The End of Policing

Throughout his book, Vitale focuses on existing reforms like operational reforms, behavioral reforms, training, and oversight. In every instance, said reforms have either failed outright or offer limited success. This is based on several factors, including the continued reliance on training methodologies that are functionally dependent on James Q. Wilson and George Kelling’s broken windows theory (1982). Vitale describes it:

[It’s] a deeply conservative attempt to shift the burden of responsibility for declining living conditions onto the poor themselves and to argue that the solution to all social ills is increasingly aggressive, invasive, and restrictive forms of policing that involves more arrests, more harassment, and ultimately more violence (7).

Diversity hires is another reform that consistently falls short due to the institutional racism that permeates departments across the US. Despite the inclusion of people of color on police forces the issue remains twofold. First, Black and Latino police officers historically faced discrimination within departments. Second, according to Vitale, “even the most diverse forces have major problems with racial profiling and bias, and in individual black and Latino officers appear to perform very much like their white counterparts” (11). Police training inherently teaches people of color internalized oppression. Even procedural justice reforms have been criticized by Vitale for doing “little to address the racially disparate outcomes of policing” (15).