As with so many of my neighbors, the body camera footage of the fatal shooting of Christian Wallace turned my stomach. As Village President Scaman stated, a transparent investigation is needed. Such an investigation, however, represents the bare minimum.
No investigation, however transparent, can erase the fact that a man is dead following an encounter with our police department. Nothing will bring Mr. Wallace back or restore a sense of normalcy for his family and loved ones. Our community should not aspire to a sense of normalcy either. Because what happened to Mr. Wallace is not normal.
The Illinois State Public Integrity Task Force will answer the question of whether the officer involved violated the law. But to consider the matter closed once the investigation is concluded would reflect a complacency that does not represent our community values.
We need new systems of policing in Oak Park. And new systems can only emerge from a department-wide review of the issues and the policies, training, supervision, tactics, and organizational culture that shaped the circumstances surrounding this shooting.
The tragedy of Mr. Wallace’s death must also be a catalyst for genuine institutional reform. To chart our course for this process, we should look to other local governments in the U.S. that have undertaken similar efforts.
Fifteen years ago, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confronted a series of officer-involved shootings. Rather than simply investigating each incident in isolation, the department invited the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a comprehensive review of its use-of-force practices.
This was in 2011, when the Department of Justice’s Collaborative Reform Initiative offered independent, non-adversarial assessments of police departments seeking to improve their practices. The Department’s comprehensive review took about a year to complete. Rather than focusing on the narrow question of whether individual shootings were justified, questions were asked that sought to identify system-wide issues that could lead to officer-involved shootings:
- Were officers receiving the best possible training?
- Were there certain tactics that increased the likelihood of deadly encounters?
- Were supervisors tracking recurrences of certain patterns?
- Were internal investigations resulting in actual policy changes in the department?
The Las Vegas review produced 75 findings and recommendations that completely changed how the department trained its officers, reviewed uses of force, managed critical incidents and measured performance. The Las Vegas example shows us that a community can respond to tragedy with serious institutional self-examination, followed by real systemic change. Oak Park should adopt this approach.
It goes without saying that the current U.S. Department of Justice is unlikely to be the right partner for such an undertaking. No matter. At this point in history, we clearly should not look to Washington for guidance in matters of law enforcement.
Instead, the Oak Park Village Board should establish, by ordinance, an Independent Critical Incident Review Commission charged with producing a public report within 12 months containing specific recommendations on policy, training, supervision, transparency, and use of force.
We need not engage a consultant to accomplish this. Oak Park is uniquely positioned to do this work. We are home to attorneys, judges, criminologists, behavioral health professionals, academics, policy experts, and engaged residents who have spent their careers thinking about public institutions. We should put that expertise to work.
While we cannot reverse the circumstances that robbed Mr. Wallace of his life, we can make this tragedy mean something if we treat the underlying disease and not just the symptoms.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Justice’s Collaborative Reform review of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department following a series of officer-involved shootings:
https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p273-pub.pdf
Justice Department press release summarizing the review:
Adam Salzman served as an Oak Park village trustee from 2011 to 2017, and currently serves as executive director of the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic.