COPS has a sordid history in many places. Recall the criticisms of its role in Operation Urban Shield, for instance. But insofar as there were appropriations that awarded a grant for this DOJ publication on internal affairs investigations in 2005, then what has resulted since?

Most pension schemes, including police pensions schemes, have increasingly focused on “demographic” information as the basis upon which to evaluate employee compensation as well as I anticipate employee availability for compensation considerations. Additionally, considerations of righting wrongs to which communities have been subjected are often reflected by local administrations as being contingent upon agreement to demonstrate a certain recapitulation of the demographic representation on the force reflecting the composition of the communities most primarily engaged by law enforcement. This has deficiencies in two primary manners:

          a) It does not speak to the totality of the actual engagement of and by law enforcement in local                                 processes when it comes to non-apparent relationships, including surveillance infrastructure and                           the manners in which data acquired in connection with the surveillance infrastructure is made                                 available to other sectors of the locality, including for purposes of financial consideration; and

          b) It does not include the material basis for the economic causes of crimes, including the disparity                           in terms of opportunities for material resources to be made accessible and HELD accountable.

This impacts the disproportionate valuations of law enforcement efforts in the overall matrix of its engagement with communities. If there is not enough crime being targeted in sectors wherein it is occurring that have abused resources and subjected resources necessary for economic stability to fraud and engagement in and through criminal processes so it can be protected against unlawful engagement in illegal activities, then its circulation in and within other communities through some other form of redistribution only serves to continue perpetuating crimes disproportionately within communities of color or those communities disproportionately deprived otherwise of the resources to support themselves economically.

This is demonstrated in the recent events of the last year, specifically, when protests against police have been specifically coordinated with issuance of municipal bonds in cities wherein a police encounter resulted in the death of someone whose last name was connected to litigation that referenced someone with the same name. This is, I contend, evidentiary of the original allegations regarding the specific pattern connected to fraud involving group insurance policies that can provide consideration of the reserves on municipal bonds. The civil litigious dimension of a response to and regarding police brutality and/or an officer-involved shooting speaks to the manners in which municipal resources are “drawn down” in terms of the payment to the community. But ultimately, even such restitution is actually still drawing down on the credit of the community as collateral based upon its relationship with the overall public financing of the municipality.

Recently there was an announcement of a lawsuit in the City of New York that discussed benefits for first responders of 911. This is I believe a very important element in consideration of this very condition. There is a necessary consideration of providing certain kinds of qualified “pooling” of people in law enforcement or other first responder roles that would not “circulate” within other “pools” but at the same time if there is not another means by which resources can circulate otherwise then the social impact of the economic disparities become more evident. It can be causal of the proliferation of certain  KINDS of crime that is acknowledged under the specifications of what is designated as priority police work in various areas while other KINDS of crime are NOT investigated or prosecuted. This then effects the overall valuations of the law enforcement resources that the community has to work with.
 

I contend now and have contended that the internal affairs functions of local police forces necessarily need to provide a more important and formative role. The implications of effective “internal controls” and the success of such efforts need to be refactored into considerations of the value communities have to work  with. This should also correlate with a focus on white collar crime at a more local and immediate level with less of a focus on “clandestine” or “covert” sting-type operations that have not factored in the role of educating the public about how to avoid or protect oneself against financial crimes that can proliferate into other forms of crime. This is not exclusively about the police not performing certain responsibilities, but rather about municipal planning regimes that have not appropriately factored in the implications and valuations of internal control demonstrations as an indicator of viability and value.

The economic implications of the surveillance regime need to be accounted for in this regard. The balance of circulating individual private wealth in and through the local municipalities that support law enforcement activities as well as the compensation of individuals employed in the various law enforcement roles needs to be focused on. Dispossessing individuals and communities of their wealth through illegal surveillance, or unnecessary surveillance accomplished via poor policy implementation that itself might be evidentiary of CRIME at another level for which enforcement has been significantly lacking, has long-term implications on the misrepresentation of actual obligation incurred in a great deal of municipalities. I have personal experience with this disparity involving five major cities in five years specific to the mis-valuation of the police force and its role in the larger factors within which municipal works occur. This can only incentivize crime BY law enforcement and the resultant economy, including political economy, follows suit.

Much needs to be done on the federal or even sate level to recapitulate priorities around concepts of “crime” and the focus of crime, as well as the punishments, for that crime, in order to attend to this appropriately. Specifically, financial crimes that are addressed via an over-representation of accommodation as payment of penalties or fines, including in manners that have yet to be divested of a longer-term form of divestiture from legitimate recirculation outside of the crime operators in the financial sector, need to be attended to. We need “reform” of “criminal justice” not only from a perspective of “decriminalizing” lower-level offenses but in training and enforcement of laws regarding serious theft and crime in other sectors and at other levels. When we address “crime” at the other levels from which people have been dispossessed then we can actually obtain the resources of those sectors for legitimate recirculation into the community in such manners that deter the crime by removing the underlying causes of under-representation and access to the means of self-sufficiency.

Identifying “crime” as being accomplished by certain “demographics” of people is more capable of being perpetuated when the “crime” committed by other “demographics” of people is not prosecuted as CRIME but rather is accommodated in or via a systematology that incentivizes certain kinds of illicit behavior. It is in such disparities that the attempts to “normalize” or even “legalize” illegal activity come to define the political priorities of movements for justice. If there is fraud or crime involved in the assessment of the financial status of the municipalities, then this must be meted out at the level it is at and not permitted to be “written off” or “covered up” via alternative means that are themselves crimes. Such crimes do contribute to the proliferation of other kinds of crime that may occur within a municipality if they are not addressed as crime and hence enforcement of such crime is not a credit to the municipality. This is the kind of resource that is needed by our communities and our country.

It is for these reasons that local police departments need to start to redefine the value to their own self interest in having a functioning and effective internal affairs mechanism. It is also for this reason that local municipalities need to start seeing the value and self-interest of having an accountable internal affairs mechanism. I contend it will take substantial reform of the financial sector, including through prosecutions as well as legislative refinement, in order to redefine concepts of municipal financing, including its role in the overall benefits and pension systems of the localities of concerns, and that one major means by which to account for this is to reconceptualize local pension systematologies to see the value and need of effective internal affairs operations. This not only gives the communities served by law enforcement a form of “social insurance” in understanding there is a functioning corrective mechanism for potential police abuse, but also provides another standard that is not about targeting individuals based on their physical characteristics but rather job performance as a potential primary indicator of the success or capacities of law enforcement. This can provide a more qualitative indicator for consideration of how police activity factors into overall municipal operations, which in turn determines consideration of the actual financial status of the municipalities.

 

/s/: Charity Colleen Crouse
Attorney General of Texas
10:21 am CST
April 1, 2021

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See here.