Welcome to the last installment of Police Brutality in America!

In the last four posts, we have discussed the history of policing and police brutality, four possible ways of lessening police brutality, a real-life example of police misconduct, and the statistics involved with police misconduct.

In today’s post, I will wrap everything up by discussing all my previous posts as well as what I learned at a panel here at Penn State.

Last week, on April 4, I attended a panel sponsored by the Center for Democratic Deliberation and the Justice Association.

The panel, entitled Safety!: Citizens and Police Conduct, discussed what police misconduct was and how it was affecting America and its citizens. The panel consisted of Elisa Vogel, a member of Penn State Speech and Debate Society, Abe Kahn, an assistant professor African American studies and Communication Arts and Sciences here at Penn State, Phil Stinson, a professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Bowling Green State University, and Lieutenant Gregory Brauser from the State College Police Department.

The panel was very thought-provoking, and it caused me to reflect a lot about my beliefs about and expectations for law enforcement.

Most importantly, at the panel, Professor Kahn discussed a topic that many individuals, including myself, fail to mention: the overworking of police.

Police officers are expected to do everything.

They are expected to help, protect, and serve members of their community, but they are also expected to run errands for their department and their Commissioner of Police, assist emergency services when they need it, and file extensive and thorough amounts of paperwork, detailing every encounter that they had with a civilian.

In reality, police officers are not crime fighters for a majority of the time. Instead, they perform the little jobs that one never really thinks of.

As Professor Kahn stated, the profession’s primary goal is becoming more unclear as time progresses.

Lieutenant Brauser confirmed Professor Kahn’s statement. He stated that firemen are not the ones who retrieves cats out of trees. Police officers are. Police officers have to manage the homeless population and make sure that they are not illegally squatting, help individuals who pose a threat to themselves (specifically mentally ill individuals), and control crowds.

This intrigued me because I realized that we, the citizens, hold police officers to an extremely high standard. We forget that they are normal people with the same drive (to make money) and capacity to feel. They are capable of failing and breaking the law because they are human.

As I said previously, we forget. We believe in this fantasy that police officers are superbeings with the morals of Mother Teresa, or Saint Teresa of Calcutta. When a police officer ruins this fantasy, we are shocked and angered, but I realized that this emotional response makes little sense (this will vary depending on the crime that they committed, of course).

At the end of the day, can we truly blame an officer for stealing cocaine so that he or she could make money off of it on the streets or to use it personally?

It is greed. It is human.

Can we truly blame police officers for stealing money and drugs?

It is greed. It is human. Police officers are humans.

Professor Kahn reminded me of the humanity of police officers even more so when I posed the following question to him: Do you think that the negative stereotypes of African Americans increase the likelihood of police utilizing excessive use of force against them?

His response was brilliant.

In summary, Professor Kahn explained that a racist is a racist. No matter where you put him or her–no matter their profession–a racist is a racist. If a racist becomes a writer, he then becomes a racist writer. Similarly, if a racist becomes a cop, he then becomes a racist cop.

I will admit that it is a simple answer, but it made me aware of how often I ignore racism. Furthermore, I became aware of how high the standards that I hold police officers to are. Whether or not I agree with their beliefs, I cannot expect a racist individual to stop being racist overnight because he or she became a cop. In all honesty, it is not fair to them.

This does not mean that I should expect less of law enforcement. At the end of the day, a police officer is given a lot of authority and is trusted to act morally for the good of his community and, ultimately, America. However, I do think that it is important to be more empathetic of officers and their situations.

As I said in my last post, officers are oftentimes in dangerous, life-threatening situations. That is stressful, and sometimes, stress impairs an individual from thinking thoroughly and logically. Responding defensively is their first reaction.

Thinking empathetically, who can blame them? We cannot judge officers harshly for their reactive responses when looking at the altercation from a more complete point of view. Hindsight is 20-20, and we have to remind ourselves that officers did not have that luxury at the time of the incident (which was ruled in the Supreme Court case, Graham v. Connor).

Admittedly, there are cases, such as Johnnie Rush’s, where brutality was quite evident. Where the force used was unreasonable. That is when judgment is appropriate. That is when the conviction of bad cops is necessary.

None of the four points (hire more female cops, drug test cops more often, require cops to live in the area that they police, and demand that all cops go to college) could rid the police force from the amoral cops, perhaps with the exception of the drug tests. They only work for the future. They would improve the hiring of new officers, but that would take many years.

Change needs to happen now.

But, how can change occur if both conflicting parties fail to understand and empathize with each other?

This post’s question: Taking Professor Kahn’s statements into account, what do you think of empathy for cops? Could it allow for citizens and police officers to understand each other?

Thank you all for reading my blog! I really hope that it inspired new ideas and taught my readers something new.

Until next time!

According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, there have been 264 deaths committed by officers of the law.

I will admit that when I first saw this large number (considering that we are only in the third month of the year), I was simultaneously blown away and unsurprised. I will also admit that it is not fair to look at this number and judge police officers without considering the fact it is a possibility that not all of these killings were unwarranted.

Police brutality is a complex issue, and because it is a complex issue that cannot be solved with a policy or an implemented law (much like gun regulation), things can get messy and muddled very quickly.

You have to be compassionate for the victims of police brutality, but you also have to be understanding of how police officers most likely felt in any of these incidences.

Like many others, I strongly believe that there is a difference between abusing the authority that you were given as an officer and simply reacting to a potentially dangerous situation.

In my Criminology 100 class, one of the first traits that they say a great detective should have is a sixth sense. A detective should be able to correctly read a situation or person without much effort and in a little amount of time. That takes experience, common sense, and an adequate (or a more than adequate) education (I believe that we have already established more than once that I am extremely partial to the idea that all police officers should have a bachelors degree at the least).

What amazes me, however, is the fact that even police officers are taught to fine tune this sixth sense, but they are never taught to nurture their compassionate side. Police officers know that their job is to maintain order, peacefully apprehend those who disturb that order, catch individuals who pose a threat to public safety, and help other emergency services should they need assistance. However, they should be reminded daily that an officer’s most important job is to help members of his or her community–not to criminalize them or, in instances of brutality, victimize them.

Police officers should work to make their community members to both trust them and feel safe around them.

As citizens and community members, we have a right to feel comfortable enough to go to the police whenever we need help.

Although, I will admit that it is tough to achieve that perfect balance in a relationship where police officers have our absolute respect while being friendly with us, but I do not think that it is impossible. This is where community-building activities would be extremely useful.

With all of this being said, I want to now discuss the relationship between police brutality and the death of minorities.

According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, police killed 1,146 people in 2017. Black people were 25% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population. 

As a minority myself, this scares me. It really does, and it is hard to stay fairly neutral as I discuss this.

It is not fair to automatically judge the officers involved in these recorded incidences when we were not at the scene. It is scary to deal with people that you do not know, whilst trying to assert your authority, control the situation, understand what is happening, and stay safe. So, it is hard to read a report or watch body cam footage of an altercation and think about it from a neutral perspective, especially when I feel somewhat personal about this.

I oftentimes think, “How else can I explain the statistics that Black people are more likely to be killed by police other than attributing it to race? How else?”

How else can I rationalize the fact that “Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white people?”

How else can I explain the fact that “30% of Black victims were unarmed in 2015 compared to the 21% of white victims?”

I want to attribute these killings partially to the stereotypes that are in place–the ones that actually work against Black people.

The stereotypes that make people subconsciously believe that Black people are educationally inferior (no matter their background), filled with attitude (or affectionately called “sass”), and, scariest of all, dangerous.

According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, “fewer than 1 in 3 Black people killed by police in America in 2014 were suspected of a violent crime and allegedly armed.”

Underneath the text, the website showed a pie chart which said that 31% were “allegedly armed and violent,” but 69% of them were actually “non-violent/ unarmed.”

That means that those officers simply assumed that they were in more danger because of the race of the people that they were dealing with. Their racially biased “sixth sense” told them that the people they were dealing with were more dangerous because of the color of their skin and the stereotypes associated with Black Americans.

While this is a loaded argument, this is one way that I can rationalize it.

But then, I began to think. What if it is not that innocent Black people are killed more by police officers? Maybe these are due to the fact that Black individuals are more involved in criminal acts….

According to ucr.fbi.gov, 52.6% of Black people were arrested for manslaughter (with 44.7% of White people), and 54.5% of Black people were arrested for robbery (with 43.4% of White people).

All other crimes with the exception of gambling were lower in percentage for Black people and higher for White people.

I do not know what to make of these statistics. I will say that it makes sense for a race to be more likely killed by the police (when simply looking at the numbers) if they are more involved in crimes.

What makes this issue more complex is when we consider the fact that Black people are only the majority in the three out twenty-six acts.

Before I pose my post’s question, I want to state that all opinions are welcome–no matter how polarizing or “insensitive.” Honesty is greatly appreciated.

So, my questions for you are: what do you truly think about police brutality? What do you think causes it? And lastly, what do you think of think of the relationship between police brutality and the death of minorities, and why do you think that this relationship exists?

(Below is a current tracking of the 264 police killings in America so far.)

Welcome to the third installment of Police Brutality in America!

Today, we will be looking at a more recent case of police brutality. I will then apply the four points that Shaun King suggested would end or lessen police use of excessive force to the occurrence. I am interested to see how King’s points would apply to a real-life situation.

In Asheville, North Carolina, on August 25, 2017, a man named Johnnie Rush, an African American male, was walking home from work (from “a 13-hour shift”) around midnight. He was “approached by two white police officers,” Officer Christopher Hickman and Officer Ruggiero, for jaywalking.

In the video of the altercation, received from the body cam of Officer Christopher Hickman,   the two officers were talking about how they had just told Rush to stop jaywalking.

They pulled up to Johnnie Rush and asked him to stop jaywalking for the second time. They proceeded to repeat, “use the crosswalk,” multiple times. Officer Ruggiero, the officer in training, even explained to Rush how he had just committed “four crimes in a row.”

The officer in training, Ruggiero, then told Johnnie Rush how he had two options, “[he] could either arrest [Rush] or write [him] a ticket.”

After Rush repeated over and over that he was tired because he had just got off of work, he then said that he did not care what they did to him as long as they stopped harassing him.

Rush began to curse at the officers, and that was when Officer Hickman told him to put his hands behind his back.

Rush began to back up, but then he stopped and let both officers begin to restrain him. Rush ran when they put his hands behind his back. Officer Hickman began to chase him immediately. Hickman reported that as Rush was running he was laughing and taunting him, but you cannot hear it in the video.

When Hickman caught Rush, he pinned him to the ground (all the while, Rush was repeatedly screaming that he could not breathe). Hickman then hit Rush’s head against the pavement and punched his head multiple times. He also tased and strangled Rush multiple times as well.

This is Johnnie Rush after the incident. 

After the altercation, some police officers took Rush to the hospital for his injuries, and no one, including Officer Hickman’s supervisor, would believe his accounts of the occurrence.

Rush went on to tell his story to the media which inspired officials to look into the case. After reviewing Officer Hickman’s body cam footage, a district attorney “ordered Hickman to turn in his gun and badge.” Hickman resigned before he could be formally terminated.

With all of that being said, I will now apply this real-life situation to the four points that Shaun King stated could possibly end, or significantly lessen police brutality.

King’s four points (out twenty-five) are:

1. Police must be routinely and randomly tested for steroids and other illegal drugs. 
2. Police must be required to earn four-year degrees–it changes everything. 
3. Take women from 12% of police to 50% of police– they are more professional, less brutal, and just as effective.
4. Require cops to live in or near the areas they police. It’s too easy to mistreat strangers.

Point number one: Police must be routinely and randomly tested for steroids and other illegal drugs. 

With this point, I do not think that it would have contributed much to prevent this event from occurring. I will admit that, after watching the video about ten thousand times, Officer Hickman lost his temper very quickly for him to be an experienced officer. Officer Ruggiero, the officer in training, was still very calm despite Rush being very rude to him.

To be fair, it was twelve o’clock in the morning, so temperament could have been a little short because everyone was tired, but that does not explain Hickman’s unreasonable aggression.

Point number two: Police must be required to earn four-year degrees–it changes everything. 

With this point, I agree with Shaun King that having an educational background could make a difference in preventing abusive events such as police brutality from occurring in other cases. However, I cannot firmly state whether or not education would have prevented this particular case of police brutality because I do not know if Officer Hickman is an educated man. So, again, education does not change much in this situation.

Point number three: Take women from 12% of police to 50% of police– they are more professional, less brutal, and just as effective.

If you read my last post, you would know that I hated this point then, and I hate it now. At the end of the video, there was actually a female present, and she did not display any compassionate feelings towards Rush’s bloodied condition. She did not even flinch when Hickman told her that he was covered in Rush’s “face blood.” So, no, I do not think that this point would have contributed much in preventing this altercation from happening.

Point number four: Require cops to live in or near the areas they police. It’s too easy to mistreat strangers.

This is still my favorite point. I think that this is the only point (out of the four) that would have worked in preventing the occurrence of this incident. A lot of the comments made great suggestions in improving this point because it is neither practical nor feasible.

If Hickman and Ruggiero had to participate in community events and just became more involved with the community members, I think that they would have been more compassionate of Rush’s situation. They treated him as a criminal when he began to curse at them when it was obvious (by Rush’s language) that Rush was not a very educated man. They did not take into account that his language did not have to necessarily mean aggression. I believe that the two officers failed to understand the culture of the area that they were patrolling in.

With that being said, what do you think of the altercation, and what point do you think could have helped prevent this incident from happening?

This is a map of recorded police brutality incidents in America. I thought that it was interesting!

Today, I thought that I would start this post off a little different from my first post.

Earlier on this week, I started my search for new, credible info regarding police brutality in an effort to figure out what I was going to write about. Originally, I thought that I would continue to discuss the history of police brutality from 2000 to the end of 2017, but I do not want my blog to get bogged down by discussing the past. The past cannot be changed. However, I can discuss the present and the possibilities of the future.

In this post, I will be discussing four of twenty-five ways that Shaun King (shown below), an American writer and Civil Rights activist, said would bring us a few steps closer to eradicating police brutality. 

In 2015, he was a writer for the New York Daily News, and in December 2016, he was hired as a political commentator on The Young Turks. 

During his time as a writer at the New York Daily News, Shaun King wrote a twenty-five part series where he analyzed police brutality and its causes and effects. At the end of each article, he would then suggest a way to solve the issue of police brutality.

As I said previously, I will be discussing four suggestions that I find the most interesting and thought-provoking.

1. Police must be routinely and randomly tested for steroids and other illegal drugs. 
   1. Now, when I first read this point on the list of the twenty-five, I balked, and then, I chuckled. I wanted to see data suggesting that police officers are avid steroid users. However, King made a great point; police officers are only drug tested once in their career, given that their actions do not stir up the suspicions of their superiors. Even professional athletes are drug tested more than police officers. Being that police officers are constantly surrounded by illegal narcotics, both on the streets and in their precincts, we expect officers to practice almost ethical perfection. We expect normal people to be able to deny temptations such as drugs and the ability to make a lot of money (selling drugs or accepting bribes) because it is their job. In return for making the “right” choice, police officers receive little in return.
   2. On paper, this seems like a good idea, but in real life, I do not think that it is very realistic, and honestly, I do not think that it would contribute much towards ending police brutality.
2. Police must be required to earn four-year degrees–it changes everything. 
   1. When I read this point, I instantly thought, “Who would not require the people who protect us and save thousands, maybe even millions, of lives to have at least a four-year degree?” It is blasphemous. As King said, if a cosmetologist is expected to receive post-secondary schooling, so should police officers! Also, apparently, “just under 1% of all law enforcement agencies in America require a four-year degree,” so all hope is not yet lost! Somewhere out there in America exists a couple precincts of academically qualified police officers.
   2. I definitely agree with this point. Education changes the world. Just from one semester in college, I have changed so much, and it makes me cringe at the thought that a majority of the officers who are employed to protect me did not receive that same educational change. Of course, it would be foolish of me to assume that they have not gone through a significant change being an officer of the law; however, I believe that the changes differ from one another.
3. Take women from 12% of police to 50% of police– they are more professional, less brutal, and just as effective.
   1. As a woman, I will have to admit that I love this point. However, as a neutral person, I think that this point just plays into gender stereotypes. A corrupt woman is just as dangerous as a man, corrupt or not, maybe even more so. I support the move to hire more female officers, but I do not think this change would do much to end police brutality. Good ideas are good ideas, and more importantly, good actions are good actions, regardless of the gender of the individual committing it. If King had more evidence suggesting that female officers have helped stop instances of police brutality in the past, I would be more likely to seriously consider this as a possible solution, but honestly, he is just making speculations.
4. Require cops to live in or near the areas they police. It’s too easy to mistreat strangers.
   1. I absolutely love this suggestion. Of course, there are some hang-ups with this point about the population of a city and having the space to house an entire precinct in any type of city, but Shaun King makes a fantastic point. So many police officers take a more legalistic perspective of law enforcement, and they do not focus as much on the community building aspect of law enforcement. Police officers are not only here to protect us, but they are also here to help us when no one else will. They are here to be our greatest ally, yet so many citizens of America view police officers as the enemy.
   2. It is fair to assume that the hatred of multiple communities hinders an investigation. Police officers need to work harder at being our neighbors, our protectors, and our teachers. They need to understand the communities that they patrol in and the members of that community. It would definitely be a considerable contribution to the end of police brutality.

Which point do you think would be the most effective in ending, or even lessening, police brutality?

On this blog, I will discuss both the effects of police brutality on minorities, past and present, and how we will move towards ending discriminatory police brutality.

With this post, I thought that it would be important to first give a brief overview of both police history and police brutality in America.

According to Dr. Gary Potter of Eastern Kentucky University, the first police task force was formed in Boston in 1838. Policing efforts first took place in the colonies, and as policing developed in the colonies, they also developed in England. In the colonies, before a police task force was officially developed, they employed “informal and communal” ways of policing, known as the “Watch.”

Rembrandt’s The Night Watch 

The “Watch” consisted of concerned of community members who volunteered to watch in case of “impending dangers” at night. However, the task force was not very effective because members “often slept or drank on duty,” and many of the Watchmen did not actually want to perform their duties because members were forced to watch, or it was assigned as a punishment. The idea of having a watch in place proved to be successful as Philadelphia went on to create “the first day watch in 1833,” and eleven years later, New York followed, creating the city’s first day watch in 1844.

After Boston’s implementation of an official, full-time, and permanent police task force in 1838, a majority of the cities in the United States followed, and by the 1880s, cities such as New York City, Albany (in New York), Chicago, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Newark, and Baltimore all had police task forces in place.

According to Katie Nodjimbadem, a staff reporter for Smithsonian magazine, states that after the creation of Boston’s police task force in 1838, the targets of discrimination were “recent European immigrants.” However, that soon changed once African Americans began to migrate from southern states to northern states (which is known as the Great Migration). Once the Great Migration occurred, African Americans became “victims of brutal and punitive policing in the northern cities where they sought refuge.”

Family actively migrating up North

Interestingly though, policing developed differently in southern states. The first policing ideas or movements came from “the Carolina colonies in 1704.” In the Carolina colonies, they created what is known as “slave patrols.” Members in “slave patrols” had three specific jobs: “(1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves, (2) to deter slave revolts, and (3) to discipline the slave-workers…that violated plantation rules.” After the Civil War, these “slave patrols” evolved into Southern police task forces as their primary focus shifted onto “controlling the freed slaves” and “enforcing Jim Crowe laws.”

Despite the racism and harsh actions of the police against harmless minorities, the establishment of police forces was completely necessary. The United States began to grow, and as it grew, crime rates and instances of “disorder” in urban communities grew as well. “Mob violence, particularly violent offences against African Americans and immigrants by white youths,” as well as “public drunkenness…and prostitution” became more and more problematic. Also, establishing police forces to enforce social order became an economic decision as creating social stability meant constructing a stable and lucrative workforce, a completely sensible move.

However, in the late 1920s, social stability in Chicago began to waver as the crime rate was higher than ever, and a survey showed that a majority of the crimes was accredited to Mr. Al Capone and the “criminals associated with him.”  The survey also showed that “although African Americans made up just five percent of the area’s population, they constituted 30 percent of the victims of police killings.”

 Al Capone

According to Malcolm D. Holmes, a sociology professor at the University of Wyoming, “there was a lot of one-on-one conflict between police and citizens, and a lot of it was initiated by the police.”

Through 1931 and 1932, President Herbert Hoover’s commission, the “National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement,” provided a lot of evidence that revealed the harsh reality of the extent of discriminatory police brutality.

Moving towards the Civil Rights Movement Era, it can be seen that a majority of the peaceful protests were met with “aggressive dispersion tactics, such as police dogs and fire hoses.” Of course the extent of this mistreatment angered the victims, African Americans, which was why some, if not a majority, of the protesters had to be trained to not react in violent ways.

A great example of such restraint is the Greensboro Sit-Ins. To be brief, four young, African American men who attended the local technical college in North Carolina sat at the “whites only” counter of their town’s Woolworth and asked for a cup of coffee. After being asked to leave, the men refused and stayed at the counter until closing.

Although the Civil Rights Movement and segregation ended, police brutality did not, but this truth was not obvious to individuals who were not perpetual targets of police brutality until the advancement of technology. In 1991, the video of Rodney King being beaten by police was a catalyst that caused events which shook America and inspired a lot of positive change, but we still have a long way to go.

Do you think that advancement of technology helped expose and improve the issue of police brutality in the past as well as the present?