The End of Policing

by Alex S. Vitale

Any hope we have of holding police more accountable must be based on greater openness and transparency. Police departments are notoriously defensive and insular. Their special status as the sole legitimate users of force has contributed to a mindset of “them against us,” which has engendered a culture of secrecy. For too long police have walled themselves off from public inspection, open academic research, and media investigations. Entrenched practices that serve no legitimate purpose, failed policies, implicit and explicit racism among the rank and file, and a culture of hostility toward the public must be rooted out. Police should stop fighting requests for information from the public, researchers, and the media. They should encourage more public oversight by including civilians on major decision-making bodies. Just as many hospitals, universities, and corporations have outside directors drawn from the communities they serve, the police should be bringing people in, not shutting them out. This is being done in places like Seattle and Oakland, which have created civilian police commissions with encouraging results. Ideally, these people should be chosen by communities, rather than the police or even political leaders. This is a basic requirement of democratic policing. As NYU law professor Barry Friedman notes, our failure to adequately oversee the actions of police puts our society at peril, especially as new technologies give police the ability to see into ever more asp...