Boston’s New Police Commissioner Should Implement Direct Community Oversight, Says Shea Cronin
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Shea Cronin recently spoke with BU Today about Boston’s newly appointed police commissioner, Michael Cox, who arrives to the job with a mandate to reform the department he oversees. The chair of MET’s Department of Applied Social Sciences, Cronin offered suggestions on how Cox can help the Boston Police Department make inroads in building trust with Bostonian communities of color, who have historically been disproportionately affected by law enforcement improprieties.
First, Cronin said, Cox should prioritize transparency when implementing strategy and enforcement activity, and reliably address their disparate impact on communities of color. He went on:
- The second big thing is to open the agency to direct, community-based oversight. We have in Boston the new oversight board out of the mayor’s office, but what we really need is having neighborhood organizations in the room with police commanders, helping to make decisions. It’s having representatives of the people who are going to receive those strategies have some authority about what police in those neighborhoods are actually doing. There could be some veto power over that decision—I would be an advocate for them having some decision-making authority—but at the very least, they can review, they can be in the room to express disapproval, they can help problem-solve, and they can more effectively constrain when the police are going down a road that is incompatible with the way it should be done in their own community.
When it comes to learning to implement organizational changes through interdisciplinary approaches, there’s no better course of preparation than BU MET’s MS in Criminal Justice with concentration in Strategic Management, which combines sound ethics, quality leadership, and a commitment to best practices.
Read more of Professor Cronin’s suggestions for Commissioner Cox in BU Today.