Six steps—once again—to improve police and race relations in St. Louis

“There has to be a better way forward.” That’s how this column began three years ago, while St. Louis was still awaiting the grand jury’s verdict in the case against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the August 9, 2014, killing of Michael Brown.

“History might someday regard the boiling point of August as a turning point,” I wrote, “but only if St. Louis could establish itself as the metropolitan area that faced its reality and embraced real change.

“To be brutally honest, it’s unlikely to happen. St. Louis clings to its past and its traditions like perhaps no other metropolis, and that goes for the good and the bad. There is a collective resignation to the inevitability of the status quo. ‘This is the way it’s always been’ is the most deleterious phrase in the local lexicon.

“So it’s no surprise that after all the coverage—and all of the well-intended dialogue in churches, synagogues, rallies, and media about bringing us together—there’s little on the table that represents tangible change. Real change. Structural change. A new way of viewing St. Louis as one unified community with regard to something other than its baseball team, zoo, and the like.

“To achieve that sort of unity about its collective future, St. Louis would need to take tangible steps to address its racial divide, with emphasis on the criminal justice system. It would also somehow have to overcome its obsession with provinciality. There’s the ludicrous gulf between city and county. There’s the equally absurd diffusion of less than a million county residents into 90 balkanized municipalities. This is not merely inefficient: It’s fatal to most attempts to think as a region. But if one begins consideration of steps, say, to upgrade the quality of police departments, it’s crystal clear that real-world progress can only occur with some degree of consolidation.

“At some point, St. Louis needs to fix its regional dysfunctionality. If Ferguson isn’t the wakeup call for that, what could be? At least this is an opportunity to consider possible solutions.”

At a time before the Ferguson Commission was formed or the city had established a civilian oversight board, I wrote, “With expectations firmly in check, I offer six specific ideas for action at the local and state levels that I believe could move the needle in the right direction. To put together the list, I tried to adhere to four guiding principles: Talk is cheap; race matters; provincialism weakens the region; and the status quo is unacceptable.”

Once again, here are those six suggestions:

1. Enact citizen-police relations boards. It is critical to establish permanent structures to foster and maintain positive relationships between police and the communities they serve and to do so with openness and accountability. I’d establish a countywide board and, ideally, a local board for every police department. This is not a call for classic civilian review boards, which are routinely resisted by police and viewed as adversarial to them. A citizen-police relations board, as I envision it, would be a mechanism for cooperation and understanding. It would have a civilian majority but would include at least one representative from the police hierarchy and police officers’ ranks.

The board would meet no less often than quarterly—always in public—to provide a forum on community policing, racial profiling, challenges facing police, or other concerns shared by citizens and law enforcement officials. It still could serve, in limited cases, as a civilian review board with subpoena powers to consider allegations of excessive force by officers involving serious injuries or death. This role would not supplant that of a police internal affairs unit and would be used only in the case of a narrowly defined set of serious allegations. Policing the police would not be the board’s main function, but it would be there to provide independence and credibility if a major issue arose.

2. Reduce racial profiling and consistently track it. The phrase “racial profiling” might evoke a sociology textbook, but in practice, it represents a grim reality: African-Americans in St. Louis (and nationally) are dramatically more likely to be stopped, questioned, arrested, and otherwise dealt with unhappily by law-enforcement officials. Though, of course, many arrests—of people of all races—are justified, the incredible disparity among those races is not. Disproportionate racial profiling is an issue that affects African-Americans of all economic strata and walks of life, and it is the source of universal outrage in the black community.

This is not purely statistical: It is unacceptable that activities such as “driving while black” and “walking while black” can be routinely regarded as probable cause to investigate people for evidence of a crime. Rightly or not, the Michael Brown case fell into the category of racial profiling in many people’s eyes because of a sense that a hostile encounter might not have occurred at all had it not involved a white officer and a black suspect. A citizen-police relations board could make a real difference by focusing consistent attention on the numbers and issue in general.

3. Implement community policing. This is a relatively new strategy—the notion that police and civilians can partner proactively to head off crime before it happens—and it has never been embodied better than by Captain Ronald Johnson, the homegrown Missouri Highway Patrol leader who emerged as one of the heroes of Ferguson by bringing needed humanity to a seeming war zone. There is little controversy about the potential of community policing—it’s a rare patch of common ground—but I would argue that it will fade under the “talk is cheap” principle if there’s no formal, permanent mechanism (e.g., the citizen-police relations board) to monitor its effectiveness consistently.

4. Require cameras on police officers and vehicles. It is obvious that new technology can go a long way toward protecting the interests of citizens and police officers alike. The majority of police interactions with suspects are uneventful, but when they’re not, it’s not acceptable to have to rely upon random cellphone videos for documentation. If an issue with having cameras installed universally is budgetary—as was said to be the case in Ferguson—then that’s a sure sign that a department should consider consolidation with a neighbor.

5. Raise hiring standards for police departments. Whatever comes out of Ferguson, the trauma did shine a light on the challenges facing some of the region’s smaller police departments, to put it gently. The bottom line is that all departments should have to maintain hiring standards as high as those of the St. Louis County Police. And speaking of bottom lines, that means providing pay and working conditions commensurate with those of the countywide department.

Again, addressing this might involve consolidating departments. But ask yourself: Do you risk your life every day you go to work? I don’t. No matter how strongly one feels about weeding out those officers who don’t live up to the privilege of carrying a badge and a gun, the reality is that police deserve better treatment. It’s a tough job, often a lousy one, and part of any solutions going forward must address what can be done for police, not just to them. I see this as a key role of a citizen-police relations board as well.

6. Make diversity a priority in police departments. Reasonable people will disagree on affirmative action issues, but there can be no denying that race is a defining characteristic—and often a dominating one—in the area of criminal justice. One of Ferguson’s most dubious claims to fame is its status as a two-thirds African-American community policed by a force that’s nearly 95 percent white. And the county police department has less than half of a proportional representation of African-Americans on its force. At the very least, the county needs to have the same goals, standards, and commitment to diversity in hiring police officers that it has for minority contractors.

This list represents a process, not a panacea. Obviously, many broader economic issues, sociological concerns, and legislative matters deserve consideration. Originally, I’d planned to include some of them, then thought better of it in light of the hopelessness of effecting positive change at the state level in Missouri.

I do think the state should institutionalize the use of special prosecutors in cases in which local police officers might be charged with felonies. The laws governing the use of deadly force by officers also need refinement and clarification. And the impossible dream of enacting rational gun policies might get a moment’s reflection.

None of that is happening in the real world. But it isn’t unrealistic for St. Louis to begin turning things around in the criminal justice system by adopting a fresh and open approach to these issues. It’s all about realizing the ultimate lesson of the experience known as Ferguson—and now, as the Stockley verdict:

When it comes to race relations and criminal justice, “this is the way it’s always been” doesn’t cut it.