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Last week, following months of upheaval and unrest, the City of Decatur finally released an independent review of its police department – a report that was commissioned by the city council in the wake of the alleged murder by a police officer of Steve Perkins.
The report revealed what everyone pretty much knew all along: The Decatur Police Department is a mess.
I don’t say that lightly, or flippantly. Being a cop in any city is hard, dangerous and often thankless work. It requires a skill set and an attitude that should not be casually dismissed, and that should garner more compensation than we currently provide most officers. But it’s also a job with clear expectations, clear rules and clear consequences for doing it poorly. And the review of Decatur’s PD shows pretty clearly that it’s time for consequences.
Certainly, we could nitpick and sugarcoat things – bring up all the cited incidents in which officers engaged with citizens peacefully and respectfully – but that would be the same as talking about how well the rest of the play went, aside from the Lincoln shooting. Because, I’ll remind you, police-citizen interactions are supposed to be professional and respectful. Even when they’re not, it is a police officer’s job to de-escalate a hostile encounter and uphold the law.
According to the independent review of DPD, conducted by Green Research and Technology, that has been a problem for Decatur cops. There were numerous incidents of officers treating citizens disrespectfully, escalating situations and essentially making bogus arrests of peaceful protesters on trumped up, catch-all charges, like “obstruction of governmental operations.”
Those are problems enough, but the most troubling aspects of the report – and what should lead the Decatur City Council to change department leadership and clean house at DPD – are two things: the obvious lack of respect for Chief Todd Pinion by the rank and file officers and the nonsensical defense of his department and his leadership by Pinion following the release of the report.
The report describes quite clearly an atmosphere within DPD in which select cliques of officers and supervisors operate above the rules and are rarely, if ever, punished for it. This information doesn’t come in the form of speculation from outsiders, but from officers who cooperated with the Green agency on its review.
If you doubt the danger of such insubordination, simply look at the facts of the Perkins murder. A group of Decatur officers, including supervisors and veteran officers, violated department policy (and likely city law) to assist in the repossession of a vehicle. None of them had any business being at Perkins’ home that night, which is why they hid their vehicles and themselves until Perkins exited his house to stop – for the second time that night – what he believed was a wrongful repossession.
Their conscious decisions to break rules and protocols led to a man’s death. And it’s not more complicated than that.
The fact that such behavior is so obvious and well known within the department — to the point that officers are sharing it during this review – is a sign of widespread issues throughout the department. Even worse, it’s a sign of a chief that has no real control over the department.
In fact, it seems that the only reason those first-line supervisors are supportive of Pinion is because he has allowed them more freedoms to be abusive, cavalier and unbridled by department rules – a change that they apparently loved following the tenure of former Chief Nate Allen, who was focused on community policing and enforcing rules that required de-escalation and professional conduct.
In the wake of the report’s release, Pinion held a press conference – a rarity for the chief – and basically attacked the findings. Flanked by his officers, Pinion said: “I am also concerned by the perception created by this report and by certain comments of members of our city administration that my administration has promoted more aggressive policing, a lack of accountability, and directing or allowing our officers to make unnecessary arrests.”
Um, pardon, but the people saying those things were also your officers.
City administrators didn’t concoct such views from thin air. They read the comments from DPD officers in the report. DPD officers discussed those very issues and said they were praising Pinion for his move away from community policing techniques employed by Allen.
At this point, it’s fairly obvious that the Decatur Police Department can’t continue under the current leadership. Pinion seems like a well-meaning officer, but his leadership of that department, for whatever reason, has failed to rein in the old-school, abusive tendencies of some officers. And in some instances, he has allowed their influence over the department, and their power within it, to grow to dysfunctional proportions.
They’re ignoring rules and regulations. They’re failing to utilize important reporting systems and internal affairs. They’re ignoring the chain of command. And in some cases, they’re ignoring the laws they’re supposed to be enforcing.
In an ideal situation, you could say that allowing such behavior and such lax leadership to continue could lead to someone getting killed.
But for Decatur, it’s already too late for that.
