Goldman, the decertification expert, said he believes every state should license and ban officers the same as they do other professionals, such as doctors and teachers. He supports the creation of a mandatory databank to track problem officers, similar to the congressionally mandated National Practitioner Data Bank for health care professionals.
But Matthew Hickman, a Seattle University professor and expert on law enforcement decertification, predicts a federal mandate would fail because of the country’s “long history of local control” of law enforcement. The fix, he said, must come at the local and state level.
Even then, union resistance can cause roadblocks.
In California, union pressure led the Legislature to approve a bill in 2003 that diminished the power of that state’s police standards agency, Goldman said. The agency can issue licenses but, unless the license was obtained by fraud, it cannot be revoked. Officials in California said they require local law enforcement agencies to report any time an officer is convicted of a felony crime so they can note that in an officer’s file and potentially disqualify him or her from future police work. But they do not track such convictions or how often they disqualify officers.
Police union officials in California and nationally questioned whether decertification is necessary when departments can fire officers and prosecutors can pursue criminal charges. Ultimately, they said, policing the corps is the job of a chief.
“You’ve got to start at the beginning,” said Jim Pasco, director of the Fraternal Order of Police. “Did the process fail when they hired these people? … And that’s a problem that shoots through a whole myriad of issues, not just sexual crimes.”