Lessons for U.S. police from an unexpected place – Northern Ireland

*The day the Ulster constabulary passed into history, it was replaced by a new agency called the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Its new commander, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, spoke of the opportunity to create “a culture where equality for all is offered and where respect for cultural diversity and for individual dignity is the order of the day.”

The new force still included former Royal Ulster Constabulary constables, but heavy recruitment of Catholics began immediately. With new training and a makeover that included changes in everything from attitude to uniforms, Flanagan created a new department that was far more representative of the general local population. The force is now roughly 30 percent Catholic and has won the respect of many of the old regime’s harshest critics.

If this kind of turnaround can happen in Northern Ireland, it can happen in Ferguson, Missouri."


*Just as troubling, the report found that Ferguson’s police force and court system viewed the mostly African-Americans community as a source of revenue. The more summons police handed out, the more the city was able to collect in fines. This picture of racism, brutality and corruption has made it all but inevitable that the federal government will intervene in Ferguson, perhaps disbanding the current department and creating a new one, following the Northern Ireland model.

Ferguson would thus become the latest American city to resolve its policing problems by starting over from scratch."


*Big-city police departments from Chicago to New York have endured scandals involving corruption, racism and brutality. But reform, not dissolution, has been the preferred method of change.

That was not true in Jennings, Missouri, several years ago, when city officials decided that institutional racism was so bad that they had no choice but to start over. Among the officers fired from that disbanded force was Darren Wilson, who found a new job in Ferguson. He was the officer who fired the shots that killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, last summer.



http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/03/20/one-sure-way-to-fix-the-ferguson-police-force-disband-it/