The demand for police reform following the death of George Floyd has produced many reform suggestions including, but not limited to, federal, state, and municipal legislation, amendments to court procedures, and changes to hiring qualifications. Many reforms call for long overdue changes. Most reform measures miss the most important element: requiring leadership skills in the top commanding officers of the police departments. This requires the type of leadership that will overcome outdated city ordinances, cumbersome labor contracts and local political influence. All supervisory police personnel should have leadership responsibility, commensurate with their rank, and they should be reprimanded and removed for failure to lead. The military services are based upon such leadership requirements. Police departments have quasi-military personnel organizations, with a command structure and discipline; however, few police departments follow the military personnel example.

I interviewed a former high-ranking officer of the Philadelphia Police Department who spent 20 years on the force and asked that his name not be used. He described a leader as a person having command presence. He said that it is leadership that the rank and file will respect and follow. It is a commander that will promote personnel for good performance or demote for failure to perform. He described one police commissioner who said that failure of performance should result in being assigned to a walking patrol along the west side of the Delaware River at low tide.

In a true military organization, if an incident occurs involving misconduct or failure to follow procedures, the immediate supervisor of the person involved is interviewed and often that person's immediate supervisor is also interviewed to determine what training the actor received, any indication the actor's prior conduct demonstrated an issue, and whether the supervisor was aware or should have been aware of the potential  problems. The supervisor may be reprimanded or transferred. For example, two years ago, after a series of ship collisions in the Pacific fleet, the navy reprimanded and relieved officers of their command well up the chain of command for failure to have proper training in ship handling. This seldom occurs in police misconduct situations. In the George Floyd situation, the arresting officers' supervisors should have been questioned as to what they knew or should have known about the actors in that circumstance and personnel action taken accordingly.

The good cops do not need most of the proposed reforms. They know how to make a physical arrest or handle rebellious protesters in a lawful manner. What is necessary is to ensure that a code of responsibility is in place to make the system respond to expose potential problem officers before he causes problems. There are many factors that must be overcome for that to occur.

One factor is that good cops will not voluntarily expose bad cops. Good cops know the bad cops. Good cops know who is on the take, who fudges reports, who are beholden to local politicians, and could identify those cops whose conduct is likely to become a problem. In my career as a federal prosecutor, I was often advised by federal agents that they were reluctant to work with certain local police officers, as they did not trust their integrity. While working with Chicago and Philadelphia police officers, I was often advised by them that a certain fellow police officer was a problem waiting to happen and that I should exclude that person from our project. The key management problem is that the good cops will rarely tell anyone about the problem officers, including informing their own supervisors. There are many practical reasons for this, including many bad cops have political support from outside the department and any information supplied about their misconduct is quietly ignored, or it is found "unsubstantiated." A good leader can establish an atmosphere in which good cops will quietly inform their superiors of troublesome cops or procedures.

Another reason for the failure of good cops reporting problem cops is that the internal disciplinary system is often so ineffective that the discipline administered is often overturned and the bad cops return to duty. This is especially true of the system employed by the Philadelphia Police Department. While serving on a Philadelphia commission on police corruption in 1997, I was told by Mayor Ed Rendell "… to get rid of that arbitration system." Such a change was beyond the power of the commission. It was also beyond the power of the mayor, as it still exists. The disciplinary procedure for Philadelphia police is so complicated by prior arbitration decisions and existing labor contracts, that it will take several years to change it.

The concept of leadership starts with the selection the chief executive in the police department. In Philadelphia that is the police commissioner. That person must be a demonstrated leader. Quite often, despite their paper qualifications, some commissioners have not been leaders. In a quasi-military organization such as the police department, the rank and file will figure out in about two weeks if the commissioner is a leader, or a bureaucrat who talks a good game for the media. Few Philadelphia police commissioners have ever been replaced for failure of performance. Military or business organizations often replace an executive for poor performance and poor leadership. The process for selection of the head of a major police department is perhaps the biggest challenge for the success of the proposed reforms.

It must be noted, even with all the suggested reforms, that a police arrest is often a contentious event. Detroit's highly respected African American police chief, James Craig, was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying, "Civilians sometimes assume that a suspect resisting arrest can be subdued quickly. … In reality, even when police are in the right and following correct procedure, a fight is never pretty. I've never seen a force incident that looks good when it's on television." See, Main Street, by William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, June 22.

One area that can be addressed immediately is the procedure for in-custody interrogations. Each year there are criminal convictions reversed by the courts on the basis of recently discovered evidence and DNA tests that prove the defendant was not the person who committed the offense. Many of these cases involve defendants who have been incarcerated for years. In most situations, the defendant had confessed. It is difficult to explain to laymen why persons will confess to a crime they did not commit, but in law enforcement it is a recognized fact. Once admitted into evidence, a jury will seldom ignore a confession. A procedure has now been adopted by police forces in many large cities that is very effective in preventing false confessions. All interrogations of in-custody prisoners are physically recorded with audio, from the very start of the interrogation. No portion of the interrogation is not recorded. None of the police forces that have adopted this procedure have returned to the old practice. In those jurisdictions that have adopted this interrogation procedure, motions to suppress confessions filed by defendants have been reduced by 90%. This does not mean prisoners no longer confess; it simply means there are better interrogators who play by the rules. The Philadelphia police department has partly adopted this procedure. It is time to implement this good law enforcement practice. There is no good reason to wait. It will do away with a source of complaints that have plagued the police force and the courts for too long.

In conclusion, there are many aspects to reform: hiring, training and internal procedures. These changes will take time to have an effect. Good procedures will be effective if persons with leadership skills are selected for command.

Peter Vaira is a member of Greenblatt, Pierce, Funt & Flores. He is a former U.S. attorney and the author of a book on Eastern District practice. He acts as special hearing master for Pennsylvania courts and clients. He can be reached at [email protected].