Talk:Police reform in the United States/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Delldot (talk · contribs) 22:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Just about to start this review, comments coming soon! delldot ∇. 22:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

This is a fascinating topic, thank you Pine for taking the time to improve it. I can see that a lot of work has gone into it. I love the use of erudite sources, and it looks like every statement is pretty well sourced.

The main problem I see is a lack of comprehensiveness—the article is on the right foot, we just need to see more detail and expansion on the topics given. Here are some examples:

Lead

• The lead section should be expanded to summarize the article. As a rule of thumb, think of having about one sentence per section, although of course it can be more flexible than that.

Early history

• How about more detail here? What was the Wickersham Commission? Who established it, and when? What were the reforms mentioned?

• Beyond that, How about more of this early history? What did American Policing originally look like, and what reforms brought it to its next stages? What about the police departments in the gangster era that existed to prop up political machines? How did we get away from that? I think fleshed out this could be several sections.

1960s

• Did Johnson set up the Commission in response to something? Weren’t there some important riots at this time (I’m blanking)? In general, let’s get more historical context around these facts.

• What did the WAarren commission have to do with the Johnson administration? How about a transition sentence?

• The section ends with “These decisions began to set national standards for policing.” How about a few examples?

1970s and 1980s

• I like the CRB example, let’s get some more context here too. Where were CRBs established? What was the political context? What events precipitated these changes?

1990 to 2010

• The LA riots were a huge deal, I bet there’s some info that belongs here about them. What kinds of reforms were demanded or brought about as a result?

• Did the DOJ bring any actual suits against PDs? Again, the info that is here is great, I just think it needs a lot more.

See also

• A lot of these links should be discussed in the article, e.g. Stop-and-frisk. Once something is linked in the article it does not need to be repeated here.

In general I think there should be a more fleshed out list of what reforms have been proposed and tried. What is here, e.g. body cams, independent prosecutors, is a good start.

I think the writing is really top-notch, as it is I would not say a copy edit is needed. However I’m going to decline this GA nom for now because I think substantially more info is needed before it can be considered to meet the comprehensiveness requirement. I think that will be too much work to be within the scope of a GA review. However I’m happy to help however I can with the ongoing improvement of this article. Once the new info is added, it will be a great idea to re-nominate it for GA. Very nice work so far, I hope you keep it up! Let me know if there’s any help I can offer. delldot ∇. 22:51, 18 May 2015 (UTC)