Guest editorial: Policing in the aftermath of the 2020 protests: Lessons learned and evolving strategies for reform

Abstract

Statistical evidence from both countries document that this increased public scrutiny of POC, by police, repeatedly occurred in the absence of substantiated criminal activity (Delsol and Shiner, 2015;White and Fradella, 2016) [8], and in the US, was ultimately deemed by state and federal authorities to have produced persistent constitutional violations [9]. According to reports and statistical data released by the New York City Police Department (NYPD), from 1994 to 2000, the deployment of BWP led to unprecedented reductions in crime and substantial improvement in the quality of life experienced by New Yorkers across varying social strata (Bratton and Knobler, 1998;Zimring, 2011) [10]. Though George Floyd was killed in the United States, the papers in this special issue help build our understanding of how intersecting global social dynamics both, internal and external to police agencies, lead to and can lead away from the next incident that will fuel serious calls for sweeping change to the policing profession. In the US, there are no reports of serious police violence against the protestors associated with the Coronavirus protests, but investigations have revealed considerable complaints of police use of force against individuals who engaged in peaceful protests against the killing of Black men, women and children (Amnesty International, 2020) – deaths that extended back several years and with perpetrators that included police officers and civilians claiming to act in a law enforcement capacity [19].