President Obama’s policing reforms are a disappointment to many supporters who had been anticipating a new era in law enforcement following the high-profile killings of black men in Missouri and New York City.
Nearly seven months after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., setting off a wave of protests — and federal pledges to overhaul policing practices — the environment looks much as it did before.
The Justice Department is not expected to bring civil rights charges against officer Darren Wilson, who killed Brown. There have been no criminal charges in the police chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City.
Attorney General Eric Holder also recently announced that George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed black teenager Trayvon Martin, would not be charged — three years after the shooting initiated a broader debate about race relations in America.
However, the Justice Department is soon expected to accuse Ferguson police officers of racial bias in conducting traffic stops.
And the White House just released a report Monday from an Obama-appointed task force calling for more civilian oversight of local police departments, body cameras for officers and greater transparency about issues of alleged brutality.
Lacking, however, is the kind of prominent criminal charge or major legislative push that many expected when Obama declared in December, “This time will be different.”
And experts said Obama has plenty of work left to ensure the issue doesn’t fade away.
“The history of high-profile police incidents is that they are periodically met with public outrage, which is followed by vows to bring about change. Too often the intensity necessary to produce change fades, and then we suffer through another high-profile incident,” William Yeomans, an American University law professor who spent more than 25 years working on civil rights cases for the Justice Department, told the Washington Examiner. “The test now is to make something happen before the intensity fades.”
Some, however, already see the likelihood of lasting changes dwindling.
The push for body cameras, for example, which seemed so intense on Capitol Hill amid the Ferguson controversy, has since died down. Obama’s request for $75 million to put 50,000 body cameras on police officers has gone nowhere.
Even Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing seemed noncommittal on whether all local police departments should employ the technology.
“While technology is crucial to law enforcement, it is never a panacea,” the task force said in the report released Monday. “Its acquisition and use can have unintended consequences for both the organization and the community it serves, which may limit its potential. Thus, agencies need clearly defined policies related to implementation of technology, and must pay close attention to community concerns about its use.”
Yet some critics said the White House has only itself to blame for the disillusionment it faces nearly seven months after Brown’s death in Ferguson. By becoming so heavily involved in matters where the legal outcome was hazy, detractors argue, the White House was bound to disappoint.
“I give the administration an F for leadership and an A+ for hype,” said Joe DiGenova, a Republican who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
“Everybody knew that there weren’t going to be civil rights charges,” he added. “I do think they are responsible for whatever disappointments there are. Their rhetoric was inflammatory and it did not calm things down.”
Even as Obama rolled out the recommendations made by his task force Monday, he confronted doubts about whether real reforms would be implemented.
“So often we see an event that’s flashy; it makes the news; people are crying out for solutions,” he said from the White House. “And by the time recommendations are put forward, our focus has moved on and we don’t actually see and pay attention to the concrete ways that we can improve the situation. There’s some good answers to be had if we don’t make this a political football or sensationalize it, but rather really focus on getting the job done.”
In being unable to bring civil rights charges against those at the center of the controversies, however, the Obama administration has already shown the limitations of what it can effectively do in these local incidents.
And the White House is still trying to convince the public that Obama is as committed to getting legislative reforms across the finish line as he to fostering a national dialogue about how minorities are treated by police departments.
The policies recommended on Monday by his task force were hardly new, said those most involved in the debate.
“The majority of the recommendations in the report are ones that the ACLU has pushed for and stood behind for quite some time,” said Kanya Bennett, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Most of the recommendations are essential and should be non-negotiable,” she added. “For us to see meaningful change, local authorities must first implement data collection systems to improve transparency, use-of-force policies that emphasize de-escalation, eradicate all forms of biased policing and improve community engagement and oversight to provide accountability.”
Yet, questions persist about what will realistically be achieved at the federal level in Obama’s final two years.
“The problem that people should focus on with regard to federal criminal civil rights prosecutions is that the law is stacked against victims of police violence,” argued Yeomans, the American University law professor. “The law pursuant to which those cases are brought (a Reconstruction-era federal law prohibiting “deprivation of rights under color of law”) is 149 years old, has been narrowly construed by courts and simply does not address today’s needs. It should be fixed.”
