High-pro­file police killings of peo­ple of col­or have brought sys­temic racism back into the news in recent years. The dis­cus­sion nat­u­ral­ly leads to a ques­tion: how to fix it? Two recent pro­pos­als in Chica­go seek to answer that ques­tion — one by tin­ker­ing with the real estate of police repres­sion, the oth­er by expand­ing com­mu­ni­ty con­trol and democracy.

Bringing the police under the democratic control of the people is the only real way to confront this issue.

The for­mer has come from Jeanne Gang, a Chica­go-based archi­tect most famous for the 82-sto­ry Aqua Tow­er north of Mil­len­ni­um Park. Gang and her archi­tec­tur­al firm, Stu­dio Gang, put forth their project, Polis Sta­tion, at the recent Chica­go Archi­tec­ture Bien­ni­al. In Greek, the word ​“polis” implies a sense of com­mu­ni­ty and the healthy func­tion­ing of a soci­ety. Polis Sta­tion seeks to reform police/​community rela­tions by redesign­ing the cur­rent police sta­tion and the sur­round­ing area.

After study­ing the archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry of police sta­tions, Gang and her team found that such sta­tions had become increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed from their sur­round­ings. Today, police sta­tions resem­ble fortress­es, closed-off and fore­bod­ing struc­tures that appear sep­a­rate from the rest of society.

In chang­ing the struc­ture of the police sta­tion, Gang hopes to encour­age more pos­i­tive inter­ac­tions between the com­mu­ni­ty and police. The project seeks to trans­form the police sta­tion into a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, with the goal of ​“police offi­cers [becom­ing] atom­ized and part of the com­mu­ni­ty.” Her pro­pos­al includes com­put­ers with pub­lic inter­net access in the police sta­tions, shared ath­let­ic facil­i­ties for com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and police, police hous­ing in neigh­bor­hoods where there is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of vacant prop­er­ties, com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and more.

The project cen­ters on the 10th dis­trict on Chicago’s West Side, which has been rat­ed the sev­enth most vio­lent out of Chicago’s 22 police dis­tricts. On Octo­ber 4, 2015, Stu­dio Gang, along with the Chica­go Police Depart­ment, the City of Chica­go, and 24th Ward Alder­man Michael Scott Jr. pre­sent­ed the com­ple­tion of a new bas­ket­ball court in a pre­vi­ous­ly aban­doned park­ing lot of the 10th dis­trict police sta­tion, rep­re­sent­ing a small but tan­gi­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of Gang’s proposals.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, a pan­el con­vened to dis­cuss the poten­tial mer­its of the project. One of the pan­el mem­bers, Ghi­an Fore­man, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Greater South­west Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion on Chicago’s South Side and civil­ian mem­ber of the Chica­go Police Board remarked that Polis Sta­tion will, at the very least, ​“force us as a com­mu­ni­ty and a city to come up with some solu­tions” to the prob­lem of the rela­tion­ship between the police and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. The Chica­go Tri­bune echoed Foreman’s state­ment, prais­ing the project’s attempt to gen­er­ate dis­cus­sion.

Some of these pro­pos­als sound good. Who could be against giv­ing more com­put­ers and com­mu­ni­ty gar­den space to com­mu­ni­ties in need? Yet the Polis Sta­tion pro­pos­al leaves much to be desired.

For one thing, the imple­men­ta­tion of Gang’s project would ulti­mate­ly estab­lish con­stant sur­veil­lance of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, insert­ing the police in fre­quent­ly used, impor­tant pub­lic spaces. Liv­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty with police offi­cers in the com­mu­ni­ty and recre­ation cen­ters, as well as parks and streets, might serve to height­en ani­mos­i­ty between the police and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers — par­tic­u­lar­ly if there no fun­da­men­tal change in the role police play in soci­ety. The caus­es of ten­sion between the police and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers have to do with pow­er rela­tions and con­trol. See­ing a police offi­cer on the way to school and again lat­er that after­noon will not increase trust between the two groups, because peo­ple still know that that police offi­cer could still get away with mur­der. The ques­tion isn’t one of trust and expo­sure to the police, but rather one of hav­ing pow­er over them so as to not live in fear of them. It is nec­es­sary to put mech­a­nisms in place which actu­al­ly hold the police account­able for their actions; to do so, we have to change the dynam­ics of pow­er at the heart of cur­rent prob­lems with the police.

While some might argue that those mech­a­nisms and insti­tu­tions already exist, the killing of 17-year-old Chicagoan Laquan McDon­ald pro­vides a trag­ic exam­ple of the fun­da­men­tal flaws and inad­e­qua­cies of the cur­rent sys­tem. McDon­ald was shot 16 times by Chica­go Police Depart­ment (CPD) offi­cer Jason Van Dyke in Octo­ber 2014, set­ting off a chain of events which has served as a scathing indict­ment of Chicago’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. From miss­ing audio from a CPD dash­cam video, to a speedy set­tle­ment with McDonald’s fam­i­ly, not to men­tion the tim­ing of Emanuel’s re-elec­tion bid, the hun­dreds of emails and doc­u­ments made pub­lic by the Emanuel admin­is­tra­tion shed light on the need for change.

Fea­tured in the emails and doc­u­ments made pub­lic is the inde­pen­dent police review author­i­ty (IPRA), an insti­tu­tion tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing inci­dents of police mis­con­duct. IPRA is sup­posed to pro­vide an inde­pen­dent check on police author­i­ty. The emails revealed that IPRA was by no means act­ing inde­pen­dent­ly of May­or Emanuel and City Hall. In fact, the doc­u­ments sug­gest that City Hall and the Emanuel admin­is­tra­tion played a sig­nif­i­cant role in craft­ing the IPRA’s statements.

Much more than archi­tec­tur­al tweaks offered by Polis Sta­tion, or nom­i­nal­ly ​“inde­pen­dent” insti­tu­tions such as IPRA, we need tru­ly inde­pen­dent gov­ern­ing bod­ies that lim­it police pow­er if we’re going to stop the killings by police. Any attempt to resolve the prob­lem should seek to assert con­trol over the police, by giv­ing peo­ple pow­er over the police who are sup­posed to pro­tect them.

The Civil­ian Police Account­abil­i­ty Coun­cil (CPAC) pro­pos­es to do just this.

CPAC is a pro­pos­al draft­ed by the Chica­go Alliance Against Racist and Polit­i­cal Repres­sion (CAARPR), along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions. CPAC aims to estab­lish demo­c­ra­t­ic, civil­ian con­trol of the police through an elect­ed coun­cil of civil­ians from every police dis­trict in the city. CPAC would have the author­i­ty to appoint the super­in­ten­dent of police, inves­ti­gate police mis­con­duct and all police shoot­ings, indict police offi­cers for crimes they com­mit and re-write the police rule book, includ­ing all use of force guide­lines. As CAARPR leader Mike Sivi­we Elliot stat­ed, CPAC would ​“empow­er peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty to con­trol how their neigh­bor­hoods are policed.”

Elliot moves beyond the issue of police killings and the role of the police in soci­ety, how­ev­er, stat­ing that his groups strat­e­gy to win ​“com­mu­ni­ty con­trol of the police is based on par­tic­i­pat­ing in and sup­port­ing oth­er strug­gles in hous­ing, schools, and work­places, against aus­ter­i­ty and against exploita­tion. … [L]inking up with oth­er strug­gles, build­ing coali­tions across the board, [will] help us grow our move­ment.” CAARPR argues that demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of the police is crit­i­cal, but that it is also must be part of a larg­er process of re-democ­ra­tiz­ing society.

Chang­ing the archi­tec­ture of police sta­tions might not be a bad thing. But police vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or isn’t a result of bad lay­outs of those sta­tions. It’s a result of the unchecked pow­er that police wield and a sys­tem designed to obstruct jus­tice. By oper­at­ing with­out account­abil­i­ty behind insti­tu­tions which lack trans­paren­cy and pro­tect police no mat­ter how heinous their crimes, they have been allowed to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly kill cit­i­zens, espe­cial­ly peo­ple of col­or. Bring­ing the police under the demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of the peo­ple is the only real way to con­front this issue.

We live in an era in which bureau­crat­ic and tech­no­crat­ic approach­es have been increas­ing­ly employed as the only way to solve society’s prob­lems. But when it comes to racism and polic­ing, we actu­al­ly need a more old-fash­ioned solu­tion: giv­ing the peo­ple demo­c­ra­t­ic pow­er to affect the deci­sions which affect their lives.