Beyond Police Propaganda
On May 19, 2022, the Detroit Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability (CPTA) sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, requesting an investigation into the Detroit Police Department’s excessive use of force, including the killings of people. The coalition, formed in the wake of the police murder of Hakim Littleton in July of 2020, requested federal intervention because of an accelerated pattern of brutality and lawlessness by police.
The letter provided a detailed review of the history of policing in Detroit noting that “In every era” the DPD has “functioned as agents of repression, hostility and violence towards the African American community.” Explaining that since the conclusion of the 13 years of federal oversight which ended in 2016, little has changed in the practices and culture of the DPD. The letter argues that “the problems that prompted the federal monitoring have not only persisted, but they have gotten worse.” It documents a 24% increase in the use of force since 2020 involving broken bones or death, a 75% increase in forcible use of handcuffs, and violence used against people in public demonstrations. Nor has the Department or the Police Commission developed any effective measure to investigate or discipline officers who violate the rights of people. Racist targeting of people, lack of oversight, and poor leadership were all documented in detail.
Now, in the year since this letter was written, we have seen an intensification of police killings, especially of people who are suffering from mental health crises. Meanwhile the police have successfully increased their budgets and continued to spread the fiction that they are reducing crime and keeping people safe.
This idea has been most evident in the demands by police for more sophisticated methods of technological control. And while the Department of Justice has yet to decide about investigating the DPD, its research arm has documented the failures of these promised protections.
The National Institute of Justice did a thorough investigation into two pet projects of DPD: Project Green Light and Ceasefire. The rating for both programs was “no effect.” This rating means that each “program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s) and may result in negative outcomes.” The response to the report by Chief James White was almost incomprehensible, but it acknowledged that Ceasefire “does not affect the broader community” and the Project Green Light may be failing to deter crime, but it does help in solving crimes.
The failures of these efforts are especially important this year as the DPD moved to increase Project Green light, expand the use of facial recognition techniques, increase the use of ShotSpotter technologies. and is now moving to include automatic license plate readers.
We need to ask what these efforts mean to our community. In a recent article of yet another black man mis identified by facial recognition technology we found this summary:
Mr. Reid’s wrongful arrest appears to be the result of a cascade of technologies — beginning with a bad facial recognition match — that are intended to make policing more effective and efficient but can also make it far too easy to apprehend the wrong person for a crime. None of the technologies are mentioned in official documents, and Mr. Reid was not told exactly why he had been arrested, a typical but troubling practice, according to legal experts and public defenders.
“In a democratic society, we should know what tools are being used to police us,” said Jennifer Granick, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
A national study of police spending found that all of these technologies do not deter crime or make people safe. Instead, they tend to only provide a means to increase misdemeanor arrests. Such arrests are often deadly. The study exploded that these arrests are “concentrated in poor neighborhoods and in communities of color… It is during such arrests that police tend to kill Black and Brown people. Those cities that specifically took steps to reduce arrests for petty crimes saw a decrease in police killings. “The conclusion from the study is clear. “There is so much data bolstering the fact that more police funding means more violence and death at the hands of police.”
As a community we need to think beyond the police propaganda about what makes us safe.