American police departments are beginning to respond to protesters’ calls for action
Lesson summary
Hi there, this is Jeff and thanks for joining us for another Plain English. JR is the producer, and you can find this complete lesson at PlainEnglish.com/268.
Coming up today: The protests over police brutality and discrimination are starting to have an effect, as several police agencies around the country are instituting new policies. The expression we’ll review today is “set in motion”. We also have a video lesson, exercises, vocabulary training and more at PlainEnglish.com/268.
Reforms begin in American police departments
The protests for racial equality in the US continued into a third week. The protests in the second week have been mostly peaceful; the looting, fires, and other violence that characterized earlier protests did not, in general, continue. But the peaceful demonstrations have not let up, with Americans in hundreds of towns and cities demonstrating against police brutality and in favor of structural reforms. They are the most significant demonstrations since the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.
The American public is broadly sympathetic with the protesters’ message and this could be a turning point for policing. Several states and cities have committed to changing their tactics. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer, the city pledged to ban chokeholds and neck restraints. You might remember that three officers stood by and watched as the offending officer pressed his knee down on George Floyd’s neck. Minneapolis will now require officers to intervene if they see another officer acting improperly. That’s currently the policy in some other cities, but is likely to become more common.
Police agencies in California are going to stop teaching tactics that block the flow of blood to the brain. The Dallas Police Department said it would ban any force that would restrict a person’s airway and would require officers to issue a warning before shooting. It will also require officers to intervene if improper force is being used.
Police sometimes used teargas and rubber bullets to contain protest crowds in big cities. Many police departments have announced they will no longer use those in peaceful protests. In recent years, many police officers have worn body cameras and have dashboard cameras in their vehicles. The use of these cameras is also likely to expand in the future.
One of the clearest images from recent weeks has been protesters against the police; or citizens against the police. And that has been the reality in many places. But one of the images that often gets overlooked is of police joining protesters. Many police officers, including police chiefs, are disturbed by the unjustified violence in other places. The police chiefs of large cities like Pittsburgh and Phoenix, and smaller cities like Santa Cruz, California and Aurora, Illinois, all lent their support and joined protests. Several police officers in Ferugson, Missouri, the site of an unjustified police shooting several years ago, joined protesters for a nine and a half minute kneel in George Floyd’s memory.
Police reform in the US is difficult for a number of reasons. A quirk of the American system is that policing is a local activity. Unlike in many European countries, where policing is controlled by the national government, American cities and counties set their own policies and have their own budgets. This means that policies are uneven throughout the country and sweeping reforms can’t all happen at once. In big cities, the mayor appoints the police chief. In more rural areas the county sheriffs are directly elected. At election time, mayors and sheriffs appeal to law and order to win votes; community-oriented policing is less of a vote-getter.
American police officers often have powerful unions that protect members, almost no matter what they do. American police have killed over 7,000 people between 2013 and 2019. Some of those were, no doubt, justified. But in only 48 cases was an officer convicted of a crime for the killing. That is the result of police unions at work.
Police in America are also responsible for handling a staggering array of situations. It’s very difficult for them to be trained effectively for all the situations they need to respond to. The same people who are trained to deal with the worst, most violent crimes are also the ones who are called to deal with drug addiction, graffiti, traffic violations, overdoses, petty theft, domestic violence, noise complaints, homelessness, and mental health issues. They are, for some reason, often in public schools. One idea gathering steam is that we should have fewer police, responsible for the most series matters of law and order, supported by an expanded social infrastructure to deal with lower-level conflicts, mental health, addiction, and the like.
American policing is overdue for serious reform. It’s a tragedy that it took a videotaped killing to set this in motion; it would be a worse tragedy if the moment were not seized.
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