Is This Time Different?

The Facts

Over a year ago, a police officer killed George Floyd.

Just over a month ago, that killing was found to be a murder, as a matter of law.

That fact alone is a rarity in American policing. And that fact alone does not comprise a systemic change—meaning, in the most fundamental sense, the kind of change that might prevent future killings.

In reporting on these cases and civil rights issues, I’ve noticed that the very discussion of problems and progress can get “ideological” very quickly.  Mentioning a piece of measurable progress, for example, can be seen as minimizing the larger problem. But we need a handle on the common facts, especially when so many people have been confronted with America’s racism, and many want to know if things are getting any better -- or what to do next.

So what has changed in the last year? Is “this time” any different?

Here are some of the measurable changes:

• A Conviction: An officer was convicted of murder. In America, police kill more unarmed citizens than most countries, and they are virtually never convicted of murder. For roughly a decade straight, with about 10,000 police shootings, there were zero officers convicted of murder - and then about one a year given recent pressure. (Chart data from Professor Philip Stinson).

  

• The Blue Wall: Police forces uniformly line up behind officers. In the Chauvin case, a crack emerged. Officers and even the police chief testified against the defendant.

• Conspiracy: In the rare cases where an officer is charged, prosecutors often use a framework of a “bad apple” going rogue - not charging a group crime, even if evidence suggests there was one by several officers. Prosecutors indicted officers who did not literally kill Floyd, because they were part of what is now a convicted murder.

• New state laws: Many states reacted to the Floyd killing—a police action in a different state—by passing new laws that tacitly admit their police forces face similar problems. 16 states curbed neck restraints, 10 states added body cameras to policing, and 4 states reformed special police immunity, which can prevent officers from being held accountable for their actions even in civil court.

• The House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, though the bill remains stalled in the Senate.

That is measurably more action on police reform than any single year in the last several decades. Those are facts.

But what hasn’t changed? 

The core problem that sparked the backlash—police killing unarmed people, and disproportionately black people—has not changed.

Since Floyd’s murder last year, American police are using force at the exact same rate. 

They’re on track for roughly the same annual toll: Police killing 1,000 people per year, as data from The Washington Post shows:

The chart shows America’s policing problem. The police are killing people—many unarmed—at the same steady rate. Experts note some of those incidents involve justified use of force, some involve weapons, and many others do not. The chart includes many killings that police departments themselves often later admit were mistakes or tragedies. 

Every point on this chart is a dead person, a family grieving. 

You may remember some of the names: Andrew Brown Jr., shot last month as he drove away from officers, unarmed; Kurt Reinhold, stopped for jaywalking in broad daylight and shot to death, unarmed; Daunte Wright, stopped in his car and shot to death by police near the Chauvin trial courtroom; unarmed. Those are just three points on this chart.

We should face what these facts mean.

After all this protest, pressure, heat, scrutiny, and videotaped evidence; after a murder conviction, those new laws, and the prospect of more laws regulating police; if all that fails to budge the rate of lethal force -- then we have to question how such lethal force became this entrenched.

Many of the answers are systemic—what people used to just call “The System.”  Police in America have several special powers that largely did not change this past year:

• Immunity from many civil lawsuits suits (“qualified immunity”)

• A high legal bar for criminal prosecution 

• Union powers that protect them from accountability and routine discipline

• Deference from prosecutors, who have a structural conflict of interest when deciding whether to prosecute the police whom they frequently work with on other cases

Each of these impediments to accountability turn on government policy. They are choices we make as a society -- in state or federal policy. They can change. They are also about rules, incentives and punishments, not just about concerns with policing at an individual level (the “good cop” versus “bad apple” framework).

Current policy, however, operates very clearly to shield police from accountability, in both criminal and civil court. Criminal charges are rare, and immunity ends most potential civil cases against police before they begin. So, most officers never face even a public civil trial about alleged misconduct, let alone a conviction.

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So, is this time different?

The murder of George Floyd did spark a movement. That movement did achieve real, measurable change at the level of the individual case and led to a spate of new state laws. 

Those new laws look like a function of raw politics—the murder upended the conversation, increased support for BLM and demands for reform, and in some states, legislators acted swiftly in response.

But the claimed surge in support for BLM was also fleeting—many Americans who said they backed BLM’s agenda after the Floyd murder quickly reverted back to where they were. I recently saw a chart in the Times capturing this long-term polling trend (data visualization via Civiqs/NYT).

What does that tell us?

Even people who literally said they ‘supported reform’ last summer are now eager to move on. 

Some would rather talk about something else, think about something else, or claim things got a little better and it's time to move on. That may sound appealing to some people. But if these killings are wrong, then that view is wrong, because objectively, the killing rate has not changed.

This epidemic of police killings shows why so many Americans cannot just “move on.”  They live in places where these killings are routine, a scary part of daily life, a danger never eradicated and rarely legally punished. This is a risk that has no guarantee of escape, even if you ‘follow every rule,’ get a good job, buy a home, avoid ever owning a weapon (despite your constitutional right to have one), and have no prior brushes with the law.

This is a nation where you can get killed in broad daylight after being accused of jaywalking, or walking towards your own kids in your own car, or facing the (non-violent) allegation that you used a counterfeit bill.

This is a nation where the supposed order that supposedly benefits some of us comes at the cost of routinely killing so many others, other people, human beings who are unarmed, who are not dangerous, who are nevertheless executed on the spot.

So as the nation reopens, and talk of “returning to normal” is in the air, it is worth reflecting on which aspects of “normal” life we want to restore.

We’ve lived through recent disruptions on several fronts.  We have seen some measurable change on policing, some steps towards a fairness long denied. Yet the “normal” and routine rate of police killing continues. If that fact sounds unacceptable, if that makes you want to act, then beyond getting back to normal, this is clearly still a time for action.