Ferguson: A How-Not-To-Do-It Guide

Reading the Department of Justice Report on the Ferguson Police Department is a lot like reading a “How-Not-To-Do-It Guide” to law enforcement. The findings of the DOJ are shocking in the extreme. The report highlights so many violations of human and civil rights of the residents of Ferguson – mostly African Americans – that it would be hard to make this stuff up.

It’s a long list: abuse of power, excessive force, abuse and unsafe use of TASERS, harassment, racial profiling, indiscriminate use of police dogs against residents – some as young as 14 years old,

Officers violated internal policies and procedures even when they must have known they were being video taped or that evidence of wrong-doing would be found if an investigation was ever conducted. But they knew there would be no investigation. Supervisors and even elected city officials turned a blind-eye to wrong-doing; clearly nurturing and enabling a police culture of fear, intimidation and misdeeds.

According to the DOJ, differential policing was driven by “intentional discrimination…racial bias and stereotyping….This evidence includes: the consistency and magnitude of the racial disparities throughout Ferguson’s police and court enforcement actions; the selection and execution of police and court practices that disproportionately harm African Americans and do little to promote public safety; the persistent exercise of discretion to the detriment of African Americans; the apparent consideration of race in assessing threat; and the historical opposition to having African Americans live in Ferguson, which lingers among some today."

Rather than preserving public safety, police officers in Ferguson became revenue generators - de facto tax collectors - for the city and black residents became an easy source of income because of the multiple citations imposed on them, often for minor offences.

The DOJ says: “FPD’s lack of systems to detect and hold officers responsible for misconduct reflects the department’s focus on revenue generation at the expense of lawful policing and helps perpetuate the patterns of unconstitutional conduct we found. FPD fails to adequately supervise officers or review their enforcement actions.”

Among the remedies announced to the media by the Mayor of Ferguson to rectify this toxic environment is diversity training. But it will take more than “diversity training” and hiring a few black women to solve this problem. Obviously the Chief of Police must go, but so too should the City Manager and Municipal Judge who presided over court sessions and handed out sentences. And that’s just for starters.

Perhaps now is a good time to remind or inform the leaders of Ferguson and its police department what diversity and inclusion ought to look like.

Diversity, inclusion, and intercultural competence are three essential pieces of an integrated whole that helps to create and sustain a productive organization – one that values all individuals and allows the organization to interact effectively with the many “cultures” it serves. A diverse, inclusive, and interculturally competent organization has the following characteristics:

1. An ability to provide services effectively to a diverse array of cultural and identity groups
2. Full inclusion in the decision-making and social life of the organization (or community) for members of all cultural and identity groups
3. Capacity to continuously upgrade knowledge about cultural and identity groups
4. Resources and incentive systems are aligned to support organizational intercultural competence

This has been called the “integration and learning” paradigm of diversity where organizations actively seek input from members of multiple identity groups and cultures in order to improve work processes as well as product and service offerings.

Diversity is the variety of differences among people and can be defined as the representation of many different cultures or perspectives in the organization; it should be viewed as the “floor” or foundation for a longer and deeper process. Enriching recruitment systems to broaden feeder pools, linking selection processes to skills, and ensuring a fair chance of employment for all cultural groups is an important step, but it is only a first step in a much longer and more involved process.

Inclusion means that all individuals are welcomed, accepted, and valued in the organization. Many different voices are sought in important organizational decision-making processes, and members of all cultural groups are fully included in the informal networks and social life of the organization.

Intercultural Competence is the capability of individuals and organizations to appropriately and authentically shift cultural perspectives and change behaviours when encountering cultural differences. It has four components:

• Awareness of one’s own culture and how capability to navigate cultural differences
• Knowledge of the different dimensions along which cultures differ
• Skills for interacting effectively across cultural differences
• Attitude of valuing cultural differences

The ultimate vision of diversity and inclusion should be: “diverse teams of people (diversity) have the skills, knowledge and attitudes (intercultural competence) to provide inclusive environments for their stakeholders (inclusion) in order to create synergistic knowledge-sharing processes that drive organizational productivity and innovation.”

The Ferguson Police Department and the residents its officers swore to “serve and protect” have a long road ahead. As the DOJ states, “Restoring trust in law enforcement will require recognition of the harms caused by Ferguson’s law enforcement practices, and diligent, committed collaboration with the entire Ferguson community.”

If you are interested you can find some of my other posts at my Blog