Police brutality in the United States
Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force by personnel affiliated with law enforcement duties when dealing with suspects and civilians.
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.
In the 2000s, the federal government attempted tracking the number of people killed in interactions with US police, but the program was defunded.[1] In 2006, a law was passed to require reporting of homicides at the hands of the police, but many police departments do not obey it.[2] Some journalists and activists have provided estimates, limited to the data available to them. In 2019, 1,004 people were shot and killed by police according to The Washington Post, whereas the Mapping Police Violence project counted 1,098 killed.[3][4][5] Statista claimed that in 2020, 1,021 people were killed by police, while the project Mapping Police Violence counted 1,126.[6][5] From 1980 to 2018, more than 30,000 people have died by police violence in the United States, according to a 2021 article published in The Lancet.[7] For 2022, Mapping Police Violence counted at least 1,176 individuals killed, making it the deadliest year on record.[8] The US police has killed more people compared to any other industrialized democracy, with a disproportionate number of people shot being people of color.[9][10][11] Since 2015, around 2,500 of those killed by police were fleeing.[12]
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,[13] 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 police power.[14][15][16][17] 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.[18]
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,[19] 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.[20] 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.[21][22]
Legal and institutional controls[edit]
Responsibility for investigating police misconduct in the United States 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.[212]
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 U.S. Department of Justice prosecutes police officers who violate people's federal constitutional rights; federal prosecutors primarily apply Conspiracy Against Rights, 18 U.S.C. Section 241; and Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, 18 U.S.C. Section 242. 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.[213] 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.[212] 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[214] to file a lawsuit. Like other tools at their disposal, the federal government also rarely uses this statute.[212] 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.[215] 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.[216]
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.[217]
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 have good reason to believe that the suspect is a danger to others.[218]
The Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor (1989) stated that the reasonableness of a police officer using force should be based on 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.[219]
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.[220][18] Starting in around 2005, courts increasingly applied this doctrine to cases involving the 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).[18]
On May 25, 2022, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that would ban chokeholds and carotid restraints, adopt body camera policies, limit the use of no-knock warrants to certain circumstances, and adopt updated use-of-force standards that encourage de-escalation for all federal law enforcement agents.[221][222]
In art[edit]
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.[223]