Police Brutality in America
G. W. Goodrum, Jr.
Over the past two
decades there have been numerous allegations of police overstepping the
boundaries to protect and serve the community.
Most incidents between police and US citizens can be avoided or reduced by
contemplating changes in police training such as use of force and increasingly
expressing empathy; treating citizens with respect
and dignity. Recently these incidents have escalated into
more aggressive and egregious acts of violence commonly referred to as
unnecessary use of force was recorded by social and national media. This paper will
identify specific incidents of acts of Police Brutality or victims of hate that
seem to have no end across the American landscape. Despite the media attention and pending
lawsuits many Americans believe we have been deceived by local, state and
federal government officials under the guise of a simple motto “To Protect and
Serve”.
Data
uncovered by Barry, R & Jones, C. (2014) of The Wall Street Journal, from
105 of the country’s largest police agencies found more than 550 police
killings from 2007 to 2012 were missing from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s records. Certain groups
of our society have demanded transparency when investigating killings of all
sorts, while other parts of American society have comforted itself in knowing
that our communities were safely protected exclusively by emergency
responders. With the recent events of
police shootings or killing unarmed men of color being captured by the national
media, an old demon has been reawakened called Racism. Consequently, the undertow of the nation
despite the myth of a post-racial America has heightened tensions and emotions
across the country igniting an overdue conversation between whites and blacks
over the perceived or plausible unfair treatment by police.
Still
today, protesters have been calling for justice for what seems like an
eternity. Shortly after the Civil War
three amendments ratified to the Constitution that opened doors once closed to
Americans of color. They were the 13th,
14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The 13 Amendment, abolished slavery, the 14th
Amendment guaranteed citizenship and the 15th Amendment gave Black
males the right to vote. Nevertheless
certain states found creative and covert ways to undermine the amendments by
instituting barriers that disqualified black voters from attending the
polls. Despites these efforts many
African Americans exercised their right to vote while confronting egregious
discriminatory laws and domestic terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan. “While white
supremacy certainly has an interracial effect on nonwhites (creating divisions
and animosities that reproduce social marginality), one must avoid readings of
cultural behavior as direct reflections of racist ideology”, Hughey (2012).
Desperate
for justice the federal government stepped in on several occasions, but to the
dismay of the majority of Black Americans, justice came either too late or with
even tougher retributions. The belief in
inequality has created a sense of injustice and anger in which states use of
violence is deemed necessary to control a racial and/or economic underclass who
are the most seriously affected by economic and social injustices (Smith,
2004). In many of the jurisdictions,
state and local police were required by law to first determine the citizenship
status of non-white Americans, and then challenge the plaintiff to prove a
crime was committed. This type of law
became an antecedent to such laws as “Stop and Frisk” and “Stand Your
Ground”.
Black and Hispanic Americans
regard such laws as racist based upon their understanding of their
Constitutional Rights. These laws have
actually enabled police, security guards or any self-appointed law enforcers to
use whatever tactics they deem necessary; hence, the belief of police
brutality. In recent videos from the
news media and social media websites, psychologist agree that brutality against
brown and black people is attributable to the constant racist and
anti-immigrant hysteria formulated by opportunistic politicians. Such brutality occurs because of a systematic
dehumanization of a target audience, (Rodriguez. 1996).
. In America, human rights are considered
universal. All of the previous
institutionalized acts of racism began as a way to keep society safe and free,
have all come with abuses of power executed by government officials, lawmakers
and the local community. Even the
economically advantaged have injected their fears and encouraged either
explicitly or implicitly that violence be used to maintain existing social
arrangements (Rodriguez 1996). As Jacobs
and O’Brien (1998) point out, it is not necessary for the privileged to openly
advocate the use of violence, rather the use of violence by police is a means
to maintain order. Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatrist on the
faculty of Harvard Medical School, notes that police brutality is undeniably a
weapon used primarily against black and brown people and people on the low end
of the economic scale. “They (law
enforcement officers) do this because they know they can get away with it”,
(Rodriguez, 1996).
This
perspective is the community violence hypothesis; that the use of force by
police officers is in the response to levels of violence in a community (Fyfe,
1980). Similar tactics were used by Congress
to reconstruct the embattled south through racial harmony and economic
advancements the African Americans along with their Republican counterparts
faced the challenges over the legacy of slavery. Huston (2005) noted, in the situation of the
United States in 1865, the laissez-faire solution to racial animosities in the
South could only lead to white supremacy and black degradation. Between 1865 and 1895 politics in the south
for African Americans was subject to violence and political disability. This trend of violence and political discord
existed until the 1960s.
Amazingly
as a means to control the dangerous elements of society, our leaders are using
tax-paid respondents to perform the dreaded tasks of policing the communities. As Kaplan (2011) noted “From these movements
racism evolved to rationalize the existing social order established in white
European nations.” Some theorists contend
these racists beliefs highlighted efforts are embedded in police structures to
maintain social order. Hence, police
brutality is placated in several primitive resistance efforts of the system
designed to protect and serve.
In
many communities, especially large cities, police are mandated to protect and
preserve social order. In order to
perform these tasks there have been significant studies examining homicides by
police officers, community violence, inequality and race, and organizational
structures. One study discovered a
direct correlation between police killings, racial threats and community
violence. Smith (2004) noted,
“Inequality creates a sense of injustice and anger in which the state’s use of
violence is deemed necessary to control a racial and or economic underclass that
are the most seriously affected by economic and social injustices”.
Recently
a qualitative study was performed to examine reasons for the increase of social
injustices. So far three notable causes
were presented: First, police brutality against people of color remains a
present and persistent problem (Chaney & Robertson, 2013). Second, police departments have increasingly
become objects of government scrutiny (Gabbidon & Greene (2013). Third, as though the Rodney King videotaped
beating was not a tragic enough lesson for police departments across the
country, police beatings and killings of African American and other people of
color, continue almost unabated since the King Incident.
The aforementioned reasons
are not all inclusive but may hold the key to stop abusive actions by police
officers. Certainly there are members in
our society that detest the rhetorical sentiment of “Just do what the cops tell
you, and you will live”. This logic did
not hold true for the following individuals: he police murders of unarmed
African Americans such as Sean Bell (who was shot at fifty times), Timothy
Thomas, Amadou Diallo (shot at forty times), Devin Brown (thirteen years old),
Adolf Grimes (shot twelve times in the back), Oscar Grant, and Robert Mitchell,
by Oakland, Detroit, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Cleveland police
departments respectively, represent the state of police community relations
post Rodney King (Chaney & Robertson, 2013 ; Gabbidon & Greene, 2013;
Karenga, 2010, Leonard, 2010, Staples, 2011; Tonry, 2011). Further, the police
beatings of Abner Louima, Gregory Lee-Bey, and Chad Holley elucidate the point
that very little has changed when it comes to police killings and beatings of
people of color (Aguilar, 2012; Chaney & Robertson, 2013; Desmond-Harris,
2012; Robertson, 2014; Staples, 2011).
Finally, although
several scholars have examined the increasing rate of police brutality against
Blacks (Chaney & Robertson, 2013; Dottolo & Stewart, 2008; Elicker,
2008; Kane & White, 2009; Neuendorf, 2002; Smith & Holmes, 2003;
Tomaskovic-Devey, Wright, Czaja, & Miller, 2006; Staples, 2011). The truth surrounding these circumstances will
never be known. The three sources of
information about the deaths caused by police stem from data collected by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and
the Bureau of Justice Statistics. David
Klinger, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a
previous police officer confirmed that the figures differ dramatically between
the three agencies.
Here is an example of
how the numbers were underreported:
Between 2007 and 2012 there were 1800 police killings in 105 departments
across the country. According to the FBI
statistics, the numbers were 45% higher for justifiable homicides. Alexia Cooper, a statistician for the Bureau
of Justice Statistics who studies the FBI databases admitted that a large
majority of the US agencies do not report their records to the FBI for reasons
unknown. The records collected by the
FBI are part of the consolidated efforts to standardize its crime reporting
program. One disturbing caveat to this
program is the knowledge that local law enforcement agencies aren’t mandated to
provide the data to anyone outside of their agencies. Those agencies indicated that justifiable
homicides by police officers weren’t reportable to the FBI.
The Justice Department
also released statistics similar to this catastrophe and they were related to
excessive or reasonable force. In 2008
among people who came in contact with police there was an estimated 1.4% of
them had excessive force or threats against them. From 2009 0 2013 areas like Los Angeles saw
an increase in deadly force rates, whereas Massachusetts witnessed more
officers firing their weapons. Both
areas saw a substantial increase in which black people were being killed twice
as frequently by law enforcement than white people.
A widely publicized
report in October 2014 by ProPublica, a leading investigative and data
journalism outlet, concluded that young black males are 21 times more likely to
be shot by police than their white counterparts: “The 1,217 deadly police
shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age
15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per
million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.”
Research has also
revealed another disturbing fact; racial profiling exists in the majority of
communities. Brown and Black people are
70% more like to be stopped by police compare to their white counterparts. Classic cases like Rodney King in 1991 and
Amadou Dialla in 1999 have heightened the awareness and tensions between race
and police tactics. Though race is never
mediated in communities with low social-economic status, it is however labeled
a potential source of conflict.
Low-income or impoverished communities are riddled with possible
explanations that are key influences to police officers use of force. The researchers, William Terrill of
Northeastern University and Michael D. Reisig of Michigan State University,
found that “officers are significantly more likely to use higher levels of
force when encountering criminal suspects in high crime areas and neighborhoods
with high levels of concentrated disadvantage independent of suspect behavior
and other statistical controls.”
Far too often, the news
media bombards the airwaves with footage of law enforcement officers using
force to arrest or defend themselves. We
watch intensely as a police officer who has taken an oath to serve and protect
use what is considered by most as violence, excessive force or actions that are
reprehensible to its community. Shortly
after the footage is aired across the cable and network news, civil rights organizations
flock to the scene to protest the violations of an individual’s rights. We have all witnessed the tragedies, the
violence, the looting, the riots and civil disobedience from Florida in the
shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, and in Missouri, the
shooting death of Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson. Then there was the chokehold death of Eric
Garner in NY. These are all considered
allegations of excessive force by police officers or self-appointed law
enforcers.
In 2012, the Criminal
Justice Policy Review examined the behavior patterns of several police
departments with 1,000 or more officers and discovered—a small portion of
officers were responsible for the majority of incidents involving excessive
force. Another research team discovered
officers with more experience and education were less likely to use excessive
or unreasonable force while discharging their duties. Their
research suggests that specific training programs and accountability structure
will possibly lower the use of violence by police officers.
Violence against police
officers has sparked many debates. Some
suggest police training reform, while others have suggested psychological
profiling and screening of police officers.
Still others believe human relations training, police community
relations, racially integrated patrol units, increase the hiring of black and
other minority officers. Most of us
understand that this will only improve the “image” of the police and not
address the elephant in the room. As
noted by Covington (2014) “Using the Criminal Event Perspective (CEP) to better
understand situations that result in violence against police officers by
citizens, we can suggest policy changes and training recommendations”.
Retraining police
officers seem to be general consensus favorite.
The training should consist of
guarding against physical danger from perpetrators. Historically police have been taught to
assume that women are gentler or less likely to assault or batter them than
men. Changes in policies and training
have enacted the feasibility that women are more prone to batter and men use
weapons to assault police. Also, police
should be well-trained to de-escalate a confrontation by using verbal skills or
less lethal means when necessary.
Another requirement will involve specialty weapons training, to include
proper reporting anytime force resulted in injury or a potential complaint; the
greater the force, the greater the scrutiny.
According to Carter, M & Miletich, S (2012) “Police officers will
have to file a use-of-force report when they point a gun at someone…and look
for ways to de-escalate confrontations and, within safe bounds, decrease their
use of force.”
All-in-all, “the rights of liberty, equality,
and security are not elements to be exchanged for the right of property by the exploitation
of wage labor; nor should they be expressed in relative terms, that is, as
greater or less than property rights. One person's life and liberty is the same
as the next person's” (Takagi (2014).
America is the greatest nation on earth and we should all be grateful
that we live in a free society. Let’s
celebrate our lives together and work towards a greater future, together.
In this paper we have
looked at the past and discovered several allegations that can be viewed as police
overstepping the boundaries to protect and serve the community. Most incidents between police and US citizens
can be avoided or reduced by contemplating changes in police training such as
use of force and increasing expressing empathy; treating citizens with respect
and dignity. The recent incidents that escalated
into more aggressive and egregious acts of violence commonly referred to as
unnecessary use of force were recorded by social and national media. This paper
identified specific incidents of acts of Police Brutality or victims of hate
that seem to have no end across the American landscape. Despite the media attention and pending
lawsuits many Americans believe that with reforms and retraining of police
officers and the communities we can all live under the motto “To Protect and
Serve” together.
References
Barry, R.,
& Jones, C. (2014, Dec 03). Hundreds of police killings are uncounted in
federal stats;
FBI data differs from local counts on
justifiable homicides. Wall Street Journal (Online)
Carter, M.
& Miletich, S., (2014). SPD faces
new oversight, scrutiny of use of force.
Retrieved from: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018790775_dojspd28m.html
Covington, M.
W., PhD., Huff-Corzine, L., & Corzine, J., PhD. (2014). Battered police:
Risk
factors for violence against law
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Fyfe, J.
(1980), "Geographic correlates of police shootings: a microanalysis",
Journal of
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Hughey, M. W.
(2012). The Myth of post-racial American: Searching for equality in the age of
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reconstruction
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Jacobs, D. and O'Brien, R. (1998), "The determinants
of deadly force: a structural analysis of
police
violence", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103, pp. 837-62.
Kaplan, H. Roy. The myth of post-racial America: searching
for equality in the age of
materialism.
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Kirschner, R. H. (1997). Police brutality in the USA. The Lancet,
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Martinot, S. (2014). On the epidemic of police killings. Social
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Rodriguez, R. (1996). Beyond brutality: Scholars say repeated beatings
born in hate and police
culture. Black Issues in
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