spending decreased than increased in their areas, while in October 2021 higher numbers of respondents from both groups—and of respondents overall—wanted it increased than decreased. As an example of the political reversal, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, marched with Defund the Police protesters last year and called for police budget cuts, yet this summer she asked for $11 million in new funding to hire dozens of police officers in response to rising crime. Eric Adams, a former police officer, won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayoral race by rejecting Defund the Police and [pledging]( toughness on crime. City governments across the U.S, such as New York, Oakland, and Austin, have approved [significant increases]( in their police budgets this year. As crime rates jump and police budgets swing upward again, what’s going on with police reform? Ed Maguire is a professor of criminal justice at Arizona State University and a co-author of [Transforming the Police](. According to Maguire, many U.S. cities are embracing new approaches and methods in policing, with some positive results are already apparent. But other cities are proving resistant to change, whether because of reluctant police chiefs, local governments, police unions, or officers themselves. In Maguire’s view, prospects for reform often come down to whether an individual police chief takes an open- or close-minded position on it. Reforms gaining traction, Maguire says, include focusing law enforcement on the tiny subset of residents and locations that tend to be involved in crime, reducing traffic stops for minor violations, and deploying trained civilians to deal with calls involving mental-health concerns or people experiencing homelessness. ——— Michael Bluhm: Where does police reform stand? Ed Maguire: The story of police reform is city-specific in the United States. Some cities are taking it very seriously and trying to figure out how they can do better, meet the requests activists are making, and experiment with local-level reforms. In others, we’re seeing a more defensive posture and pushback against calls for reform—or everything in between. Bluhm: How are the reforms doing? Maguire: We’re seeing promising signs from Baltimore, for example, which is an interesting city in police reform because, for many years, Baltimore was almost a national symbol of opposition to police reform. They did a great job in responding to the protests during the summer of 2020, were very thoughtful in how they chose to handle those events, and are engaged in a much larger program of reform under an innovative police chief. I have a student who’s doing a master’s thesis on how the Defund the Police movement has taken shape in different cities. It really differs. We’re seeing defensive postures from some cities, arguing that the calls for reform are an indication that people don’t support the police, which is a silly argument. We’re seeing this mixed bag across the country in how agencies are open, transparent, and introspective, or defensive and resistant. Bluhm: What are some of the specific reforms that police departments are trying? Maguire: We’re starting to see some experimentation around not engaging in traffic stops for minor offenses like a broken taillight or license-plate light. Often, those traffic stops tend to be used as pretexts for proactive police work. If you’ve got a taillight out, the officer pulls you over and is not necessarily interested in the taillight, but is interested in what else he or she might find in the vehicle. Some research suggests that, particularly among African Americans, there’s the feeling that that type of enforcement is directed much more heavily toward them than people of other races. Another big reform is having civilians who have training in how to deal with mental-health issues respond to calls involving mental-health concerns. These are difficult calls, because some of them turn violent. You may need the police there in a backup function, in those cases, so civilians aren’t endangered. There are similar reforms in how agencies deal with homelessness—only bringing in police officers if there may be a danger of violence. We’re seeing changes to police training, new forms of communicating, new methods for de-escalating encounters, so that the way police officers talk to people doesn’t have the unintended effect of escalating matters rather than de-escalating them. More from Ed Maguire at The Signal: “It really has to do with the police chief. America has police chiefs who are thoughtful, innovative, and sensitive to the needs raised by their communities. And we have police chiefs who are a little more defensive about traditional models of policing and not willing to embrace alternatives.” “We’re seeing reforms like focused deterrence, which is a method that’s worked well for reducing gun- and gang-related violence in the United States. There’s enough research on this model that cities should be embracing it, testing it, and trying to refine it. There’s evidence that it reduces violent crime, especially among groups and gangs that engage in chronic levels of violence—shootings and, particularly, retaliation-type shootings.” “There are cities where mayors, city managers, or city councils are very supportive, and there are others where they’re not. You have those where police unions have good working relationships with police chiefs and those where these relationships are awful. It depends on the chemistry of the city. In places where the drivers for reform are much stronger than the obstacles, we’re seeing change; in places where the obstacles are stronger, those obstacles are winning out.” ——— Meanwhile: Why is a wild conspiracy theory getting such play on a prominent U.S. TV network? America’s most influential right-wing media personality, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, is [facing criticism]( from across the U.S. political spectrum for appearing to promote the conspiracy theory that the attack on the American Capitol in January was a “false flag” operation—that is, that people other than pro-Trump rioters were responsible. A [promotion video]( for an upcoming special programming on Carlson’s show promises “the true story behind 1/6” and ends with an unidentified speaker saying “false flags have happened in this country, one of which may have been January 6th.” I asked Brian Rosenwald, a political and media historian who [spoke with us]( earlier this year about the changing media landscape on the U.S. right, how he interprets Carlson’s latest provocation. —Graham Vyse Rosenwald: One thing that has surprised me since we last talked is the growing extent to which conservative media—especially Fox News—seems not to place any limits on what its on-air talent says about the pandemic or January 6th. I don’t have sources inside Fox. There has to be a business rationale. Carlson has been more and more extreme, going in a direction that would never have been tolerated on any network—well beyond where Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity were going—with this false-flag and anti-vaxxer stuff, even as you have anchor Neil Cavuto on Fox’s airwaves pleading with viewers to get vaccinated. I can’t tell how much of what Carlson is doing is just reading his audience and giving them what they want, and how much of it is that he’s a kind of contrarian—that the more what he says outrages, infuriates, and horrifies everyone else, the more he leans into it. I find it hard to accept that he actually believes some of it, because he’s not an idiot. There is this culture on the contemporary right where the more experts and elites say not to do something, the more talk radio and cable news lean into it. The fundamental issue at play in how Americans’ memory of 1/6 has been transformed—from unifying everyone in revulsion on that day to becoming more of a partisan football now—is that, unlike the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, the death toll on 1/6 was, thankfully, very low. It wasn’t the kind of attack where there was only one position you could possibly take. For those on the left and in the center, this was nothing less than a terrorist attack and an assault on a symbol of American democracy, the U.S. Capitol, in the service of trying to overturn an election. To the right, it was a largely peaceful protest against a stolen election. Remember, three in five Republicans in Politico-Morning Consult polling say the election should definitely or probably be overturned. They see media depictions of January 6th as the ruthless left trying to crush them, using misbehavior by a small portion of the people protesting as the justification for a crackdown. It’s not just that this wasn’t Oklahoma City, where people saw an explosion and 168 people—including a number of children—died. It also wasn’t Watergate. There’s no smoking gun here. There isn’t Donald Trump giving an order on tape, which people would recoil at. So it’s very hard to translate across political lines why the event was so bad. There have unfortunately been people who talk about “false flags” with respect to 9/11, but there, people saw the towers come down and were horrified. It’s much easier to minimize 1/6, because the long-standing damage wasn’t so great that no one would risk politicizing it. After 9/11, you had thousands of families who would have rightly risen up in outrage if someone like Carlson had tried something like this, but you don’t have that constituency here. For more from Brian Rosenwald on right-wing media in the U.S. after the Trump presidency … ——— This Week From The Signal [Weapon of Choice]( Why would China be developing hypersonic-missile technology? Stacie Pettyjohn on the problem of nuclear deterrence in a multipolar world. [Vital Signs]( Is the U.S. economy doing well or badly? Betsey Stevenson on the uncertain shift to post-pandemic markets and jobs. [Sweeping the Nation]( Why are U.S. state and local elections less and less about state and local issues? Daniel J. Hopkins on the “nationalization” of American political life. ——— Meanwhile - Sandeep Vaheesan on how [banning surveillance advertising could stop]( Facebook from manipulating people with bogus content - Emily Tamkin on how [anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are affecting]( American Jewish life - Benjamin Hopkins on how [strong the Taliban are]( in Afghanistan ——— ——— [The Signal]( is a new digital publication exploring urgent questions in democratic life and the human world—sustained entirely by readers like you. To support The Signal and for full access: © 2021 The Signal The Signal | 717 N St. NW, Ste. One, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by newsletters@thesgnl.email