Reform Efforts
Reform Efforts
Current efforts to mitigate the potential for harm perpetrated by law enforcement officers focus on increasing accountability and oversight, requiring extensive and specialized training in de-escalation tactics and trauma-informed service provision, and partnering with social service systems or community-based organizations to expand the skills and expertise available for members of the community in need.
Defunding law enforcement can also be a reform-oriented approach if efforts are solely focused on reducing budgets without overhauling policies to mitigate harm, investing in alternatives to providing safety, or without providing for healing and reparations.
Reform efforts have not been effective or widespread enough to change the long-standing pattern of police brutality and violence perpetrated by law enforcement agencies. Examples of failed yet ongoing reform strategies include but are not limited to: requiring officers to wear cameras and film interactions with members of the community, hiring law enforcement officers of color, implicit bias training, and implementing use of force laws that limit violence in policy but not in practice.
Examples of Reform Efforts:
Overhauling training paradigms for law enforcement agencies: Procedural justice training has been shown to reduce the use of force among police officers in Chicago. However, despite a $12M investment in police training in the state of Minnesota following the police killing of Philando Castile, officers have continued to kill Black men. Winston Boogie Smith Jr, Dolal Idd, and Daunte Wright have lost their lives at the hands of police in Minnesota in the last year since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis.
Any reform efforts would need to fully overhaul police education and training models in order to uproot the institutional racism and toxic, dangerous systemic culture and practices that pervade police forces around the country and lead to over-policing and the unnecessary use of force.
Social service agencies are partnering with law enforcement agencies to support individuals in crisis when police are responding to emergencies.
In Oregon, the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) program in Eugene and Springfield offers mobile crisis intervention, dispatched through the police/fire/ambulance communications center. CAHOOTS is an alternative model to police response in nonviolent incidents.
It should be noted that with CAHOOTS and in communities where similar models are used, armed police may still be involved in responding to individuals in crisis. In those situations, police often retain the discretion to harm, maim or murder individuals in crisis.