Katherine Spillar Urges Cleveland to Dramatically Increase Hiring of Women Police to Mitigate Polic

[niyad]

Katherine Spillar Urges Cleveland to Dramatically Increase Hiring of Women Police to Mitigate Police Violence


In a well-received speech at the City Club of Cleveland today, Katherine Spillar, Executive Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation urged Cleveland city officials to dramatically increase the hiring of women police officers as a way to decrease police brutality incidents.




Following a number of high profile police killings in Cleveland of African Americans, and an eight-month investigation by the US Attorney’s office of the Northern District of Ohio, the City of Cleveland has now entered into a Consent Decree that requires numerous reforms in how the city oversees and investigates police operations, including training in use of force.

“Among the most important reforms mandated by the consent decree – and the most easily overlooked – are the changes the Cleveland Division of Police must make in its recruitment and hiring practices,” said Spillar. “Why? Because it provides Cleveland an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically increase the percentages of women in the police department. And to racially diversify the ranks of a department that is two-thirds white in a city that is two-thirds non-white.”

Spillar explained that racial diversity would ensure communities of color are full partners in a new community-oriented police department, and that gender balancing the department would bring a different kind of police officer to the CDP. “Studies over the past 40 years have shown that women officers are less authoritarian in their approach to policing and less reliant on physical force,” Spillar continued. “Most importantly, women officers have proven to be better at defusing potentially violent confrontations – before those encounters turn deadly. This is the very approach to policing that the US Attorney says is tragically missing in Cleveland.”

Spillar pointed to two reasons explaining the difference in women’s and men’s approach to policing. “First, policemen see policing as use of force to gain compliance. By contrast, women see policing as a public service. Second, some research suggests that male police officers who feel like they must demonstrate their masculinity might be more likely to use force against a subject. We most recently saw this play out on the video-taped arrest of Sandra Bland in Texas. Her death in police custody is still unexplained. “What’s more, women police are better at responding to domestic violence incidents, the largest category of 911 calls to police departments across the country, underscoring the need for more women in the department.”

. . . .

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/07/24/katherine-spillar-urges-cleveland-to-dramatically-increase-hiring-of-women-police-to-mitigate-police-violence/

[hollysmom]

1. did it stop abuse at abu ghraib?

Apparently women are just as corruptible a men

[niyad]

2. right on schedule. how many women vs how many men in these situations?

[hollysmom]

3. On Schedule - what does that mean?

ETA - I thin more women should be hired because they are not fully represented on the forces and have been eliminated unfairly for ever, but I do believe "Blue line" and the current mentality of we are in this together no matter how wrong saturates police departments in this country. It will take generations for that to dissipate. And it is nothing new, my mother warned me to stay away from police and darkness when I was a child, she had almost been raped by two cops in the 1930's when she and my father were caught necking in the park, the cops told my father to get along and com back in an hour, and he refused and threw my mother in the car and jumped in and drove off leaving them. She never forgot that little incident. So I think abuse of power is never new. The blue line seems to override race and sex. You could see the police woman with no sympathy in the Sandra Bland arrest.

[dsc]

4. Unless Cleveland does something about the way their police department is run

it won't matter who they hire. Yes, women are probably less likely to do some of what has been done in Cleveland. But if you give any group of people guns and carte blanche to use those guns on the citizenry in any way they see fit then some of them will do bad things no matter who you hire.