For some time now, I’ve nominated Aurora, Colorado, as the U.S. city having the worst police.
Many factors contribute to awful policing, such as systemic racism, excessive force and gratuitous violence against (often innocent) citizens, frequent civil rights and constitutional rights violations, being sued and paying settlements, etc., and Aurora’s police department is guilty of all of them. They’re thugs in uniform.
So, it’s no surprise that
“Colorado’s attorney general said Wednesday that a civil rights investigation begun amid outrage over the death of Elijah McClain has found that the Aurora Police Department has pattern of racially biased policing,”
Huffington Post reported on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 (see story here).
For things like this:
“The Aurora Police Department also faced criticism when officers put four Black girls on the ground last year and handcuffed two of them next to a car that police suspected was stolen but turned out not to be. And an officer was charged with assault in July after being captured on body camera video pistol-whipping and choking a Black man during an arrest.”
And this:
“String players who traveled from all over the U.S. to Aurora, Colo. for a violin vigil and peaceful protest over the death of Elijah McClain were met with police in riot gear, attacking people with tear gas and pepper spray Saturday,” June 27, 2020 (story here).
When a police agency has a rap sheet longer than the average serial killer’s (see list here), “defunding” almost begins to sound plausible. You want to support the good cops, of course, but what can you do when an entire police department is broken?
There are reform efforts underway in Colorado (read about some of them here), and also other states and cities, and some of the most abusive cops are now being fired and prosecuted, which is a necessary start. But to ultimately clean up policing — which is a national imperative — you need more rigorous suitability screening of applicants, better training of recruits and ongoing training of officers, more attentive supervision, and better accountability to the community.
And, not least, you need to break the power of police unions over police conduct and discipline.