Giving Compass' Take:

• Weihua Li writes for The Marshall Project about the existing gaps in reforming police departments to deescalate violence and promote racial justice.

• Which if these shifts are needed in your community? What can you do to call awareness to these injustices and work towards change?

• Learn about how failures in reforming police departments compound the current public health crisis.

What happens when a police officer is accused of misconduct or brutality? That depends on where you live. In more than a dozen states, police enjoy their own Bill of Rights, which could mean if an officer is investigated, he or she does not have to answer any questions for up to 10 days, and the department still has to pay salary and benefits. Often, the local officers assigned to joint task forces don’t have to follow their own department’s rules, such as wearing a body camera.

When it comes to reforming troubled police departments, we reached back decades for a deep dive into the Kerner Commission Report aimed at prescribing solutions after the race riots of the 1960s—and showed the shortcomings of federal attempts at police reform. More recently, we explored one type of reform deployed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which can sue local police to change through consent decrees—a tactic largely set aside under recent Republican administrations. The results, however, often fall short. In Cincinnati, where the police department was celebrated nationally for being an example of successful federal intervention, people who live in the city’s low-income and middle-class neighborhoods said they saw few changes. One officer was fired for trying to help de-escalate a fraught encounter and not reaching for his gun first.

Over the years, many police departments have explored options for crowd control during protests, weapons that have been labeled “nonlethal” like bean bags and pepper balls, though they can inflict grievous harm. Militarization of police is not just a matter of equipment; in fact, as a Marshall Project story showed, nearly one-fifth of police officers have served in the military, where their training and experience can distort relations with the communities they serve.

Read the full article about reforming police departments by Weihua Li at The Marshall Project.