Across the country, reports have consistently shown similar flaws.
In New York, more than 2,000 people were arrested during the first week of demonstrations in the city and the crackdown during the height of the protests was openly aggressive and disproportionately affected people of color, according to the highly critical report issued by the state attorney general. , Letitia James. Her office has received more than 1,300 complaints of police misconduct stemming from the first weeks of protest in New York City, she said.
In Portland, Oregon, Justice Department lawyers wrote last month that the city’s police department was breaking a 2014 agreement that focused in part on how law enforcement officers used force. The Justice Department wrote in court that, during protests last year, the Portland Police Department used force more than 6,000 times in six months, sometimes deviating from politics.
In Seattle, the City’s Office of the Inspector General has been working on a review of last year’s protests. The office said there were more than 120 separate protest events and more than 19,000 complaints sent to the Police Accountability Office about how they were handled.
In Chicago, the city inspector general’s report concluded that the senior police department leadership had failed the public and ordinary officials to deal with intense protests. As in Los Angeles, the department failed to properly process mass arrests, the report said, charging too much for some people and charging less than others. Police officers obscured their badge and nameplate numbers, and many did not use body cameras, making it difficult to hold officers accountable for misconduct.
All of this happened while the public’s own images of questionable tactics by Chicago officials circulated widely, the report said. The city and the Police Department, the report said, may have stepped back “significantly in their long-term and deeply challenged efforts to promote the trust of community members.”
The Dallas Police Department was also closely examined to see how it handled the protests. A Dallas Morning News report found that the police had thrown pepper balls improperly at the protesters. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing police officers from using chemical agents, flash-bang grenades and other less lethal weapons against protesters. The police chief at the time ended up resigning, although she said it was for reasons other than criticism of the protest response.
Chaleff, who previously served as the Los Angeles Police Department’s special assistant to the constitutional policing of former chief William J. Bratton, who later headed the New York Police Department, noted that Thursday’s report was mainly concerned with the institutional response, not with any particular incident of police misconduct, a sign that the police had “allowed less violence” than in the past.
“I think there has been progress,” he said. “But you have to be prepared for what is to come and you have to have an elected and appointed leadership that understands what is needed and creates a culture for the types of responses that are needed.”
The report was contributed by Mike Baker, Manny Fernandez, Shawn Hubler and Ali Watkins.