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r-'. .~~ l','i" ,~p 64 I I I Forces of Change in Policing by Patrick V. Murphy President Police Foundation Washington, D.C. The start of a new decad~ ~rovides a convenient p~rspective for reflect. ing on wh.ere we have been and predIctmg where we may be gOlllg. To reflect on where Amencan policing has been during the past 15 years or so is to examine the most wrenching, most important period of police change and improvement in U.S. history. Th,,-~ riots that rocked Anwrican urban life, massive antiwar demonstrations of the Vietnam era, water- shed changes in mores and life-styles, heightened public sensitivity to social injustic\:s and to serious faults within the criminal justice system, and, not the least, spiraling crime rates. converged as social forces in the late 1960s to challenge the orthodoxies and the practic\:s of many American institutions. Few institutions were atlected more profoundly than the American police service. The 1967 report of the President's Crime Commission diagnosed the weaknesses and failures of American policing and retlected much of the surge of momen- tum to change and reform policing. The Commis- sion's report was one of the three principal forces for change which were to lure and prod the American police service into questioning past practices, adopt- ing innovations, and seeking other inlprovements in the way the police do their job. Anothel' force for change was the cascade of federal and private money, most notably the largesse of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, to pay for change and improvement. The third force, and perhaps the seminal one. was the demands of citizens, particu- larly members of minority communities, who made it clear that they would no longer put up with what they perceived as unfair and demeaning police harass- ment and interference in their lives. To real ize where policing is IhlW, on January I, 1980, consider where policing was in 1965. American polic- ing was mad\: up almost completely of while males with, at most, high schou I education:s, who used traditional but untested techniques to kcep th\: peace and to atternpt to control crime. Administrators, including chiefs, were cops with gold braid but little formal education. The police were remote from the cumrnunities they served ..md, as the riots of the 1960s indicated, were often insensitive in dealing with minority COlnmunities. A skeptic might rernark that policing hasn't changed very rnuch since then. In still too many police agen- cies, personnel do not yet reflect till' communities the departments serve and arc mostly still white and llIale;rnost polic\: otIicers still have only high school educations; unquestioned traditional approaches to policillg are still in place; many driers are still cops who passed rote pen'..llld penl;i1 pnJlllotiunal exams; 2 and ollicers on the street in some communities are remote from the citizens they serve. But, in fact, policing has changed dramatically, even though it is not apparent in every community and even though policing still has a long way to go before it is a pro- fession or even a coherent craft. ; 1: {" ;;" The progress policing has made in the past 15 years c<m be gauged by the tens of thousands of police ollicers who have received some college education and by the thousands who now have college degrees and even graduate degrees. True, as the National Advisory Commission on Higher Education for Police Ollkers reported, higher education for the police, the bendiciary of hundreds of millions of federal dollars, has been generally low in quality. Still. the process of higher education for police, Which the 1967 Crime Commission strongly endorsed, has begun, and many thousands have benefite.d. i' \ ~".' I' '!'~: Progress in policing can be seen in some departments which now employ minorities and women in large numbers (although they may have been recruited as the result of community or federal pressure). This progress can be seen in the departments which have forced themselves to become sensitive to the needs uf the minority communities. W i ~; "1' '. This is not to say that, in some communities, prob- ll:ms between the police and minority communities do not exist, particularly in regard to the use of furcl:. As recent research and headline stories attest, police misuse of the necessary authority to use deadly force can rip apart police-minority community rela- tions and exacerbate racial tensions. But, overall, the police are far less brutal and demeaning in dealing with citizens than they were 15 years ago. Thc progress policing has made is visible also in the improved leadership of many police departments. Advanced degrel's do not guarantee successful admin- istrative performance, but they do indicate dedi- cation and a level of sophistication. In a radical change during the past decade, police chiefs and key executives in many communities hold graduate degrees. A few examples: Lee Brown, director of public safety of Atlanta. has a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley; Joseph Mc- Namara, police chief of San Jose, California, has a doctorate from Harvard University; Davi.d Epstein, Pvb1:.c Manage~'_~nt/')c'o:;c)~J':>er 1979