Rachel Harmon: recommendation

Transcript context

…Do we have too many separate police departments? You mentioned the number of different departments as an obstacle to collecting data. Should there be more consolidation? Sure. There are advantages and disadvantages to consolidation. I said 18,000. That’s actually not the best, most recent number. It’s probably a little more than 12,000 local departments. About half of those are fewer than 10 guys. Now, we talk about police accountability and having use-of-force policies and disciplinary structures, but in an office of 10 guys, none of that matters. So I think some consolidation would be extremely valuable because these very small departments just can’t maintain the kinds of standards that we might want. But I don’t think consolidation is the solution to all problems in policing, and consolidation has costs as well as benefits because it means that, as communities get more diverse, segments of the community might not get what they want out of policing. I believe that, right now, around one-eighth of police officers are women. Should that percentage be higher as a way of addressing police misconduct? You might want it to be higher for other equity reasons; that’s fine. But in terms of people being happier with their police, would it help?…

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