The new head of the National Police Accountability Project is from Philly. He’s had plenty of practice.

It’s been three and a half years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, sparking widespread protests and demands for meaningful police accountability. But over time, that momentum stalled as the national conversation shifted back to calls for more law and order.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia is at a law enforcement crossroads. The city’s new mayor, likely Cherelle Parker, will take office with a tough-on-crime message and appoint a new police commissioner. At the same time, John McNesby, the longtime police union president who relentlessly resisted reform efforts, has resigned.

I spoke with Jonathan Feinberg, 48, a partner at Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin in Philadelphia and the recently named president of the National Police Accountability Project, about policing and police reform.

This interview, based on a recent phone interview and follow-up emailed questions, has been edited for clarity and length.

Thank you. So, the National Police Accountability Project is a membership organization of more than 500 lawyers and legal workers across the country focused on civil rights litigation. Specifically, that involves cases of police misconduct and also misconduct in jails in prisons.

We’ve seen some pretty significant developments in places like California, Colorado, and Washington. In New Mexico, we were intimately involved in legislation that created a new state law that allows people to sue the government in state court for civil rights violations.

We have a very vibrant community of civil rights litigators in Philadelphia who have been dealing with law enforcement accountability issues for decades. One very recent example is the close to $10 million settlement that lawyers reached with the city concerning the abuses in the George Floyd protests back in May and June of 2020. It wasn’t just one firm. It wasn’t just one lawyer. I hope to develop that spirit of cooperation because this work is challenging, and you can’t do it by yourself. You need support from other lawyers, community groups, and community activists.

I had a very inspiring American history teacher in high school who spent much of that year talking about the 1960s and early 1970s U.S. Supreme Court. He conveyed the impression to me that if you wanted to reform society and address issues of racial division and abuse of power, then you should go to law school and become a civil rights lawyer. That impression was wrong. What we know in 2023 is that when there are major issues of societal division and abuse of power, you don’t just file a case and take it to the Supreme Court and expect to win and solve all your problems. The legal system, as it is set up now, with a very conservative judiciary, does not lend itself to massive efforts of social reform. The approach has to be incremental. I have clients who have taken the brave step of deciding to challenge authority. No matter what happens, each case is going to have some incremental benefit of holding people accountable for violating someone’s civil rights.

I think a lot of us had the belief that “Wow, maybe this is actually the time when we can see some significant developments on the federal level regarding law enforcement accountability.” And then it disappeared. The conversation changed. Any potential progress was watered down by lobbying from law enforcement interests. And that was deeply unfortunate. But to people who know this area of the law, it was not at all surprising, because that’s often the case. There’s a galvanizing incident, there’s attention paid, and then attention wanes, and you can name any number of significant cases where this applies: Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Trayvon Martin in Florida … So one of our hopes, as the National Police Accountability Project, is to keep a spotlight on these issues and to keep the conversation going.

That settlement communicates an important message to the public, and it communicates an important message to the policymakers. Were officers [who were] involved fired? No, although Deputy Commissioner Dennis Wilson was demoted. By and large, the officers who were involved had no significant impact on their careers, but what their supervisory staff knows is that if something like that happens again, [those officers are] going to get dragged into court. We are watching. We’re going to hold you accountable. Sometimes that accountability is money. But that settlement also involved an agreement for the police commissioner to participate in community meetings in West Philadelphia and in the establishment of mental health services in a neighborhood that was deeply underserved.

No question, both departing leaders have been polarizing figures. However, I think we have to realize that replacing a single leader in either position can only do so much to address larger systemic issues that result in police misconduct. For example, whoever leads the police union is going to be supported in efforts to limit accountability by long-standing state laws that restrict the ability of police employers to impose discipline. In my view, the most important thing new leaders can do is recognize, first, that we have such systemic problems, and second, that addressing those problems is going to require broad-based reform and creative thinking.

I think this news raises a different and very important question: Do we really need more officers? Or, instead, should we be directing resources into areas that, as experience shows, are more useful to address issues that don’t need uniformed and armed police officers? I’m thinking here especially about expanding the availability of highly trained personnel to address mental health issues. That said, on a proposal for lower standards [for new recruits], it’s clear that the policing profession already has a low barrier to entry, and when we think about the power that officers have, decreasing those standards further risks opening the door to people who are not at all suited for the job.

I just don’t know. One of my most significant memories is driving into the office on a Saturday while developing the George Floyd protest litigation case and dropping my 16-year-old daughter off at a protest and seeing someone walk down the street with a sign that said “End qualified immunity!” I hit the brakes and was like, “Oh my God. I can’t believe that this is a conversation that we’re having in public.”

It’s impossible to predict, but given that we have had a dramatic shift in focus with people talking about police accountability issues, all I can hope for is that there is a continued expansion in that same direction.