All of which helps explain how we arrived at our current moment, which came, as Hemingway once described bankruptcy, gradually then suddenly.
“The Black Lives Matter movement and various racial-justice organizations have been continuously organizing or strategizing in the background to bring these issues to people’s attention,” Cobbina says. “And I think that work has led people to realize that to do nothing essentially means that you are complicit.”
On Tuesday, POLITICO Magazine spoke with Cobbina about what she learned learn from her research in Ferguson and Baltimore; which type of policing “reform” is, in her words, “essentially putting a Band-Aid on something that requires deep surgery”; and where the country goes from here. The transcript of our conversation is below, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Zack Stanton: There’s a discussion going on about whether to reform the police or defund the police What people actually mean by those terms casts a pretty wide net, but one of the things often brought up by those on the “reform” side is the idea of diversifying police departments. You’ve done research on this. Does hiring more black police officers make a difference in terms of reducing police violence?
Jennifer Cobbina: In my study, I interviewed nearly 200 protesters and residents of Ferguson and Baltimore, and asked about their experiences with the police. While 25 percent of them believed that hiring more black officers would help and that black officers were more courteous and respectful, those responses largely came from those who didn’t actually have very much contact with black officers. (In Ferguson, for example, at the time of Michael Brown’s death, about 95 percent of the police force was white.) Another 25 percent of those who I spoke with stated that black officers were just as aggressive as white officers. Those comments tended to come from Baltimore. At the time of Freddie Gray’s death, nearly half the city’s police force was black, as was the police chief. More Baltimoreans actually had direct encounters with black officers. The Department of Justice conducted its own independent investigation of the Baltimore Police Department and concluded that the department engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional, racially biased policing—and this is in a department where you have diversity taking place. Of the six officers charged [in Gray’s death], three were black. Simply hiring more black officers is not going to help reduce police violence. It’s essentially putting a Band-Aid on something that requires deep surgery.
Stanton: When we talk about “reform,” it often means things like diversifying the police force, or increasing implicit bias training, or increasing the use of technology. And those, it seems, are reforms that have been, to varying degrees, proposed and enacted for several years now.
Cobbina: Absolutely.
Stanton: Are they adequate to address the problems with policing?
Cobbina: Too often, there is a call for police reform that generally entails more police technology, more surveillance, more increased training, training in diversity and implicit bias. But the reality is many police departments have been doing this for years, and we still continue to see problems between police and civilians, particularly black civilians. There is certainly a need for new training regimes and the elimination of militarized tactics on civilians. There’s a greater need for oversight and accountability. However, I wholeheartedly believe that we’re mistaken if we think that these solutions are adequate to reduce abusive practices. The reality is that for four decades, America has been investing more dollars in law enforcement, but that has only allowed greater surveillance of black and brown people. Real systemic changes need to occur. Additional training and adding more people of color—to be honest, that’s often the low-hanging fruit. It’s window dressing that fails to get to the heart of the matter, which is that law enforcement, in general, aggressively polices black and brown people, communities of color, because they are generally viewed with suspicion, viewed as threatening and as “criminals.”
Stanton: You studied what happened in Ferguson after the killing of Michael Brown and in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray, and you’ve talked to a great many people in those communities—demonstrators in particular. How does that work inform the way you see the protests happening right now in reaction to the killing of George Floyd?
Cobbina: What I found in my study is many protesters felt a moral and ethical obligation to do so, because to do nothing would mean that the number of people who continue to die at the hands of police is going to continue to pile up. People are going to the streets to protest, similar to what they did with Michael Brown and Freddie Gray’s deaths. They’re protesting police violence and they’re also protesting the broader structural inequalities that oppress black people. What happened to George Floyd was such an egregious act that people feel as if they have to protest. There’s a full understanding that these are not isolated incidents. And so people are heading to the streets because they want to see change. They desire concrete changes so that black and brown lives will no longer be unvalued or dehumanized.
Stanton: I remember protests happening around the country after Ferguson. But the scale of the protests right now dwarfs that. Why is it different this time?
Cobbina: To be honest, I think part of it is what happened here is so egregious. And it’s been egregious in the past, but many people tried to justify those killings of black and brown people. Typically, the justification for police officers is that they fear for their lives, and many people will side with police officers and say, ‘Well, if he just did this … .’ But in George Floyd’s case, he was compliant. He was deferring to the officers. He was telling them he couldn’t breathe. He did nothing wrong. It’s pretty much impossible to justify. And because it’s such an egregious act, you see a number of people horrified and outraged—people who typically weren’t in the cases of Michael Brown or Freddie Gray or many others. There’s a realization that the call of “Black Lives Matter”—that black lives have been devalued—people are now coming to understand this is actually true: There is a complete devaluation and dehumanization of black life.
Stanton: I’m curious if you feel like the size of these protests is a manifestation of a societal change that has already happened — a sign that things are different now—or whether this is the start of a change that is just beginning.
Cobbina: This is not just the beginning. The Black Lives Matter movement and various racial-justice organizations have been continuously organizing or strategizing in the background to bring these issues to people’s attention. And I think that work has led people to realize that to do nothing essentially means that you are complicit. I believe wholeheartedly that is the result of the Black Lives Matter movement and various racial-justice organizations.
Stanton: It’s striking to me that Black Lives Matter, while it has co-founders, in some sense it’s a leaderless movement. There are definitely organizers and people wholeheartedly involved in it, but it doesn’t have a central figurehead in the way that, say, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference did during the civil rights movement. Do you have a sense of how that affects its approach to these protests?
Cobbina: Well, I would say that it is a leaderful movement.
Stanton: That’s a fair point.
Cobbina: They are intentional about it: There is not just going to be one or two leaders. There’s not just one figurehead as we saw in the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King; it’s a leaderful movement with numerous people taking the lead. And it can look very different in different places, but the overarching goal remains the same.
Stanton: In your study of Ferguson, you classified protesters into three different types, depending on their level of commitment to the cause. On the low end of the spectrum were “tourists.” Can you explain that a bit?
Cobbina: “Tourists” is how I categorized individuals who, at the time of my interview, had protested fewer than three times [in Ferguson, over the course of several months following the killing of Michael Brown]. They really had more curiosity than anything else; they were well aware history was being made; they knew media outlets would be there; they were going and checking it out. The second category is what I call “intermittent protesters,” individuals who protested four or more times. They continued to go to work and school, they believed in the cause, [but they] had more of a middle ground commitment to it. And then there’s the “revolutionary” protesters. They demonstrated every single day or every other day. Many stopped going to work. Some took a semester off school. Many essentially believed that their whole purpose in life was to bring about change for the black community.
I found that in Ferguson, the “revolutionary” protesters were more likely to be the targets of repressive, militarized police tactics. But the harder the state came down, the more it strengthened their resolve to continue to fight. Nothing was going to deter them; it just reinforced why they were out there. However, for the “tourists” and some “intermittent” protesters, actions by law enforcement did deter some of them from coming out—they generally wanted to be involved only if they could avoid the violence. So instead of protesting on the streets, they figured out other ways. Many decided they were going to vote; they were going to mentor a neighborhood youth; they were trying to figure out ways to get more involved in the community.
Stanton: Do you have a sense of what it is that turns someone from a “tourist” into an “intermittent” demonstrator? What is it that motivates that change?
Cobbina: So, it’s interesting. A person can be a “tourist.” And if they come out and actually observe heavy-handed tactics, it may deter some, but for others, it actually provokes righteous indignation about what they’re experiencing. An “intermittent” protester can potentially become a “revolutionary” protester because of that outrage.
Stanton: Over the past two weeks of demonstrations, the use of force by police in response to the protests—notably using chemical irritants outside the White House, or assaulting the 75-year-old man in Buffalo or the many other viral videos of police violence—has seemed to escalate the protests. You looked into similar dynamics in Baltimore and Ferguson; how did police tactics against protests there influence demonstrators in terms of their commitment to continuing to protest?
Cobbina: So, in Ferguson, we saw heavy-handed tactics similar to what we are seeing now in many cities. And the militarized tactics used by law enforcement received strong criticism from the public. Baltimore tried to learn lessons from Ferguson, and initially allowed protesters to demonstrate without forcefully engaging the crowd—and that happened for quite some time. However, as protests became violent, the police response became militarized. Among the respondents in my study, Baltimore’s protesters had more favorable views of how law enforcement handled the protests compared to in Ferguson, where the vast majority of people had such negative views and perceptions of the police. And even among some who had neutral views, the response by law enforcement during demonstrations colored their perceptions. What we’ve seen over the last few weeks, the tactics that law enforcement has used to manage protests—tear gas, rubber bullets, physical force being deployed on demonstrators—all that does is simply exacerbate tensions between police and protesters. It will not stop protests from happening. It is not going to stop further disruption from taking place. It will only reinforce the resolve of those who are committed to the cause—that this is the very reason they are out here fighting against state violence.
Stanton: It seems like we’ve gone through several eras in terms of how police interact with demonstrators and mass protests. In the 1960s, there was an idea that “escalated force” was the right approach. And that turned into a more negotiated response from the 1970s through the 1990s. How should we think about our current moment? Is it a mix of approaches, or something new?
Cobbina: What we see happening now is escalated force coupled with strategic incapacitation. There is the use of tear gas or rubber bullets, physical force, large-scale arrests. There’s also a bit of strategic incapacitation—an effort to identify people who are being violent and to arrest them. What I believe, however, the police response should be is negotiated management. That approach requires officers not to forcefully or aggressively engage protesters, to avoid provoking an incident, to avoid mass-scale arrests, to even wear regular uniforms [instead of military uniforms or riot gear]. It also includes tolerating some community disruption and limiting the use of force unless absolutely necessary. This is to try to ensure that the crowd does not see the police as an occupying force—to convey that the police are there not as warriors who view demonstrators as the enemy, but rather as guardians there to protect and serve.
Stanton: The notion of defunding the police seems like it’s gaining political salience. President Trump has certainly jumped on it as a cudgel to use against Democrats. But it also sounds like you’re saying that “defund the police” is basically just putting a new term on an approach to public safety that is not altogether new.
Cobbina: Yes. Some supporters of “defund the police” essentially want to divest and reallocate some—but not all—funds away from the police department and toward social services. And there are some who want to strip all police funding and dissolve the departments. It really exists on a spectrum, but the main interpretation is centered on reimagining what public safety looks like. And, so, there are calls for cities to divest from policing and to instead invest in resources that create safety for black people and people of color—including investing in high-quality public schools, clean and affordable housing, mental health care, livable-wage jobs with health care and other benefits. And so that’s really at the heart of the term “defund the police”: divest from the police and invest in marginalized individuals and communities.
Stanton: One final question: Given your experience studying Baltimore and Ferguson and how the situations there de-escalated and life went on, how do you see America emerging from its current moment?
Cobbina: I’m hopeful that we will see systemic changes. In Ferguson, people protested for weeks and months on end. After what took place, there are more blacks in power. There was the installment of a black police chief. There is an increasing number of minorities in the Ferguson Police Department. The majority of those serving on the Ferguson City Council are black. [St. Louis County prosecutor] Bob McCulloch was ousted after serving seven terms, and replaced by Wesley Bell, an African American attorney and prosecutor. In addition to those changes, the Ferguson police entered into a federal consent decree in 2016 with the Department of Justice to stop a pattern of unconstitutional racially biased policing—and that has led to widespread reforms. The city ended up dismissing thousands of municipal court cases, forgave millions of dollars in fines and enrolled numerous people in community service if they couldn’t afford to pay the fines. In addition to that, St. Louis County police officers are now equipped with body cameras and dash cameras mounted inside their vehicles. There’s also been efforts to rebuild in Ferguson with the Ferguson Committee Empowerment Center. And finally, I will say, as a result of what happened in Ferguson, there were a whole lot of people who ran for office, and Ella Jones was just elected Ferguson’s first black female mayor. Five, six years later, there are concrete changes that people of Ferguson can point to as a result of the protests that occurred. And, so, I am hopeful that we will also see concrete, sustained systemic changes.
Source: politico.com
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