How police reform changed one of US’s most violent cities

A former police chief who led a major reform of what was then America's most violent city says police must shift their thinking and change - or find themselves changed regardless.

Protests have raged across every US state over racial injustice and police brutality following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, after police officers knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

J Scott Thomson headed the police force in Camden, New Jersey. It had been the US city with the most homicides per capita, but that rate has since halved and excessive force complaints have been cut 95 percent.

He tells RNZ Saturday Morning's Kim Hill the man who replaced him, who had been his deputy, was one of the first police chiefs in the country to walk up to protesters, without riot gear, and offer to walk with them.

"That caught fire, and that got the attention and the national media descended upon that ... that was the culture within the organisation where in years gone past the approach would have been completely different, and no doubt the result would have been completely different as well.

"I think the key to thee indicator of progress is that in cities across the United States in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, the city of Camden is not experiencing civil unrest. The city of Camden is not rioting against its police."

Since overseeing the reform of that department, Thomson has gone on to work with President Barack Obama and with President Donald Trump's administration,

He says his department was in crisis in 2012 when cuts due to the 2008 global financial crisis halved the number of officers.

The city's murder rate was already the highest in the nation - five times that of neighbouring Philadelphia, and about 18 times that of New York City - but that was just the start.

"When the police force was cut in half it went from extremely bad to even worse. That year we had 67 murders in a city of 77,000. Our murder rate was 19 times the national average and it was higher than Honduras' ... the most violent country on the planet that year."

"Little kids were getting shot as they walked to school, and there was a political decision in which something had to be done immediately."

A change in culture

Thomson says the political decision was made to completely dismantle the city's police, and rebuild from the ground up. The move meant that despite the funding cuts, staffing levels returned to about what they were before 2012.

He says it was the opportunity to change the culture in the police which really had an effect, though.

"What we did was we were able to change the way we operated and the way we act, so our extremely challenged community - who really didn't like us and had high levels of mistrust for us - they still called upon us every day for answers and help for their problems.

"The answer wasn't that they didn't want us there they just wanted us to behave differently, and when we did that change they changed as well."

He says it was a move from a warrior mentality of using force and arrests to create a safer neighbourhood, to one of guardianship and working to empower the people to take back their own neighbourhood.

"We were able to go from an occupying force that was resented by its residents to one in which we coexisted in an environment that was based upon respect and dignity."

"Trying to work with the community and empower them to identify what were the root cause issues that were causing the high levels of violence, the high levels of disorder and to work with them to address them so that we could still be a poor city but we didn't have to be a violent city."

Some "very honest" conversations with the community were had, he says,

"The people were telling us that they really liked the officers that were walking the beats, they liked the officers engaging, but we were still giving out far too many summonses for low-level offences ... in a very poor community, handing someone a ticket can be life altering. By listening to them they started to tell us all the mistakes we were making."

Making a change like that meant the department had to get rid of some of its old-school officers, he says.

"Yes. Yes we did. Everyone was given an opportunity to adopt this new philosophy and culture but it wasn't a suggestion, it wasn't an option, it was a mandate. And if they didn't do that they weren't gonna work there long.

"We ended up getting rid of a lot of people - but that was mostly addition by subtraction to be honest with you.

"There were people that completely shifted their philosophies in policing for the better and they became some of our best officers and even some of our most productive commanders ... they just needed to be a part of something that was bigger than themselves and they needed the understanding that the leadership supported that and those types of behaviour would be rewarded.

"Ultimately it altered the way they approached things and it was for the betterment of themselves professionally and personally - and it was for the betterment of the community as well."

Police unions

The reforms were not popular with everyone. The move was partly criticised as union busting, leading to poor employment practices and lower pay for officers, and a reduction in local knowledge.

"An officer made $50,000 a year, that officer would also get a 22 percent bump in pay if they happened to work night work and they happened to have so many years on the job so it was a contractual structure that ended up becoming cost prohibitive.

"All of the kind of enhancements that precluded the city from having the staffing levels that it needed were restructured and in some cases eliminated."

Thomson admits the department is not perfect, but says the police unions can either be powerful facilitators of reform, or powerful barriers to it - and he has experienced both.

"You see in a lot of jurisdictions across the country in the United States that there are unions that are far more formidable and even politically more powerful than even the elected leaders because they sit upon large war chests of money and they have got the process pretty much owned so that they can obstruct and prevent police reform from occurring."

He says that until the cuts led his department into crisis, attempts to change the culture were forestalled by the police union.

"When I was [first] named police chief I had an extremely difficult union that every decision I made they filed a lawsuit, they filed arbitrations, their objective was maintaining the status quo."

The unions' ability to stop punishment of bad actors is "the bane of nearly every progressive police chief's existence," he says.

"It was extremely difficult to get rid of police officers that were lethargic, apathetic, disrespectful. Anything short of a crime it was next to impossible to get rid of them and the public deserves better.

"Far too often the stories of police chiefs that try to hold officers accountable, they remove them from the job only to have them returned. Not only is that bad for the community to have those types of cancerous individuals to be brought back but it has a profound negative impact on the organisation because it just sends the wrong message that accountability is not real."

He does not argue for police unions to be abolished however, and says they have the power to encourage and enforce positive change.

"When we went to the county police force I had the same union, it was the same organisation - it was the Paternal Order of Police - but I had different union leadership and with that union leadership they valued the safety of the public as much as they did the welfare of their officers.

"There were times that we would have acts of misconduct and the union leader would come into my officer recommending termination because of the obvious violation of the public's trust and the code of ethics within policing.

"This is where the unions need to step forward ... they should not welcome officers that are negatively defining everyone to be members of the organisation."

Defund the police?

He says getting rid of police is not a good idea.

"Not in the United States of America - I don't think it really is anywhere in a democratic society because you still need a form of government that's going to intersect with really bad people when they're doing really bad things.

"When you look at the abolishment of police we probably had the closest thing to that in Camden in 2011 when we laid off half the police force and we saw something that was extremely, extremely bad from public safety perspective."

Some of the protesters have instead called for police to be "defunded" but Thomson says what exactly that means is a little unclear.

"We really need to land on a definition of what 'defund' means and then we can start having a meaningful conversation, because depending on who is using the word I have heard it be defined as everything from abolishing the police to repurposing the money out of the police to ... taking away the military aspect to police.

He suggests relieving police of some of the roles they are not prepared or equipped to handle.

"Mental illness, homelessness, addiction have been dropped squarely at the feet of a 24-year-old officer who has a high-school diploma, and we give that person a  gun, a pair of handcuffs and a ticket book and we expect them to fix it - and it usually has bad endings.

"There are a lot of people that are saying we have to stop expecting the police to address these issues, I think that's something the police welcome and they really can't add value to it and the options that they have generally make the situation worse."

He says colleagues have brought him to the table to have conversations with policy makers and leaders on the issue of reform.

Change or be changed

Regardless of which reforms are enacted, Thomson hints that the protests seen across the US will inevitably force change in police whether it is wanted or not.

He has a kind of sink-or-swim mentality around it.

"Part of my message to police within my own organisation and even nationally is if you fail to adapt to your environment your will cease to exist, and that's true in economics, biology, any type of science or discipline ... it's better to be the co-author of that change than be subjected to it.

"If we're not able to show the people that we hear what they're saying and we're trying to address their concerns in a meaningful way then I shudder to think what's going to occur when the next really bad incident occurs on video, and policing - particularly American policing - that's not a matter of if it's a matter of when.

"What you're seeing now is if police unions and intransigent leaders refuse to reform you're going to start to see laws be changed, you're going to start to see the court systems all the way up to the United States Supreme Court - they can impose rulings that can significantly alter and change the status of things."

Thomson says the issue of gun reform in the US is like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube, however.

"I am in favour of common sense gun legislation. It is just far too easy, it's senseless how easy it is to get a gun; to be able to buy ammunition; carry guns. We have more guns in the United sates of America than we have people ... it's just ingrained in our culture."

He said he spent time with New Zealand's former Police Commissioner Mike Bush and UK police agencies, and he had learned a lot from them.

"These are non-gun carrying police agencies that I have learned a lot from over the years because they know how to handle and defuse situations. The word du jour in America is 'de-escalation' and it's new to American policing but it's something that's been embedded in countries that have not had armed police.

"There's a lot more we can learn ... and if we don't start handling these situations better .. change is going to come and it's going to be something that police are not going to like."