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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Protesters want big police reforms. Michigan lawmakers offer small changes.
Protests in Michigan cities are still ongoing1 against racial injustice2 and police brutality3 in what is becoming one of the most sustained social movements in memory. After years of police killing4 African Americans at a disproportionate rate, protesters are calling for revolutionary change.
But state policymakers haven’t matched this fervor6. Four weeks after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, sparking protests worldwide, Michigan lawmakers have largely offered reforms that even law enforcement officials say would do little to actually change policing.
Those proposals include bipartisan legislation that would codify7 police training requirements, ban chokeholds, and require officers to intervene if they see another officer using excessive force.
Activists9 and experts who spoke10 with Bridge and WKAR, East Lansing’s NPR member station, said the proposals represent the minimum needed to move toward safer policing, and at worst would do little to truly change a system that many view as fundamentally broken.
Those seeking more sweeping11 reform want, among other things:
An end to the “qualified12 immunity13” doctrine14 that often allow police officers to avoid being held liable for violations15 of constitutional rights;
Independent investigations17 in cases where police kill or severely18 injure people and requirements to prosecute19 those found at fault. For example, New York state has a team dedicated20 to investigating police killings21 of unarmed people and has a number of other independent bodies that are supposed to oversee22 the NYPD;
An end to policies that obscure an officers’ disciplinary or misconduct history from investigators23 and the public;
And, in some cases, a reallocation of portions of police funding to community services.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer has added four non-police seats to a commission that regulates officer training, and a bipartisan group of state lawmakers and law enforcement agencies announced a collaboration24 in which the state will report data that police agencies are already encouraged — but not required — to report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation16.
Beverly Boatley of Holt is among those who see some of these reforms as well-meaning but not nearly enough. Her grandson, Elijah Boatley, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Arizona last fall after he allegedly brandished25 a gun as deputies sought to arrest him as a suspect in a shooting incident the night before.
Beverly Boatley said Elijah, “had his entire life ahead of him. He wasn’t the hardened criminal they made him out to be.” Police have offered no evidence he was at the site of the shooting he was suspected for, she said, and it took seven months for the family to get basic police reports about the incident. She added that her attorneys haven’t been given access to the officers’ disciplinary records.
She’s since started a foundation in Elijah’s name to raise awareness26 of police brutality.
Deaths like her grandson’s have been happening for hundreds of years in America, she said. She’s fed up.
Public officials, “continue to come back with bandaids. At some point, they’ve got to go deeper and start to restructure this thing,” Boatley said.
“If we don’t start seeing some real change, I fear that there’s going to be an issue. People are just not going to continue to sit back while their loved ones are murdered.”
An urgent call to action
Beverly Boatley was among hundreds of people who marched down Michigan Avenue in Lansing earlier this month in the NAACP “We Are Done Dying” Peace March, carrying signs with urgent demands: “We are not target practice,” “get your knee off our necks,” “respect existence or expect resistance.”
In Detroit, daily protests have been ongoing for more than 20 days. Demonstrations27 continue in Grand Rapids, Flint and even small, rural towns.
While some early protests turned into civil unrest marked by looting and vandalism, the majority have remained peaceful. In several cities, including in Michigan, law enforcement officers knelt down or marched with protesters. But there have also been images of police responding to protesters with force, including police officers who pushed down a 75-year old man in Buffalo28 and punched a journalist in the stomach in Washington, D.C.
Protesters in Michigan and nationwide say it’s time for big policy shifts after years of well-documented inequities in policing.
According to data compiled by Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group, police killings have remained relatively29 steady in Michigan and across the country since January 2013. Michigan police killed 123 people between 2013 and 2019, nearly 40% of whom were nonwhite, despite these groups making up around 20% of the state’s population.
Boatley’s preferred reform, among others, would be to end qualified immunity — the legal doctrine that often shields police officers from being prosecuted30 for constitutional violations.
Tristan Taylor, one of the organizers of Detroit Will Breathe, told Bridge and WKAR he wants an accountability system that will ensure officers involved in police brutality are fired and prosecuted and for a portion of police budgets to be re-routed to community resolution programs.
Others have endorsed31 a set of reforms known as “8 Can’t Wait” which includes requiring reporting of use of force and banning police officers from shooting at moving vehicles. They’re based off of more comprehensive reform ideas put forward by activist8 group Campaign Zero.
Few of the reforms championed by activists are on the table in the Michigan legislature, and most of those that are have not yet received a committee hearing. Compare that with states like New York that recently passed laws making chokeholds a felony, requiring disciplinary records be released, mandating32 officers report every instance of discharging their weapon, and more.
The legislature can move more quickly to propose and enact33 reforms — as can city councils, mayors, and police chiefs, said DeRay Mckesson, a civil rights activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero. He said what’s been introduced in Michigan is “low-hanging fruit.”
“While it’s a good thing to do, we can't let people okey-dokey us into believing that this is some monumental move. This is the floor, not the ceiling,” Mckesson told Bridge and WKAR.
“We’ve got to get to the floor so we can make outcomes change, but you can do this really quickly.”
What’s on the table
The bill with the most traction34 in the state Legislature in the four weeks since George Floyd’s death has been a proposal from state Senator Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), a Democrat35, which would require all police officers receive de-escalation, implicit36 bias37, and mental health training.
Critics of the bill argue it’s simply codifying38 existing police training requirements and would have little impact without an evidence-based curriculum, regular testing, and re-training over time.
Both Mckesson and Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a professor of criminal justice at Case Western Reserve University School of Law who is on a team evaluating police reforms in Cleveland, said that while training requirements are a good idea, there isn’t enough evidence to indicate they’ll make a difference in police behavior.
“Quite honestly, without knowing what the curriculum looks like and who’s delivering that training it’s hard to understand if it will really be effective,” Hardaway said.
It would also require officers to complete a number of continuing education hours annually39 throughout their career “in subjects related to law enforcement,” a new requirement that state Representative Steve Johnson (R-Wayland) questioned as overly vague.
Irwin acknowledges the bill “just isn’t enough” to fundamentally change policing practices and said that he has other proposals based on Campaign Zero that would require more citizen oversight40 boards, independent investigations into police misconduct and demilitarization of agencies that he plans to introduce.
“These are small steps and we need to do more, we need to do much more,” Irwin said. “But we also need to make progress when we can and take these small wins when we can.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers and law enforcement officials announced last week it would be releasing Michigan-specific, use-of-force data collected by the FBI under a new program. But that program is optional, and only 40% of agencies nationwide participate. Just under three-quarters of Michigan agencies participated in the program in 2019, according to the state’s first report released last Wednesday.
Other bills, introduced by Senator Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Township) and Senator Ruth Johnson (R-Holly) would ban officers from putting pressure on a person’s throat or windpipe and would require officers to intervene when they see others using excessive force. Johnson’s bill would also require agencies to punish those officers who fail to intervene. The Minneapolis Police Department had a duty to intervene policy when George Floyd was killed, but strengthened it after his death to make it enforceable in court.
These proposals haven’t yet received a committee hearing in Michigan.
Law enforcement representatives argue that these, too, represent practices that are already controlled by current guidelines.
Chokeholds or other measures of blocking someone’s windpipe except in emergency situations would be considered excessive force, said Robert Stevenson, executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, and a duty to intervene is required of those police departments that are accredited41 by the association and is inherent in the creed42 all police officers must take. However, that doesn’t carry the force of law.
Stevenson said the protests have indicated to many police chiefs that “maybe we need to speed up some actions” of reform, but he pushed back on the idea that law enforcement is due for an overhaul43.
“Policing is always in the process of reform, we’re always changing,” he said. The killing of George Floyd has “been universally condemned44 by civilians45 and police alike. People assume that’s a norm, rather than the exception. It’s definitely the exception.”
These proposals are a good start, Hardaway of Case Western Reserve University said, in that they provide “a state level of reforms instead of doing it haphazard46 from one municipality or local department to the next.”
But without real accountability measures, reporting requirements, and a significant reining47 in of police unions’ powers to protect officers from punishment for misconduct, the problem will likely persist, she said.
“Until there is a real conversation that's built on respect for communities that have been impacted by policing, moving the needle in a significant way through incremental48 reforms will, in fact, be difficult,” Hardaway said. “We may find ourselves here again.”
Multiple activists and experts expressed some optimism at proposals by Attorney General Dana Nessel, which would allow the state commission that sets law enforcement standards to revoke49 an officer’s license50 for a broader range of misconduct and create a statewide misconduct registry. Those proposals have not yet been introduced as legislation and would not necessarily require disciplinary records to be reported to the state or made public; it would only require police departments to retain them.
“This is the pattern that we’ve seen. The measures that would actually make substantive51 change are the measures that are not in the legislation. Politicians put it up as talking points,” Taylor of Detroit Will Breathe said.
Hardaway and Rev5. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit Branch NAACP, said effective policies must include real enforcement mechanisms53 — such as requiring law enforcement agencies to report all misconduct to the state — and noted54 that police reform proposals are often shaped without input55 from communities of color. They urged lawmakers to listen.
“The community determines the kinds of rules, regulations and mandates56 that police departments will have,” Anthony said. “If you don’t have that, then what you have is the militarization of the community — a police state.”
Why is real change so hard?
America’s problems with police brutality have existed nearly as long as it has had police.
Police still kill Black people at more than 2.5 times the rate they do white people, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group, despite an upsurge in activism after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.
Activists who spoke with Bridge and WKAR questioned why police reform is so difficult to enact into law.
Many pointed57 to the power of police unions, which are often effective in protecting officers’ disciplinary records from scrutiny58 and in getting officers rehired who have been fired from their jobs. Police are still considered trustworthy by more than two-thirds of Americans and remain a powerful force in state and local politics.
“The police unions have been pretty intractable on [many proposed reforms], and they've held a lot of sway with the legislature,” Nessel said in an interview. “No candidate for the legislature once to be called anti-police.”
Data compiled from state records by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network show that state legislators in both parties pulled in tens of thousands of dollars collectively in contributions from police unions and advocacy organizations over the last decade.
“When politicians accept campaign donations from law enforcement, they’re really granting law enforcement access into policymaking,” said Sasha de Vogel, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan who works with No More Cop Money, a project advocating for policymakers to decline political donations from police unions.
“When they take money from these organizations they signal something about their values, so they can stop doing that to signal something different about their values,” she said.
But amid the millions of dollars spent every election season in Michigan, many of those seeking change said police spending is not the main obstacle to change.
Lawmakers and law enforcers are part of the same system, said Taylor of Detroit Will Breathe.
“They are the mechanism52 of enforcement of policies that these politicians create. That gives them undue59 influence into how those policies look,” he said.
Sen. Johnson, who sponsored the duty-to-intervene legislation, chalked up the slow pace of reform to the ease of setting roadblocks on controversial legislation.
“It’s always easy to stop somebody’s bill,” she said. “It’s certainly harder to get one through and get everybody on board.”
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ongoing
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| adj.进行中的，前进的 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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fervor
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| n.热诚；热心；炽热 | |
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codify
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| v.将法律、法规等编成法典 | |
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activist
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| n.活动分子，积极分子 | |
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activists
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| n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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immunity
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| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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violations
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| 违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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prosecute
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| vt.告发；进行；vi.告发，起诉，作检察官 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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killings
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| 谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发 | |
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oversee
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| vt.监督，管理 | |
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investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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collaboration
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| n.合作，协作；勾结 | |
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brandished
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| v.挥舞( brandish的过去式和过去分词 )；炫耀 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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prosecuted
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| a.被起诉的 | |
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endorsed
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| vt.& vi.endorse的过去式或过去分词形式v.赞同( endorse的过去式和过去分词 )；在（尤指支票的）背面签字；在（文件的）背面写评论；在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品 | |
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mandating
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| 托管（mandate的现在分词形式） | |
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enact
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| vt.制定(法律)；上演，扮演 | |
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traction
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| n.牵引；附着摩擦力 | |
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democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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codifying
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| v.把（法律）编成法典( codify的现在分词 ) | |
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annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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oversight
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| n.勘漏，失察，疏忽 | |
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accredited
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| adj.可接受的；可信任的；公认的；质量合格的v.相信( accredit的过去式和过去分词 )；委托；委任；把…归结于 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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overhaul
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| v./n.大修，仔细检查 | |
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44
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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civilians
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| 平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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reining
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| 勒缰绳使（马）停步( rein的现在分词 )； 驾驭； 严格控制； 加强管理 | |
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48
incremental
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| adj.增加的 | |
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revoke
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| v.废除，取消，撤回 | |
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license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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51
substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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52
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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mechanisms
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| n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 )；机械装置；[生物学] 机制；机械作用 | |
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54
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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55
input
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| n.输入(物)；投入；vt.把(数据等)输入计算机 | |
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56
mandates
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| 托管（mandate的第三人称单数形式） | |
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57
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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