The Dark Side Of Putting Police In Texas Schools

 The following is part of an article by Clare Amari, Kristian Hernandez, and Asher Lehrer-Small in The New York Times:

SINCE THE MASSACRE at Robb Elementary in Uvalde in 2022, school districts across Texas have spent billions of dollars to station police officers on every campus in the state. The effort, the most ambitious in the nation, was intended to protect students from similar tragedies.

But the constant presence of officers has transformed the way many public schools manage discipline, subjecting students to heavy-handed police tactics for behavior that once would have landed them only in the principal’s office.

Officers in Texas displayed startling belligerence at times, grabbing or tackling students a fraction of their size over misconduct that often appeared to be minor. Children in elementary school, including one as young as 6, were handcuffed. Teenagers were arrested, charged with crimes and even jailed. In the most extreme cases, they wound up in hospitals, bruised or concussed, after being body-slammed or shocked by Tasers, which are prohibited in the state’s juvenile detention facilities but allowed in its public schools.

There is no comprehensive record of use-of-force incidents across the more than 1,000 public school districts in Texas. Many districts and police agencies declined to disclose their data to our journalists; others did not respond to public records requests. More than 200 provided some information, but in most cases, it was limited.

Still, by examining even that small share of records, our reporters identified more than 2,600 use-of-force incidents that occurred from January 2022 through December 2025. About 450 of those interactions were described in detailed reports, which we reviewed. We also watched video footage from over two dozen encounters.

The records provide a first-of-its-kind look at how Texas’ initiative around school policing has played out in districts large and small, urban and rural.

Many incidents began over misbehavior such as dress-code violations, vaping or schoolyard scraps. Officers, often summoned by principals or teachers, escalated some situations by shouting obscenities or insults. They used physical takedown tactics in about 60 situations when students ignored their commands, talked back or pulled away. . . .

In Texas, no state agency has the power to routinely review school officers’ actions and weigh in on possible overreach.

Lawmakers here have embraced school policing without establishing safeguards required for meaningful accountability, policing experts said. A 2019 law meant to keep officers out of “routine student discipline” does not define the term or detail repercussions for violations. Police departments in Texas are not required to report incidents of force in schools unless they shoot someone. . . .

A review of use-of-force policies from more than 200 school district police departments found that many were largely copied from those used by municipal police agencies. Some addressed how to handle livestock and animal control calls. Most provided no specific guidance on handling students. . . .

It was not until the 1980s and ’90s, amid concerns about drugs and violence, that the ranks of school officers began to swell. The 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado led to a larger rise.

Elsewhere in the country, school districts typically tapped the local sheriff’s office or police department for officers. Texas was unusual in that many districts formed their own departments instead.

As police presence in schools grew, some educators became wary of harsh punishment and practices that could push students into the criminal justice system. Even in law-and-order Texas, concerns seemed to break through. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law saying that school boards should not task officers with routine student discipline.

Then came Uvalde, the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, which claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers.

A year later, in 2023, lawmakers passed legislation to require at least one licensed police officer at each of the state’s public schools. While other states had taken steps to increase school security, few relied as heavily on the police. . . .

In the two years that followed, statewide annual spending on school security rose to more than $1.3 billion from about $900 million.

Today, Texas is home to nearly 400 school district police departments, more than all other states combined. Most of the remaining districts have contracts with outside police agencies. The number of officers trained to work in schools — about 11,000 — exceeds the total number of police officers in at least two dozen states.

Most of what school officers do is mundane. They secure external doors, usher students through metal detectors and monitor hallways for fights. Some mentor students and offer advice.

But routine interactions have been punctuated at times by physical encounters. Officers grabbed or tackled students hundreds of times, data and records show. They used pepper spray in dozens of cases and shocked students with Tasers in at least nine incidents. On four occasions, reporters found, officers held teenagers at gunpoint. . . .

Students were left with bruises, scrapes or other injuries in nearly a quarter of the 450 cases reviewed by reporters. Two teenagers suffered concussions, according to medical records and an interview with one family’s lawyer.

About two dozen of the overall cases involved children in elementary school. In the Northside school district, an officer handcuffed a 6-year-old boy who kicked a school employee during a tantrum.

State law prohibits using restraints on children in fifth grade or below in all but the most dangerous situations. In a statement, the district said that the officer had perceived an “immediate risk of harm.”. . .

Across the state, officers directed obscenities, insults and threats at students just before or after using physical force, records and video footage show. . . .

In Texas, the state-mandated training for school police officers includes instruction in child psychology, conflict resolution and managing students with behavioral issues. But at only 20 hours, the program is half the minimum recommended by the National Association of School Resource Officers. Kentucky, which also mandates officers at all public schools, requires 120 hours.

Trump Acts To Halt The Progress Being Made In Better Policing

The chart above is from the Gallup Poll - done in 2024 of a nationwide sample of 48,981 adults. The margin of error for the entire sample (and the individual groups) are 1.0 points.

It became obvious a few years ago that some police department in this country were not treating citizens equally. They were discriminatory and even violent toward minorities. This was seen in numerous unnecessary deaths of Blacks.

The federal government acted to correct this. They investigated and then imposed agreements on some offending departments. And it helped make things better. Note in the chart above that Blacks had an improved perception of their local police departments.

Things were not perfect, but they were improving. Sadly, the racist in our White House didn't like that - and he has moved to destroy that progress. Consider the following from Reuters.com:

The Trump administration is ending efforts to secure agreements for federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, despite a prior government finding they routinely violated the civil rights of Black people.

In a major rollback of federal civil rights investigations, the Justice Department said on Wednesday it was also ending investigations and rescinding findings of misconduct into six other police departments.

This is not good. In spite of what Trump (and his racist MAGA movement) think, all people have the right to be treated decently and equally by governmental organizations like the police.

The American Dream must apply to all or it is not guaranteed for anyone. 

Trump's Desire For Police Violence Is Illegal And Ridiculous

Donald Trump must be getting desperate. His latest proposals are ridiculous. He has proposed letting police department have a day on violent retribution against those they consider to be criminals. It is insane!

It's also unconstitutional. The Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and allowing the police to attack people without arrest or trial would certainly meet that definition.

It's also illegal. It is against the law for anyone to attack or abuse someone - including the police. In fact, because of the power we give police officers, they should be held to a higher standard.

And finally, it simply would not work. It would not eradicate crime as he thinks. I worked in various aspects of law enforcement for nearly 30 years. I never met a criminal who thought he would be caught. And if someone doesn't think he/she would be caught while committing a crime, arrest or violence would not serve as a deterrent.

This would not make our society better or safer.

Lax Gun Laws Make Security At Outdoor Events Impossible

The recent shooting at the Kansas City celebration of winning the Super Bowl highlights a sad reality in American life. It has become impossible to provide effective security for citizens attending large outdoor events.

It shouldn't be, and it can't be blamed on police efforts. They do everything they can to make those events safe. But our government's failure to curb who can buy a gun (and what kind of gun they can buy) has made it impossible. 

Years ago, the government passed a background check law on gun purchases, but that tepid law had many holes in it - so many holes that anyone can effectively buy any kind of gun they want without actually having their background checked.

That's not what the American people want. 80% to 90% of the public want a strict background check law (and that is true even of gun owners). An effective law would prevent any dangerous person from purchasing a gun or receiving one as a gift, but the U.S. Congress (mainly Republicans) have blocked all attempts to pass such a law. 

They consider the right to own a gun more important than protecting the lives of American citizens - even though a strict background check law would not prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing or receiving a gun.

They have also refused to outlaw the possession of assault rifles (the most dangerous guns police have to face). A previous outlawing of these guns proved it could be effective in reducing mass shootings and save lives. But they refused to renew that law, and mass shooting have exploded in both number and size.

There are other reasonable and constitutional restrictions that could help with safety and security, but Republicans have refused to consider ANY gun restrictions.

Attend a large outdoor event if you wish, but understand that (thanks to Congress) you could be putting your life in danger because it is impossible for the police to provide adequate security.

Hiring Better Officers Would Be Better Than More Officers

The following is a thought-provoking op-ed by Radley Balko in The New York Times:

In a staggering report last month, the Department of Justice documented pervasive abuse, illegal use of force, racial bias and systemic dysfunction in the Minneapolis Police Department. City police officers engaged in brutality or made racist comments, even as a department investigator rode along in a patrol car. Complaints about police abuse were often slow-walked or dismissed without investigation. And after George Floyd’s death, instead of ending the policy of racial profiling, the police just buried the evidence.

The Minneapolis report was shocking, but it wasn’t surprising. It doesn’t read much differently from recent Justice Department reports about the police departments in Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Ferguson, Mo., or any of three recent reports from various sources about Minneapolis, from 2003, 2015 and 2016.

Amid spiking nationwide homicide rates in 2020 and 2021 and a continuing shortage of police officers, many in law enforcement have pointed to investigations like these — along with “defund the police”-style activism — as the problem. With all the criticism they are weathering, the argument goes, officers are so hemmed in, they can no longer do their job right; eventually they quit, defeated and demoralized. Fewer police officers, more crime.

Lying just below the surface of that characterization is a starkly cynical message to marginalized communities: You can have accountable and constitutional policing, or you can have safety. But you can’t have both.

In accord with that view, some academic studies have found that more police officers can correlate with less crime. But the studies don’t account for factors that the Minneapolis report highlights — the social costs of police brutality and misconduct, how they can erode public trust, how that erosion of trust affects public safety — and they don’t account for the potential benefits of less coercive, less confrontational alternatives to the police. We don’t have as many studies that take those factors into account, but to see the effects in real time, you need only step over the Minneapolis city line.

Golden Valley is a suburb of about 22,000 that in many ways is as idyllic as its name suggests. The median annual household income tops $100,000, there’s very little crime, and 15 percent of the town is devoted to parks and green spaces, including Theodore Wirth Park on its eastern border, a lush space that hosts a bike path and a parkway.

But the town’s Elysian charm comes with a dark past. Just on the other side of the park lies the neighborhood of Willard-Hay. There, the median household income drops to about $55,000 per year, and there’s quite a bit more crime. Willard-Hay is 26 percent white and 40 percent Black. Golden Valley is 85 percent white and 5 percent Black — the result of pervasive racial covenants.

“We enjoy prosperity and security in this community,” said Shep Harris, the mayor since 2012. “But that has come at a cost. I think it took incidents like the murder of George Floyd to help us see that more clearly.” The residents of the strongly left-leaning town decided change was necessary. One step was eliminating those racial covenants. Another was changing the Police Department, which had a reputation for mistreating people of color.

The first hire was Officer Alice White, the force’s first high-ranking Black woman. The second was Virgil Green, the town’s first Black police chief.

“When I started, Black folks I’d speak to in Minneapolis seemed surprised that I’d been hired,” Chief Green said when I spoke with him recently. “They told me they and most people they knew avoided driving through Golden Valley.”

Members of the overwhelmingly white police force responded to both hires by quitting — in droves.

An outside investigation later revealed that some officers had run an opposition campaign against Chief Green. One of those officers recorded herself making a series of racist comments during a call with city officials, then sent the recording to other police officers. She was fired — prompting yet another wave of resignations.

The typical Golden Valley police officer makes a six-figure salary with good benefits. The city has almost no violent crime. It’s a good gig. Yet in just two years, more than half the department quit.

“I haven’t been on the job long enough to make any significant changes,” Chief Green said. “Yet we’re losing officers left and right. It’s hard not to think that they just don’t want to work under a Black supervisor.”

The interesting thing is that according to Chief Green, despite the reduction in staff, crime — already low — has gone down in Golden Valley. The town plans to staff the department back up, just not right away. “I’ve heard that the police union is cautioning officers from coming to work here,” Mr. Harris said. “But that’s OK. We want to take the time to hire officers who share our vision and are excited to work toward our goals.”

Mr. Harris is quick to point out that Golden Valley may not be the perfect model for the rest of the country. “This is a wealthy community with very little crime,” he said. “We can afford to go through this change. I realize that may not be the case in other places.”

There is reason to think it may. When New York’s officers engaged in an announced slowdown in policing in late 2014 and early 2015, civilian complaints of major crime in the city dropped. And despite significant staffing shortages at law enforcement agencies around the country, if trends continue, 2023 will have the largest percentage drop in homicides in U.S. history. It’s true that such a drop would come after a two-year surge, but the fact that it would also occur after a significant reduction in law enforcement personnel suggests the surge may have been due more to the pandemic and its effects than depolicing.

At the very least, the steady stream of Justice Department reports depicting rampant police abuse ought to temper the claim that policing shortages are fueling crime. It’s no coincidence that the cities we most associate with violence also have long and documented histories of police abuse. When people don’t trust law enforcement, they stop cooperating and resolve disputes in other ways. Instead of fighting to retain police officers who feel threatened by accountability and perpetuate that distrust, cities might consider just letting them leave.

Trust Of Police Divided By Race - Most Oppose Immunity

These charts are from the recent Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between February 9th and 14th of a nationwide sample of 1,580 adults (including 1,429 registered voters). The margin of error is 2.5 points for adults and 2.6 points for registered voters.

Most Voters See Police Violence As A Problem

 The charts above are from the Politico / Morning Consult Poll -- done between January 27th and 29th of a nationwide sample of 1,977 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Why Must "Never Again" Always Turn Into "Once Again"?

This image is by Gary Huck at huckkonopackicartoons.com.

The following is from the editorial board of The Washington Post:

No decent citizen could fail to be appalled by the video, released Friday, showing Memphis police officers beating a 29-year-old Black man, Tyre Nichols, so badly on Jan. 7 that he died three days later. No feeling citizen could fail to be moved by the anguish of his mother, RowVaughn Wells, as she eloquently described her grief at losing a young man, himself the father of a 4-year-old, who cried out for “mom” as he absorbed the assault. And no concerned citizen can fail to be impressed by, and appreciative of, the way in which those who justifiably protested Mr. Nichols’s death heeded — with sporadic exceptions — Ms. Wells’s call for nonviolence.

Yet no thinking citizen can fail to be frustrated that something like this could have happened less than three years after George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, triggering a national movement for police reform and social justice — or, for that matter, nearly 32 years after Los Angeles police officers delivered an eerily similar, though nonfatal, beating to Rodney King. How many more times will Americans, and their leaders in government and law enforcement, vow “never again” about such an incident, only to find ourselves ruefully saying, “Once again.”

Horrible as it was, there are encouraging aspects to this episode. The Memphis Police Department did not maintain the proverbial “blue wall” of silence, despite what appear to be initial efforts at a coverup by the five officers involved. Rather, chief Cerelyn Davis took her own skeptical look at the initial reports and fired the men 13 days later. She forthrightly denounced their conduct as “acts that defy humanity.” The Shelby County district attorney filed second-degree murder charges. And authorities added transparency by releasing video of the incident from police body cameras and other sources. Attorneys for Mr. Nichols’s family have declared that the city and county’s official response “gives us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre.”

Legal accountability for alleged police perpetrators is indeed necessary, to punish, to deter and to reinforce the principle that those who wear the badge are not above the law. The sobering reality, though, is that such retrospective justice is no panacea. If it were, guilty verdicts in Floyd’s case would have prevented what happened in Memphis. So would the convictions, in 1993, on federal civil rights charges, of two officers who beat Rodney King — albeit after a jury acquitted them the previous year, sparking six days of violent protest in L.A.

Further reforms are needed to reduce police impunity, including federal legislation to modify the “qualified immunity” doctrine, largely created by the Supreme Court, that often blocks lawsuits for unconstitutional abuses. Still, even many oft-proposed reforms — including some included in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — would not have prevented what happened to Mr. Nichols. The measure bans potentially deadly chokeholds, for example, but that appears to be one of the few forms of physical force the officers in Memphis did not visit upon Mr. Nichols’s body.

Indeed, Memphis, similar to other cities, had instituted reforms. Onewas the use of police body cameras to record encounters with citizens, which seemingly did not give the officers who beat Mr. Nichols much pause. Another was the recruitment of a force that reflects the city’s large Black majority. All five officers who assaulted Mr. Nichols were Black — as is the chief, Ms. Davis. Memphis hired her in 2021 after a career in Durham, N.C., during which she had embraced the protests over Floyd’s murder and decried “systemic racism” in U.S. policing.

The change Memphis and many other departments need is the kind that cannot come from laws and policies alone: cultural. Police officers — regardless of their race — too often regard young Black men as inherently suspect or dangerous. The savagery with which the police beat Mr. Nichols was unfathomable. But so was the f-bomb-laced disrespect with which they immediately approached him, based on what appears to have been at most a traffic violation, and then suddenly snatched him out of his car.

It bears repeating, even at a moment such as this: Most police officers do a difficult and necessary job with decency and professionalism; the country needs more like them. This is especially true in Memphis, where the level of violent crime is unacceptable: the city of 630,000 saw 302 homicides in 2022, or about 48 per 100,000 — about seven times the 2021 national homicide rate. The vast majority of victims in Memphis were Black.

As it happens, the city’s high 2022 rate reflected a 13 percent improvement over 2021, which the police department had attributed in part to work by the special unit to which the five officers who beat Mr. Nichols belonged — and which Memphis has now disbanded. But as the Editorial Board argued in the wake of Floyd’s death, an overreliance on police has prevented communities from imagining and investing in other public safety tools, starting with revitalizing neighborhoods that experience the most crime.

In the wake of Tyre Nichols’ death, the Memphis police have nothing to celebrate and much to improve. The same goes for the United States as a whole.

Better Rules/Training Is Not Enough - Reform Police Culture

During a war, countries use a propaganda that defines their enemy as them -- as people that are different than themselves. This makes it easier to kill those people (and sadly, many times leads to war crimes being done and defended). 

We can debate whether that propaganda is good or not, but it also exists in our own society. Too often these days, people are quick to label their political opponents as enemies. This has led some to actually perpetrating violence against those seen as others.

We have seen a continuing violence by police. And with the advent of videos (especially on cell phones, which nearly everyone has), much of this violence is being documented. And rightly, this has resulted in calls for reforming the regulations and training in police departments.

There is no doubt that better regulations and training are needed. But they are not enough. Police culture must also be reformed, or the better training and regulations will mean nothing.

For far too long, many police have had an "us vs. them" view of their job. They consider themselves to be in a war against criminality, with the "us" (police) fighting against the "them" (criminals). This is the same kind of thinking that is used in a war, and it allows police to justify bending, or even breaking, the rules and regulations to win that "war".

Unfortunately, it also leads to innocent citizens being branded as the "them", and persecuted or even killed. The most recent example is the beatting death of Tyre Nichols by police. Some will try to say this is an isolated incident. It is not. 

There is far too much police violence in many departments across the country, especially toward minority citizens. And its due as much or more to the "us vs. them" police culture as it is to a lack of proper training and regulations.

Don't get me wrong. I believe there is a need for better training and regulations -- and it should be on a nationwide basis (with laws passed on a federal level). But the best training and regulations will not work until the "us vs. them" culture among police is changed.

The truth is that there is no "them" -- only "us". Even the most heinous criminal is a human, and deserves the constitutional rights afforded to everyone. Sometimes a physical alteration cannot be avoided, but it must always be initiated by the person being stopped by police -- not from the police themselves.

Police are to protect and serve the people, but they cannot do that if they consider a portion of the population as enemies.

It Was All So Unnecessary - And More Need To Be Punished

Like the rest of America, I was horrified by the videos of Memphis police officers beating Tyre Nichols to death. And it was all unnecessary.

Nichols was stopped for a traffic violation (supposedly reckless driving). It should have just resulted in a traffic ticket.

But the officers that stopped him approached him in a very aggressive manner, demanding he get out of the car. When he asked politely why he was stopped. They physically removed him from the car and roughly shoved him to the ground. There was no reason for that, and I'm not surprised that Nichols was scared and ran away.

When he was apprehended, the officers decided to get revenge for his escape. They beat him with their fists, with a metal nightstick, and kicked him in the head. None of that was necessary either. There were enough officers to safely put the 140 pound man on the ground and handcuff him. There was no reason for anyone to be injured -- not the victim or the officers.

The five officers who beat Nichols have been charge with the crimes they committed, and that's a good thing. They were nothing more than criminals wearing badges.

But they were not the only officers who failed to do their duty that night.

A police officers job is not over once a person is apprehended. The job is not over until the person is safely in jail -- or in the hospital, if medical attention is necessary.

After Nichols was subdued and handcuffed, he was leaned against a car. He fell over several times. It should have been obvious to all of the dozen or so officers standing around that he was in medical distress. But they ignored it. Nichols laid on the ground for over 20 minutes before receiving any medical help. 

That may or may not have contributed to Nichols' death. But one thing is sure -- every officer at the scene failed to do their duty! They all need to be punished.

Words Are Not Enough - We Need Police Reform NOW

 

The following op-ed is by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times:

The spectacle of a televised countdown to the showing of the video in which Tyre Nichols was savagely beaten by Memphis police officers doesn’t just theatricalize Black death; it is a damning indictment of American perversion.

It was horrific, as promised, but unfortunately not singularly so. It was instead yet another data point in a long line of videos showing the torturing of Black bodies by police. It was more snuff porn with Black victims in a country becoming desensitized to the violence because of its sheer volume.

America — and the world — had the realization that police violence was a problem, and then it simply walked away before the work was done and the war was won.

After the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the historic summer of protest that followed, police killings of American citizens didn’t decrease; they increased. What fell away were the evanescent allies, poll-chasing politicians and cooped-up Covid kids who had used the protests as an opportunity to congregate.

Even Black people’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement eventually began to fall.

And as Americans shifted to other priorities like politics and the economy, the broader public became desensitized to police killings, or it callously started to see the police killings as unfortunate but ultimately acceptable byproducts of much-needed increased policing at a time of rising crime.

To break through, a killing would have to be truly gruesome and barbaric, the circumstances around it truly ghoulish and the victim of it truly unassailable.

That case has now arrived with the death of Nichols, a Black man, after his horrific beating at the hands of five Black Memphis police officers.

Authorities moved relatively quickly to fire, arrest and aggressively charge the officers.

But instead of leaping to my feet to applaud a system working as it should, rather than as it was designed, I am stuck on the fact that there should have been federal legislation to prevent such killings.

But there wasn’t, and there isn’t, because America has once again failed Black people who were pleading for help and demanding it.

America should be ashamed. It abandoned the issue of police reform.

After Covid lockdowns eased and people were once again gathered for things other than protest, their priorities snapped back to a noninterventionist normality. Their cabin-fever racial consciousness was like some kind of delirium, an outgrowth of end-of-the-world ideations.

As the world reopened, elections approached and crime and inflation rose in tandem, interest in police reform and protecting Black lives from police violence melted away like ice cubes on a summer sidewalk.

And with it, America was taught some horrendous lessons that do more harm to the quest for equality than the protests did to promote it.

Black people were taught that for some, interest in their safety had simply been a dernier cri, that allyship could be transitory and transactional, that some people entered the fight through a turnstile and that when their interest and energy waned, they exited the same way.

Too many liberal politicians showed us that their commitment to legislation, and even language, to protect Black lives from police violence was polling dependent, not rooted in moral rectitude or core values but governed by their ideas’ public appeal. When the winds shifted, these politicians spun like a weather vane.

They ran scared of being labeled woke or supporting a “defund the police” ideology. Rather than rebrand a laudable effort to be smarter about how municipal funds are allocated with a more acceptable slogan, they did the lazy, politically expedient thing: They raced to neutralize the idea by proclaiming their direct opposition to it, not defunding the police but increasing funding to police.

Police unions also learned a lesson: that they could survive the most intense and coordinated denunciation of their practices they had ever faced and still dodge federal legislation to address the violence that happens on their watch.

Yes, states like California and New York moved quickly, while the issue was still in vogue, to rewrite some criminal codes, and a smattering of cities increased protection by doing things like strengthening “duty to intervene” policies, but national reform remained elusive.

If there are rare occasions to employ a cliché, this is one: They dodged the bullet.

If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is at present an anecdotal one. It is the seeming impact that Black women have had to disrupt the system when given power not necessarily to prevent violent excesses but at least to punish them.

The police chief who moved quickly to fire the officers in the Nichols case is a Black woman.

When Rayshard Brooks was killed in Atlanta at a drive-through, the mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Black woman, accepted the resignation of her police chief and decided that the officers should be fired immediately. (Unfortunately, the officers were not eventually charged in the case, sued the city and were reinstated.)

When a white Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger, walked into the apartment of Botham Shem Jean and shot him to death, Police Chief U. Reneé Hall, a Black woman, moved quickly to secure a warrant for the officer’s arrest. Guyger was convicted of murder in the case.

I don’t want to imply that a handful of cases are universally revelatory but to circle them as curiosities worthy of keeping an eye on.

Rather than pointing to a system that is evolving and becoming more humane, these examples only underscore the racialized nature of the system and how slow it has been to act in places where neither the people in power nor the accused officers were Black.

Tyre Nichols’s death isn’t only an individual tragedy; he is now a marquee victim of a predacious system that America has lost its willingness to confront. The untreated wound, still festering, bled through the gauze.

Thousands Of Police Dept. Don't Report Hate Data To FBI

 

The following is by the editorial board of The Washington Post:

The FBI released what seemed to be good news earlier this month, announcing that the agency had counted 7,262 instances of hate crimes in 2021 — a drop from 8,263 the year before. In fact, outside experts said, hate crimes might actually have trended sharply higher last year; the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism charted a 21 percent surge in hate crimes in 20 states over the same period. One reason for the discrepancy: The FBI relies on state and local police departments to report crime numbers to the federal government, and only 11,883 of 18,812 law enforcement agencies submitted their 2021 hate-crimes data. The nation’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, were among the non-reporters.

FBI crime data is supposed to give the public, criminal justice researchers and law enforcement agents hard numbers so that they have more than just instinct and anecdote — and the claims of demagogic politicians — to characterize what is happening on the country’s streets and elsewhere. Real numbers provide insights into what is working and what is not. They also show how often police respond to crime with force, against what types of people and in what situations. But voluntary compliance from state and local departments falls well short of what is necessary.

This is not the first time the FBI has struggled to collect reliable criminal justice statistics. The Post has tracked fatal police shootings since 2015, painstakingly sorting through news and social media reports, local law enforcement records and other sources. The Post has found that police shoot and kill about 1,000 people every year — including 1,084 over the past 12 months. Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than White Americans, the victims skew young, and nearly all are male. Further, the number of fatal police shootings has been rising in recent years, The Post’s tally shows. Yet the FBI has reported a decline between 2015 and 2021. The FBI’s records contain only about one-third of the 7,000 fatal police shootings The Post counted during that period.

In other words, the statistics provided voluntarily by local law enforcement agencies underplay both the scale of the problem and the urgency of taking measures to address it — for instance, by updating use-of-force guidelines and investing in de-escalation training. The FBI has embarked on a broad effort to track fatalities and serious bodily injury committed by law enforcement officers, plus instances in which police officers fire their weapons. Yet the bureau  almost had to shut down the program for lack of response from local police departments.

All of this is despite Congress having passed laws in 1994 and 2014 to improve federal crime data collection.

True, in any given year, smaller police departments might have seen no hate crimes, police use-of-force incidents or other notable events to report, so they might not see a need to inform the FBI. Doing so takes time and resources; the FBI estimates it consumes 38 minutes to report every incident to its police use-of-force database. Police departments complain that the FBI’s transition to a new crime reporting system, which asks for more details, has made complying harder.

But “none this year” results are crucial if the FBI is to compile an accurate and comprehensive report. Police departments that have a sense of what is happening within their areas would also benefit from seeing what is happening down the road — or across the country.

Congress should intervene once again. Federal appropriations to help police departments report their crime numbers are an obvious place to start. At the same time, Congress should condition the large number of various crime-fighting grants it sends to state and local governments on departments reporting their numbers. Bills such as 2021’s George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which passed the House but got nowhere in the Senate, would have created such a system. Federal legislators should also eliminate any confusing or duplicative reporting requirements that place an unnecessary burden on police departments.

Ultimately, however, the federal government has only so much leverage. Most police funding comes from state and local governments. Some departments get scant federal money at all. So state governments should also step in, requiring their police departments to submit crime data to the FBI — or to them directly, to be forwarded to the FBI.

A trustworthy set of statistics is a foundational tool with which to begin figuring out just how big of a problem crime, police use of force and related issues are in the United States — and how to tackle them.