Law Commons^™

Curbing Excessive Force: A Primer On Barriers To Police Accountability, Kami N. Chavis, Conor Degnan

Faculty Publications

This Issue Brief summarizes some of the traditional mechanisms for holding police accountable for misconduct, offers a critique of each, and ends with suggestions for the future of police accountability. Part I focuses on some of the legal and structural impediments to police accountability including the inherent conflicts of interest that frequently prevent local prosecutors from prosecuting police officers accused of using excessive force. Part I also discusses how the doctrine of qualified immunity shields officers from civil liability when a suspect is harmed or dies in police custody. Part II explores how the Department of Justice (DOJ) has failed …

Body-Worn Cameras: Exploring The Unintentional Consequences Of Technological Advances And Ensuring A Role For Community Consultation, Kami N. Chavis

Faculty Publications

This Essay will discuss the role police body-worn cameras can play in ensuring police legitimacy by increasing transparency, deterring police and citizen misbehavior, increasing officer professionalism, providing valuable training tools, and improving evidentiary documentation when crimes occur. This Essay will also discuss the need to view body-worn cameras and similar technologies with a healthy bit of skepticism. While body-worn cameras can have a significant impact on police accountability and public safety, local officials must carefully consider camera implementation and draft clear guidelines to balance the concerns for accountability with the privacy concerns articulated below. Therefore, this Essay seeks to identify …

Body-Mounted Police Cameras: A Primer On Police Accountability Vs. Privacy, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Immediately following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York Police Department officer, criminal justice advocates called for greater measures to hold police officers accountable for their actions. For many observers, the failure to secure criminal indictments against the officers involved in each of these deaths of unarmed citizens suggested various shortcomings in the criminal justice system.

One of the most hotly contested reform proposals involves requiring police officers to wear body cameras. The NAACP, the ACLU, and The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law …

Increasing Police Accountability: Restoring Trust And Legitimacy Through The Appointment Of Independent Prosecutors, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Criminal prosecution of police officers raises a myriad of issues that this Article will begin to explore. First, while there has been a paradigmatic shift in police accountability in recent decades from remedies focusing on individual officers to those focusing on broad organizational reform, this Article will explore the important role that the deterrence rationale of criminal prosecution might play as one tool to address police misconduct. Second, other than deterrence, criminal prosecutions serve numerous goals, including retribution for the harms imposed upon the victims and society for the crimes. Historically, many racial minorities, when compared with their white counterparts, …

The Coming Crisis In Law Enforcement And How Federal Intervention Could Promote Police Accountability In A Post-Ferguson United States, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

The proliferation of aggressive, and sometimes militarized, police tactics represents the "coming crisis" in law enforcement, although many residents of [inner city] communities might argue that the crisis arrived long ago. Even more disturbing is that these heavy-handed police strategies are employed almost exclusively against racial and ethnic minorities.

This Essay argues that in order to alleviate racial bias in policing and gain the trust and legitimacy of police officers in racially and ethnically diverse communities, local police departments must not only ensure that they are hiring police officers capable of implementing community policing, but must also focus on institutional …

Cooperative Federalism And Police Reform: Using Congressional Spending Power To Promote Police Accountability, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Police misconduct and corruption persist in our nation's local police departments. Recognizing the organizational roots of police misconduct, Congress granted the U.S. Department of Justice (the "DOJ") the authority to seek injunctive relief to implement institutional reforms within local law enforcement agencies. While the federal government's current strategy represents a promising model for reform, the DOJ's efforts cannot reach many local police departments that require intervention. Furthermore, the local primacy of criminal-justice issues, particularly issues related to police practices, implicates important federalism concerns. Although federal intervention is appropriate to address persistent patterns of misconduct, states and local entities must play …

New Governance And The "New Paradigm" Of Police Accountability: A Democratic Approach To Police Reform, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

This Article proposes that policymakers should draw from the emerging New Governance theoretical framework--particularly democratic experimentalism--in order to develop strategies to successfully reform law-enforcement agencies. Modem police departments function like administrative agencies, and as such, they are susceptible to the same deficiencies that traditional agencies experience in other administrative contexts. Given the traditionally insular nature of law-enforcement agencies, the need for political legitimacy in the reform process is amplified in the policing context. Therefore, in order to eliminate patterns of police misconduct and corruption, reform measures should embody characteristics that promote stakeholder participation and local experimentation.

This abstract has been …