Twenty First Century Policing in the City: Officer Perspectives on a Decade under Consent Decree

• In Event: Organizational Change, Reform, and Technology Adoption in Policing

Abstract

American policing is at a crossroads. Videotaped police shootings in North Charleston, Columbus, and Chicago, coupled with contentious protests and counter-protests in Ferguson, Minneapolis, and Baltimore all demonstrate that historically accepted police behavior cannot withstand the scrutiny of modern information technology. Since the early 1990s, structural reform litigation has sought to address such conditions. Consent decrees are settlements of such litigation that allow the federal government to impose constitutional compliance in local law enforcement agencies found to tolerate unconstitutional policing patterns or practices. Despite the expanded use of consent decrees over the last twenty years, scant empirical scrutiny has been applied to the process. Specifically, failure to analyze how officers perceive consent decrees, how those perceptions influence their work, and how the effects of consent decrees change over time restricts criminologists, officials, and citizens to decision-making without the benefit of understanding the long-term impact of structural reform litigation. To contribute to a more detailed understanding of consent decrees, I present results from in-depth interviews with current and former officers in a large Midwestern city regarding the initiation, development, and completion of their decade-long consent decree. Narrative analysis places the focus on the often-overlooked perspectives that matter most: frontline officers themselves.

Author

• Gabriel T. Cesar, Arizona State University