Lessons From the First Failed Police Reform Movement
Black Lives Matter protesters gather in September 2020. Photo courtesy of Montecuz Foto.
The U.S. has found itself in an age-old position wherein citizens are calling for police accountability en masse. The murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was killed by the police while being arrested, ignited the most recent movement for police reform in May 2020.
Some reforms have already begun to take shape. Some cities reduced their police budgets and vowed to change police conduct, such as in New York City which cut $1 billion from its $6 billion dollar police budget due to both the coronavirus economic slowdown and calls by activists to “defund the police.” In June 2020, NYC also repealed a controversial policy that allowed the NYPD to shield officer misconduct records, marking a win for activists seeking greater police accountability.
Calls for police reform are not a new phenomenon. In fact, many of the current proposals for reform have encountered pushback for decades, dating back to the first calls for police reform in the 20th century when Progressive Era reformers attempted, with limited success, to weed out partisan politics from police administrations.
In looking at our current police reform movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, the question remains: how much will change, and what can we learn from the first reform movement? This question is steeped with a history of political power shielding police departments from reform. Activists and political leaders can move forward by looking back to the legacy of the Progressive reform movement on current-day political institutions and the conditions that led to that reform movement’s shortcomings. While these lessons may not provide holistic solutions, they do shed light on the structures that prevent reform.
The Conditions of Police Corruption in the Progressive Era
The first police reform movement took place in the early 1900s after the era of political machines. Machines operating in large cities like New York through a system of clientelism wherein political access, employment, and other material incentives, were given to the electorate in exchange for support. Through doling out patronage jobs and resources, machines came to control many aspects of the police department. New York City is often cited by historians as having the first formal police department, established in 1845. The machine wielded control over the police department because they could directly staff it with loyal supporters who were incentivized to keep the position for its simple responsibilities and high salaries.
Additionally, machines had the power to fire or discipline officers, meaning any officer who acted in opposition to their political patron by refusing to enforce laws that benefited the machine could be terminated. This meant that police were hired with little qualifications and not held specific standards in terms of conduct. Those looking to move up the ranks of the New York City Police department could simply pay the machine a bribe of $16,000 to become a sergeant. In all, these administrative structures enabled officers to slack off on patrol, amass power without being held to a higher standard or qualifications, and allowed political machines to derive local political control.
Police departments were also given control of the election process, granting them the power to commit voter fraud and intimidation. For example, New York’s Board of Elections was largely controlled by a police board, meaning they could choose the location of polling places, draw up voting districts, monitor the ballots, and print voter registration lists.
Varied Reform Success
These factors led to dissatisfaction among the growing middle-class urbanites at the turn of the 20th Century. They sought municipal reform and to destabilize the machine-era blue-collar hold on city government. Starting in the 1900s, these reformers targeted inefficiency, lack of oversight, and professionalism in the machine-government system. This was done by disenfranchising the machine’s electorate and removing their ability to hand out material incentives.
Police departments were not excluded from this call for reform. Reformers targeted the police department’s lack of recruitment standards and formal training, officer’s wasted time on patrol, and favoritism towards certain crime syndicates, businesses, and the working-immigrant class.
Some of these reforms included instituting semi-annual examinations, creating a police academy to enforce training and examinations prior to joining the force, consolidating power among the police chief to prevent partisan leaders from yielding too much control, and creating national platforms through literature and conferences to professionalize police work.
While these reforms effectively displaced machine power over police departments and standardized policing, the movement negatively affected minority populations For instance, changing the municipal election process by removing voting aids like partisan labels and switching from district to at-large elections effectively disenfranchised minority communities: specifically, the working class and recent European immigrants. Many reforms simply shifted power away from the working class and into the hands of the growing middle class. Through this, police reforms catered to middle-class desires.
The legacy of some of these municipal reforms like the aforementioned continue to this day and may actually pose problems for current-day and future reform movements.
Takeaways for this Current Movement
Given the mixed outcomes of the first reform movement, several lessons can be taken in understanding and determining steps forward for political activism in the present day. Twentieth-century reformers focused on removing the nexus of power from the working-class-supported political machine, not to remove partisan influence in general. They left loopholes and failed to follow through with meaningful reforms. Reform needs to do more than just replacing those in power, it requires actual substantive systemic changes and citizen oversight.
Further, municipal structures that reformers successfully put in place that still exist have complicated the effort to call for police accountability. These structures can serve to dilute minority voters and insulate police chiefs and their political patrons through appointment systems. Withstanding this, here are three lessons that can be drawn from the shortcomings of the first police reform movement.
Lesson 1: Reforms need follow-through. Grand gestures from city councils to institute change indicate that reform is in progress, but as citizens saw in the first reform movement, many of these actions are performative. Even though investigations were conducted and findings showed gross misuse of power in the Progressive Era, the system did not adjust to rectify the reality. In calling for reform efficacy, structures need to be put in place to not only identify issues and hold police accountable, but also to create systems to solve them.
As twentieth-century progressive reformers merely sought to shift the power away from one party to their own, the fundamental problems plaguing policing were never addressed. Namely, if activists seek to call for reforms, the work is not done once the legislation is passed. Reform legislation should be closely monitored, and structures should be put in place to allow for public and political oversight such as through local oversight commissions into police administration.
For example, even with the creation of the Civilian Complaints Review Board, which oversees cases of police misconduct lodged by civilians, police chiefs still have the authority to override their decisions. In other words, the CCRB holds no weight in determining police discipline as the police chief can undermine their decision. Present-day reformers should maintain pressure on those in power to see follow through on reforms, rather than accepting mere performative acts.
Lesson 2: Appointees appoint appointees. Twentieth-century reformers proposed taking power away from the mayor and creating a city manager, who would oversee administrative work and make city governance more efficient and professional. These chief executives are not elected by the public as a means of reducing political interference. The problem here stems from the fact that city managers are often the ones tasked with appointing police chiefs. As a result, an electorate who feels discontent with the police chief cannot vote out the official in charge of appointing them. This insulation prevents the electorate from having a say over the person who directly oversees the police force.
According to the National League of Cities, by 2006 55% of cities used a council-manager form of government. In cities that follow a different government structure where the legislative officials are elected like a council-mayor form of government, the public could leverage their vote in calling for a new police chief and other reforms. Progressive reformers effectively internalized power within the municipal government through the creation of city managers, so the current public living in cities with city managers who are given the authority to hire police chiefs may not have the voting power to leverage against their elected officials.
The municipal governance structure in itself may prevent substantive reforms from occurring, since the populations directly impacted by police brutality that are calling for reform also must deal with systemic disenfranchisement. With this in mind, activists and reformers should consider who in their city government has the power to appoint the police chief and act accordingly.
Lesson 3: Voting structures systemically block out minority voters. Other changes in municipal reforms from the 20th century included shifting from district-based elections to an at-large system, meaning votes were cast to select representatives for the entire jurisdiction and not just small districts. The district-based system enables minorities, who often live in communities with residents of similar ethnic and racial backgrounds due to historic issues surrounding segregation, to have more weight in selecting their representatives. By changing to a system that elects representatives for the entire jurisdiction, Progressive reformers effectively diluted minority votes.
Changing from an at-large election system to district-based could help fragmented minority communities gain more representation.
Furthermore, twentieth-century reformers eliminated the use of voting aids on ballots and put up barriers for minorities to cast votes such as poll taxes and literacy tests. While literacy tests were eliminated after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 21 of the top 30 largest U.S. cities still used non-partisan ballots for local elections in 2003. Partisan ballots provide cues to voters that can help minority voters. This along with general forms of enfranchising voters through voter registration accommodations and voter identification laws can help communities of color have their voice included in the political process.
Their votes can hold council members and other elected officials accountable in calling for reform. As a creature of the city government, city councils and mayors hold oversight over police departments, so by insulating the public from voting out those who appoint the police chief by creating the appointed city manager position and instituting voting systems that dilute Black and minority voters from selecting council members and mayors, twentieth-century reforms disadvantage present-day calls for reform in a deeply underlooked and structural way. According to criminal justice scholar Thomas Stucky, Black mayors are more likely to initiate civilian review boards to tackle police brutality against communities of color. To the extent of what elected officials can accomplish, scholars say that the race of elected officials can impact how open a city is to reform. In other words, disenfranchising Black and minority voters can directly impact police oversight policies. Reformers should take a broad approach to address voting rights when applicable.
Hundreds gather by Spring Street in Downtown Los Angeles on June 12, 2020 in protest of police brutality. Photo provided by the author.
While similarities exist among the reform movement in the twentieth century and today, it is notable how new factors complicate the success of the present-day reform movement. Namely, the reformers themselves differ drastically. Progressive reformers were largely native-born white middle-class citizens, whereas the current reform movement is far more diverse and has centered around police brutality against Black citizens. Consequently, the motives of the reforms differ significantly. Twentieth-century reformers were more focused on taking power out of the hands of the blue-collar working class, and not as much on the structures of police conduct and accountability itself. On the other hand, current-day reformers seek racial justice and accountability for police brutality through structural change. Many of these reformers and Black Lives Matter activists are also not historically afforded the space and resources to involve themselves in politics. While the first reform movement can be looked to for lessons, it is worth noting how current-day conditions change the calculus on the potential for police reform.
Still, the prevailing legacy of these twentieth century reforms continue to influence and explain how police administration can and have shielded themselves from reform. Understanding how the current municipal system may disadvantage communities of color and failed initiatives from the first reform movement are lessons worth noting for those seeking change in our current political moment.
Stephanie Lai is a rising senior at Columbia College studying political science. She is an aspiring political journalist and will be working as a local politics reporter at the Washington Post this summer. You can find her running across campus to catch the latest scoop.
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