Letters: Reader supports police reform

Dear Editor:

As the Henrico Board of Supervisors and Virginia state legislature look at police reform, it is useful to look to the views of a couple conservative think tanks — Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute.

Heritage Foundation notes in their policy paper, Reforming of Policing (June 2020), “Police officers … deserve our support and respect …. (however,) large numbers of individuals, especially in communities of color, think that police are biased against them….”

“… when police engage in misconduct, they break trust with the very people they are sworn to protect.  Misconduct is bad enough.  But when misconduct crosses the line into criminal behavior (which we believe was clearly the case in the killing of Floyd) then that scars a community — and sometimes the nation — for a long time and is hard to erase….”

“Police know that perception (of bias) can become a reality in the eyes of the general public.

"The police also know that they carry enormous baggage because for many years, some police in the South enforced overtly racist Jim Crow-era laws, often in a brutal fashion utilizing dogs, fire hoses, night sticks, and more.

"The killing of Floyd was inexcusable.  Unfortunately, when a heinous crime like that occurs — regardless of whether it was the result of overt racism or just horrifically bad training or judgment — it rips the scab off an old and deep wound and rubs salt in it.

"We do not believe that our criminal justice system and our police forces are systemically racist.  Are there racist cops?  Undoubtedly, there are.  There are regrettably racists in every walk of life…. As for racist police officers, special care should be taken to weed them out of the force as quickly as possible and, if they violate the law, they should be persecuted and punished accordingly ….

"We … believe … that the criminal justice system and policing can always be improved and that some reforms … might be beneficial.

"… curb or ban the use of chokeholds, consider increased use of body and patrol car cameras, increase funding for training on … de-escalation techniques…. Review policies surrounding no-knock warrants in drug cases, (and) greater transparency about police misconduct inquiries are deemed worth exploring in greater detail.”

And the American Enterprise Institute, in the Brent Orrell USA Today article (July 2020), Police officers’ connection to communities they serve is broken,  agrees certain aggressive and lethal practices — like choke holds, no-knock warrants and discriminatory stop-and-frisk policies should be reformed or banned.

(And that) qualified immunity, which largely protects officers against civil suits resulting from excessive use of force claims, must also be reformed to change police incentives when it comes to use of lethal force.”

Finally, they recognize that “an underlying factor in many fatal incidents is the prevalence of mental illness.”

Clearly, while police officers deserve our support and respect, there is no lack of opportunity to reform policing.

Sincerely,

Toni Schmiegelow, Henrico