As leaders across the U.S. discuss police reform in light of the widespread protests after the police-custody death of George Floyd, historians are pointing to failed attempts in the past to change police behavior in the nation’s capital.
In an online discussion Tuesday hosted by the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove said protesters are angry in part because they understand that reform efforts have failed repeatedly over a period of more than 150 years.
“There’s this ingrained sense of a march of progress in American history from limited freedom to more and more freedom over time, and that’s just not how it works,” Asch said.
“A lot of people have wondered if it’s even possible to change the police,” Musgrove said.
In Tuesday’s discussion, they talked through how President Abraham Lincoln first led an effort to reform police in Washington because he was disgusted by police involvement in political violence in the 1850s.
As part of Lincoln’s effort, A.C. Richards was appointed police chief in 1864 of what was then called “Washington City.”
“One of the first things Richards says is that he wants to protect the rights of the newly-freed African Americans,” Musgrove said.
Sayles Bowen was elected mayor of Washington City in 1868, during the post-Civil War period known as the Reconstruction era, and he appointed the police department’s first two black officers.
That led to more African Americans being involved in the local government.
“You get a pretty solid number of African Americans on the police force, and some of them actually attempt to protect black rights during this period,” Musgrove said.
But things started to revert after D.C. became a territory in 1871, Musgrove said. In 1874, Congress stripped away the right to vote from all D.C. residents and imposed a three-man commission that ruled the city.
“Basically what happens is all political accountability is stripped away,” Asch said. “Very quickly, the police force essentially purges itself of its black officers.”
Asch said the white community had some level of influence over the commission, but the black community did not. By 1879, there was only one black officer left on the police force.
“In this new era of government by commission, the black community essentially has no way to hold the police accountable,” Asch said. “Pretty quickly, the police force becomes notorious for what we would now call police brutality.”
Asch and Musgrove wrote the 2017 book “Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital.”
