How the Federal Government Can Reform the Police [newyorker.com]

By Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, June 10, 2020

On Monday, in response to the killing of George Floyd and nationwide protests against police violence, Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced a bill to reform America’s police departments by banning choke holds and tracking police misconduct nationally. The bill is unlikely to make it through the Republican-controlled Senate, but criminal-justice reform is now certain to be one of the top items in a potential Biden Administration. Meanwhile, activists and protesters are advocating for more radical transformations of the criminal-justice system, including the defunding of police departments. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, the city council has announced its intention to defund and dismantle its police department. (On Monday, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign said, in response to demands from protesters, that the former Vice-President “does not believe the police should be defunded.”)

To discuss how best to reform America’s police departments, I spoke by phone with Tracey Meares, a professor and the founding director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. In 2015, Meares served on President Obama’s Task Force on Twenty-first Century Policing, which was convened in response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and offered a detailed set of recommendations for how police departments could build better relationships with the communities they serve. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how much reform can take place at the federal level, why Obama’s task force didn’t focus on structural problems, and what “defunding the police” means in practice.

[Please click here to read more.]

How the Federal Government Can Reform the Police [newyorker.com]

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