Introduction:
The Ferguson Police Department (FPD) is a law enforcement agency residing in Ferguson, Missouri. Currently the organization includes 45 commissioned officers and 17 civilian support staff for a total of 62 employees (City of Ferguson, 2018). The FPD prides itself on their actions of protecting Ferguson citizens lives and property through the enforcement of laws and ordinances, as well as assistance with emergency medical services. In addition to these services, the department also provides a variety of community initiatives aimed at preventing crime. Some of the programs include the D.A.R.E. program, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), and providing school Resource Officers (City of Ferguson, 2018). The FPD has had many issues in recent history, two of them being the lack of accountability held by officers and lack of diversification in the department leading to community distrust.
History:
The FPD was established in 1894, the same year Ferguson was incorporated into a city. In 2010, the city had a population of 21,203 people with 67% being of African-American descent. The police department was not governed with representation of its local racial makeup with 94% of its department being white, along with the Chief of Police (Wilson C., & Wilson, S. 2015). Until the 1960s, Ferguson was a “sundown town”, which means African Americans were banned from the City after dark. The City would block off the main road from Kinloch, a poor, all-black suburb, “with chain and construction materials but kept a second road open during the day so housekeepers and nannies could get from Kinloch to jobs in Ferguson.”(The Making of Ferguson, 2016)
Roughly 10 years ago, the FPD had its first isolated incident leading to a string of multiple scandals. On September 20, 2009, Henry Davis, an African American male, was wrongly arrested when Ferguson police officers confused him with another Henry Davis. When Davis resisted entering the jail cell, an officer promptly shoved him, to which Davis retaliated by striking the officer in the face. The other 3 officers handcuffed Davis due to his violence and the officer he struck ran and kicked him in the head. When legal authorities got involved the police gave them the wrong video recording of the incident and then claimed they had recorded over the actual tape. Davis was then charged with destruction of property for bleeding on the police officers’ uniforms (Shapiro, 2014). This incident instigated tension between the police and the citizens of Ferguson, more specifically, white officers and the African-American population.
The incident that put Ferguson on the center stage of international news was the death of Michael Brown at the hands of the FPD. On August 9th, 2014, a short confrontation between officer Darren Wilson and African-American citizen, Michael Brown, occured in which Wilson reportedly told Brown “to get the f*** off the street” while Brown and a friend were walking on the road (Wilson C., & Wilson, S. 2015). The police indicated that Brown tried to take the officers weapon and beat him with it while Wilson was still in his patrol car. Brown then ran away from the officer and a few moments later, several shots were fired by the officer while Brown was allegedly facing him with his hands raised in a sign of submission. This resulted in Brown dying from gunshot wounds, roughly 20-30 feet away from the site of the initial struggle. It was later revealed that Brown was unarmed (Wilson C., & Wilson, S. 2015). This tragedy spread all over the world and was the original momentum for the Black Lives Matter movement. This sparked protests all over the United States which focused on unfair treatment by law enforcement to ethnic minorities (Hafner, 2016).
Culture and Strategy
While the official mission statement of the FPD is that “The Ferguson Police Department provides protection of life and property in Ferguson through the enforcement of laws and ordinances and assistance with emergency medical services.” (City of Ferguson, 2018), it continues to contradict itself by displaying a culture of abuse and racism. In a report administered by the Department of Justice, it was found that law enforcement activities were driven by pressure to raise revenue, rather than by legitimate causes. This includes falsifying reports, unwarranted traffic stops, and illegal searches. Several cases indicated that the threat of jail time was often used to force payment for minor infractions such as illegal parking, but when jail time was served it wasn’t recorded by the court. This is an example of the clear lack of accountability that police officers are subject to, allowing them to act in unlawful ways with no consequences, using their uniform and badge as protection (Berman, M., & Lowery, W. 2015). The culture within the FPD also fosters and encourages racism, with stereotypes against African-American citizens being openly passed around and acted upon. This racial bias begins from the upper levels of management, shown by Ferguson officials, including police commanders and supervisors, exchanging emails containing clear racial bias. For example, one email speculated that Barack Obama wouldn’t remain as President for too long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years.” This racist activity within the FPD shows itself in its external actions, in which there is clear discrimination against people of color. African-Americans account for 85% of traffic stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests, despite only making up 67% of the population (Wilson C., & Wilson, S. 2015). These charges are often unconstitutional in nature as well, with the officers frequently detaining people without reasonable suspicion and arresting people without probable cause. These unlawful behaviors are only encouraged by supervisors, as they are more concerned with the number of citations and arrests that officers produce, rather than the legitimacy of the citations and arrests. One police officer even admitted that he was trained to arrest when citizens would refuse to provide identification, despite it being the citizens’ right to do so. Again, these behaviors are encouraged within the police department, and there is no system to ensure accountability. Comments made by a supervisor suggest that there are systemic measures built into place that allow for reports to go unwritten and unapproved, with 600 reports that had not been approved over a 6 month period in 2014 (Wilson C., & Wilson, S. 2015). Overall, the culture at the FPD is one that encourages revenue generation and racism, with no measures in place to hold officers accountable for their unconstitutional behaviors.
Issue 1: Lack of Accountability for unlawful & unethical actions
The FPD’s Chief of Police, who admitted to that prior to the Michael Brown incident, he thought that the relationship between the department and the community was in good standing. The Chief of Police’s lack of understanding for the actual state of relations between the citizens and the department speaks volumes to the lack of communication between floor-level employees and upper-management. This lack of communication easily leads to a lack of accountability due to a wide number of unlawful & unethical FPD officer actions not being reported (Department of Justice, 2015).
FPD officers who abuse their power are rarely held accountable and rarely answer for their own actions. Prior to the shooting of Michael Brown, there were already numerous reports of FPD officers mistreating African-American residents of Ferguson by calling them racial slurs, physical aggression, and gun-violence. The African-American residents filed numerous complaints against the FPD officers, however these complaints were met with silence. This response further caused department-community relations to deteriorate to the point wherein majority of Ferguson’s residents described making a report to the police department as “futile” (Department of Justice, 2015). In the official FPD policy, it clearly states that officers must “never dissuade any citizen from logging a complaint.” (City of Ferguson, 2018). This policy was reported to be directly contradicted by an unnamed FPD captain who repeatedly refused to address complaints from Ferguson residents, going so far as penalizing FPD officers who took complaints (1). In one instance, a City employee recounts being “lectured via email” by an FPD captain for taking a complaint . In another instance, a man wanting to report excessive force being used by FPD officers was threatened with jail time if a complaint was made. This refusal to accept complaints could be taken as the FPD captain’s refusal to take on responsibilities to perform their jobs ethically and to accept accountability for the FPD’s unlawful & unethical actions. Furthermore, the FPD captain has yet to receive any follow-up actions, and the initial complaints against the FPD were never logged or investigated (Department of Justice, 2015).
It should be noted that the FPD’s treatment of its citizens mimic Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. In Zimbardo’s prison simulation, 24 students were split equally and randomly assigned the role of prison guards or prisoner. In the beginning stages of the experiment, the 12 students selected to be prisoners were humiliated and emasculated. This humiliation strongly mimics the way the FPD officers verbally abuse the African-American residents of Ferguson. Furthermore, while the guards weren’t given any formal instructions to be guards, they were given a type of freedom that allowed them to operate within loose limits. This freedom translated into a lack of accountability for the guards which in turn resulted in the guards being essentially “freed” from the repercussions of their actions as well. The badge, uniform and sunglasses acted as a type of mask for the prison guards. These items aided in increasing the power the guards had over the inmates while reducing the level of accountability held by them, similar to how the citizens of Ferguson feel the officers hold a certain amount of power over them.
Under the Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search and seizures are prohibited (U.S. Const., Amendment 4). The FPD was found guilty of repeatedly violating this amendment by stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion, arresting people without probable cause, and using excessive force while conducting these practices. Moreover, the FPD office continuously violated the First Amendment rights of the Ferguson citizens by not allowing them to record while the officers were conducting police practices. This stems from the prioritization of generating revenue for the department at the cost of lawful police practices. The FPD currently does not enforce the systems in place to monitor or discipline its officers for poor and unlawful police practices. One reported interaction depicted a lieutenant running the ID of an individual just to see if he had any outstanding warrants, without probable cause (CNN, 2016). This incident once again illustrates how FPD officers commit unlawful and unethical practices due to their lack of accountability.
The FPD officers often consider basic human rights such as Freedom of Speech as disobedience. Management does nothing to enforce proper police practices, and when complaints are filed they are rarely taken seriously. With these types of practices becoming more common, the basic rights of the citizens are more often overlooked. Incidences where officers arrest individuals for giving the shorthand form of their name, such as referring to the officer as Mike instead of Michael, and filing it as a false declaration are prime examples of the abuse of power that takes place at the FPD. These false accusations continue to harm the citizens’ well being and, in some cases, cause them to lose employment (Department of Justice, 2015).
Issue 2: Disproportionate Demographic Representation leading to Community Distrust
FPD’s lack of systems to hold their officers accountable for their unlawful & unethical practises made policing in Ferguson less effective at promoting public safety. Another key concern amongst the community is the FPD’s inability to properly empathize with the issues of the people due to a lack of diversity within its workforce. This effectively creates racial bias and erodes community trust. As mentioned previously, there is a disproportionate representation of ethnicities within the FPD, where the workforce is dominated by white individuals. This poses a strong imbalance in the community due to the underrepresentation of Ferguson’s African-American population within the FPD.
In several instances, Ferguson Police were reported to have routinely violated the constitutional rights of black residents, by intentionally creating arrest records so that they would be unable to participate in voting. (cite). African-Americans are 50% more likely to have their cases turn into an arrest warrant compared to white individuals, and also have less than 68% chance of having their case dismissed by the courts. These obvious racial biases left much disappointment and distrust from the African-American population, to the point where they “have no hope and see no point in voting” (Chaney, 2015). This is just one instance of the FPD acting unconstitutionally while explicitly motivated by racial biases. When the police are driven by stereotypical ideologies, there is public distrust in the legal processes, which is only further amplified by the lack of diversity in the police force.
Due to the disproportionate representation on the police force, a bigotry culture is easily fostered in which the majority feel that they are able to dominate over the voices of the minority. This allows white officers to continuously exercise racially biased practises and further deteriorate community trust among African-American citizens. This extremely imbalanced organizational environment can also induce the toxic effect of “groupthink,” in which the few black policemen are discouraged from speaking up about racial bias due to pressures from the white officers to conform.
Given the fact that racial bias is not only coming from statistics, but also the racist remarks and emails that have been exchanged between the police and court officials, it is clear that the enacted values are clearly contradictory to the supposed espoused values of the FPD. This is illustrated in contradicted remarks made by the FPD’s spokesperson Timothy Zoll, such as “we don’t see black or white among our colleagues” and “we’re all over it to have African-American candidates in our department to help us bridge the gap”(PunditFact, 2014). This large diversity disparity clearly does not reflect the diversity of the community they serve, nor has the police department displayed actions that are justified at protecting, understanding, and responding to their African-American citizens. Therefore, community distrust is formed due to the FPD’s lack of legitimacy, as well as the citizen’s perception of the police and law enforcements to be unfair. This explains why Black citizens are unwilling to join the police force, nor do they believe anything can be changed in their community.
Building trust with the community is of utmost importance because it can help to diffuse tension and facilitate the police department and the law enforcement officers to be more effective in performing their jobs. In addition, it can redirect citizen’s perception of the policing system to be fair and just, which reflects the theory of procedural justice. According to this theory, citizens will be more receptive to an outcome of law enforcement if the process to achieve this outcome was perceived to be fair and just, even if the citizens don’t particularly support the outcome. Thus, perceptions around procedural fairness will ultimately encourage more participation from African-American residents in taking on the role as a police officer and initiating other changes to the current system (Department of Justice, 2015).
Recommendation
To address the issues outlined in this report, a two-tiered solution is recommended. The first tier involves refining the selection process for the FPD, which has a direct impact on the lack of diversity issue. The second tier relates to addressing problems with the current complaints process, which is intended to address the lack of accountability issue.
Tier 1- Recommendation and Implementation:
The first critical piece of the recommendation will be to use People Analytics to improve and refine the initial screening process prior to the standard written, oral, physical, and psychological exams used when hiring police officers. While the intuitive solution to the issues identified would be various training programs, these will prove ineffective if the people being trained are indoctrinated into the racist culture and reject such training materials. Because of this, it is necessary to dig deeper and reduce biases in the hiring process at the FPD. Currently, African-Americans are discouraged from applying to the police force because they are scared of the current management, and know that their applications will be subject to racial bias (PunditFact, 2014). By implementing People Analytics software, the FPD can use a data driven method to get rid of the current system that is subject to human bias and allow for a more objective method of hiring the right people for the right jobs.
People Analytics refers to summarizing large data in a way that is useful for management decisions. It takes into account the applicant’s social media activities such as likes, shared posts, friends, as well as background information obtained from other search engines. This process obtains a prediction of 74% accuracy of the actual traits that the individuals possess (Tandera, Hernado, Suhartono, Wongso, Praseto, 2017). Traits that are associated with employees that were engaged in discriminatory behaviors as well as those that are lacking the ability to hold themselves accountable will be distinguished as undesirable. Traits associated with open-minded, conscientious, and ethical people be marked as desirable. Many People Analytics softwares analyze individuals based on the Big 5 Personality traits. (CITE) It is used to provide a “blind screening” of an applicant, omitting demographic factors, and analyzing identified traits to ensure that people that are engaged in or are likely to engage in problematic behaviors are rejected. According to Mckinsey & Company, using people analytics leads to a more diverse set of hires CITE. This data driven approach is meant to help remove subconscious biases that spring from stereotypes that surround demographics such as race, gender, and age. As the costs of implementing data analytics software become more affordable, an increased number of companies are using People Analytics to hire the best people and remove biases (CITE).
Feeling the sense of urgency for change is a key step in bringing any type of major change into an organization. Since the Michael Brown incident, the FPD is aware that its workplace lacks diversity and that actions must be taken to promote a more diverse workforce. It is important to build onto this momentum of urgency by slowly creating the ideal scenario for change at the FPD. As a result, the next step is to create the mold that helps the organization understand that removing the bias in hiring through People Analytics is necessary. This involves explaining the benefits of using data to aid in the screening process to upper management. To maximize effectiveness, the FPD should look at companies that have been successful with People Analytics, such as Deloitte, Adidas, FedEx, Goodwill, and use them as benchmarks. (Unfreeze).
Once the support of upper-management is gained, the next step is to slowly introduce the changes that come with People Analytics into the rest of the organization. This process involves having mandatory training sessions for the HR department, the main department that will be utilizing the software. This will help improve upon hiring practices, analysis of complaints and reports, and employee retention. It is important that upper management remain enthusiastic and positive towards the use of analytical software while the members are being trained in People Analytics to help mitigate grievances from employees that raise concern about the software. It should be communicated that the new software is not meant to replace their jobs nor is it meant to remove the human aspect of the workplace, rather, instead it intends to reduce the biases that can unfairly skew the selection process.
Future Considerations
Moving beyond reducing the FPD’s hiring biases, People Analytics softwares can further aid in the department’s other areas as well. People Analytics can be used to examine current employees at the FPD and expose toxic employees that threaten the integrity of the team. This is done by analyzing current employees to identify those that subscribe to racial biases and act unconstitutionally. Additionally, in implementing these strategies, various costs apply that should be noted. To implement widespread usage of a People Analytics software, an annual cost of around $60K would be incurred (CITE). This cost is a fraction of the overall annual FPD budget of $8 million.
Tier 2-Recommendation & Implementation:
Implementing similar practices that are held by the Columbus, OH police department (the department with the highest ratings in the states) will help the FPD improve its current standings with the public. The current mechanisms for accepting and reviewing complaints filed against officers is not effectively addressing the issues. The broken processes allow for reports and complaints to essentially go ignored, which is a huge factor in the lack of accountability that the officers are subject to.
The current complaint system must be reworked to ensure a fair and equitable process. To file a complaint about an officer at the FPD, an individual must go to the station and fill out the form in person. This current method is an extremely intimidating process for the individual (CITE). To help mitigate this the FPD can offer multiple ways to file a complaint. This can include anonymous submissions, submissions through third parties and different locations throughout the city, as well as through online forms. The department must also implement practices that require all reports to be logged into a central database which will send alerts to upper management if no progress or updates are made. This will help ensure that all reports are investigated. By improving the communication channels that citizens have access to, as well as ensuring that the reports are all collected in a central location, the complaints process will be more consistent and reliable. In addition, the FPD must look into all misconduct complaints, even if the complainant does not want the complaint investigated or withdraws his initial file. This step is crucial to ensure that people are not being coerced into retracting valid complaints.
Furthermore, the FPD needs to have proper consequences in place for the officers found guilty of misconduct. This includes, but is not limited to, the termination of employment of the guilty FPD officers. This will hold the officers to a higher level of accountability if they know the extent of the repercussions. To help enforce the practices, all reports will need to be submitted to the Ferguson prosecuting attorney. This will add a second level of accountability to the process, as the prosecuting attorney will be expecting complete factual reports from the department. The final step is that the FPD must put in place an area where the community and the officers can discuss the complaint and resolve the issues, if it is appropriate. The sessions can be held at a local community center with the presence of a neutral third party to help mediate the conversation. This will help resolve any issues and help repair the trust within the community at the same time. Implementing these practices will help reduce the amount of information filtering that was present in the FPD in previous years. These practices will also help eliminate the bias that officers had in the past with presenting complaints against them in a more favorable manner.
Future Considerations:
To reinforce the effectiveness of the new complaint system, and to assess the performance of the officers, an annual evaluation report should be conducted on every officer by their direct supervisor. The main criterias will take a closer look on if the officer: 1) was engaged in discriminatory behaviours both inside and outside of his/her workplace; 2) had a complaint filed against them regarding his/her attitude and performance on duty; 3) received continual complaints during the year. Decisions regarding the retention of employees, whether a promotion, a verbal appraisal, or dismissal will be made according to the evaluation. The supervisor will then compare these results to the People Analytics suggestions, and analyze any discrepancies. Furthermore, the supervisor can also make changes to the traits that are detected in the software to better refine their screening practises in the future.
In addition to the internal performance evaluation, the FPD should also recognize the importance of transparency, as it shows their determination to rebuild community trust. In particular, they should provide annual reports on police stops, arrests, searches, ticketing, and force. The report should also describe how they address these issues and insights into how they can improve in the future when officers are on duty. Secondly, they should post public reports regarding how they address misconducting officers, the nature of the complaints and their resolution method. Last but not least, they should regularly update the FPD policing regulations and inform the public so they can hold FPD accountable for their actions and give constructive feedbacks to yield a more engaging community (Cite).
With the effort to evaluating/monitoring internal officers are doing the right job and publicly showing the citizens about their performance and policies, FPD will be able to improve their services and repair community trust.
Risks and Mitigation
As with any endeavour Ferguson will undertake to address internal organizational issues, there will be potential risks included in the implementation of these recommendations, including the potential for technological difficulty in adapting to new softwares, which affects compliance rates with people analytics and overall software effectiveness in analyzing proper key metrics and display relevant and actionable data (cite). Another key issue that must be addressed with implementation of People Analytics is the security of the data and privacy of the employees, in regards to cyber security and ensuring framework maintenance.
In relation to technological barriers, it is up to the Ferguson Police Department to make sure its senior management and chief officers do their due diligence in educating the rest of their police force on why this new system will be taking place and why it is important that they comply to the data collection methods. By properly informing and educating the police force on the new people analytics practices, FPD can also address the issue of difficulties in adapting to the new technologies. With any technological innovation comes a need for shift in knowledge and skills to be able to fully utilize the new advances, and thus FPD officers must be properly trained in using these new softwares to the best of their ability. Once all officers and support staff are knowledgeable on the new softwares, FPD can continue to assess the overall effectiveness of the implementation strategies. Although there are very promising results, with any algorithm based artificial intelligence, there is still no guarantee that “data driven decisions” will be understandable or accurate to the goals and intentions of this program (cite). With this is mind, consistent education and awareness of the goals of the program amongst the organization at large is essential for the effectiveness.
As for the concern of data security and protection of confidential organizational information, there must be a relationship of utmost good faith between the FPD and the People Analytics software suppliers. Due to the nature of the data to be held by FPD in their analytics reports, it is essential that network security is also kept in mind and a potential partnership with strong internet providers will be more than enough to make sure all this information is kept secure and the privacy of all employees are withheld. Another way to mitigate this risk is to further create a privacy policy specific to the practices with handling people analytics data, such that, anyone with access to the full data and analytics reporting must practice explicit disclosure.
Overall, by educating and informing the police department, as well as creating a privacy policy for data security, FPD can effectively ensure that their force will effectively benefit from People Analytics softwares and get the most out of their people.
Conclusion:
Refer to page 3 of http://login.bersin.com/uploadedFiles/BBD-Holiday_eBook_2014-121614.pdf
References
Hafner, J. (2016, August 10). How Michael Brown’s death, two years ago, pushed #BlackLivesMatter into a movement. Retrieved April 05, 2018, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/08/how-michael-browns-death-two-years-ago-pushed-blacklivesmatter-into-movement/88424366/
Police Department | Ferguson, MO – Official Website. (n.d.). Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.fergusoncity.com/92/Police-Department
Shapiro, J. (2014, September 12). In Ferguson, Mo., Before Michael Brown There Was Henry Davis. Retrieved April 05, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2014/09/12/348010247/in-ferguson-mo-before-michael-brown-there-was-henry-davis
Wilson, C. P., & Wilson, S. A. (2015). A Community Unraveled: Police Shooting in Ferguson, MO. Journal Of Critical Incidents, 852-55.
Berman, M., & Lowery, W. (2015, March 4). The 12 key highlights from the DOJ’s scathing Ferguson report. Retrieved April 8th, 2018, from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/04/the-12-key-highlights-from-the-dojs-scathing-ferguson-report/?utm_term=.0931e8149c8a