Louisville doesnt need a new police chief.
Mayor Greg Fischer is surveying the community on what characteristics and goals we would like to see the next police chief embody.
Focusing on whom to hire to be the next police chief is a fundamental misreading of the moment and movement. Its also insulting.
Hiring another chief would result in only more policy and procedure changes and not actually deliver change: Black people would still be harassed, abused and killed by the bad apple cop.
Louisville does not need a new police chief it needs a chief of health and safety, or a chief of peacekeeping and peacemaking.
Asking for public feedback is fine community engagement is never bad. But, in this instance, surveying the public is a cynical, calculated effort to appease an outraged citizenry. It feels a lot like all of the other talk strategies the city and police have used in the past, which never fixed the fractured relationship between Black communities and police.
This outreach ends up giving politicians time. It can divert some of the protesters energy. It conveys empathy, care and compassion but not change.
Plus, the community needs no official invitation to provide input. Protesters have been making their demands known for weeks, and theyre not focusing on the need for a new police chief.
Theyre focusing on the police. Want to change the result? Change the police.
As Mariame Kaba, director of Project NIA, wrote in a New York Times op-ed this past weekend, We cant simply change their job descriptions to focus on the worst of the worst criminals. Thats not what they are set up to do.
What Fischer is proposing as reform, in addition to changing out the chief, has been done before with no success, obviously.
He has called for an external top-to-bottom review of LMPD, with a focus on training, bias-free policing, use of force, supervision, accountability and community engagement ( again with the community engagement). The city earlier announced the city would be reconstructing a civilian review board on police accountability, which would include subpoena power.
I cannot overstate this its all been done before. Firing the police chief, also, has been done before.
For the city to return to the same failed processes, which promises the same failed result, is a failure of imagination and leadership.
We know how this ends, because weve been here and done this before.
As Kaba wrote, When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.
Louisville doesnt need a public survey to be heard. We dont need an accountability board, better training or community engagement, and we definitely dont need a new police chief.
As long as police are allowed if not encouraged to rule by force and violence with one-sided, qualified immunity from the law, nothing will change.
They must understand they are there to ugh serve and protect.
We need to reimagine police.
This article appears in June 17, 2020.