I was recently sent a news story about Harvard University canceling a class that focused on a policing strategy. The class was an evaluation of a policing technique called C3 Policing; a technique that the Springfield, MA police department is currently utilizing. This technique was developed based off of military counter-insurgency (COIN) techniques used Iraq and Afghanistan.
The short-short version is that a letter, signed by over a dozen groups and 800 individuals, was sent to the school that raised concerns about the ethics of the course, as well as the qualifications of the instructor. The ethical dilemma included questions about both the general nature of the militarization of police, as well as the use of unpaid student work for research (which is a really good point that unfortunately I won’t be talking any more about here).
Since I look at policing, I want to talk about the policing.
The C3 Policing program was developed by a man named Michael Cutone, and stands for Counter Criminal Continuum. Cutone served as a Green Beret, and upon returning to law enforcement work back in the US, thought that the COIN techniques that he had been using in Iraq would work well in Springfield.
Cutone disputes that his program is “militarization”. In an interview with Boston Public Radio, Cutone said:
[T]he policing program I started has nothing to do with militarizing the police, it’s basically taking the best practices I learned from community engagement with my time with the Green Berets, then applying them in the civilian law enforcement sector.
Cutone is giving a textbook definition of militarization of police here. One could argue that militarization isn’t inherently bad (e.g. ER doctors get updated training and techniques to treat gunshot wounds, developed by combat doctors on the battlefield), but we should be clear on what this is. This is the militarization of police. Equipment and tactics are developed by the military in combat environments, and then are brought home to local law enforcement.
The militarization of police is generally frowned upon for two main (related) reasons. First, that giving police officers access to more dangerous gear will result in more deadly outcomes for the public. Second, that the mindset of police officers should not be that they are soldiers fighting against a hostile force.
Proponents (i.e. law enforcement officials) argue that the gear and training that officers receive will help save lives, both of officers and citizens.
There’s a lot to think about here. Are these programs effective? Research suggests not. Do communities want them? The C3 program has a lot of community support in Springfield, but research also shows that militarization can cause increased harm to communities.
In reading through all of this, a question kept popping up in my mind.
Why do police departments like militarization?
There’s a funny thing about crime prevention programs. Most of them work. If a police department adopts a program, focuses on it, effectively implements it, and then looks to see if it had an impact on what they were targeting, they usually find success. When police address crime, it usually works.
The other funny thing about crime prevention programs is that most of them fail. Interest wanes, and crime displacement is a real phenomenon (that is frequently poorly measured), and there can also be harms to police-community relationships. A zero-tolerance policing strategy focused on a few city blocks can have tremendous effects at lowering crime, but (a) the crime is displaced, (b) the program has a very high cost and can’t be sustained, and (c) the people living and working on those city blocks very quickly learn to hate the police. (This also contributes to racial inequities in policing.) And then a new chief comes on board with a different program they want to try, and the cycle continues.
These side effects are often ignored, and what we’re left with is a huge collection of crime prevention programs that all claim to reduce crime (whatever that is).
Something that often gets lost in discussions about crime prevention programs is the engagement by the police department. When we read about some kind of program, we tend to forget that the program is being implemented by human beings, with all their quirks, and we just focus on the program itself. But the human element is critical.
Any implementation of a crime prevention program will fail if the individuals who do the work aren’t engaged with it. And police officers engage more with militarized programs. They get excited by acronyms like COIN, or phrases like “detect, degrade, disrupt and dismantle criminal activity”. It all sounds cool.
They get excited by tech that delivers surveillance where they can track targets on a map like a video game. They get excited by big guns and armored vehicles. I have seen it firsthand.
Police departments actively choose which crime prevention program they want to implement, and police officers actively choose how much they engage with these programs. And very often, the choice is for a militarized program. Officers roll their eyes at programs that they derisively refer to as “hug-a-thug”. And if the individuals tasked with implementation don’t believe in it, then any program will fail.
It is a problem that police officers engage and identify more with programs that treat civilians as hostile combatants. It is a problem that police department leadership chooses these programs when there is a wealth of other options to select from. It is a problem that city leadership passively sits by while all this takes place, and does not take a more active role in protecting their citizens.
In their letter to Harvard about the C3 policing course, there were concerns because none of the available course descriptions or syllabus mentioned racism or inequity in policing. Police practitioners might scoff at this and say that this is just the out-of-touch academics. The program reduces crime and has community support, so what’s the problem?
The problem is that we don’t know all the dangers that this program is causing, and we do know that military-style programs have no place in domestic policing. There are other, better options — options that can reduce crime without increasing racial inequities or risking unnecessary harm to people.
There needs to be a dramatic change in police culture for this to occur. And for a change in police culture, we need a change in our own culture. We need to stop thinking that the police are solely responsible for crime, and that they are above question when it comes to policing. We need to start looking at all the ways that government can respond to situations where we previously have sent armed agents. We need to start emphasizing de-escalation. We need to focus on community engagement for every member of the community.
Equitable and effective public safety will only start when we restructure our public safety system. And we can do that by shifting funds from combative practices to community practices. In other words, defund the police.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash
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