March 7, 1965: Alabama police attack the Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers on "Bloody Sunday"
Police brutality is the use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by personnel affiliated with law enforcement duties when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by corrections personnel in municipal, state, and federal penal facilities, including military prisons. Highly publicized incidents of police misconduct have adverse effects,
both on the victims and on the public perception of the implicated
police departments. As of 2002, the magnitude and longevity of such
effects have rarely been investigated.
The Federal government attempted tracking the number of people killed
in interactions with US police, but the program was defunded.
The term police brutality is usually applied in the context of causing physical harm
to a person. It may also involve psychological harm through the use of
intimidation tactics beyond the scope of officially sanctioned police
procedure. From the 18th-20th centuries, those who engaged in police
brutality may have acted with the implicit approval of the local legal
system, such as during the Civil Rights Movement
era. In the contemporary era, individuals who engage in police
brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they
may be rogue officers. In either case, they may perpetrate their actions
under color of law and, more often than not, engage in a subsequent cover-up of their illegal activity.
Since the 20th century, there have been many public, private, and community efforts to combat police corruption
and brutality. These efforts have identified various core issues that
contribute to police brutality, including the insular culture of police
departments (including the Blue wall of silence), the aggressive defense of police officers and resistance to change in police unions, the broad legal protections granted to police officers (such as qualified immunity), the historic racism of police departments, the militarization of the police, the adoption of tactics that escalate tension (such as zero tolerance policing and stop-and-frisk), the inadequacies of police training and/or police academies, and the psychology of possessing absolute power. The US legal doctrine of qualified immunity has been widely criticized as "[having] become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights," as summarized in a 2020 Reuters report.
Regarding solutions, activists and advocates have taken different approaches. Those who advocate for police reform offer specific suggestions to combat police brutality, such as body cameras, civilian review boards, improved police training, demilitarization of police forces, and legislation aimed at reducing brutality (such as the Justice in Policing Act of 2020). Those who advocate to defund the police
call for the full or partial diversion of funds allocated to police
departments, which would be redirected toward community and social
services. Those who advocate to dismantle the police call for police departments to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. Those who advocate to abolish police departments call for police departments to be disbanded entirely and to be replaced by other community and social services.
History
Slave patrols roots
Some of the earliest roots of American policing, particularly in the Southern United States, can be found in slave patrols.
Beginning in the 18th century, white volunteers developed slave patrols
(also known as "paddyrollers"), which were squadrons that acted as vigilantes. In 1704, the first slave patrol was established in South Carolina.
Eventually, all states with legal slavery had slave patrols, and they
functioned as the first publicly funded police force in the South. These patrols focused on enforcing discipline and policing of African-American slaves. They captured and returned fugitive slaves, quashed slave rebellions, terrorized slaves in order to prevent rebellions (including beatings and searches of slave lodges), broke up slave meetings, and kept slaves off of roadways. The patrols also administered discipline of indentured servants.
The patrols had broad influence and powers; they could forcefully enter
all people's homes, if there was any suspicion of sheltering fugitive
slaves. During the American Civil War, slave patrols remained in place. After the Civil War, in the Reconstruction period, the former slave patrol groups joined with other white militias and groups, such as the Klu Klux Klan.
Meanwhile, early police forces of the South began to take on the role
of policing and regulating the movement of African-Americans who had
gained their freedom. New laws were put in place to restrict their
rights, which were known as Black Codes. According to some historians, the transition from slave patrols to police forces in the South was a seamless one.
Early police departments
In the 1838, the United States developed its first formal police department in Boston. This was followed by New York City (1845), Albany, New York (1851), Chicago (1851), New Orleans (1853), Cincinnati (1853), Philadelphia (1855), Newark, New Jersey (1857), Baltimore (1857). By the 1880s, all major US cities had police departments.
As written by Dr. Garry Potter, "Early American police departments
shared two primary characteristics: they were notoriously corrupt and
flagrantly brutal. This should come as no surprise in that police were
under the control of local politicians." The local political ward leader, who was often a tavern owner or gang leader, would appoint the chief of police
of a neighborhood. The chief would be expected to follow the orders and
expectations of the ward leader, which often included intimidating
voters, harassing political opponents, and ensuring that the ward's
business interests remain intact.
The police officers typically had little qualifications or training as
law enforcement officers, and they often took bribes and kickbacks. If
conflicts arose, it was common for police officers to use force and
brutality.
In the 19th century, police brutality was often directed at European immigrant communities, particularly those from Ireland, Italy, Germany, and Eastern Europe.
The different cultures of these communities were often framed as
"dangerous," which called for the enforcement of law and order. For example, Irish immigrants were considered a "dangerous" class, and they experienced discrimination by nativists.
Meanwhile, organized crime and political parties were often
intertwined, and police typically cast a blind eye toward gambling and
prostitution, if managed by politically influential figures.
Strike breaking
After the Civil War, industrialization and urbanization grew rapidly in the United States. This was accompanied by a rising organized labor movement, in which workers formed unions and joined in organized actions, such as strikes.
Between 1880-1900, New York City had 5,090 strikes and Chicago had
1,737 strikes. The economic elites of the era typically characterized
these strikes as "riots,"
and they encouraged the police to break the strikes. Consequently, the
police broke up strikes through two primary methods: extreme violence
and making "public order" arrests at a mass scale.
Jim Crow South
By the late 19th century, local and state governments began to pass Jim Crow laws. These laws enforced strict racial segregation in schools, parks, neighborhoods, restaurants, and other public places. This era saw a rise in lynchings and mob murders of African-Americans, with the police not arresting the perpetrators.
It was estimated that "at least one-half of the lynchings are carried
out with police officers participating, and that in nine-tenths of the
others the officers either condone or wink at the mob action," as
reported by Arthur F. Rapper in 1933. Meanwhile, African-Americans suffered police brutality, such as the 1946 beating of Isaac Woodward in Batesburg, South Carolina.
Due to the brutality of Jim Crowe laws, many African-Americans fled to
Northern cities, where they experienced police brutality, as well.
Professionalization of police
During Prohibition (1919-33), the problem of police corruption was only worsened. Police officers were commonly bribed so that bootlegging and speakeasies
could continue, in addition to the flourishing organized crime
underworlds of cities such as Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia.
Some police officers became employed by organized crime syndicates, and
they helped perform duties, such as harassment and intimidation of
rivals. Consequently, President Herbert Hoover established the Wickersham Commission
in1929, which was tasked with investigating law enforcement in the
country. The result was the beginning of a new era in law enforcement in
the United States, which aimed to professionalize and reform
the industry. It was decided that police should function separately
from political wards or leaders, and police precincts were altered to no
longer overlap with political wards. Police departments became more bureaucratic
with a clear chain of command. New practices were put into place to
recruit, train, and reward police officers. However, these changes were
not welcomed by all community members. Police departments adopted
tactics that often antagonized people, such as aggressive stop and frisk.
Police departments also became increasingly insular and "isolated from
public life" as a result of these changes, according to crime historian
Samuel Walker. For these reasons, among other reasons, they were
particularly unequipped to handle the cultural and social upheaval of
the 1960s.
Civil Rights Movement era
The Civil Rights Movement was the target of numerous incidents of police brutality in its struggle for justice and racial equality, notably during the Birmingham campaign of 1963–64 and during the Selma to Montgomery marches
of 1965. Media coverage of the brutality sparked national outrage, and
public sympathy for the movement grew rapidly as a result. Martin Luther King Jr.
criticized police brutality in his speeches. Furthermore, the period
was marked by riots in response to police violence against
African-Americans and Latinos, including the Harlem riot of 1964, 1964 Philadelphia race riot, Watts riots (1965), Division Street riots (1966), and 1967 Detroit riot. In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, in order to challenge police brutality against African-Americans from disproportionately white police departments.
The conflict between the Black Panther Party and various police
departments often resulted in violence with the deaths of 34 members of
the Black Panther Party and 15 police officers.
The Civil Rights Movement was also targeted by the FBI in a program called COINTELPRO
(1956-71). Under this program, the FBI would use undercover agents to
create violence and chaos within political groups, such as the Socialist Worker's Party and Black Panther Party. The police would harm organizers and assassinate Black Panther leaders like Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, both of whom were killed in a 1969 FBI raid in Chicago.
In the United States, race and accusations of police brutality
continue to be closely linked, and the phenomenon has sparked a string
of race riots over the years. Especially notable among these incidents was the uprising caused by the arrest and beating of Rodney King on March 3, 1991, by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The atmosphere was particularly volatile because the brutality had been
videotaped by a civilian and widely broadcast afterwards. When the four
law enforcement officers charged with assault and other violations were
acquitted, the 1992 Los Angeles Riots broke out.
Anti-war demonstrations
During the Vietnam War, anti-war demonstrations were sometimes quelled through the use of billy clubs and tear gas. In 1967, student protesters experienced violent confrontations with police during a sit-in protest of Dow Chemical producing napalm. The most notorious of these assaults took place during the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Some rogue police officers took off their badges, in order to escape
identification, and brutally assaulted protesters. Journalists were
assaulted inside the convention hall. The actions of the police were later described as a "police riot" in the Walker Report to the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. On May 15, 1969, police opened fire on protesters in People's Park in Berkeley, California, which resulted in serious injuries for some protesters.
War on drugs
In June 1971, President Richard M. Nixon declared a War on Drugs. This new "war" brought in stricter policing and criminal laws, including no-knock warrants and mandatory sentencing. As was the case with Prohibition, the War on Drugs was marked by increased police misconduct. War on drugs policing - notably stop and frisk and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams - contributed to police brutality, especially targeting minority communities. Years later, Nixon aide John Ehrlichman,
explained: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after
that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people... We knew we
couldn’t make it illegal to be either... but by getting the public to
associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then
criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could
arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and
vilify them night after night on the evening news."
The war on drugs has been seen as responsible for police
misconduct towards African-Americans and Latinos. While white people and
African-Americans both use and sell drugs at roughly similar rates,
African-Americans are over six times as likely to be incarcerated for
drug-related charges, according to 2015 data.
Specifically, the use of stop and frisk tactics by police have targeted
African-Americans and Latinos. In looking at data from New York in the
early 2000s up to 2014, people who had committed no offense made up 82%
to 90% of those who were stopped and frisked. Of those people stopped,
only 9% to 12% were white. People who were stopped felt that they had
experienced psychological violence, and the police sometimes used
insults against them. Stop and frisk tactics caused people to experience
anxiety about leaving their homes, due to fears of police harassment
and abuse.
With the militarization of the police, SWAT teams have been used more frequently in drug possession situations.
SWAT teams can be armed with weapons like diversionary grenades. In
cases where SWAT teams were used, only 35% of the time were drugs found
in peoples' homes. African-Americans and Latinos are disproportionately
the targets of these raids, and according to the ACLU,
"Sending a heavily armed team of officers to perform 'normal' police
work can dangerously escalate situations that need never have involved
violence."
Post 9/11
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Protest against police brutality in New York City, December 2014
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, human rights observers raised concerns about increased police brutality in the U.S. An extensive report prepared for the United Nations Human Rights Committee, published in 2006, stated that in the U.S. the War on Terror
"created a generalized climate of impunity for law enforcement
officers, and contributed to the erosion of what few accountability
mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement agencies. As a
result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and undeterred
across the country."
During the "war on terror," there has been noted increases in
enforcement power for officers. By 2007, discussion on the
appropriateness of using racial profiling and force against people of color has decreased since 9/11. Racial profiling specifically increased for those of South Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim origins. An example of increased use of police use of force has been in the use of tasers.
From 2001 to 2007, at least 150 deaths were attributed to tasers and
many injuries occurred. People of color have been the main people who
have been targeted the most with regards to increased taser use.
A decision by the House and the Senate in Hawaii
was expected in May 2014 after police agreed in March 2014 not to
oppose the revision of a law that was implemented in the 1970s, allowing
undercover police officers to engage in sexual relations with sex workers during the course of investigations. (A similar program in the United Kingdom
resulted in physical and emotional abuse of victims, and children born
without fathers when the undercover operation ended; see UK undercover policing relationships scandal). Following initial protest from supporters of the legislation, all objections were retracted on March 25, 2014. A Honolulu police spokeswoman informed Time
magazine that, at the time of the court's decision, no reports had been
made in regard to the abuse of the exemption by police, while a
Hawaiian senator stated to journalists: "I suppose that in retrospect
the police probably feel somewhat embarrassed about this whole
situation." However, the Pacifica Alliance to Stop Slavery and other
advocates affirmed their knowledge of police brutality in this area and
explained that the fear of retribution is the main deterrent for sex
workers who seek to report offending officers. At a Hawaiian Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing, also in March 2014, an attorney testified
that his client was raped three times by Hawaiian police before
prostitution was cited as the reason for her subsequent arrest.
Recent incidents
The prevalence of police brutality in the United States is not
comprehensively documented, and the statistics on police brutality are
much less available. The few statistics that exist include a 2006
Department of Justice report, which showed that out of 26,556 citizen
complaints made in 2002 about excessive use of police force among large
U.S. agencies (representing 5% of agencies and 59% of officers), about
2,000 were found to have merit.
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Protest march in response to the Philando Castile shooting, St. Paul, Minnesota, July 7, 2016
Other studies have shown that most police brutality goes unreported.
In 1982, the federal government funded a "Police Services Study," in
which over 12,000 randomly selected citizens were interviewed in three
metropolitan areas. The study found that 13.6 percent of those surveyed
claimed to have had cause to complain about police service (including
verbal abuse, discourtesy and physical abuse) in the previous year. Yet
only 30 percent of those filed formal complaints. A 1998 Human Rights Watch
report stated that in all 14 precincts it examined, the process of
filing a complaint was "unnecessarily difficult and often intimidating."
Statistics on the use of physical force by law enforcement are available. For example, an extensive U.S. Department of Justice
report on police use of force released in 2001 indicated that in 1999,
"approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to
have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was
used."
Research shows that measures of the presence of black and Hispanic
people and majority/minority income inequality are related positively to
average annual civil rights criminal complaints.
Police brutality can be associated with racial profiling. Differences in race, religion, politics, or socioeconomic status
often exist between police and the citizenry. Some police officers may
view the population (or a particular subset thereof) as generally
deserving of punishment. Portions of the population may perceive the
police to be oppressors.
In addition, there is a perception that victims of police brutality
often belong to relatively powerless groups, such as minorities, the
disabled, and the poor. According to a 2015 and 2016 project by The Guardian,
more white people are killed by police in raw numbers than black people
are, but after adjusting this finding based on the fact that the black
population is smaller than the white population, twice as many black
people are killed by police per capita than white people are, and black victims are more likely to be unarmed when they are killed than white victims are.
A 2019 study showed that people of color face a higher likelihood of
being killed by police than white men and women do, that risk peaks in
young adulthood, and men of color face a nontrivial lifetime risk of
being killed by police.
Race was suspected to play a role in the shooting of Michael Brown
in 2014. Brown was an unarmed 18-year-old African American who was shot
by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The
predominately black city erupted after the shooting. Riots following the
shooting generated much debate about the treatment of African-Americans
by law enforcement.
Recent Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
reports have found that prison guard brutality is common in the U.S. A
2006 Human Rights Watch report revealed that five state prison systems
permit the use of aggressive, unmuzzled dogs on prisoners as part of
cell removal procedures.
In May 2020, the issue of police brutality saw a surge in public response following the police killing of George Floyd. Protests occurred nationwide and internationally beginning in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 26, 2020. In 2016, Tony Timpa was killed in the same way in Dallas.
Investigation
In the United States, investigation of cases of police brutality has often been left to internal police commissions and/or district attorneys
(DAs). Internal police commissions have often been criticized for a
lack of accountability and for bias favoring officers, as they
frequently declare upon review that the officer(s) acted within the
department's rules, or according to their training. For instance, an
April 2007 study of the Chicago Police Department
found that out of more than 10,000 police abuse complaints filed
between 2002 and 2003, only 19 (0.19%) resulted in meaningful
disciplinary action. The study charges that the police department's
oversight body allows officers with "criminal tendencies to operate with
impunity," and argues that the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed to police itself.
Investigations can be conducted by civilian complaint review
board (CCRB), which act as an independent agency that can investigate,
conduct hearings, and make recommendations in response to complaints of
police brutality. However, only 19% of large municipal police forces have a CCRB, such as the Civilian Complaint Review Board
(New York City), Civilian Office of Police Accountability (Chicago),
Citizen Police Review Board (Pittsburgh), and Police Review Commission
(Berkeley).
Law enforcement jurisdictions that have a CCRB have an excessive force
complaint rate against their officers of 11.9% verses 6.6% complaint
rate for those without a CCRB. Of those forces without a CCRB, only 8%
of the complaints were sustained.
Thus, for the year 2002, the rate at which police brutality complaints
were sustained was 0.53% for the larger police municipalities
nationwide.
The ability of district attorneys to investigate police brutality
has also been called into question, as DAs depend on help from police
departments to bring cases to trial. It was only in the 1990s that
serious efforts began to transcend the difficulties of dealing with
systemic patterns of police misconduct.
Logo on T-shirts sold at Daytona Beach Police Department headquarters in Florida, cited in a lawsuit against the DBPD alleging police brutality, is said to show the DBPD condones violence.
Beyond police departments and DAs, mechanisms of government oversight have gradually evolved. The Rodney King case triggered the creation of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, informally known as the Christopher Commission, in 1991. The commission, mandated to investigate the practices of the LAPD,
uncovered disturbing patterns of misconduct and abuse, but the reforms
it recommended were put on hold. Meanwhile, media reports revealed a
frustration in dealing with systemic abuse in other jurisdictions as
well, such as New York and Pittsburgh. Selwyn Raab of the New York Times wrote about how the "Blue Code of Silence among police officers helped to conceal even the most outrageous examples of misconduct."
Within this climate, the police misconduct provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
of 1994 was created, which authorized the Attorney General to "file
lawsuits seeking court orders to reform police departments engaging in a
pattern or practice of violating citizens' federal rights."
As of January 31, 2003, the Department of Justice has used this
provision to negotiate reforms in twelve jurisdictions across the U.S. (Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, Steubenville Police Department, New Jersey State Police, Los Angeles Police Department, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, Highland Park, Illinois Police Department, Cincinnati Police Department, Columbus Police Department, Buffalo Police Department, Mount Prospect, Illinois Police Department, Seattle Police Department, and the Montgomery County, Maryland Police Department).
Data obtained by The Associated Press in 2016 showed a racial disparity in officers' use of stun guns.
Causes
Numerous doctrines, such as federalism, separation of powers, causation, deference, discretion, and burden of proof
have been cited as partial explanations for the judiciaries' fragmented
pursuit of police misconduct. However, there is also evidence that
courts cannot or choose not to see systemic patterns in police
brutality.
Other factors that have been cited as encouraging police brutality
include institutionalized systems of police training, management, and
culture; a criminal-justice system that discourages prosecutors from pursuing police misconduct vigorously; a political system that responds more readily to police than to the residents of inner-city and minority communities; and a political culture that fears crime and values tough policing more than it values due process for all its citizens. It is believed that without substantial social change, the control of police deviance is improbable at best.
In the United States, the passage of the Volstead Act
(popularly known as the National Prohibition Act) in 1919 had a
long-term negative impact on policing practices. By the mid-1920s, crime
was growing dramatically in response to the demand for illegal alcohol.
Many law enforcement agencies stepped up the use of unlawful practices.
By the time of the Hoover
administration (1929–1933), the issue had risen to national concern and
a National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement (popularly
known as the Wickersham Commission) was formed to look into the situation. The resulting "Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" (1931) concluded that "[t]he third degree—that
is, the use of physical brutality, or other forms of cruelty, to obtain
involuntary confessions or admissions—is widespread." In the years following the report, landmark legal judgments such as Brown v. Mississippi helped cement a legal obligation to respect the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Police brutality can be associated with racial profiling. Differences in race, religion, politics, ability, or socioeconomic status
sometimes exist between police and the citizenry. Some police officers
may view the population (or a particular subset thereof) as generally
deserving punishment. Portions of the population may perceive the police
to be oppressors.
In addition, there is a perception that victims of police brutality
often belong to relatively powerless groups, such as racial or cultural
minorities, the disabled, and the poor.
The war model of policing has been offered as a reason for why
police brutality occurs. Through this model, police brutality is more
likely to occur because police see crime as a war and have people who
are their enemies.
Police who have been exposed to war have more than a 50% higher rate
of excessive force complaints than non-veterans according to internal
Boston PD documents.
Academic theories such as the threat hypothesis and the community
violence hypothesis have been used to explain police brutality. The
threat hypothesis implies that "police use force in direct response to a
perceived threat from racial and/or economic groups viewed as
threatening to the existing social order." According to the community violence hypothesis, "police use force in direct response to levels of violence in the community." This theory explains that force is used to control groups that threaten the community or police themselves with violence.
Solutions
Body cameras
Many policies have been offered for how to prevent police brutality. One proposed solution is body worn cameras.
The theory of using body cameras is that police officers will be less
likely to commit misconduct if they understand that their actions are
being recorded. The United States Department of Justice under Obama's administration supplied $20 million for body cameras to be implemented in police departments.
During a case study attempting to test the effects that body cameras
had on police actions, researchers found evidence that suggested that
police used less force with civilians when they had body cameras.
Police are supposed to have the cameras on from the time they
receive a call of an incident to when the entire encounter is over. However, there is controversy regarding police using the equipment properly.
The issue regarding an officer's ability to turn on and off the record
button is if the police officer is trustworthy. In 2017, Baltimore
Police Officer Richard A. Pinheiro Jr. was caught planting evidence. The
officer did not realize 30 seconds of footage was available even before
switching the camera on.
To solve this problem, it has been proposed to record police officers'
entire shift and not allowing access for police officers to turn on and
off the record button. This can cause technical and cost issues due to
the large amount of data the camera would accumulate, for which various
solutions have been proposed.
According to a survey done by Vocativ in 2014, "41 cities use
body cams on some of their officers, 25 have plans to implement body
cams and 30 cities do not use or plan to use cams at this time."
There are other issues that can occur from the use of body cameras as
well. This includes downloading and maintenance of the data which can be
expensive. There is also some worry that if video testimony becomes
more relied upon in court cases, not having video evidence from body
cameras would decrease the likelihood that the court system believes
credible testimony from police officers and witnesses.
Civilian review boards
Civilian review boards have been proposed as another solution to
decreasing police brutality. Benefits of civilian review boards can
include making sure police are doing their jobs and increasing the
relationship the police have with the public.
Civilian review boards have gotten criticism though. They can be
staffed with police who can weaken the effectiveness of the boards. Some
boards do not have the authority to order investigations into police
departments. They can also lack the funding to be an effective tool.
Lawsuits and qualified immunity
Excessive use of force is a tort, and police officers may be held liable for damages should they take unconstitutional actions. The ability to sue in federal court was first introduced as a remedy for police brutality and misconduct in 1871 during the Reconstruction era as the Third Enforcement Act.
The act allowed plaintiffs to sue directly in federal courts which was
important as it allowed plaintiffs to bypass state courts during the Jim
Crow era. The theory behind this solution to police brutality is that
by taking the civil action to a federal court level, the case will be
heard fairly and the financial judgments are intended to have a
deterrent effect on future police misconduct in that department.
Since 1967, this remedy has been restricted by Supreme Court precedents through qualified immunity which grants police officers immunity from lawsuits unless their actions violated "clearly established" law.
In practice, most jurisdictions rely on court precedent to define
clearly established law, so to be successful plaintiffs often must show
that a previous court case found the particular act at hand unlawful.
For example, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals granted immunity to an
officer who shot a 14-year-old who dropped a BB gun as he raised his
hands, because unlike a 2011 case where an officer was held liable for
shooting a man who lowered a shotgun, the boy had pulled the BB gun from
his waistband.
This is often a stringent requirement, and in a majority of cases since
2005, police officer have been granted immunity for their actions.
Lawsuits are sometimes successful, however. For example in a 2001
settlement, New York City was required to pay a plaintiff $7.125 million
in damages and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association
was required to pay $1.625 million. At that time, it was the most money
the city had ever paid to settle a police brutality lawsuit and is
considered the first time that a police union has paid a claim to settle
a brutality suit.
Redirecting funds to other departments (defund the police)
After the Killing of George Floyd in 2020, there have been widespread calls to defund the police.
The idea behind this is that money is diverted from policing to the
areas needed to prevent crime, for example, housing, employment,
welfare, etc. There have been calls for this since society has seen a lack of reform in policing around police brutality and discrimination.
Public reaction
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George Floyd protests in Raleigh, North Carolina on May 30, 2020
A 2001 publication noted that local media rarely reported scandals
involving out-of-town police unless events made it onto a network
videotape.
According to a 2002 analysis, there is often a dramatic increase in
unfavorable attitudes toward the police in the wake of highly publicized
events such as the Rampart scandal in the late 1990s and the killings of Amadou Diallo (February 1999) and Patrick Dorismond (March 2000) in New York City.
Experiments have found that when viewers are shown footage of police
arrests, they may be more likely to perceive the police conduct as
brutal if the arresting officers are Caucasian.
Public opinion polls following the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the 1992 killing of Malice Green
in Detroit indicate that the incidents appear to have had their
greatest effect on specific perceptions of the way local police treat
black people, and markedly less effect on broader perceptions of the
extent of discrimination against them.
To draw attention to the issue of police brutality in America, multiple basketball players for the NBA, including Kyrie Irving and LeBron James, wore shirts labeled "I Can't Breathe," referring to the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the New York City Police Department on July 17, 2014. Concerned African-Americans also started a movement referred to as "Black Lives Matter" to try to help people understand how police are affecting African-American lives, initially prompted by the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman of the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, and further sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. In a related action, Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback then playing for the San Francisco 49ers, started a protest movement by refusing to stand for the national anthem at the start of games, receiving widespread support and widespread condemnation, including from President Donald Trump.
In May and June 2020, support for the Black Lives Matter movement surged among Americans as a result of the protests and unrest that broke out across the United States following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. A tracking poll by Civiqs found that, for the first time ever, more white Americans supported the Black Lives Matter movement than opposed it.
While many celebrities have joined in on the "Black Lives Matter"
campaign, many of the initiatives occurring in communities across the
country are led by local members of the Black Lives Matter Global
Network. The purpose of this network is to demand change at the local
level and stop unfair punishment or brutality towards Black communities. The group has 22 chapters in many major cities across the United States.
Legal and institutional controls
Responsibility
for investigating police misconduct has mainly fallen on local and
state governments. The federal government does investigate misconduct
but only does so when local and state governments fail to look into
cases of misconduct.
Laws intended to protect against police abuse of authority include the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures; the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects individuals against self-incrimination and being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process; the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which bans cruel and unusual punishments; the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which includes the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses; the Civil Rights Act of 1871; and the Federal Tort Claims Act. The Civil Rights Act has evolved into a key U.S. law in brutality cases. However, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 has been assessed as ultimately ineffective in deterring police brutality.
The federal government can place charges on police officers who commit
police misconduct. These prosecutions do not often occur as the federal
government tends to defer to local and state governments for
prosecution.
The federal government also has the ability to investigate police
departments if they are committing unlawful actions. When an
investigation reveals violations by a police department, the Department
of Justice can use §14141 to file a lawsuit. Like other tools at their disposal, the federal government also rarely uses this statute.
In a 1996 law journal article, it was argued that Judges often give
police convicted of brutality light sentences on the grounds that they
have already been punished by damage to their careers.
A 1999 article attributed much of this difficulty in combating police
brutality to the overwhelming power of the stories mainstream American
culture tells about the encounters leading to police violence.
In 1978, surveys of police officers found that police brutality,
along with sleeping on duty, was viewed as one of the most common and
least likely to be reported forms of police deviance other than corruption.
In Tennessee v. Garner (1985), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment prevents police from using deadly force on a fleeing suspect unless the police has good reason to believe that the suspect is a danger to others.
The Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor
(1989) stated that the reasonableness of a police officer using force
should be based off what the officer's viewpoint was when the crime
occurred. Reasonableness should also factor in things like the suspect's
threat level and if attempts were made to avoid being arrested.
In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court introduced the legal doctrine of qualified immunity,
originally with the rationale of protecting law enforcement officials
from frivolous lawsuits and financial liability in cases where they
acted in good faith in an unclear legal situation.
Starting in around 2005, courts increasingly applied this doctrine to
cases involving use of excessive force, eventually leading to widespread
criticism that it "has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police
brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights"
(as summarized in a 2020 Reuters report).
In art
In July 2019, the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York premiered Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson′s opera Blue about African-American teenagers as an ′endangered species′; often falling victim to police brutality.
