Task Force Report: Not Bad!
nbc12.com
Last week, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s Task Force to Reimagine Public Safety released its interim report. I finally got a chance to sit down and read it, and the results are... better than we might have hoped for.
You might remember hearing about this group a month or two ago. The Mayor created the Task Force at the height of this summer’s protests, ostensibly to “help the city heal.”
But as I and others suggested at the time, commissions like this one serve a number of purposes for political authorities, not all related to “healing.” A commission or panel can make it seem like leaders are doing something about a hot issue while also conveniently putting any real action off into the future. Commissions also offer an opportunity to defuse movement power and co-opt movement leaders, funneling energy into more “respectable” avenues of politics. The underlying goal: get people out of the streets. Tame the movement.
Two problems with the Task Force were readily apparent at the time Stoney announced it. First, appointees included current and former police officers, including a police union leader; protestors and organizers were immediately skeptical of how serious any reform could be. (“Who watches the watchmen?” and all that.) Second, the timeline for the task force was only 90 days, which was alternatively criticized as too rushed and conveniently ending AFTER this fall’s mayoral election.
Problems aside, though, a commission does not have to be completely useless, however. You can get some decent institutional reform out of these things. Changes are always far fewer than what the movement called for, but spooked authorities are much more willing to change when people have recently been in the streets. Commissions are sometimes one way that this change happens.
To his credit, Stoney called for the commission to release an interim report half-way through its 90-day timeline. That report is what we saw last week. And there’s some good stuff in there!
For example, there are many references to best practices used by other municipal governments across the country, such as the promising reforms to use-of-force policies implemented by the Minneapolis Police Department this summer.
The commission expressed clear support for a Civilian Review Board with subpoena power. And there’s a recommendation for a routing system that would create alternative pathways for non-criminal 911 calls, a clear response to the death of Marcus David Peters.
Of course, the devil in the details, and such reforms actually need to be implemented by the city’s next Mayor. We should all be skeptical in an environment where local officials demonstrate a cowardly resistance to any kind of police reform. Just this week the Henrico County manager, John Vithoulkas, pulled county funding for a legal position designed to investigate police misconduct because... reasons. (That’s NOT what we meant by #defund, John!)
I also think the commission report has some significant reform pieces that are missing. Three big areas of changed are needed but not addressed here:
We need sanctions for officers who cover badges, turn off body cams, or otherwise violate procedures in the ways that RPD officers routinely have during the recent protests. Combined with the lack of mask wearing and their ongoing retaliation against journalists, there’s a growing sense that the police force is out of control.
We need more data. Police departments generally are reluctant to compile or offer any data about the number of complaints, use of force, disciplinary records, etc., both on an individual and department level. The FBI is starting to put together a database, but rely on local law enforcement to provide.
Finally, we need to #defund, shifting funding from police departments to other important city needs. Unfortunately, the task force might be structured to avoid addressing this, with three subgroups entitled Community Engagement and Healing, Human Service Lens, and Use of Force (not Budget). This throws the burden of this particular reform back on the Mayor and City Council next year.
So we need more than what this commission wants. But the point is that that does NOT mean that the report, or the Task Force, is garbage. There are clearly some well-meaning folks, many of whom are respected community members, making some good suggestions on this task force. We can implement their best suggestions, while also pursuing even more. We don’t have to choose.
The Mayor might have chosen the 90-day timeline to put off any final action until after the election. (Although the possibility of a December runoff election makes that decision much more interesting.) Still, that does not mean the question of police reform should be put off until then afterwards. The Mayor, and ALL challengers, should indicate whether and how they would implement the changes in the interim report and what else they would do. You should not vote for someone unless they have good answers.