Why does the United States rely on police and the criminal justice system to address social issues—including mental-health crises, homelessness, and addiction—with little evidence of their effectiveness?
Assistant Dean and Martha Craig Daughtrey Director for Public Interest Beth Cruz invited Farhang Heydari, Assistant Professor of Law, for a candid conversation with Vanderbilt Law School students interested in pursuing legal careers in public interest. The discussion explored why the U.S. defaults to policing for social problems and outlined reforms that reduce unnecessary encounters, improve clearance of serious crimes, and build durable community and officer buy-in.
Before joining Vanderbilt, Professor Heydari spent a decade working to improve accountability in the criminal justice system. He served as the inaugural executive director of the Policing Project at NYU School of Law. Prior to that, he served as a civil rights attorney representing victims of government and policing misconduct with Neufeld Scheck & Brustin.
Where Policing Misses the Mark
Police officers are often the default responders to social crises, which they aren’t adequately trained and equipped to solve. Yet, their performance is still largely measured by routine traffic stops and misdemeanor arrests rather than reductions in real harm, creating incentives that encourage over-policing. Heydari argued that police actions like stop-and-frisk and low-level traffic enforcement are not effective. Instead, he added, they erode community trust, generate racial disparities, and consume officer time without delivering meaningful crime-reduction benefits—time that could be redirected to safety-improving investigative work.
Professor Heydari argued that if these low-yield tactics are diminished, the question from officers becomes, “What do we do with all of our time?” He answered, “You have to do hard police work,” building relationships, cultivating trust with the community, and developing information that helps solve actual crimes.
Building Systemic Change Through Buy-In and Reform
Professor Heydari reflected on why he shifted away from high-damages civil-rights litigation, realizing that court victories alone weren’t changing everyday policing practice. “We found that we had clients who were wrongfully incarcerated for decades, people who were killed at the hands of the police,” he recalled. “The money wasn’t going to change their lives. Their lives were ruined.” He saw the same limits institutionally. “ Long term, systemically, cities would rather pay the bill than do anything differently. Police departments would rather the insurers pick up the tab than they fire a cop.”
That realization led him to NYU’s Policing Project, working directly with communities and police departments to reduce harm and measurably improve public safety. “They had an ethos: ‘We’re going to work with everybody,’” he said. “That was not common in the policing space around the Michael Brown and Ferguson time. Being someone who cares about police reform and saying ‘we’re going to work with police,’ that did not really exist.”
The strategy centered on utilizing police as credible messengers, Professor Heydari explained. “The same words were received differently from those messengers, because they are kind of insular,” he said. This meant involving rank-and-file officers early, asking for their input, and being willing to incorporate it so reforms aren’t experienced as punishment. “They’re the best partners when you can get them on board, and you can only get them on board when you involve them early,” he added. In practice, that meant coupling legal tools with real engagement.
For example, in Nashville, after the police department dismissed a community study showing racial disparities in traffic stops, the mayor asked the Policing Project to independently re-run the stop data and convene focus groups with residents and officers. Their analysis confirmed substantial disparities and helped the city move away from stops as a crime-fighting tactic. Professor Heydari said traffic stops in Nashville then fell by roughly 95% without a corresponding rise in crime. ”They just stopped using them as a crime-fighting tactic because we were able to convince them that it doesn’t help—and so now they use their resources differently,” he said.
Professor Heydari emphasized that when officers help shape the solution, they’re more likely to carry it out, and when communities see their experience reflected in the design, trust improves. Lasting reform requires buy-in from the same people who must do the work, he explained, and even great ideas will not last when people perceive it as being forced onto them.
Refocusing the Work of Public Safety
Professor Heydari advocated for evidence-based practices over routine. The path forward for efficient policing requires reallocating police time in ways proven to make communities safer and building alternatives for what police aren’t designed to handle, he argued.
He urged the use of technology for improved law enforcement. “I have a real interest in technology policing, technology surveillance, big data—and I think it can be really effective in crime fighting,” he said. But he cautioned that technology is only helpful if it reduces problems. Departments should ask whether a tool meaningfully improves safety or simply floods 911 with false alarms and drains resources.
He added that law schools can advance policing reforms by acting as a nonpartisan resource for legal clarity in their communities, providing explainers on key issues—such as what pretextual stops are, when they’re unlawful, and how to document them—producing model statutes and policy templates that cities can adopt, and developing clinics to serve local clients.
“I think we play a really critical role in unearthing new ideas,” Professor Heydari said. “Our role is creating and preserving knowledge,” adding that, “We can be a resource because we are funded, separate from all those considerations. Communities can rely on us.”
Considering alternative responders, evidence-based tactics, and supportive technology, he summarized a durable path to accountable policing. “We want fewer people dying at the hands of the police. We also want less crime. When murders are committed, we want them to be solved,” Professor Heydari concluded. “We want policing. We want fewer police—we want them where they’re really needed.”
