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March 21, 2016
Since 2014, Epperson and Sarpiya have worked together to implement Kingian nonviolent community policing processes in Rockford, Illinois. In this panel presentation, the pastor and the retired police chief discuss what it means to practice constitutional policing, their collaborative efforts in building a more-engaged and empowered community, and a police force committed to a hopeful future.
Chet Epperson: We're going to talk about constitutional policing. What part of the Constitution has to do with police departments? How does the Fourth Amendment pertain to police officers? What's the connection, or, as the constitutional law professor would say, what's the nexus? What's the nexus with the Fourth Amendment? It impacts every one of you, young, old, rich, or poor. If I' m a police officer, what part of the Fourth Amendment stops me from illegally going into a person's pockets? Search and seizure laws. Many police departments use force too much. If a police officer were to come up and say to someone, "Hey, you're not supposed to be jaywalking!" and then hit that person over the head with a baton a few times (I'm making this up), that would be excessive force. The law says that's a seizure- I've actually seized him, I've taken him into my custody, and I've used excessive force, force beyond the standard that the law provides. That's what gets police departments in trouble, first and foremost. Whether it's in Ferguson, Baltimore, Oakland, or Albuquerque, constitutional policing is the issue in law enforcement today.
The Constitution goes with policing. In the community that I served (I retired in November), a member of the editorial board of the paper asked, "How does the Constitution have anything to do with policing?" The current mayor got in a debate with one of the senior editors of the paper over this.
Is there any truth to the notion that more people escape the police when the cops are controlled? What do you think? If we see a cop on the front page of the newspaper immobilizing a person, what do we automatically assume? Police brutality. It may not be. Think about when you're sitting and watching the news on TV. If you have no thought process independent of what you see on...