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In the middle of a year with tense protests against police violence and inequalities in the criminal justice system, millions of Americans voted this year on local voting measures designed to increase surveillance or otherwise reform the police in their cities.
Police voting initiatives in more than a dozen cities received overwhelming support from voters.
Monitoring
In Philadelphia, where the October 26 murder Walter Wallace Jr. sparked ongoing protests, with more than three-quarters of voters, 78%, choosing to replace the city’s Police Advisory Board – long ridiculed by critics as ineffective – with a Citizen Police Oversight Board. The voting measure called on the Philadelphia city council to design the commission with a larger budget and more power than its predecessor.
Similar measures, either the creation of brand new supervisory boards or the expansion of the power of current bodies, have been adopted by wide margins in Columbus, Ohio, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco and Portland – which has it- even experienced months of continued protests against police assassination of George Floyd by Minneapolis officers.
But the long-term effectiveness of voting initiatives calling for police oversight often depends on the power and resources that local legislatures ultimately give to commissions, according to Jennifer Cobbina, professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University.
“It really gets more symbolic if the board doesn’t have real bite. While it does not really have the power to guarantee that the advice or recommendations it makes will be implemented, it does not. really go anywhere, ”said Cobbina, author of“ Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, ”which examines the police crackdown on protests in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.
In Akron, Ohio, voters chose to expand police surveillance by demanding that police release the recordings of the police corps cameras and dashboard of use of force cases resulting in the death or serious injury.
Cobbina said the jury was out on the effectiveness of body cameras in preventing police violence.
“There have been randomized controlled trials with officers using body cameras and they have found that officers with cameras use force and deal with civilian complaints at about the same rate as officers without a camera. that we just need to know that body cameras should not be seen as a panacea to deeply rooted issues with law enforcement legitimacy, ”Cobbina said.
Funding
A pair of initiatives in Los Angeles and San Francisco could ultimately divert law enforcement funds, but they are not necessarily compatible with the “defund the police” movement that gained momentum after the death. from Floyd, Cobbina said.
While supporters of these reforms have called for “reallocating police department resources to marginalized communities,” according to Cobbina, the San Francisco and Los Angeles measures are more limited.
San Francisco residents voted to remove a mandatory endowment level from the city charter, and Los Angeles residents voted for a measure that requires the county to spend at least 10% of its annual budget on alternatives to incarceration.
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