Some years ago during a phone riff on the root causes and consequences of police brutality with a corrections officer turned activist, the conversation took an unusual turn when the advocate spit passionately about the education level of cops.
“You want to know one big reason why cops beat Black folks up?” they asked. “They aren’t the most educated bunch.”
Meaning most – especially on beats or making rounds along prison corridors – don’t have college degrees. It may have seemed trivial at the time, but there’s a point in it. The act of police brutality against people of color might seem like senseless violence triggered by irreparable racist insanity, but that’s letting the cops who commit the acts, the police departments who train them and the governments who fund them get off light.
Hence, are we really being all that smart and thoughtful about how we respond to grisly, nonsensical acts of brutality by police organizations? It’s not a trick question: what happened overnight in Ferguson, Missouri offers some quick answers. While the beatings, chokings and killings of unarmed Black men and women continue stacking up, it’s not like we’ve seen any noticeable drop in the incidents. In protesting the brutality, we see the typical wide range of reactions based on who’s reacting: if it’s the traditional civil rights community, everyone’s pissed but telling those affected to stay calm; if it’s you at your screen, you’re more than likely fuming at tweets and hashtagging with everyone else; and, in some cases, if you’re Black, poor and powerless in the vicinity of some random tragedy, some of you occasionally pursue creative or destructive means by which you shake shit up, as is the case with Ferguson.
While these reactions might, in some way, help soothe the soul with the chicken soup of immediate emotional gratification, it’s not like it truly resolves the issue for the long term. We instinctively know it will happen again. The usual set of suspects racing to the scene of the crime – whether it’s a battalion of Black preachers or a legion of talk show hosts looking to hit a trend – might make some immediate dent in the crisis, but that often amounts to nothing more than crowd control. Some tweaks are made in departmental procedures, some officers are suspended or disappear into anonymity (if not rarely jailed) and commissions are formed.
The typical move is to prosecute the officers and call for more cooperation strategies between police agencies and local communities. But, maybe we’re not seeing any progress on this issue because we’re going down the wrong rabbit holes or not considering some crucial questions.
A Department of Justice analysis found that 82 percent of local police departments only require a high school diploma for employment, 16% require a college degree, including 9 percent of the second sample requiring merely 2-year associate degrees. In addressing the growing problem of police violence and brutality, shouldn’t we be asking that question: does the education level of a cop influence a tendency towards violence?
A 2010 Michigan State University study attempted to answer that question and came to an interesting conclusion: “College education does, however, significantly reduce the likelihood of force occurring. Results may be due to the amount of discretion officer’s exercise in pursuing these behaviors.” Here’s a table illustrating the point:
And so should we raise the level of discourse on this subject and demand mandatory higher education requirements for police officers? It’s common sense. Law enforcement officers, particularly those in densely populated urban and suburban areas, patrol tense pockets of poverty that should require, at the very least, a level of intellectual awareness or cognizance. You would think cops should be the first thoroughly versed in the various social, political and economic issues they’re faced with each day.
Hence, for example: if NYPD officers had some basic understanding of how post-recession pressures, inflation, systemic Black male unemployment and increases in cigarette taxes forced the late Eric Garner to hawk illegal cancer sticks, maybe it could have been a different conversation between the parties that ended up with Garner still alive. He would be sitting in a jail or before a judge, sure. But, there’s some statistical evidence suggesting he’d be around.
No one’s saying to let cops off the hook. But there’s need for a deeper examination of a systemic problem that hasn’t subsided. Of course, racial profiling is always at work when law enforcement officers patrol through diverse communities. Still, we also know through research that low educational attainment and low IQ is linked to racist behavior and politically ultra-conservative views on race – for example, the less college education you have is linked to your preference in cable networks like Fox News and talk shows like Rush Limbaugh. Here’s Pew:
Of course, that doesn’t explain brutality carried out by African American cops, but you see where I’m going.
Maybe the response to police brutality is getting to the root of it beyond just the typical “oh, that guy is racist.” That becomes contrived after a while. Well, what specifically is making him racist? Maybe we need to start asking if these officers have a true, empirical-based or solid intellectual understanding of the socio-economic conditions they’re faced with every day. A lot of it is prejudice, we get it. But a lot of it is also high-energy, fast-paced, “alpha-male” model and aggressive policing that’s more focused on the tactical than the strategic.
It’s interesting because society accepts that military commanders in the field must possess a high level of education before they lead soldiers into battle. With the advent of the “specialist” in the modern military, it gradually becomes a bit more commonplace to expect some level of sophisticated training to operate advanced weapons systems. In order to achieve effective leadership in highly stressful situations, military brass want their officers, down to the platoon level, to understand terrain, geography, geopolitics and the enemy their fighting. This is one critical factor making the U.S. armed forces the most powerful and the smartest in the world – the top two military academies on the planet are West Point and Annapolis. In fact, U.S. military personnel are better “educated” than civilians – and you’d want them to be, right, considering they operate everything from killer drones to nuclear weapons?
There’s kind of a hidden double-standard here when we talk about police behavior and the behavior of, say, Black men gunning down each other in, say, Chicago. We’re quick to examine – and for good reason – the socio-economic and deep historic roots behind the conditions in certain communities. We poke and prod at the underserved to explain why they act and react in certain ways.
So, why not, in every case of police brutality, start probing into the psycho-social and educational reasons (or lack thereof) that leads to cops acting a certain way – and not just White cops either?
Obviously, the usual response isn’t doing a whole lot to keep it from happening (and, in addition to police brutality, we’re now dealing with police that’s become much more para-militaristic [see skyrocketing increase in use of SWAT teams]). Frankly, the current mainstream conversation on police brutality is that stale and predictable. Thus, these things happen, people get upset … and then it passes till the next tragedy. I also think the conversation on educational attainment levels puts an onus on lawmakers for needed leadership where it’s currently absent. It also puts the responsibility on police departments to radically alter the value they put on education and intellectual pursuits, to stop viewing advanced educational attainment as a ticket to promotion and to start appreciating it as a process towards officer empathy for the human beings they are sworn to protect. Funding will become an issue as taxpayers will be flipping the bill for enhanced law enforcement training through higher education. But, it shouldn’t be when police departments seem all the more happy to lavishly spend on para-militarized SWAT teams and automatic rifles in the name of “homeland security.” Time to shift priorities – better spending money on the important stuff rather than wasting billions in insurance dollars and taxpayer loot on damages and law suits.
CHARLES D. ELLISON is a veteran strategist and Chief Political Correspondent for UPTOWN Magazine. He’s also Washington Correspondent for the Philadelphia Tribune and a frequent contributor to The Root. He can be reached via Twitter @charlesdellison