Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Targeting American Policing: Rogue Cops or Rogue Cultures?

2020; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 4; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s41887-020-00046-z

2520-1344

Lawrence W. Sherman,

Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis

Saving the legitimacy of a democratic policing system from the outrages of rogue cops and rogue police cultures cannot be done just by recommending what policies police agencies should adopt. In the USA and many other countries, police reform requires a realpolitik vision of who can get the policies implemented and how they can accomplish that. In the USA, the most powerful political actor for police reform is the State Governor, followed by the State legislature. All 18,000 local police agencies are creatures of the state in which they are located. Minnesota has not just the Minneapolis Police, but some 400 other local police departments. The most important step to save lives from criminal policing is for states to create Inspectors-General of Policing (IGP), along the lines of HM Inspectors of Constabulary in the UK. This would work best if the IGP would be empowered to decertify both police officers and police departments after a documented pattern of abusive (“rogue”) policing. The precedents of both Camden, New Jersey, and Northern Ireland are not exact matches, but they do show the potential for reforming any police agency that has become bankrupt in the eyes of key communities.