I can never understand just what police critics mean when they talk about “changing the police culture.” For example, a man named John Hamasaki, who currently is on the San Francisco Police Commission, announced he’s quitting that office next month because “we [the Police Commission] have failed at changing the culture.”
Precisely what Hamasaki meant by that is unclear, and for a good reason: “changing the culture” is a meaningless phrase. Unless there are metrics attached to that goal—metrics everyone agrees with—then achieving a “culture change” will be in the eye of the beholder. In other words, participants will argue indefinitely about when, whether and how the “culture” has been changed.
Hamasaki is usually referred to in the media as the commission’s “most outspoken police critic.” His resignation announcement came immediately after a jury acquitted a San Francisco cop, Terrance Stangel, who had been indicted by District Attorney Chesa Boudin. (I blogged about that case yesterday.)
Hamasaki really wanted Stangel to be found guilty; right after the acquittal, Hamasaki tweeted, “SFPD may have won the battle and lost the war here. The video exists, it is undisputed that SFPD Officer Stangel beat a Black man mercilessly without cause, breaking bones. In response, Chief Scott and the police union launched a campaign to subvert justice & undermine the trial.” In other words, Hamasaki believes that a jury that had taken an oath, and that had unanimously found Stangel not guilty, was somehow complicit in “subverting justice.”
This provides some insight into what “changing the police culture” means. It means, first of all, assuming that any cop who’s accused of brutality is guilty until proven innocent—exactly the opposite of what our jurisprudential system preaches. It means that John Hamasaki is incapable of seeing anything besides what he wishes to see. It means, apparently, that whenever there’s a confrontation between a cop and a civilian—especially a civilian of color—the benefit of the doubt should be given to the civilian, rather than the police officer.
One of Hamasaki’s chief complaints is that civilian oversight of police departments needs to be far stronger than it already is in San Francisco. “Civilian oversight,” he told the Chronicle, “is only as strong as the overseers.” Let’s parse that comment. Who are the “overseers” Hamasaki wishes were in control? He obviously has no fondness for the jury of twelve men and women who acquitted Stangel—men and women who, we must assume, are of good character. We can make additional inferences. Hamasaki wants “overseers” who are like him—basically prejudiced against cops, always ready to assume the worst about them, straining to find excuses to punish them for offenses that often are imaginary, as in Stangel’s case (or should I say “in Boudin’s case”).
Are these the kinds of “overseers” we want controlling our police? Would you want an “overseer” like Cat Brooks or Carroll Fife determining the fate of officers? I can tell you this: if Brooks and Fife were OPD’s “overseers,” you’d have pretty much a 100% attrition rate, because almost every cop would quit.
It’s only fair to end this post by quoting something LeRonne Armstrong told the Oakland Police Commission when he accepted his appointment to be OPD’s Chief. “My mission,” he told them, “was really to change the culture of the Oakland Police Department to be a bridge between the community and the police department.” So my critique of cop critics isn’t simply based on fuzzy language. But I think what Armstrong meant when he used “change the culture” was fundamentally different from what Hamasaki and other cop critics mean. I think Chief Armstrong meant something we all agree with: lower the temperature between cops and communities of color. That is something that OPD is working hard to do—and let’s not forget it takes two to tango; communities of color are going to have to work to overcome their own grievances against cops. But when Hamasaki and the other critics use the phrase, what they seem to mean is, “Punish the police. Find them guilty as often as you can. Demean and insult them. View them with suspicion, not respect. Intimidate them. And if someone, especially a person of color, accuses them of brutality, believe the victim, not the cop.” Well, that’s the sort of cultural change we can live without.
Steve Heimoff