Recently, I noticed a family out walking their dog through the neighborhood.

What struck me was the five-year-old who was in a motorized toy car with “Sheriff’s Office” decals, wearing a police uniform costume, sirens blazing, presumably initiating a traffic stop with the family dog who was clearly noncompliant. And I thought, “Is this our future?” Is it possible to imagine a future where kids still aspire to be police officers and serve their communities? Can police be trusted again?

To really understand the future, we must reconcile our past, examine police culture, and embrace intelligence and intellect. Technology will continue to develop better tools and resources, but to fully engage with the future, we must recognize the need to transform and embrace a new role in civil society. Over the past 20 years, policing moved from strengthening and valuing collaboration with communities and to viewing communities as adversaries. Moving forward means being courageous enough to pivot—yet again—to meet different needs and challenges, some of which we can only barely imagine.

As some of the brightest and most experienced minds in policing came together in 2015 to set a broad vision for policing, we took stock of the purpose and importance of community. Many good things came out of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, including a focus on procedural justice and enhanced community engagement. Seven years later, agencies in the United States have fallen behind some of their international counterparts to imbed community-policing into organizational culture, manage performance measurement, and view community-policing as an exercise of partnership and consent. As a result, we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that community-policing works but little measurable evidence of success. Moving forward means rethinking the boundaries of community-policing, developing robust strategies to challenge organizational culture, and the courage to measure success and failure.

Rebuilding Trust through Coproduction

Coproduction of policing expands on the concept of policing by consent through Sir Robert Peel’s cherished Principle 7 that “the police are the public, and the public are the police.”¹ In modern policing, it isn’t a far stretch to replace “public” with “community.” In part, this means that community gains an equal and valued seat at the policy table; police and the community share responsibility to improve transparency; and the community has a voice in setting the policy agenda that can include meaningful decisions about setting enforcement priorities, strategies, and, to some degree, tactics. In other words, we move beyond mere engagement and embrace partnership with our communities.

Consequently, agencies share responsibility for outcomes and measuring impact with the communities they serve. Shared responsibility means repairing the deterioration of trust that permeates and damages the relationship between communities and their police.

Embracing Restorative Policing

Restorative policing strategies are not new to the international community but are rare in the United States. During the early 2000s, the concept and practice of restorative policing was starting to take hold in the United States in tandem with other nations but was stifled by a shift that focused on militaristic crime suppression strategies that amplified the adversarial relationship between police and community. Police became warriors, communities became enemies, and the resolution of damage caused by criminal behavior was referred to courts that retain, for many good reasons, an adversarial process that pits individuals against the state.

“To really understand the future, we must reconcile our past, examine police culture, and embrace intelligence and intellect.”

One of the most difficult challenges for police officers in the United States is managing the reality of responding to crime but handing off resolution to other parts of a complex criminal justice system. In this process, communities and victims are damaged because resolution is seldom swift, is often perceived as unfair, and the repair of harm between the victim and offender is peripheral at best. There is an important role for police in resolving conflict using restorative justice practices and strategies where they retain their identity as police—yet contribute to solutions to repair the damages of some types of criminal events. However, getting to that point means transforming from the role of “crime responder” to “harm resolver,” recognizing that different cities and jurisdictions may have different needs, and gaining cooperation of the justice system and community in significant ways that supports resolution through repair of harm as experienced by the people who were most involved in the conflict.

Diversity of Thought through Civilianization

There’s an adage in policing: “Not born unless you’re sworn.” A consequence of this element of police culture is that the role and impact of civilian professionals is diminished to below that of sworn officers. Communities and agencies are complex, but there’s room for contributions from a range of expertise that contributes to resolution of conflict and trust building. To be clear, this isn’t advocating the removal of sworn police officers—far from it. This is recognizing that policing in the future will require a broad skill set where some services may be more efficiently and effectively managed by civilian employees beyond the traditional roles of criminalistics, records, and communications.

Civilianization means agencies must make purposeful decisions about which roles require the authority to arrest and use force compared to those that do not. Examples of where civilianization may create opportunities for positive impact include swift resolution using a variety of restorative justice facilitation techniques and accommodating the expansion of police services that include responses to mental and behavioral health crises, service surrounding housing insecurity, and resolution of neighborhood disputes.

Utilization of New Technology

In the future, cities will continue the march to become smarter through the availability of advanced digitization and cloud-based technologies. These technologies are beneficial only to the point where adequate data are collected to track improvements in policy and process and adjust tactics along the way to achieve success. Investment in technology often focuses on the acquisition of tools related to crime suppression and crime fighting, but departments often ignore the connection between the acquisition of advanced technologies, any reductions in crime, and outcomes related to community trust and relationships. The future of policing involves using technology and data to make better decisions about the primary focus of improving public safety in a way that is efficient, effective, and measurable.

I have faith in policing and always have. To answer my own question at the start of this essay: Yes, there is a future for law enforcement where future generations aspire to serve. Yes, police can be trusted. And yes, with courage, we can change the trajectory and realize the future vision of policing we share. d

Note:

¹San Jose, California, Police Department, “Sir Robert Peel’s Principles of Law Enforcement.”

Please cite as

Tanya Settles, “Reconciling the Past to Move to the Future,” Perspectives on the Future of Policing, Police Chief 89, no. 9 (September 2022): 62–63.