Many things affect the attitudes of beat cops and how they do their jobs. While some officers approach the job with exuberance, others become, in NYPD slang, "hairbags": lazy cops who see more upside in being passive rather than proactive. The revolution in police management over the past few decades has been to elevate engaged policing, which has had impressive and obvious effects on crime. As budget cuts, restrictive reforms, and anti-police protests sweep the country, will demoralization turn even the most genuine and lion-hearted cops into hairbags? How hard would such a cultural shift in departments be to reverse? To address these questions, we are assembling criminal justice scholars along with former police executives who have intimate insights into the culture of policing.

Event Transcript

Hannah Meyers:

Good afternoon everyone. I am Hannah Meyers, Director of the Manhattan Institute's new initiative on policing and public safety. One facet of our research to develop smarter, more creative policing policy solutions is to identify and avoid unintended consequences. Without close attention to all the possible outcomes of efforts to reimagine policing, deeper problems may be introduced than are solved. Those efforts may also be intention with the proactive policing revolution that helped bring about the great crime decline of the 1990s. That revolution itself was a counterweight to the cynical perspective that it was best for cops to stay in their cars, keep their heads down, and at the NYPD, these older jaundiced cops who held that view came to be known as hairbags.

Hannah Meyers:

Today, a growing trend of anti-police protests, budget cuts, and increasing drastic reforms risk setting police back on the retreat toward hairbagginess. Our perfectly suited and incredibly accomplished panel of guests today will address the question of whether this is happening, and if so, how worried we should be about pushing for change too hard and too fast?

Hannah Meyers:

First up we have Carmen Best who served 28 years on Seattle's police force, eventually becoming the department's first Black female police chief before retiring this summer. You can catch her now as a contributor to NBC and MSNBC where she helps viewers understand policing and crime. Thank you for joining us.

Hannah Meyers:

And we also have Paul Cassell, the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Utah's College of Law where he has undertaken scholarship into the relation between police proactivity and crime. He is also himself a former judge and a law clerk to then-Judge Antonin Scalia and former Chief Justice Warren Burger, and he is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School. Thank you for joining us, Professor Cassell.

Hannah Meyers:

And last but not least, we have Ed Flynn who has lead a long and distinguished career in law enforcement, serving as chief to multiple departments. Most recently chief of the Milwaukee Police Department from 2008 to 2018. He is truly a thought leader in the police community. And my first question is for him.

Hannah Meyers:

Chief Flynn, you have been on the job through many transformations and in many jurisdictions. Do you think there is a generational divide between how veteran cops approach the job versus how cops approach the job today in terms of proactivity?

Ed Flynn:

Thank you, Hannah, and thanks everybody. I'm pleased to be on this presentation with all of you. I would say there still is a generational difference over the course of the career on what constitutes good policing. Some of this was generational in terms of different errors of policing. My police career started in the aftermath of the great corruption scandals of the 1960s and civil disturbances that occurred that were frequently, if not always sparked by procedure actual misuse of force. So in that context, I was an East Coast policeman. I grew up on the Jersey City Police Department. This was not like the LAPD you saw on TV. Generally speaking too much proactivity was seen as disruptive to the lead of the police department to keep people on their foot beats, in their cars answering calls and available.

Ed Flynn:

So too much car stopping and too much arrests for minor possession of drugs was really frowned upon. It was seen as not helping the crime control mission of the department, which was kind of a state of constant readiness. So the multitude of social service calls we handled were expected to be handled expeditiously so we could get "back in service" awaiting that hot call to respond in the aftermath of a serious crime.

Ed Flynn:

That gradually did change over the years, as you pointed out, Hannah. We got to a more data driven awareness of how police resources could be deployed. We found ourselves rewarding proactive activity because it could be shown that there was an impact between the accumulative effort of large numbers of officers "in the game" attempting to disrupt criminal activity and ultimate outcomes that resulted in reduced victimization. Certainly our feedback from neighborhoods, particular the neighborhoods most exposed to high rates of crime was uniformly positive. People wanted their streets. They wanted the same level of safety on their streets that any suburb claims to want.

Ed Flynn:

But within that, as officers evolved over the course of a career, what officers see as good policing gradually changes. The good pinch so to speak, the in progress robbery arrest, the arrest of a violent criminal who was wanted for something are still valued, but officers come to realize that they begin to adapt to the fact that the bulk of their work is a form of social work. They spend most of their time dealing with people in their worse moments of their lives, and they're the only agency available 24/7 to do anything.

Ed Flynn:

I think it was Egon Bittner that said many years ago, "The police are called every incident in which something is happening that shouldn't be happening about which somebody should do something now." And that places them in a wide variety of confrontational circumstances, and I think their ability to adapt themselves to the nature of police work, which is dealing with human suffering and figuring out how to use your coercive authority become the key ingredients of learning how to be a good police officer.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you. Thank you. Professor Cassell, you recently published an op ed in the Wall Street Journal based on your longer research report identifying and discussing the Minneapolis effect. The stark jump in homicides and gun violence in major cities nationwide following the May 25th death of George Floyd. You compare this to the Ferguson effect described by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald and others back in 2015. And you estimate that this spike resulted in around 710 more homicides and 2800 more shootings just in June and July of this year. Can you tell us how police morale plays into this deadly trend?

Paul Cassell:

Well, thanks, Hannah. Thanks for having me along with the other distinguished panelists here. And as you've mentioned, I've been researching what's really I think almost an unprecedented spike in gun violence, particularly homicides and shootings, and it started, as you mentioned, right in the last week of May and it's persisted all the way through the summer according to the data that's coming in. What we're seeing is about a 50% increase in homicides and shooting crimes, and we're not seeing that in other crime categories. So what is it about these particular crime categories that's leading to this spike?

Paul Cassell:

And I think it's pretty clear what's going on is we're seeing a pull back from police. We're seeing reduction in what's probably thus called proactive policing, some of the things Ed was talking about. I've gathered some data from some large cities. For example, in Minneapolis, we've seen a real decline in pedestrian stops over the summer. Chicago had a big decline in arrests. Philadelphia had a decline in pedestrian stops and vehicle stops. NYPD had a decline in arrests over the summer. So you see this reduction in I think what's fair to call proactive policing. That is steps that police officers are initiating. And that's going to show up in a couple of crime categories, and those are the shooting categories.

Paul Cassell:

If police officers aren't doing things like stop and frisk or aggressively trying to take guns off the street, then more people are going to have guns on the street and we're going to see this increase in homicides that I've been talking about.

Paul Cassell:

How does that tie into morale? Well, why is it that police officers are doing fewer pedestrian stops in some of these cities? I think there are a couple of things going on. We all know there were a lot of anti-police protests, Black Lives Matter protests beginning in the last week of May and extending in June and even beyond. Police officers had to be redeployed from other tasks to monitor those protests. But I think even those when those protests began to subside, what you started to see is police officers not wanting to become the next viral incident or suddenly become even potentially charged with a criminal offense. So the result was simply I think a very natural one. The result was police officers just became a little less aggressive in engaging in stop and frisk and other kinds of things that we know can respond to and even prevent gun violence.

Paul Cassell:

So I think there are many causes out there. I wouldn't say that a decline in morale is the only one, but I certainly think it's an important part of the picture and one that we need to think about very seriously.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you. Okay, interesting. So Chief Flynn, you spoke about how proactivity has changed as it's become more recognized across the board by different departments as something that's a useful form of policing and also how it changes within the career of any specific officer as they come into the more nuanced understanding of engagement with the community as a sign of their success as a officer. And Professor Cassell, you spoke about it as a response to these major events and the followup.

Hannah Meyers:

I'm going to ask you, Chief Best, about another aspect. Do you think there's a way for police departments to experience major budget cuts, such as we're seeing right now, in a way that won't damage morale or decrease diversity?

Ed Flynn:

Well, maybe they could do it is to quote Henry V, "The fewer men, the greater share of glory to all of us. So we few, we happy few."

Hannah Meyers:

Hold on, hold on. Wait, that was a Chief Best. I love that one.

Ed Flynn:

Oh, I'm sorry.

Hannah Meyers:

I'll open it up there.

Carmen Best:

I guess I should be faster on the draw. I always love hearing Chief Ed Flynn, so there's no harm in that at all. Before I move into that, I would say this. One of the things we have to consider as we look at proactivity and what officers are doing and how much they're engaging with people is we are still in a COVID-19 environment, and one of the things that I had to consider was I was trying to figure out deployment and community outreach and community engagement was that the world as we know it has changed. There were places where we had actually taken the basketball hoops off the courts because we didn't want people showing up to the parks, and there aren't any parades and big events and community meetings and person-to-person community meetings. They're all done either virtually or through email or other sorts of communication tools.

Carmen Best:

So the world has changed. Proactive policing has changed in some ways simply due to dealing with this global pandemic, which has put different restrictions on people just on the level of communication that they're able to have and contact that they're able to have. And depending upon the environment that they're walking in, whether or not they'll have to wear personal protective equipment and that sort of thing. So that also is an aspect of public engagement that officers have to consider in this environment.

Carmen Best:

But moving from that to better address your question regarding the defund the police movement and budget decreasing and what that means. I can tell you that it means different things to different people. I have heard at meetings people say, "Let's be clear," that they are trying to abolish police, and I've heard others say that they want to bring different resources in to deal with some of the issues that officers are dealing with. And I think that there's a middle road there that we should be exploring.

Carmen Best:

I do not believe that defunding the police and not having a police department or extremely cutting the resources is going to be helpful for public safety. But I do think we should be talking about how we might be more efficient in our services and who else might be able to augment or support public safety. For example, even in Seattle where I was most recently the chief, we responded to 18,000 calls for service that were crisis calls and people who had mental health illness. So there might be an argument for having a different approach to those calls, but also recognizing that there's still a public safety interest in having a police officer engaged and involved.

Carmen Best:

So I think that we should not go down the road of untested theory that less police means a safer community, but we should be exploring what we can do to augment the resources. Officers, as Chief Flynn had mentioned, have been doing a lot of work that is even outside the scope of traditional policing. They are suddenly the folks who are dealing with crisis situations, homeless situations, people who are addicted, and all of those things where there might be another resource that would be available. But again, we can't rush into it without being thoughtful, without having a plan, without having some sort of tested theory to see if we actually can change how we respond and how our resources might better be aligned to provide public safety. I think that's a conversation worth having. We're in our reform era, and we should be looking to engage and evolve as we can.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you. I'm going to ask you a followup question, Chief Best. I had read that one thing that was troubling about the budget cuts in Seattle was that there was a class of incoming recruits who was particularly diverse, which is such a wonderful mark of progress for any department and stronger. Do you think that these cuts are having and the reforms in general are having a different impact on departments by race?

Carmen Best:

Well, there certainly is an argument for that, and ultimately that was one of the critical points of leading me to walk away from Seattle. I just really did not want to be in an environment where we were doing the opposite of what we were trying to achieve as late as December 2019, which was increase the diversity within the organization. More women, more People of Color. We had increased those numbers to record numbers with a 40% diversity number for the Seattle Police Department anyway and given a relatively substantial amount of finance and budget to increase those numbers only to have five months later the city council tell us that they were looking at defunding and reducing our resources by half.

Carmen Best:

Well, of course, with most organizations, it's the last end, first out. So the people we had just worked so hard to recruit, to bring into our organization, the many People of Color and women were going to be the very first people because they lack seniority and tenure to have to be cut from the department. And that honestly seemed very duplicitous to me and really lacked foresight about where we want to take our organizations. I mean, we in our organization and many other organizations had done this as well, initiated a bonus for officers to come into SPD. We were paying $15,000 extra if they lateraled and $7500 if they came on as a new officer. So we really lured them, enticed them to come to our organization looking for the benefit of having diversity only to have the probability that they would lose their jobs.

Carmen Best:

So from an area of conviction, that just seemed really wrong and not the right way to do things, and it was even suggested at one point that, "Well, just pick and choose who you layoff or terminate," but you can't fire people based on race. You just can't do that. So the idea of doing that really was going to have a detrimental effect. We want to bring new, fresh thoughts and ideas and people to the organization. In order to do that, you're going to have to hire and retain them.

Hannah Meyers:

So important. Professor Cassell, I want to ask you, do you think that there is a cycle that continues where proactive policing is put in place and crime is reduced because of the increased engagement of police? And then at that point, people tend to see there's not that much crime, and we don't really need police. And they push back on police, police retreat into their cars, and crime increases and we go around again. Does that happen? And if so, is there a way out of that?

Paul Cassell:

Well, I think you maybe on to something there. I mean, if you look big picture, of course we had a lot of policing, and we had a lot of effort focused on crime control in the 1990s and that bore some fruit. And over time we saw crime rates go down. And I think we sort of forgotten about what the battle days looked like when crime rates were very high. And unfortunately we're starting I think to relearn some of those lessons.

Paul Cassell:

I think a lot of the things Chief Best was talking about, we're starting to see some of those things come along. I mean, she's talked about how in her department tremendous strides were being made, the police force was being diversified. I know there was a lot of innovation going on with community policing and a variety of steps being taken in Seattle that now are suddenly going to be undone in this rush to... I think Chief Best is right. We're not talking about abolishing the police in the sense that you will wake up one day and they'll be no police officers there. But certainly scaling back police forces. If we think that police do anything at all in terms of controlling crime, we're going to start seeing that on the backend.

Paul Cassell:

Let me just give you one illustration of a city I've been following really closely, which is Chicago. Chicago right now has seen gun violence go up 50% if you compare 2020 to 2019, and we're talking about, again, specific crime categories, homicides and shootings. And those are the crime categories that I think are most responsive at least in the short term to changes in policing. I think the word has gone out to people on the streets of Chicago who might be shooters that, "Look, the police have pulled back a little bit." It's possible to carry a firearm in maybe ways it wasn't possible before. And now we start to see disputes that previously would not have been resolved with firearms being resolved sadly with firearms and turning lethal in many cases.

Paul Cassell:

And why is it that police officers are not being quite as aggressive in Chicago this year as they were last year? Well, there's another statistic that I've just seen this year in Chicago, 67 police officers have been fired at, and sadly 10 of those officers have been struck by bullets. That's four times more than existed in 2019. And so if you're a police officer in that kind of an environment... And again, these are rare situations fortunately when police officers are being shot at, but more broadly police officers are being spit at, they're being criticized, they're potentially losing their jobs as we've seen in Seattle. I mean, there's just a whole host of things. And it would really be remarkable if America's police force is somehow just ignored all of those outside influences and continued to do the same kind of job that they've been doing before.

Carmen Best:

Can I piggyback on that because right after the death of George Floyd and the murder of George Floyd, we had all those series of protests. And in Seattle, we had very unique experience at this Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that was created that later become the Capitol Hill Organized Protest Zone. And what it showed, one of the things that it showed was that because of the dynamics that we had there and the lack of the ability for first responders to get in quickly and appropriately, it quickly became a pretty lawless area. Without having officers respond, the word gets out so to speak that police aren't really coming in or it's taking them longer to get there. And the crime in that six block area went up tremendously.

Carmen Best:

So I would say based on my own experience, not anything that I've read or from any research, but I was there and I lived it. But not having a law enforcement response and not having police available and a system for responding will lead to a level of lawlessness and increased crime. And not only as the professor has mentioned is it happening in Chicago. Again, I speak from the perspective of a person who lives and has worked in Seattle that their homicide rate has almost doubled, and we're not even at the end of the year yet compared to any rates before.

Hannah Meyers:

I'm going to interject here to invite our audience to submit their questions using the comment section of whatever medium you are watching on, and we'll do our best to work them into the conversation.

Hannah Meyers:

Chief Flynn, which segment do you feel has a greatest impact on police morale in terms of their support, local politicians, journalists, public in general or higher ups within a department?

Ed Flynn:

Well, I think you can probably put the fingerprints of all of them on that particular issue if you will. But first let's take a step back and understand why police morale is important. When we talk about morale, we're not talking about am I happy with my assignment? Do I think I make enough money? Is my boss nice to me every day? What we're talking about is the individual's pride and satisfaction in their department, in their profession, and with the community they serve. Morale is important because police officers by their definition spend their lives dealing with various forms of human dysfunction and human victimization. The job is lonely. It's emotionally and physically dangerous, and it's preoccupied with human suffering.

Ed Flynn:

Now that's a hard job, and it requires emotional support systems in the family, within the department, and a sense of appreciation from the public and reasonable understanding from the press to support it. Because police morale affects police performance. Police performance affects community attitudes, not just towards the police department but towards governing generally. And all of that affects the social bonds between police and communities themselves. So it's not just some can we make the cops happy? It's do we value their work as we're celebrating nurses and emergency room personnel and soldiers. I mean, there's not a soldier in America that can walk down the street without being thanked for their service. How do we provide some of that support for our officers at this extraordinarily difficult time?

Ed Flynn:

I heard a colleague recently who was studying the ability of police officers to receiving grants from foundations. And she said right now the atmosphere is toxic when it comes to policing. People don't want to fund grants for policing outside of government grant programs. They're afraid it's going to hurt their corporate brand. That's insane. So certainly the media has had an enormous impact on this because they've made choices on what to cover and what to highlight nationally.

Ed Flynn:

Certainly various politicians have fingerprints on this gun because you can use the police easily as a scapegoat for all the social ills of America because the police are going to be in the middle of them. Sure, police have been involved in racist behavior. Sure, they've been involved in corrupt behavior over the generations. Certainly there's reasons for people to have historical distrust for the institution that lawfully uses force. But none of these things happened in a vacuum, and right now sadly police are put in this position by activists of being blamed for all the social ills of America, and the end result is the continuing victimization of the folks that the activists claim to be protecting.

Ed Flynn:

So those were important issues, and I think peeling off the various strands that have contributed to this requires help outside of the police department. We need some political figures to step up a little bit. As I used to tell my community groups, for God's sakes, engage your right to criticize us when we're wrong. But step up a little bit and recognize all the times you're asking for the police to ultra police your neighborhood because things are out of control. Can you be there for us a little bit once in a while? Because why would your best and brightest join us if their leaders only demonize us? Our great challenge is to diversify policing against a backdrop of almost universal revulsion at the active policing.

Ed Flynn:

I just believe, and I think all of us believe, effective policing in a diverse democracy maybe the most important single asset government brings to the table trying to create justice and order in the public space. So a competition of ideas and economics could occur.

Hannah Meyers:

Actually, we just got an audience question that builds on something you mentioned. This is from George who asks, "Alongside the issue of police morale in these turbulent times, has anyone done studies on the morale of the most..." I think I'm going to paraphrase, which is are the communities that are poor minority communities being disproportionately effected by the change in morale in police?

Hannah Meyers:

That is to anyone who...

Paul Cassell:

I've been looking of course at this increase in homicides and shootings across the country, and sadly a disproportionate number of the victims are from communities of color. I think by something like 85% of the victims of this homicide spike are going to be from communities of color. So we're seeing a disproportionate effect on... Well, for example, in Chicago, on the south and west sides, those are the areas that are being affected by the homicides. It's not on the Miracle Mile or something like that.

Paul Cassell:

It's interesting, if you look at public opinion poll, you find interestingly a lot of support for police, and you also find support for police in minority communities. For example, the Gallup Poll recently did a survey in July of 2020, and this was several weeks after the start of the George Floyd protests, and they asked Americans, "Would you like to have police spend more time in your community, less time, or about the same about of time?" And 86% of US adults wanted the same or more police presence, including about 81% of Black Americans and 83% of Hispanic Americans.

Paul Cassell:

So I think sometimes some of the protesters who come into say that they're unhappy with the police presence and so forth, they want to leave from various neighborhoods. And the persons who are behind in those neighborhoods are the most effected when police officers pull back. So I think we need to consider all sides in the equation while we start talking about who is really effected by this decline in police morale.

Hannah Meyers:

And how long do you think it will take if, as Chief Flynn says, the citizenry steps up to say, "We support the police," more often than they are and if there's more funding and if some of these trends reverse, will there be a lasting damage to morale say by the new recruits in Seattle who ended up getting turned away? Even if the situation on the ground improves, will it take a long time to induce a feeling of comfort in joining the police force or remaining there?

Carmen Best:

Well, I can speak for my behalf, and I certainly think that will take some additional time. Very much heartbreaking to me to think that we would have to turn some of those people away because we will never get them back, and of the last, I think the last 12 that I swore in, 11 of them had degrees and I think five or six had advanced degrees. Really smart people who could work at any Fortune 500 but had chosen to go into public service and policing. And I think turning them away, we won't get them back. I think when morale is damaged like that, it takes time to get people reinvigorated about becoming a part of a profession that has been under scrutiny and been demonized in many ways.

Carmen Best:

So we all lose out if we don't have the best and the brightest coming in and joining the service of the police service. So I think that does have a long term effect and a long term negative effect and one we should be thoughtful about before we cast these aspirations on policing without being very thoughtful about the long term effects of it.

Hannah Meyers:

This question is from Nick who asks a good question, "Do you think policing might be impacted by a Biden-Harris administration? And how?" Probably will be in some way.

Ed Flynn:

Are you going to call on us or are we going to volunteer for this?

Hannah Meyers:

I threw that one out to the group.

Ed Flynn:

I think it's going to be interesting to see. Certainly it was challenging during the Obama administration that the only path to reform in policing was seen as to sue the police, to find them guilty of misconduct rather than simply confront the reality that much of the disparity in police activity reflected absolutely the disparity in victimization rates and to try to draw distinctions between agencies such as Carmen's, which are trying to do the right thing for the right reasons. But we're in those neighbors that the communities behest, and those agencies that were presumably their activity was not justified by data or citizen requests could be shown to in fact be acting badly. We were all thrown into the same pot.

Ed Flynn:

I remember I was invited to a town hall at the end of Obama's administration, he very graciously took my question. I was asked to ask a question. I didn't insert myself into this, and I just said, "We need somebody, Mr. President, in the political environment with the credibility to contextualize police work." You will never see a discussion about police disparities in tactical, in operational matters that even references obliquely the crime rate in the neighborhoods that are most afflicted by high rates of violence. Now you don't have to blame people for being victims. We understand. People who are in better economic circumstances can afford to commit crimes that aren't using public space and that are more lucrative.

Ed Flynn:

Harvard degree guarantees you a better crime income than being a high school drop out. I tell people the example, have you ever stopped and thought why they call prison vans paddy wagons? That's because those were my people in the back of the damn... The Paddies were in the back of the wagon because they did most of the public space crime. It's the province of poorer people. But having said that, our moral obligation to do something about it and no one is crossing the intersection between what's an inappropriate disparity based on good faith efforts to control crime, and what's an inappropriate disparity? Right now it's every disparity is equally bad. If we can't get over that hump, how on earth are we going to reform policing if we don't understand its nature, if we have no empathy for its practitioners?

Ed Flynn:

The hope for the Biden administration, and I'm not a spokesman for him, God knows, is I don't know Vice President Elect Harris. I knew Joe Biden for years as many other chiefs did who always represented he fundamentally got cops in policing and was always certainly a friendly advocate in the administration. So I think there's going to be a little bit of a yin yang here. The Democrats have got a wing in the party that wants more "reform" without the press thinking through its ramifications, and then it's got some moderates represented by President Elect Biden who historically worked with policing and indicated he understood it. So I think we have to take a step back and see how it plays out.

Hannah Meyers:

Does anyone else want to jump into what the new administration may hold?

Carmen Best:

I would just say for me I think that they hold the promise of a future where we can get all the stakeholders at the table to have a conversation about moving forward. I think Chief Flynn is exactly right that we all know our Former Vice President, now President Elect Joe Biden, that he does have the ability to connect with officers. I think he's also shown he has the ability to connect with communities of color, and specifically the Black community. And I also believe that our Vice President Elect Kamala Harris, she does come from a law enforcement background being Attorney General, a prosecutor. So I think that that unique combination of both their heritage, their history, and of their career will intersect nicely for people to at least feel a level of confidence about their voices being heard.

Carmen Best:

Obviously none of us knows what the future holds. So we'll have to see what happens, but I feel very hopeful that we will continue to make strides and gains on police reforms across the country. Many of which have already been made, but I think we'll be able to continue those.

Paul Cassell:

If I could jump in as well just to echo a few things Chief Best said. I mean, I'm cautiously optimistic for Senator Harris. She does have a prosecutors background where she's worked with law enforcement. I'm hoping, as I think Chief Flynn is as well, that maybe that will give her an appreciation and Vice President Biden an appreciation for some of the complexities that are out there.

Paul Cassell:

One other thing that Chief Best said that I think is important to talk about as the Biden administration moves forward. I am hoping that they'll try to get all stakeholders around the table. I've mentioned Chicago. We know that in 2016 there was a dramatic increase in homicides. The homicide spike in Chicago that I think resulted from a consent decree essentially that was reached between the Chicago Police Department and the ACLU. It was reached by the lawyers, but no one really ever went out to the men and women of the Chicago Police Department who were on the street and how to operationalize that. And I think a lot of the problems that resulted there were from a failure to sort of bring line officers on board and get their perspective on how this new consent decree was going to be implemented.

Paul Cassell:

As a result, there was a very rocky road. And as a result, there was a tragic increase in homicides in Chicago. So I'm hoping that the new administration doesn't suddenly see that their mission is somehow to investigate police conduct to the exclusion of trying to understand the realities that are going on. If they start to implement reforms, they do so in a way that takes into account the viewpoint of officers on the streets.

Hannah Meyers:

Absolutely. At the risk of asking a broad question, do you think that it can be as simple as the right leaders bringing all the stakeholders to the table for more conversations and that be enough to bridge what seems to be this incredible disconnect between the protestors who are so vocally anti-police, but then surveys are the ones that we don't want fewer police in our neighborhood though. And the people that are understandably worried about police brutality but are also becoming increasingly the victims of this spike in crime from less policing. Do you think that it can be as simple as leaders bringing people to the table? Do you think there's something else that could bring those conversations together in a productive way that we haven't touched on?

Ed Flynn:

I think one of the shortcomings in the most recent administration was that they asked of law enforcement they can lead a commission to look at criminal justice issues. But they only invited police. I'm sure that made for much less contentious discussion around the table drinking coffee. But sadly even though there's some people... I know there are people of goodwill and very intelligent would've been open to a discussion with anybody about the nature of policing. The fact is everybody's work is now been discredited because it violated a bunch of federal statutes because it only had one point of view at the table. So if there are any good ideas in it, they're immediately wounded.

Ed Flynn:

So I think certainly symbolically convening meetings among people that really should be adversaries. I mean, there's a segment of the protest community that's about the protest. I think we can acknowledge that. It's a political tool to achieve notoriety for certain key actors. But there's a lot of people in the protests that are really connected to the justice issue, and how do we engage in some important symbolic acts that indicated, "Wait a minute, we're your police." Here we are dealing with leaders of various movements to have an intelligent conversation on how to keep people safe and do it in a respectful, constitutional way. People in those high crime neighborhoods want police protection but they want to feel like it's the kind of police protection they imagine the suburbs get where the cops know people in the neighborhood and know the difference between the people that are just going about their business and however eccentric it might be and the people that are true threats to the neighborhood.

Ed Flynn:

So starting using the convening authority of the incoming administration to consciously attempt to bridge gaps, not just "reform" the police but to bridge the gaps because all these strong neighborhoods can resist crime and victimization. Weak neighborhoods are vulnerable. Weak neighborhoods without police protection are doubly vulnerable. But to establish the credibility to do that requires that all voices be heard. So I think symbolic act matters, and I think clearly it's going to have to be on the agenda of the incoming administration because many of these demonstrations had much to do to propel to the urgency around their candidacy.

Hannah Meyers:

I'm going to turn now to a northwest question that comes in from Jonathon who asks-

Ed Flynn:

[inaudible 00:42:01].

Hannah Meyers:

What's that?

Ed Flynn:

That's Carmen's.

Hannah Meyers:

What should we make of Oregon recently passing a new drug decriminalization law that makes simple possession a civil infraction [inaudible 00:42:13] the push to do the same in Washington?" He asks.

Carmen Best:

Well, when it comes to how we look at criminalization in drugs, I mean there's a lot of conversation that needs to occur on that particular issue. I would say this, even in Seattle they're discussing how they're going to deal with misdemeanor crime and what's going to be prosecuted and what isn't, and what's an affirmative defense and what isn't. So I think there's a lot of discussions the chiefs have had about we don't want to criminalize people for their addiction or for their mental illness. That said, there is a line there where the laws have been crossed and people are engaged in criminal behavior.

Carmen Best:

So I'm not necessarily opposed to restructuring as we move forward in society. I think all of us need to do that and figure out how we're going to do that. I just don't believe we're having carp watch a blanket police for all of it because what happens that people will get swept up in there who are actually going to exploit that system and exploit those terms. So that's the real concern there.

Hannah Meyers:

Bringing back the larger morale issues, there was a Wall Street Journal piece recently about around 25% or more of the chiefs of major city departments are leaving under various terms. And my sense is that from what I've read and what I've heard people saying is that it's very hard to fill these positions because nobody wants to go into a situation where they don't feel like they can succeed. How can we turn that around? Is that going to turn around soon? What's the future look like there?

Carmen Best:

Well, I'll jump in having just recently left the department and say that I think that's a real valid concern. I got an award at the major city chiefs convening about a month ago, and many of the seats at the table had different chiefs in place than were there before. Quite a large number. And I think that that's just indicative of the year that we've had of racial reckoning and turmoil and somewhat holding police departments responsible for many of the issues that are societal issues that are pervasive in so many areas and not just in policing.

Carmen Best:

So I think that it is a difficult job and certainly this last year has highlighted some of the difficulties in it. I saw some very good chiefs leave when I think that they were the main ones that were being progressive. So it's going to be a little while to get people back in, but I do think all of this stuff is cyclical. I know Ed's going to answer up. He's been in law enforcement for over four decades, so can talk about how this ebbs and flows. Situations and issues come up and we learn to address them. So I do believe a good leadership will come to the forefront and will take its place. But yes, this year has definitely been hard on a lot of police chiefs.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you.

Ed Flynn:

I'd agree, Carmen. I mean, I tell people I had a great eight and a half years in Milwaukee. The only problem was I was there 10. The last year and a half were absolute misery. You couldn't buy a new story that was at all interested in any data that the police department could produce to mitigate criticisms of it. We had 10 years of declines in uses of force, 10 years of declines in citizens complaints against us. Yes, we had critical incidents and some of them were bad and required prosecutions and some of them required firing. But the overall data was positive for us in terms of crime, in terms of conduct, in terms of misconduct.

Ed Flynn:

The University of Wisconsin used to do annual public opinion surveys. Our worst marks were in the African American community, as you would not be surprised, and it was 66 and two thirds percent approval. What politician wouldn't kill for 66 and two thirds percent approval? None of it mattered. Once we became branded with whatever misconduct was happening anywhere in the United States, our press jumped on the conflict bandwagon. The politicians jumped on that, and I had one of them yelling at me at [inaudible 00:46:44] once. "I'm sick and tired of all this data. I don't want anymore data. What about..." How do you deal with that? And so that's afflicting all of our chiefs.

Ed Flynn:

Again, as Carmen graciously pointed out, I have over four decades experience in policing. So that means I'm old. But I remember the bad old days when brutality and corruption were real issues that all of us had to be alert to. I mean, this notion of intervening, you think it's brand new? It happened. There was no social support for it, but it happened. And corruption was a serious issue in American policing for a very long time.

Ed Flynn:

So the fact that departments right now have more higher levels of integrity and are more restrained in the use of force, they have higher standards of training and recruitment than in anytime in their history doesn't matter. And a big piece of it, as you indicated earlier, is the media coverage. I mean, Carmen and I have been to media courses. What do ex-reporters tell us? They love a conflict. Try not to be on the wrong end of the conflict. Don't allow yourselves to be portrayed as part of the conflict. The media wins prizes if they change a law or get you fired. That's how they win prizes. And in those situations, this notion of facts don't matter. We're in a post-fact environment. Believe me, that last administration has not exclusive ownership of that fact. I get the Washington Post every day. What they lead out of that darn newspaper is this important or not more important than what they put into it. Don't tell me you're not manipulating me just because you're a paper or a record.

Ed Flynn:

So it's been a real challenge for policing to put its best foot forward because it's being [inaudible 00:48:29] misportrayed. Data is being cherry picked to find us guilty of things, and we're not allowed to prevent evidence to contextualize it without appearing insensitive. So it is a super hard time to be a chief. The theory is some of the most progressive chiefs in America are the ones that lost their jobs. Why? Because they don't have strong union support. They're holding their department accountable at the same time as they're trying to create better policies to make it both more effective and more acceptable to the communities that need it the most. That puts them at risk sometimes when they're collecting bargaining units. Behind the scenes, reach out to their local politicians. "Chief's being mean to us." So you've got that weakness over there. Then on the other side, the media fascination with conflict journalism. Between those two forces, we're the... I was going to say nutcracker, but that doesn't sound right. Between those two forces, we're being squeezed, and a lot of good people are giving up. They're not even getting fired. They're just giving up and moving on.

Hannah Meyers:

I want to invite again our audience to submit questions through whatever medium they're watching on. Professor Cassell, do you think that if conversations progress and reforms are put into place however thoughtfully and with however much input from stakeholders, do you think that in one year, three years, five years departments will kind of look dame or do you think they'll be sort of a massive reimagining that sticks in what policing looks like?

Paul Cassell:

Well, I think everybody would love to see a reimagining of police departments in ways that suddenly make all the problems disappear. But a lot of smart people have been thinking about these issues for a long, long time, and I don't think we're going to discover some magic cure for all the problems that are entering police forces right now. So my sense is that we're going to see things looking pretty similar to they do right now. At least I'm hopeful they'll look pretty similar to what they looked like before the last few months when there were such strong anti-police protests. I mean, I'm hoping we can maybe turn back the clock just a little bit to where things were at the beginning of 2020. And I think there were a couple of simple steps that the incoming administration, for example, can take.

Paul Cassell:

I thought one of the most positive things that President Obama did was he held the Beer Summit back in the day where he brought I believe Sergeant Crowley and one of his old law professors at Harvard or professors at Harvard, Professor Gates. And he sat down and they all had a beer. By the way, it's a little known fact that there was a fourth person at the Beer Summit, and that was then Vice President Biden. So I think I'm hopeful that perhaps Vice President Biden as he becomes president or perhaps Vice President, Senator Harris can help to fight this sort of demonization of law enforcement and can say, "Look, the question here isn't how can we abolish the police or how can we handcuff them so that we don't have to worry about any kind of misconduct occurring. The trick is to try to hit the Goldilocks spot where there is effective policing against misconduct, but at the same time effective policing to prevent homicides and shootings and all the other things that law enforcement does."

Paul Cassell:

Now part of that will involve I think some reimagining. I think there's becoming broad consensus that if you pick up the phone with what should be a mental health issue that maybe a law enforcement officer who's on is not the only response that we want to have to those kinds of problem. But beyond that, there's just a lot of problems with law enforcement is the only way we can respond to. So I think we're going to see law enforcement five years from now looking very similar to the way it looks today.

Hannah Meyers:

Would you agree with that chiefs?

Ed Flynn:

I would reference the great mental health revolution and reform of the '70s and '80s when in response to some news stories about terrible conditions in mental hospitals around the country, we had the great deinstitutionalization movement. And the idea was it's going to be a network of mental health facilities in every community in America that would help deal with the people so they wouldn't have to go to mental institutions and be treated badly. And what we ended up with was an explosion of homelessness.

Ed Flynn:

So America doesn't have a great track record of fixing social problems by eliminating its imperfect responses to them in favor of nothing. They take the tax savings out of the budget and move on. And that's what happened with the deinstitutionalization movement, and I'm afraid with the movement here... I've been involved with, been working with some police departments that are attempting to reimagine their function. And I said, "Hey, wait a minute. This is great. Somebody else should do mental health. But if there's still no place to take them, how is the outcome going to be different than using the police to do it?" You've got to have a backend for mental health services.

Ed Flynn:

There's got to be a place where they get counseled, taken care of, medicated, admitted. Right now you can go to any major city in America and they'll be six or eight police cars parked outside the county mental health facility waiting to have their person evaluated. And if they having stabbed themself or injured anybody, they won't be admitted. So then the cops have to take them back again and wait for the next call when they have a mental health crisis.

Ed Flynn:

So it's one of these things where this rapid instant cadence to mob pressure are not thought out, and we don't have still any alternatives actually to the police. It's a great idea to have mental health professionals go respond. We did that in Milwaukee, but they were still [stimate 00:54:22] by the fact that after they done their response, nobody would place their client. So the challenges are real, and I'm not optimistic based on our track record.

Hannah Meyers:

Excellent point. I want to ask, bringing it back to a sort of micro level of morale, what quality would you say police officers most admire and are inspired by and try to live up to in their fellow officers?

Carmen Best:

Well, I think there's a myriad of things that officers really appreciate about one another. But it's going to sound very cliché, but the ability to help people. And so many officers do so much of that work, and I know that both my colleagues on this call will attest to that. They do so much work that isn't highlighted or recognized but certainly is rewarding for them to do. They often are the ones who are bringing groceries to family that needs them. In Seattle, there were kids... They were going to a lot of calls for service where kids did not have beds, and they created the Beds For Kids Project. And for several years running, officers and community members have been supplying families that need them with beds for their children.

Carmen Best:

There are so many good things that have come out of officers being on the frontlines and working in and out every day. And officers during times of difficulty can appreciate that and lean on that to help support them.

Carmen Best:

As Ed has mentioned, there are just so many negative factors that you have to sort of weed out to lead through. But good leadership reminds officers of the fact that this job is a job of integrity. It's meaningful. There's a needed place for police in society, and while other systems, failed systems that made our job much harder, for example, a failed mental health system. We also know that there's a need to have that frontline engagement.

Carmen Best:

And I'm very hopeful for the future. I don't think we'll look extremely different, but I think some of our functions and responsibilities will morph and change in the future. And we don't have a good track record yet, but I'm hoping that we can start on a track where we can sort of get things righted if you will in the community so that we can have effective police service that's needed.

Hannah Meyers:

How much do you think that this climate right now where so much is being demanded of... There's so many downstream issues that police are getting blamed for. Going back in particular to Chief Flynn's example of mental health crisis and the lack of a good way upstream to help people before they become a potential threat to others and themselves. Do you think that this moment could lead to deeper discussions of now these other areas in a productive way? Are you hopeful that that will happen, or is it just too appealing to kind of let it filter down to the police and just focus on blaming them?

Carmen Best:

Well, I think we're already having those discussions about the issues around mental health and how these calls for service should be handled. Those discussions are occurring, but they're occurring simultaneous discussions about not having police respond at all. So they're looking at all systems and how we can better respond to them. But certainly I think we're all talking about the fact that we have a mental health crisis in this country. How we deal with it and how we handle it to be more effective is yet to be seen.

Carmen Best:

I don't believe we're going to be better and more effective at doing it without the police. I believe there is a role there, and anyone else that we can get to help augment those services would be helpful. And to get those systems to work better is very needed, and I think Ed pointed that out very eloquently. It's a systemic failure in many areas, and the outcome is that officers end up being on the frontlines of those failed systems.

Hannah Meyers:

I'm going to squeeze in a last audience question here who asks, "How do we go about addressing the seeming increase in passivity on the part of police officers in large urban departments despite the climate?" Maybe this is a Professor Cassell question. [crosstalk 00:59:04] into this problem.

Paul Cassell:

I think everyone on the panel has talked a little about this. Right now the police are under fire almost literally, and I think the result has got to be that we as a society, all segments of society have to say, "Look, police officers play an important role in providing protection." I think right now I think Chief Flynn talked a little bit about the media focusing on police officers who have done something wrong and certainly there is a place and a time for that. But there's been such an exclusive focus on that and a disproportionate focus on that and not on the kinds of things that, for example, Chief Best was talking about. That's the day-to-day experience of policing. That's what's happening across the country very commonly, and to pick out the one sort of bad apple and just have exclusive focus on that and not talk about thousands and thousands of men and women who are trying to do the right thing are frankly sticking their noses into very dangerous places sometimes are doing those small things to make their communities safer and better.

Paul Cassell:

I think if we can just start to focus in a more balanced way on what American law enforcement is doing, that will go a long way forward to absolving some of the problems that have recently developed.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you. And before we wrap up, do either of the chiefs have a final word that they would like to say on morale and on all of it?

Ed Flynn:

I was just going to remind anybody. It's just that the people that police America's streets are the sons and daughters of America. They're worthy of respect and support every bit as much as any service man or woman in any component of the armed forces, and they're doing it daily. And they're doing it ambiguous circumstances with insufficient information under stress, alone or occasionally in pairs. Those people deserve support, and I think the sooner we can get the conversation back where it belongs to be, which is among those communities most afflicted by high rates of crime and concerns about injustice in the agencies charged with protecting them, that's the nub of the issue. A lot of the other stuff that's surrounding these demonstrations is distraction. We've got to get communities at the local level together with their agencies confronting their mutual challenges, histories and partnerships.

Carmen Best:

Yeah. Well, ditto to that. I give kudos to the men and women who are in the law enforcement profession. I believe that nationally we're on the cusp. We've had these discussions for such a long time about reform, reform efforts. I do believe that these discussions will continue. They will be more engaged. But basically falling on the heels of a reckoning after the George Floyd murder, we may be able to make some additional end roads. But we have to consider that policing is just one aspect of a much larger society and that these issues of disparity and race are far more pervasive than any police department. We're looking at them in health and in education and other areas. So we need to come together. We can even reform all of policing, but if we don't really as a society reform all the other areas, we're still going to be dealing with some of the same residual problems. So let's look at all the systems and let's try to incorporate that one slice of the pie of policing into those as well.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you. I must say I entered the conversation with some amount of cynicism growing within me, and this was very inspiring and gave me a lot to be hopeful for and look forward to in the future. Thank you to all our wonderful panelists today.

Carmen Best:

Great. Thank you.

Paul Cassell:

[inaudible 01:02:52].

Ed Flynn:

I have the feeling it's the opportunity. It's not one we often get.

Hannah Meyers:

We're the lucky ones. Before we close, I'd like to invite our public audience to sign up on our website to receive updates from the policing and public safety initiative, including information on our upcoming events. On our website, you can also browse the Manhattan Institute's research and subscribe to our newsletters. If you are able, please also consider supporting the institute at the link that you see below. [inaudible 01:03:17] nonprofit organization and our work depends on support from people like you.

Hannah Meyers:

Thank you again to our wonderful panelists.

Carmen Best:

Thank you.

Ed Flynn:

Thank you.

Paul Cassell:

Bye bye now.

Carmen Best:

Bye. Be well.

communications@manhattan-institute.org