Reform Works: For The First Time EVER, Newark Cops Go An Entire Year Without Firing Their Guns, Being Sued

Talk of police reform has escalated over recent years. It reached an inflection point after the killing of an unarmed black man by a white Minnesota police officer last May. Since then, a lot of proposals have been put forward, but very few have passed without being stripped of anything useful.

What's being asked doesn't make it impossible to be a cop, no matter what law enforcement and union officials may claim. There's definitely room for improvement and giving taxpayers better, more accountable cops is something that will likely pay for itself, especially in cities where millions of dollars of lawsuit settlements are paid out to victims of rights violations and excessive force every year.

The Newark, NJ police department had plenty of problems. It still has a few, but it has shown dramatic improvement. A federal consent decree put in place following a DOJ investigation has started to pay off. The ACLU demanded an investigation into the Newark PD back in 2010, pointing out an alarming pattern of abuse by officers.

The ACLU-NJ identified at least 407 allegations of NPD misconduct over a recent 2.5 year period, including police shootings, sexual assault, beatings of prisoners, false arrests, reckless high-speed driving, and discrimination and retaliation against NPD's own officers by their superiors. It also details almost 40 lawsuits resolved at a taxpayer cost of at least $4.8 million during those same 2.5 years, and describes almost 40 other misconduct lawsuits that are still pending in federal or state court.

The DOJ opened its investigation in 2014. In 2016, a consent decree was put in place after the DOJ arrived at the same conclusion the ACLU had more than a half-decade earlier.

The agreement, which is subject to court approval, resolves the department's findings that NPD has engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional stops, searches, arrests, use of excessive force and theft by officers in violation of the First, Fourth and 14th Amendments.

In the intervening years, there have been more problems. In 2017, an off-duty officer killed his estranged wife and injured another man. Another officer was recently indicted for manslaughter and assault after he shot into a moving vehicle during a pursuit, killing one of the people in the car. Notably, no other officer opened fire, despite claims by officers one of the occupants had a gun. And the department was sued over another controversial killing that occurred shortly before the consent decree was put in place.

But here's the good news. The reform efforts appear to be having a positive effect. For the first time in ever, the Newark PD rang up a couple of notable zeroes.

Newark Police officers did not fire a single shot during the calendar year 2020, and the city didn't pay a single dime to settle police brutality cases. That's never happened, at least in the city's modern history.

And, despite arguments to the contrary by the noisiest police voiceboxes, these reforms didn't make it impossible to effectively fight crime.

At the same time, crime is dropping, and police recovered almost 500 illegal guns from the street during the year.

Reform isn't zero sum, no matter what vociferous opponents to almost any police reform efforts may claim. Violating rights and deploying force irresponsibly is not inseparable from "effective" law enforcement or deterrent efforts. Cops can fight crime and stay on the right side of the Constitution. Cop guns don't need to be "discharged" to keep the peace.

One key aspect is the Newark PD's abandonment of old training programs -- ones that instilled a warrior mentality, rather than one that recognized cops serve and protect residents, rather than go to war against them.

Training is critical, too, especially on de-escalating violence. Brian O'Hara, the deputy chief overseeing training, said the old-fashioned version was to show officers how to win a confrontation, when to make the move. It was a paramilitary kind of training, just focused on stopping the threat," he said.

Now, the model is to calm things down, engage the threatening person, while creating distance or taking cover, and buying time until reinforcements arrive, he says. Newark officers view videos presenting challenging scenarios, offer responses, then discuss it with supervisors.

It's not about resolving the situation as quickly as you can," O'Hara says. It's about protecting the sanctity of every life."

If this can work here, it can work elsewhere. And, it must be noted, the Newark PD rang in the new year with a fatal shooting of a citizen. but this is a huge improvement.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes the federal government stepping in to provoke (and enforce) needed reform efforts. Under Trump, policing the police was largely abandoned. This has set the clock back on better policing. Moving forward, law enforcement agencies with histories of abusive practices will hopefully be receiving more visits from the DOJ's dormant Civil Rights division. The DOJ is far from perfect -- and houses its own fair share of abusers -- but it's one of the few entities that have been able to force the institution of needed reforms. Hopefully there will be more of this -- and more success stories to report -- in the future.