The trial of Officer William Porter, the first of six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, ended in a mistrial last week after the jury heard sharply conflicting accounts about the inner workings of the Baltimore Police Department. The prosecution emphasized the department’s comprehensive and clearly written policies and procedures, while the defense asserted that, in practice, officers ignore the formal rules as a matter of course. The two accounts revealed the limitations of a legal approach to police reform, and the necessity for departments and officers to self-critique their practices.
Often, when another officer provides critical feedback that does not affirm the officer’s decisions, such feedback falls on deaf ears. Comments like “You weren’t there” or “You don’t know what you would have done in that situation” are a common refrain...
In many departments, officers have developed a pathological aversion to “second-guessing.” There is a pervasive belief that scrutinizing officer’s use-of-force decisions will lead officers to hesitate, exposing them to dangers that swift action might have averted. The result is a reluctance to engage in an in-depth, critical review of incidents in which an officer injures or kills a civilian and resentment when an outsider calls for such a review. That’s a problem. When an incident ends badly, it should be critically dissected to identify what contributed to that result, as is done when an officer is seriously injured or killed. The primary purpose is not to blame an officer, although poor judgment and failures to follow policy and training must be addressed, but to learn how best to avoid a similar situation in the future.
The aversion to what officers derisively refer to as “second-guessing” does not only make officers less receptive to a critique of their actions, it also makes them reluctant to provide their own complete and honest critiques. That, too, is a problem. Informal interactions between officers shape agency culture and affect officer actions at least as much, and often more, than formal rules. But while empowering officers to engage in peer conversations may help in the effort to self-critique, policing culture also needs to be addressed.
