Expert: Swap some cops for pros who vow ‘first, do no harm’

There are immediate, concrete steps governments can take to address enduring problems in law enforcement, says law professor Barry Friedman.

In the weeks following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, protests erupted nationwide with people demanding justice for Floyd and condemning a policing system in which police kill Black people at disproportionately higher rates than white people. Marches often became chaotic scenes with law enforcement tear-gassing protestors and firing rubber bullets into crowds.

During these weeks of unrest, officers from departments across the country made national news when video showed them shoving and beating protestors. In New York, these images followed reports relating to the COVID-19 pandemic that highlighted the NYPD arresting greater numbers of Black people for social distancing violations in a manner reminiscent of New York City’s former stop-and-frisk policies.

Collectively, these accounts of misconduct and discriminatory treatment highlight long-standing inequities in the US criminal justice system that have prompted a national reckoning and a call for widespread police reform.

New York University law professor Barry Friedman, author of Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018), is among those advancing models of reforms. Friedman is a co-founder and faculty director of New York University School of Law’s Policing Project, an organization that partners with communities and police departments to promote public safety through transparency, equity, and democratic engagement.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James recently appointed James to aid in her investigation of the NYPD’s response to protests in late May and June. He also joined a coalition of law school faculty in releasing a report that outlines “immediate, concrete steps federal, state, and local governments can take to address enduring problems in policing.”

Here, Friedman discusses systemic inequality in the law enforcement system, the future of reform, and the state of community-police relations in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder:

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