The Many Problems With Policing

The Constitution impedes necessary changes. By Luke Pickrell

Just over a month ago, 30-year-old Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson killed Sonya Massey inside her home in Springfield, Illinois. Grayson is still in jail after bail was denied by a judge who argued his actions were “so out of bounds of societal norms that it suggests that there’s no condition that would be sufficient” for release.

Grayson worked at six Illinois law enforcement agencies since 2020, including a part-time gig as an officer in Pawnee, IL, before leaving for a law enforcement job that would offer him full-time employment. Part-time police work is common in small departments. However, “It’s never a good sign when a police department is hiring officers on a part-time basis,” says Christy Lopez, a Georgetown law professor and former deputy chief in the special litigation section of the civil rights division at the Justice Department.

In 2016, Grayson was discharged from the Army for an undisclosed “serious offense.” He pleaded guilty to two DUIs in 2015 and 2016. While working for the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, Grayson’s superiors recommended “high-stress decision-making” training and confronted him about possibly lying on a police report. In 2022, he was the subject of a complaint alleging inappropriate conduct toward a female detainee. After killing Massey, many people are understandably outraged that Grayson had a job as a police officer in the first place.

States are given police power under the 10th Amendment, which allows them to make and enforce laws to protect the public's welfare, safety, and health. There are approximately 700,000 police officers across an astounding 18,000 unique departments in the U.S., ranging from two or three officers to tens of thousands. No other country comes close to the U.S. federalized system of city and state autonomy over law enforcement. Canada comes the closest with 56 separate agencies.

Federalism significantly limits the government’s ability to force changes on local and state police agencies. There are no national policing standards for using force, recruitment, officer selection, and training. The existing federal registry of police misconduct is spotty at best, and departments often don’t provide data, resulting in the uniquely American phenomenon of “wandering cops” who move from one job to the next after termination. “There’s no question that…officers getting rehired after they’ve been let go under whatever circumstances is a huge problem and appears to be responsible for a grossly disproportionate number of tragic incidents,” said Lopez. Some feel that “nothing will change fundamentally” until the forces are centralized at least at the state level.

Officers in the U.S. receive an average of five months of training before they can go on patrol — far less than in other countries. Each year, police in the U.S. kill far more people than in any other country. According to Mapping Police Violence, 744 people have been killed by police in 2024, putting this year on track to become the deadliest one on record. Sheriff’s departments are three times more lethal than city police departments. A recent report documented “chronic misconduct” and “oversight failures that can enable abuses to go unchecked.” “Americans are needlessly dying and are being killed while in the custody of their own government,” said Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. Chiraag Bains, a former civil rights prosecutor who served as deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council until 2023, said that the violence and lack of accountability is a “failure of democracy.” Since 1994, the Department of Justice has only filed seven cases against sheriff’s offices for civil rights violations.

Massey’s killing only underscores what many have known for a long time: Policing in the U.S. needs to change. Over the past month, calls have increased for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, attorney Ben Crump, the ACLU, the Center for American Progress, and Massey’s family supported the bill. Biden, Harris, and Crump have argued that a Democratic Party victory in November is necessary for the bill’s success. “Just like George Floyd was a catalyst for the 2020 election,” said Crump, “we believe this will be similarly impactful on the 2024 presidential election, especially for our Black community.” Crump previously advocated for the bill last year after the killing of Tyre Nichols, saying, “Shame on us if we don’t use his tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” and arguing that more people would die if the legislation failed.

The Justice in Policing Act, among other provisions, would establish a robust national registry of police misconduct, ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels, and overhaul qualified immunity. Last May, the fourth anniversary of Floyd’s death, Rep. Ilhan Omar praised the bill, arguing that it would be a “critical step toward creating national standards for policing” and “save other Black lives.”

However, one crucial fact is missing from the highfalutin declarations: The U.S. isn’t a democracy in which necessity can become a reality. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, the Justice in Policing Act passed the Democratic Party-controlled House in 2020 and died in the Republican-controlled Senate. It was introduced again in 2021 by a Democratic-controlled House, passed, and then killed in the Democratic-controlled Senate after receiving less than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Right now, a new version of the bill has a one percent chance of getting out of committee and a zero percent chance of being enacted. You don’t need a political science degree to read the tea leaves. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to expand police power and reach through decisions like City of Grants Pass v. Johnson and Vega v. Tekoh. The Court also continues to side with police in qualified immunity cases, the notorious legal doctrine that shields police from essentially any claim of wrongdoing.

Ben Crump is wrong that a Democratic administration will change the police, and he’s mistaken again that the will of the people can be translated into law. However, he’s right about one thing: As long as common-sense reforms continue to perish in our bicameral and gerrymandered legislative meat grinder, people will continue dying. Winning democracy in the U.S. would be justice for Sonya Massey.