Ugh. This just churns my gut. For those truly short on time right now to read the whole article , here’s the distilled version:
The WaPo article (written by Radley Balko) describes the Dallas PD as ‘a national model for community policing.’ Much credit goes to Chief David Brown (serving since 2010), who implemented the following:
• increase in frequency of use-of-lethal-force training from every two years to every two months
• in collaboration with NAMI, improved officer training for dealing with mental health crises
• public accessibility to data on all ‘officer-involved shootings’ (also available on the PD’s homepage)
• announcement, via the PD’s official Twitter account, of any firing of a PD officer and reasons for their discharge (according to the article, has fired over seventy this way)
• publicly lauded an officer who had turned in one of the PD’s bad apples
• collection and annual release of data on all use-of-force incidents
• implementation of body cam policy in conformance with ACLU model
• reassignment of traffic patrols to ‘beats he felt were more conducive to public safety’ (article)
Finally, the article concludes (emphasis added):
It’s always dicey to credit a particular policy, public official or even set of policies for statistical trends that are likely driven by a broad range of variables. What we can say is that during Brown’s tenure, the trends that matter are mostly moving in the right direction. After his first few years on the job, crime in Dallas dropped more than under the leadership of any of the city’s previous 27 police chiefs. In 2014, murders in the city hit a 50-year low. At the same time, both use of force and citizen complaints about excessive force dropped dramatically.
And then Micha Johnson decided he’d rather just see some cops die.
Fucking. Hell.
