Policing the police: Why it is so hard to reform police departments in the United States?
| Published date | 01 February 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241267285 |
| Author | Vasabjit Banerjee,Charley Willison,Scott L Greer |
| Date | 01 February 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481241267285
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2025, Vol. 27(1) 220 –241
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481241267285
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Policing the police: Why it
is so hard to reform police
departments in the United
States?
Vasabjit Banerjee1, Charley Willison2
and Scott L Greer3
Abstract
Why has it been so difficult to reform U.S. policing? We provide a theoretical argument that
understanding of the entrenched militarisation and accountability problems of U.S. police
departments would benefit from using theory in comparative research on civil–military relations.
American police forces undermine local democracy by encroaching upon the decision-making
powers of city officials in ways that resemble militaries in fragile democracies. Applying historical and
contemporary evidence and existing scholarly research on policing, we explain police militarisation
was initiated by civilian leaders of city governments to garner governmental legitimacy, and by-
proxy police support, in racialised contexts. Trading off city governments’ institutional strength in
order to maintain legitimacy produced opportunities for police insubordination or subversion of
city government oversight of police activity. Consequently, cities with low public legitimacy and/
or weak municipal institutions, faced with high demands by militarised police departments, may
be more likely to experience police subversion of democratic accountability over police activity.
Keywords
authoritarianism, democratisation, police militarisation, urban politics
Why is it so hard to reform police in the United States?
In 2020, the United States was rocked by the Black Lives Matter protests. These protests,
triggered by the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, were probably one of
the largest protest movements in U.S. history, with 7% of adults reporting that they joined
a protest at least once (Hatfield, 2023). Many U.S. governments responded to the protests
1Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA
2Department of Public & Ecosystem Health, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
3Departments of Health Management and Policy, Global Public Health, and Political Science, University of
Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Corresponding author:
Scott L. Greer, Professor, Departments of Health Management and Policy, Global Public Health, and Political
Science, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-
2029, USA.
Email: slgreer@umich.edu
1267285BPI0010.1177/13691481241267285The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsBanerjee et al.
research-article2024
Original Article
Banerjee et al. 221
and ongoing evidence of policy misconduct with a range of policies, ranging from more
forceful use of existing policy options (such as oversight boards, ‘consent agreements’
with the federal government, body cameras and prosecution of especially violent officers)
to more novel options such as effective decriminalisation of some actions, expanded non-
violent response units for issues such as mental health crises, and, in the case of
Minneapolis, an attempt to disband entirely its police force. Calls to ‘defund the police’
asked for those policies and more.
From the perspective of 2024, it is far from clear that any of these policies have worked
(Archbold, 2021). While it is hard to quantitively evaluate changes in the quality of polic-
ing, it is noteworthy that studies continue to find police racism, police budgets are often
climbing, and citizens continue to post films of police brutality online (Lally, 2022;
Phelps et al., 2021).
We argue that the problem of U.S. police reform goes beyond the usual difficulties of
public administration reform because the police are a high-profile armed force. That
makes them qualitatively different from the unions, professional groups, and other inter-
ests that city governments face. Municipal governments, then, have specific weaknesses
that make them ill-suited to control organised paramilitaries. Weak civilian governments
facing organised armed forces and the problems that arise are, of course, hardly unique to
the United States. Such problems are widely found in comparative politics, and in this
article, we draw on comparative politics theories of civil–military relations to suggest a
theory of why it is hard to reform police in the United States and perhaps elsewhere.
Research on civil–military relations centres on ties between the military, civilian lead-
ers of national governments, and the public helps us understand institutional arrange-
ments and power dynamics between municipal governments and public safety officials.
Civil–military relations is a good analogue to city government and police relations
because both deal with armed state actors who control violence and can use this violence
against unarmed principals (such as elected politicians) to capture or retain power. The
United States is a unique case of these risks because U.S. policing governance is a model
of political devolution. There are thousands of police departments, answering to munici-
pal, county, and state governments as well as special districts (e.g. universities and air-
ports) as well as a variety of specialist federal police forces, all of them enforcing different
sets of laws. In some cases, notably county sheriffs, the head police officer is directly
elected, but, in most cases, the police chief is selected by and theoretically accountable to
elected politicians. Police forces are not, in general, accountable to any other level of
government, though state laws constitute most local police and federal agencies and
courts provide financial support and opportunities to punish overt corruption or civil
rights violations.
We posit that civilian leaders of city governments historically supported police milita-
risation to garner public legitimacy from white coalitions through the maintenance of
racial hierarchies and shore up police support for policies (Epp et al., 2014). Militarisation
created external revenue opportunities and new demands for police forces, generating
incentives for police insubordination or subversion of city government authority over
police action. Police forces today can and do subvert administrative and civilian oversight
by elected leaders in city government, which creates excessive police autonomy. We iden-
tify three conditions under which local police forces are likely to undermine civilian
authority and proceed unchecked by their putative political superiors: (1) low public
legitimacy of civilian government; (2) weak local institutions; and (3) unmet military
(police) demands. One of the principal mechanisms we identify is a self-reinforcing cycle
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