Part Four: Getting Back on Course
The good news about drift is that it can be reversed. A ship that has strayed is brought back the same way every time: take an honest bearing, admit how far you have come, and turn the wheel. A police department is no different. Dr. Deming’s teaching points the way: fix the system, measure the result, and keep improving.
Here is what I believe it takes to get back on course.
1. Take a bearing from the community. A department cannot certify its own course. Only the people it serves can tell it whether it is acting as a guardian. Every department should regularly survey the people its officers stop, question, arrest, or help, asking whether they were treated fairly and with respect, and publish the results by race and neighborhood. Research on Procedural Justice shows that people cooperate with police far more when they feel treated fairly than out of fear of punishment.
2. Raise the standard for deadly force. Replace the legal minimum of “objective reasonableness” with a standard of absolute necessity: deadly force only when it is truly necessary to protect a life, after reasonable alternatives have been tried or would clearly fail. Much of the free world already lives by this standard. California has written necessity into its law, Stanford Law School has recently published a fine model policy built on it, and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) has urged departments since 2016 to put the sanctity of life first.
3. Train officers to meet it. A higher standard without training is only words. When Louisville’s police department adopted de-escalation training, researchers found that use of force fell about 28 percent and injuries to officers fell 36 percent. A higher standard, properly trained, makes officers safer, not less safe. Officers also need far more frequent training in hands-on control.
4. Learn from every tragedy. Medicine and aviation improved when they began treating serious harm as a signal of system weakness rather than a reason to find someone to blame. Police can do the same through Sentinel Event reviews: non-blaming studies of what in policy, training, supervision, and culture made a tragedy more likely, with the results made public. These reviews protect officers from bearing the blame for broken systems, and they show the community that the department is learning and caring.
5. Restore the guardian. Keep tactical teams and equipment for genuine emergencies, but keep everyday patrol and protest response focused on presence, dialogue, and the protection of Constitutional rights. When people gather to protest, police should be there with them, not lined up against them. And when a community gathers to grieve or complain, its police leaders belong in the room, listening.
6. Make the course visible. Body cameras, published use-of-force data, and a public accounting of every past study and recommendation let residents see whether reform is lived or only written.
7. Lead with humility, and with dates. A chief must be willing to say publicly that the system needs improvement, set deadlines, report on them, and ask to be held accountable. That is the job of a leader.
This is everyone’s work
Police departments in a democracy belong to their people. If a department will not correct its course, its city’s leaders and citizens must. Mayors appoint police commissions and approve budgets. Councils set expectations. Citizens vote.
Turning the wheel
No one in American policing decided to go the wrong way. That is what makes drift so dangerous, and also what makes it correctable. The officers who will carry out reform are already wearing the badge. It is what professionals do. The knowledge needed already exists. What has been missing is the willingness to learn, to take an honest bearing, admit how far the department has come off course, and turn the wheel.
A higher standard is not a judgment against police officers. It is a promise to them, and to every resident, that every life will be treated as precious. Without the trust and support of the community, police in a free and diverse society like ours can be neither safe nor effective. With it, they can be both.
The course was set long ago. It can be reset again.
