Procedural Justice and Policing: Four New Directions

Abstract

What really happened between Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, and Dorian Johnson that summer day in Ferguson? Not the shooting, but what came before-what happened when Officer Wilson met Mr. Johnson and Mr. Brown on the street, and what might it tell us about policing and justice reform? There are two very different stories told by the two surviving members of the encounter. And the difference in narratives has the potential to reveal a great deal about what matters to people in an encounter with the police, and provide one potential avenue for justice reform on the front-end of these interactions, before things go terribly wrong. 1 In his grand jury testimony, Officer Wilson explained that as he drove in his police cruiser, he noticed two men in the street. 2 It appeared to him that they were blocking traffic from flowing smoothly, and that cars were veering around them. In his narrative, he calls out through his open car window to the young men, "[W]hy don't you guys walk on the sidewalk[?]" 3 When they respond by pointing up the road and saying they are just going a short distance, he answers, "[W]ell, what's wrong with the sidewalk[?]" 4 He offers, in his version of these events, a calm, measured, polite series of questions to the two men-