Kathy Spillar
The death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri police officer last month prompted the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into Ferguson’s policing practices. (This investigation comes on the heels of a separate federal probe into the killing of Brown).
The new investigation will look at departmental practices that may have led to Brown’s shooting and to other civil rights violations in the last several years. Five current and one former Ferguson police officer are currently facing federal lawsuits alleging the use of excessive force.
Attorney General Eric Holder also recently announced a new federal initiative to study racial bias and reduce tensions between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.
While conducting its investigations, we implore the Department of Justice to also examine how the gross underrepresentation of women in the Ferguson Police Department–and in police departments nationwide–aggravates excessive use of force problems and deteriorating police-community relations.
As I’ve written previously, research nationally and internationally for more than four decades has found that women police officers not only do the job of policing equally as well as men, but are not as authoritarian in their approach, use force less often, possess better communication skills and are better at defusing potentially violent confrontations than their male counterparts.