Changing the Police: Reckoning with the Past

For a long time, the police department in Yonkers, New York had a reputation as overly aggressive, especially when it came to policing the poorer parts of the city. There were lots of stories of "bad apples"-police officers who allegedly roughed people up or planted drugs during random stops and arrests. Eventually, the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in to investigate. Now the Yonkers Police Department says it is transforming. With the help of a progressive police chief, it has adopted new policies and procedures to minimize force and make the police more accountable to the public. As Embedded, in partnership with The Marshall Project, continues its look at police reform in one American city, we confront a question many of those who say they were mistreated by the police have raised: is it enough? For some alleged victims the answer is clear: there can never be real reform until the police have fully accounted for the wrongs of the past.

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