Annotated Bibliography
Buchholz, K. (2021). Infographic: Which states have acted on police reform? Statista.
The current article written by Buchholz (2021) dwells on the existing statistics in regard to the US states that decided to pass the legislation on police reform. With the increasing level of protection, more minority populations across the most prejudiced states will interact with law enforcement agents in a safer manner. This statistical information will be utilized to reinforce the idea that passing a bill on police reform represents a logical step to make in the nearest future.
Engel, R. S., McManus, H. D., & Isaza, G. T. (2020). Moving beyond “best practice”: Experiences in police reform and a call for evidence to reduce officer-involved shootings. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 146-165.
Engel et al. (2020) discussed the challenges that many US police departments have to encounter when coping with police-citizen encounters that could lead to fatal outcomes. The authors of the article provide a detailed rationale for specific law enforcement interventions, such as de-escalation training, reduction of bias, and attentive civilian oversight. The legislative branch has to consider such evidence in order to resolve critical issues similar to the Ferguson incident and the death of George Floyd.
House Committee on the Judiciary. (2021). Fact sheet: George Floyd justice in Policing Act of 2021 [PDF].
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is addressed by House Committee on the Judiciary (2021) as a crucial, comprehensive approach to altering the culture of law enforcement. This empowering step could help collect more data on police encounters and engage in proper community-based policing. The bill advocates for detailed police investigations and an all-inclusive staff training intended to prevent cases similar to George Floyd’s in the future.
Smith, Z. (2021). George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would make cops’ jobs more difficult, dangerous. The Heritage Foundation.
The approach taken by Smith (2021) suggests that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act could represent negative connotations. The overall ability of local law enforcement agents to maintain safety would be damaged by the lack of access to military equipment. The process of decision-making would change respectively, causing police officers to hold back when someone’s rights are violated.
Robinson, L. O. (2020). Five years after Ferguson: Reflecting on police reform and what’s ahead. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 228-239.
Robinson (2020) also took on the Ferguson incident and reviewed it from several angles in order to see if the legislative branch could introduce any valid changes. The use of lethal force remains one of the cornerstones of justice policing, especially when minority populations are engaged in citizen-officer encounters. The author suggests that there should be more room for the institutionalization of minority rights and consequent policy reform that would change the US criminal justice forever.
Main Argument
The power of the legislative branch across the United States can be defined as highly authoritative. This means that policymaking is one of the key areas that receive attention from the government and responsible individuals across policymaking bodies. It is crucial to recognize the inherent strength of legislations passed on the state-wide level and make sure that the Ferguson incident and George Floyd’s killing are not going to be repeated in the future. The evidence base of the current paper consists of two primary resources and three articles dwelling on the consequences of the George Floyd event for the law enforcement agencies across the United States. Further research is going to argue that the bill on reforming the police could have a positive effect on the occurrence of police-citizens altercations and reduce the number of fatal interventions even during critical scenarios.
Historical Oppression and Violent Behaviors
Changes have to be made to policing in order to protect minorities from exposure to coercion and constant fatal altercations. Therefore, the role of the legislative branch after the George Floyd incident was to address police attitudes and de-escalate the post-killing events in an attempt to reach a peaceful solution for the community. Smith (2021) also suggested that enhanced policing could improve the criminal justice system from within and step away from protecting the interests of privileged populations. With millions of minority representatives being placed in prisons across the United States, the policing reform was a long-time expected step intended to refrain from past mistakes and take the reasonable initiative to improve societal safety (Robinson, 2020). The use of force by law enforcement agents has to be mediated, and the legislative branch of the US government represents the primary agent to be held responsible. As long as less resources are going to be shared with the police, fewer opportunities for violence are going to transpire.
Previous Reform Attempts Were Unsuccessful
Another reason to address the role of the legislative branch when looking into the George Floyd incident is the lack of past policies that would have a long-term positive impact on the local communities. Despite the need to reduce all kinds of contact between law enforcement agents and the public, all the previous policies failed to protect minorities and the general population from police brutality and the use of excessive force (Buchholz, 2021). This shows that the legislative branch was not in charge of proper policing at the times when progressive steps had to be made in the direction of a safer environment. A much more reasonable strategy for the allocation of resources could be included in the new policy as well, mediating the existence of problematic officers and the lack of reconciliation practices for the victims of police brutality (House Committee on the Judiciary, 2021). The notion of implicit bias still has to be included in further reforms.
Police Officers Focus on Irrelevant Tasks
The ultimate problem is the fact that law enforcement agents perform numerous tasks that should not have been assigned to them in the first place. Therefore, the legislative branch should approach this issue from an angle where minor calls (e.g., homelessness, barking dogs, or numerous non-criminal activities) would be taken by other agencies. Societal failures should be moved away from the police with the help of renewed legislation because the quality of life could be improved without the engagement of law enforcement (Engel et al., 2020). There should be social workers or other individuals who possess the respective expertise to deal with issues that are not necessarily up for the police to resolve. This would prevent law enforcement staff from exposure to extensive pressure and unnecessary interactions with citizens. According to Robinson (2020), this would leave more room for community programs and citizen engagement in positive interventions that are not linked to violence and altercations in any way.
Conclusion
In accordance with the existing evidence on the subject, it may be concluded that the legislative branch in the US is a powerful governmental body that possesses enough power to reform the police. Therefore, an all-inclusive policy reform could bring more change to the table than previous local activities intended to showcase the importance of smaller steps for the quality of police-led interventions. The core three arguments for reforming the police shared within the current paper were as follows: (a) historical minority oppression seems to be entrenched in the concept of law enforcement agencies across the country, (b) state-wide interventions do not cause any positive effects, and (c) there are numerous obsolete tasks that police officers have to complete. Overall, it should be noted that the legislative branch has all the power to alter the approach to law enforcement funding and monitoring, provoking greater societal and legal changes.
References
Buchholz, K. (2021). Infographic: Which states have acted on police reform? Statista.
Engel, R. S., McManus, H. D., & Isaza, G. T. (2020). Moving beyond “best practice”: Experiences in police reform and a call for evidence to reduce officer-involved shootings. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 146-165.
House Committee on the Judiciary. (2021). Fact sheet: George Floyd justice in Policing Act of 2021 [PDF].
Robinson, L. O. (2020). Five years after Ferguson: Reflecting on police reform and what’s ahead. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 228-239.
Smith, Z. (2021). George Floyd justice in Policing Act would make cops’ jobs more difficult, dangerous. The Heritage Foundation.