by Kim Michelle Lersch and Joe R. Feagin
Department of Administration and Justice Studies, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514; and Department of Sociology, University of Florida, Gainsville, FL 32611
Crit Sociol 1996 22: 29
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It is significant that there is not a single case of white citizens being targeted for excessive force by black or Latino officers. In the cases involving Latino victims, the officers involved were either white or Latino. There were no cases of brutality involving a Latino victim and a black officer. In the two cases involving allegations of misconduct against Latino officers, the victims were either black or Latino. And in the cases in which the actions of a black police officer came under scrutiny, the victims were in all cases black citizens.
The data seem to suggest the existence of a hierarchy of racial or ethnic groups, what Feagin (1989) calls the "ladder of racial dominance." Some groups are positioned higher than others on the ladder, which results in greater power and privileges than lower groups. White citizens were rarely victims of abuse, and if they were, it was at the hands of white officers. Minority officers did not cross the line and assault those of a higher social position. In addition, white officers targeted minority group members for harsh treatment. Latinos seemed to be positioned below whites, but above blacks, in this hierarchy of force. While the low number of cases involving Latino officers suggests caution here, they show that Latino officers seemed to target members of their own group or blacks. These findings are consistent with Carter (1986) who found that Latino officers were more likely to discriminate against Latino citizens than white citizens. In the cases reviewed for this analysis, whites were not targeted by the Latino officers. Black officers were involved in brutality cases only with members of their racial group. There were no cases in which a black officer was involved in an altercation involving a white or Latino victim. Blacks seemed to occupy the lowest position on the ladder of dominance....
Another interesting finding is the relative lack of penalties given to the officers involved in violent altercations with citizens. Even though the percentage of officers who were penalized in this analysis was somewhat higher than other reported statistics, in this analysis only 13 percent of the officers received some sort of penalty for their alleged involvement in assaults against citizens. Further, in only 3 percent of the cases was the officer ultimately relieved of duty. If harsher penalties were applied, perhaps the rate of police brutality against citizens would decline. We can also recall that the Los Angeles Times study found that black officers were twice as likely as their white peers to be found guilty of misconduct. If the complainant was white, the substantiation rate for black officers was twice that for white officers, while Latino officers were penalized three times more often.
-- Violent Police-Citizen Encounters: An Analysis of Major Newspaper Accounts, by Joseph Feagin and Kim Lersch
Table of Contents:
• Abstract
• Power-Conflict Theory as Applied to Police Deviance
• Differential Experiences of Black and White Citizens with Police Agencies: A Brief History
• Continuing Racial Tensions
• Situational Aspects of Police-Citizen Encounters
• Penalties and Substantiation Rates: An Effective Deterrent?
• The Problem of Data
• The Research Project
• Findings
o The Racial Characteristics of Officers and Citizens
o Situational Characteristics
o Penalties
• Discussion and Conclusions
ABSTRACT: This paper investigates trends in police brutality using data found through the Lexis/Nexis system. Using the keywords "police brutality," 15 newspapers classified as "major papers" by the Lexis/Nexis service were searched for descriptions of incidents of police misconduct against citizens that appeared from January 1, 1990 to May 31, 1992. One hundred and thirty distinct incidents of police brutality were analyzed based on the race and gender of the officers and of the victim, as well as issues of socioeconomic class. The situational characteristics surrounding the alleged assault were categorized and discussed. Minority citizens were involved in the vast majority of the incidents. The data also suggested a definite lack of penalties against the officers involved in abusive actions against citizens. Further, a citizen was equally likely to be assaulted for a disrespectful attitude towards a law enforcement officer than if the citizen had posed a serious bodily threat to the officer or another human being.
The reality of police violence was forced back into the public consciousness as a result of the national media attention given to the graphic beating of Rodney King at the hands of several white police officers in the early 1990s. While the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) became the focus of investigations of allegations concerning police misconduct, many police departments across the country came under greater public scrutiny. Was this incident an anomaly, or does police brutality against people of color continue to be a common occurrence across the nation?
While research concerning police brutality increased after the riots of the late 1960s, in the last decade few articles have been published focusing on contemporary police-citizen incidents and brutality trends, especially in regard to the non-lethal use of force (McLaughlin, 1992). Significantly, several well-publicized governmental studies of police malpractice have not been released for public and academic scrutiny. Official national statistics on the phenomenon of police malpractice or brutality currently do not exist.
This article investigates key issues concerning violent police misconduct against citizens across the nation using the only public data currently accessible: major newspaper accounts. To shed some light on the character of police malpractice incidents in the 1990s, we examine the racial group of the officer and the citizen involved in the altercation, the situational characteristics of the violent assault, and the penalties assessed against the officers involved.
Power-Conflict Theory as Applied to Police Deviance
The power-conflict perspective will be used to better understand the phenomenon of police brutality. Power-conflict theorists focus on the great disparity in the distribution of power and resources in United States society. These inequalities may exist along lines of race, class, or gender. According to critical power-conflict theorists, the structure of capitalism in the United States in which a great proportion of the wealth is held by white corporate capitalists leads to a social system marked by exploitation and domination. Theoretical elaboration within the power-conflict perspective began historically with the works of Karl Marx and has continued to develop through the works of C. Wright Mills and others.
Feagin and Feagin (1990) developed a series of propositions to describe the power-conflict perspective: in society certain groups of people dominate over others due to their control of various important societal resources, such as wealth and income, private property that may serve to generate further wealth, and greater control over the police and military forces. As a group, white Americans are in a better position to use and mobilize both economic and political resources in times of conflict than do black Americans or other minority groups.
As applied to the problem of police deviance, power-conflict theory develops from the history of policing and the growth of capitalism within the United States. Focusing on the competition for power by various groups within society, power-conflict theorists view police brutality as a tool of subordination used by the dominant white group to protect its stronghold on limited resources. Minorities and others without political and economic power are more likely to be processed by law enforcement agents (Vold and Bernard, 1986) and experience differential enforcement of the law (Leinen, 1984; Smith and Visher, 1981).
Differential Experiences of Black and White Citizens with Police Agencies: A Brief History
Organized police forces as we know them have been around for about 150 years. Prior to that time, cities were patrolled by a few men who roamed the streets in the evening hours, calling out the time or weather conditions. In 1838 Boston became the first to employ men to patrol during daylight hours. Six years later New York City combined day and night watchmen into a single organized force. Over a thirty-year period after 1845, nearly every major city in the United States developed an organized police department (Platt et al., 1982).
The sharp increase in the demand for organized social control in the mid-1800s may be attributed to several factors: increased population density, growing ethnic diversity, the development of industrial capitalism, and the emergence of a hierarchical class structure. Several social theorists contend that a primary purpose of the police was, and continues to be, to protect the property, wealth, and position of the higher classes (Platt et al., 1982; Feagin and Hahn, 1973; Fielding, 1991). Historically, police relations with poor racial and ethnic groups often have been marked by aggressive domination and violence. Many times in their efforts to control the "dangerous classes," as defined by powerful white leaders and groups, the police relied on brute force. For instance, in the Draft Riot of New York City in 1863, the local police were estimated to have killed more than a thousand people, many of whom were poor and working class Irish immigrants (Platt et al., 1982).
In the South, the emergence of an organized police force was somewhat different. The history of the southern watchmen dates back to the year 1690 with the legislation of the slave codes. In order for the slave population to be adequately subordinated and controlled, all white males were given the right to stop, question, and apprehend any black person. These methods of control reflected and perpetuated the negative, often criminalized, portrayal of the black man in the white mind (Owens, 1977).
Police violence against African Americans continued throughout the history of the United States. From 1920 through 1932 white police officers killed 54 percent of the 749 blacks killed by white persons in the South and 68 percent of those killed outside of the southern region (Myrdal, 1944). Further, in an analysis of 76 race riots between 1913-1963, the immediate precipitating event in 20 percent of the uprisings was the killing of or interference with black men by white police officers. This percentage dramatically increased in the years 1964-1967, when seven of the fourteen major riots that occurred over the three-year period could be directly traced to the misconduct of white policemen against black citizens. In addition, most of the smaller riots were triggered by the larger riots and were thus indirectly linked to police-citizen encounters (Feagin and Hahn, 1973).
According to a number of analysts (see Fielding, 1991), the modern police forces, as major control agents of the state, are not only concerned with crime and its prevention but also with the surveillance and coercion of subordinate racial groups in society. Groups of individuals who are viewed as a threat to the dominant white society must be adequately controlled. There is much close patrolling of black and other minority communities. From the 1960s to the 1990s the common practice of preventive police patrolling in ghetto areas, with its "stop and frisk" and "arrest on suspicion" tactics, has led to unfavorable police contacts for black and Latino males. Harassment of this type in turn intensifies negative attitudes toward the police. In minority communities there is often a strong mistrust and even hatred of the police officers, who are frequently viewed as serving the interests of the dominant white group. The relationship between black and other minority citizens with white police officers has been, and continues to be, different from the relationship these officers typically have with white citizens (Alpert, 1989; Bogomolny, 1976; Feagin, 1991; Walker, 1992).
Continuing Racial Tensions
Surveys conducted in the 1960s and early 1970s indicated that black citizens expressed great dissatisfaction with local authorities. According to a 1970 Harris poll, only a fifth of the black respondents thought that local police officers applied the law equally; 62 percent believed cops were against blacks; 73 percent considered their local law enforcement agents were dishonest; and 67 percent thought police officers were more concerned with injuring African Americans than in preventing criminal acts (Feagin and Hahn, 1973). More recently, in a 1989 Gallup poll more than 50 percent of the blacks interviewed believed most police officers view blacks as suspects and would be likely to arrest the wrong person, and 25 percent of the black men stated that they had been harassed while driving through predominantly white neighborhoods (Bessent and Tayler, 1991). In a poll conducted by The New York Times, 28 percent of the blacks thought that police officers would give them a harder time when stopped for a minor traffic offense, which was nearly five times the percentage for white citizens. Further, one quarter of the black citizens interviewed stated that they knew someone who was a victim of police misconduct. This percentage was two and one-half times that for white respondents (Holmes, 1991).
In addition, in a poll of 1,901 residents of Los Angeles and Orange counties in 1990, half of the black respondents believed there was a "fair amount" of police brutality, which was twice the proportion found among white citizens (Decker, 1990). A 1991 poll found that two-thirds of Latinos in Los Angeles reported that incidents of police brutality were very common in their city; 35 percent of this group said that racist attitudes were very common among law enforcement officers. At public hearings in 1991 an independent citizens’ commission investigating the Los Angeles Police Department heard testimony from Mexican Americans that the department "acted like an army of occupation" (Ford and Stolberg, 1991).
Most racial relations researchers agree that selective enforcement of the law by police officers is institutionalized and routine and that officers apply a greater number of formal sanctions against minority Americans (Lienen, 1984; Smith and Visher, 1981). The relationship between minority groups and the dominant white society is marked, among other things, by competition for limited resources. Whites have a vested interest in the conservation and protection of the economic and residential resources they currently hold. The police, through differential enforcement practices and violence against blacks and other minorities, play an important role in maintaining the status quo as whites see it (Feagin and Hahn, 1973; Fielding, 1991). The police instruments that serve to protect the dominant position of white society also serve to keep blacks and other minorities in a subservient state (Oberschall, 1973).
Situational Aspects of Police-Citizen Encounters
Several research analyses have focused on the situational aspects surrounding the lethal use of force by police officers (Fridell, 1989; Fyfe, 1989). Research concerning the non-lethal use of force and the situations leading up to the encounter is rare, perhaps for a number of different reasons: the police-citizen incidents are often transitory and occur out of the public eye (McLaughlin, 1992); violent altercations with citizens are a relatively rare occurrence (Bayley and Garofalo, 1989; Fyfe, 1989); and many violent incidents go unreported by both the officer and the citizen involved.
McLaughlin (1992), in a review of several recent studies that examined use-of-force incidents, reported that many violent encounters in Orlando resulted during attempted arrests of unarmed misdemeanor suspects or of a "non-infamous felony suspect." While McLaughlin did not indicate whether or not these were minority citizens, he did state that blacks were more likely to resist arrest and that white officers were disproportionately involved in the overall number of use-of-force incidents. The Croft Report (Croft, 1985) examined 2,397 reported use of force incidents in Rochester, New York, from 1973 to 1979. This study reported that 80 percent of the incidents occurred in the course of an attempted misdemeanor crime or during a noncriminal situation. Furthermore, 30 percent of the arrests and the force necessary to subdue the citizen could have been avoided if the citizen "had ceased fighting, arguing, being verbally abusive to the officer or had obeyed orders of the officers" (Croft, 1985: 4). This finding was consistent with the findings of Reiss (1968) and Friedrich (1980), who found that suspects who were disrespectful or uncooperative were more likely to be arrested. Disrespect, however minor, for police officers is considered a major issue by many officers. Westley (1970) found that 37 percent of the responding officers indicated that illegal violence was justified if the suspect was disrespectful.
Falsification can also conceal an officer's use of excessive force. A number of officers told us how they and others would insulate themselves from excessive force complaints simply by adding charges of "resisting arrest" to the arrest report -- a practice rarely questioned by supervisors. In the 30th Precinct case, for example, one officer reported how he and another officer chased and finally caught an individual who had run from his car after a traffic stop. While the officer was holding the individual, another officer struck the defendant in the head with his police radio. The officers then agreed upon a false story justifying their stop and search of the car and about the circumstances of the defendant's head injury....
Officers' cynicism about the Department's commitment to corruption control is justified. As testimony at the Commission's public and private hearings made clear, supervising officers tip off subordinates about pending investigations or citizen complaints. On some occasions, desk officers reminded officers to add resisting arrest charges for suspects brought to the stationhouse with too many visible bruises. Obviously, a corrupt officer who sees his superiors condone his wrongdoing necessarily takes the message that being caught in the wrong is worse than doing the wrong itself. Officer Otto testified that although his commanding officer knew about corruption in his precinct, his only message to his officers was not to get caught.
-- The City of New York: Commission Report: Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department, by Milton Mollen
One purpose of our research is to explore the various situational aspects that lead up to violent police-citizen encounters.
Penalties and Substantiation Rates: An Effective Deterrent?
According to a national advisory commission report (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1973: 72, 93), "Once a finding sustains the allegations of wrongdoing, disciplinary sanctions commensurate with the seriousness of the offense that are imposed fairly, swiftly, and consistently will most clearly reflect the commitment of the department to oppose police misconduct." The report presented various penalties that could be assessed against officers based on the nature of the charge. Verbal reprimands, suspensions, demotions, reassignment, and permanent removal of duty were suggested. The article closed with the statement that "departments that are serious about preventing police misconduct can do something about it."
The commission also stressed the importance of effective controls from within, as opposed to various modes of external controls. In its view officers must be able to effectively control and monitor their own behavior, especially since there is so little criminal and civil prosecution of police malpractice. In addition, Skolnick and Fyfe (1993: 36) have argued that the attitude of police administrators is an important influence on the thinking of the individual officers: "Most excessive force cases that reach the courts show that the questionable conduct either has happened because superiors are so indifferent to the misconduct as to be grossly negligent in the performance of the duties, or occurs in fulfillment of administrative policy." If police officers do not perceive any risk of punishment for engaging in deviant behavior, then the likelihood that they will engage in this type of behavior increases.
The Research Project
Our research mainly addresses three major policing issues. First, are African Americans and other minority citizens more likely to find themselves victims of police brutality than white citizens? Second, are there certain situations that seem to have a greater likelihood of a violent police-citizen encounter? Third, are police departments taking allegations of violent police misconduct seriously?
Since there are no national statistics concerning police brutality available from any governmental source, we have used data derived from accounts of police misconduct in major newspapers for the period January 1, 1990 to May 31, 1992. We made use of one major Nexis database prepared by Mead Data Central. This database includes fifteen major newspapers updated on a daily basis and made available for computerized searches. These leading newspapers were selected by the Nexis service because of the size of their circulation and their major regional or national importance.
Using the keywords "police brutality," the following major national and regional newspapers were systematically searched for accounts of police malpractice in our time period: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Hartford Courant, The Los Angeles Times, The Minneapolis Star and Tribune, The New York Times, Newsday, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The Washington Times.
Out of the database of tens of thousands of articles, a total of 4,770 newspaper stories were retrieved that had at least a brief mention of "police brutality" in them. Due to the general nature of the phrase, not all of these stories dealt with a specific account of police brutality. Some of the articles dealt with "rap" songs that discussed the phenomenon, while others were based on political platforms of reform for candidates running for office. Many of the articles dealt specifically with the Rodney King incident and its aftermath. The King incident prompted many papers to broadly analyze and discuss their own local departments’ practices, while not discussing any specific case of alleged police brutality in any detail. Some of the retrieved articles dealt with the same incident, analyzing the encounter in greater depth or, in some cases, multiple newspapers reported on the same event. Combing through these 4,770 stories we found 130 distinct cases of police violence against civilians with enough detail for analysis.
We must note a few things about these data. For the purposes of this research we have accepted the designation of these incidents reported in these major newspaper accounts as cases of excessive police force, or "police brutality." It should be noted that newspapers use court, police, and community sources and there is a skew in the data toward the larger cities. Incidents of excessive police force were reported for cities in fifteen different states, with the greatest number in the largest states, New York and California. Five newspapers are located in the Midwest, and two are national digest papers that gave modest coverage to the problem of police violence. At the time of the data search, these fifteen media sources were the only newspapers available through the Lexis/Nexis service and no screening or selection process was used by the authors. [1]
The accounts of the acts of brutality varied in richness and depth. The more serious cases in which the officers were charged and tried were greatly detailed, while some other accounts of single police-citizen incidents presented only some basic details, thereby limiting the number of dimensions we can analyze in this paper.
The possibility of media bias in the major newspaper coverage of police brutality should be noted. In essence, the data is representative of the prevalence of news coverage of claims of police brutality and the level of media interest in these allegations. Why have these incidents found their way into the mass media, while many others have been ignored? In today’s racially charged climate, are violent police-citizen encounters with racial overtones more likely to garner the attention of the media than those with all white participants? Given the nature of the data source, these questions are impossible to answer. Conclusions based on this data should be evaluated with these limitations in mind.
Some white readers of our work have suggested that it is only the black and other minority cases that get into the mass media. However, it seems unlikely that an incident where white citizens were beaten up badly by police officers would not make its way into newspapers, especially if the victims were middle or upper class, as is sometimes the case for minority Americans. The opposite problem seems more likely. Martindale (1986: 133), in a discussion of the media and black Americans, has offered the following:
A vivid illustration of the black community’s concern with this problem was provided in the University of Washington seminar report, which noted that although the meeting was set up to consider media-black relations, a considerable amount of time was spent discussing police-black relations. While the black participants were willing to discuss the media, the report stated, they felt such a strong animosity toward the police that the presence of newsmen was sufficient to unleash a flood of criticism against the police. The participants apparently were eager to inform reporters about their grievances concerning police behavior in the black community because they felt that if journalists became aware of this situation and exposed it to the reading public, some corrective measures might be taken.... The media, however, continue to ignore this problem. They also seem prone to present the police only as upholders of law and order, black victims as possibly deserving of their fate, and black witnesses as probably unreliable.
White newspaper editors may feel pressure to affirm the integrity of the local police department and the desirability of the current societal organization, as phrased by Martindale (1986: 134), "Perhaps the media have failed to inquire deeply into this area because the truths that would emerge might prove uncomfortable to white middle-class society."
[Stu Bykofsky, Philadelphia Daily News] I’m glad to be credited for creating the term “Mumidiots.” They hate America. And they use him as a symbol and a focus of their hate. And Mumia becomes a handy symbol for them to use against a system that they believe is racist, and colonial, and homophobic and military and capitalist, and everything else that they despise. He’s articulate. He’s good-looking. I have to ask myself if he would have quite so much support if he were ugly and inarticulate. The overwhelming majority of Philadelphians believe he is guilty, and they are just tired of it. ... I’ve never read any of his books. I didn’t feel any need to, because I understand they are diatribes mostly, or they’re propaganda.
-- Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary. A Journey With Mumia Abu-Jamal, directed by Stephen Vittoria
Findings
The Racial Characteristics of Officers and Citizens
Examining the 130 relatively detailed cases of encounters reported as police brutality in these major newspapers, we found that the overwhelming majority of the civilian victims of police brutality were African-American. Interestingly, 113 of the victims (86.9 percent) were African American, 13 (10.0 percent) were Latino, and only 5 (3.5 percent) of the victims were non-Latino whites. Additionally, three of the five white victims were in the company of a black person at the time of the police encounter.
In contrast to the citizen data, the data on the officers involved showed a different racial background: 92.8 percent (N=104) were white, 2.7 percent (N=3) were of Latino origin, and 4.4 percent (N=5) of the officers were black (See Table 1). The racial makeup of the officers involved in violent assaults is whiter than the racial composition of larger city police departments. For example, in the city of Chicago, blacks represent 23 percent of the force (Jackson et al., 1991), while in New York City only 8 percent of the officers are black (Mydans et al., 1991). Overall, the Justice Department reports that whites constitute 85 percent of police officers, while blacks and Latinos account for 9 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
As we have noted, police departments were developed to control the poor and "dangerous classes" of urban society (Jacobs, 1979), and selective enforcement of the law by white police officers has been found to be common, with blacks and other minorities bearing a greater number of formal sanctions than whites. The cases reviewed in this analysis lend support to this contention. Almost 97 percent of the victims of police misconduct were minorities, and the vast majority (86.9 percent) of the victims were African American. Furthermore, in three of the five cases in which the victims were white, a black individual was also present. All but one of the altercations that resulted in death involved minority citizens, with black males accounting for the majority of the deaths.
It is significant that there is not a single case of white citizens being targeted for excessive force by black or Latino officers. In the cases involving Latino victims, the officers involved were either white or Latino. There were no cases of brutality involving a Latino victim and a black officer. In the two cases involving allegations of misconduct against Latino officers, the victims were either black or Latino. And in the cases in which the actions of a black police officer came under scrutiny, the victims were in all cases black citizens.
Table 1. Racial Classification of Officers and Victims
The data seem to suggest the existence of a hierarchy of racial or ethnic groups, what Feagin (1989) calls the "ladder of racial dominance." Some groups are positioned higher than others on the ladder, which results in greater power and privileges than lower groups. White citizens were rarely victims of abuse, and if they were, it was at the hands of white officers. Minority officers did not cross the line and assault those of a higher social position. In addition, white officers targeted minority group members for harsh treatment. Latinos seemed to be positioned below whites, but above blacks, in this hierarchy of force. While the low number of cases involving Latino officers suggests caution here, they show that Latino officers seemed to target members of their own group or blacks. These findings are consistent with Carter (1986) who found that Latino officers were more likely to discriminate against Latino citizens than white citizens. In the cases reviewed for this analysis, whites were not targeted by the Latino officers. Black officers were involved in brutality cases only with members of their racial group. There were no cases in which a black officer was involved in an altercation involving a white or Latino victim. Blacks seemed to occupy the lowest position on the ladder of dominance.
Situational Characteristics
The circumstances leading up to the final violent assault between the police officer(s) and the civilian victims could be analyzed in 113 of the altercations. For these 113 cases, the preceding events can be grouped into nine main categories, listed here in order of greatest occurrence: lack of respect or compliance on the part of the victim; perceived threat; traffic dispute or stop (included malfunctioning equipment or allegations of erratic driving); mistaken identity (the civilian appeared to match a description of an armed and dangerous individual); riot or protest-related incident (citizen was perceived or actually involved in a riot or protest); drug-related arrest (six of the eight reported incidents involved the forcible entry into homes of civilians in a search for drugs that did not exist); police chase or attempted escape; accidental shooting; and questioning or confession. The basis for classification was the circumstance that seemed to contribute the most to the assault. For example, if a motorist was stopped by police officers and proceeded to act in a threatening manner towards the officers, the incident was classified as a perceived threat, not a traffic stop. Only a few of the cases required this type of judgement call. The number of cases falling within each of these categories are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2. Situational Characteristics
The largest proportion (29.2 percent) of the cases involving a violent police-citizen encounter stemmed from a lack of respect or compliance on the part of the citizen toward the police officer. This finding is consistent with previous findings (see, for example, Croft, 1985; Westley, 1970). The actual circumstances surrounding the inadequate display of deference toward the officer were varied: The victim may have refused to provide his or her identification to the questioning officer, the victim may not have followed orders from the officers as quickly or as well as the officers may have liked, the victim may have had a "bad attitude" or failed to give the officer the amount of deference they expected, or, in a few cases, the victim may not have been able to communicate with the officers due to a handicap or lack of fluency in the English language.
Twenty-nine cases (25.7 percent) were the result of a perceived threat -- either the officer felt that his (rarely her) own life or the life of another citizen was in jeopardy. Complaints of brutality that resulted from the circumstances included within this category may be rationalized by many individuals. The police officer(s) involved felt that he or she was in a life or death situation: a gun may have been pointed at the officer or another citizen, or there may have been an escalating physical struggle. According to the findings of this study, more of the victims of police brutality had been disrespectful to officers than had posed a serious physical threat to the officers or other citizens.
In police/minority situations the use of racial slurs can be important. The use of racial slurs or epithets by officers in reference to citizens was noted by the media source in 25 of the 130 cases, with most of the targets of this form of abuse being African Americans. Only two slurs against Latino citizens were reported. Racial slurs and epithets, derogatory statements directed toward a minority group member, have been reported to be common in a number of police departments. For example, the Christopher Commission, in its review of the Los Angeles Police Department, found numerous racist comments in computer transmissions between the cars of the patrol officers, including some from sergeants who were on street patrol. Further, citizens are not the only recipients of racist treatment by the police officers. Janine Bouey, a light skinned black female officer with the Los Angeles Police Department complained to the department about the use of racial slurs that were made against suspects while in her presence (Serrano and Soble, 1991). Gregory Thomas, also of the Los Angeles Police Department, complained to a supervisor on several occasions that a fellow officer continually referred to him as "boy" and made racist jokes on Martin Luther King Day (Hudson, 1991).
Penalties
Of the 130 cases we analyzed, only 17 (13.1 percent) had a penalty reported against the officer involved. The actual penalties are listed in Table 3. A total of five officers lost their jobs, six were either reassigned to desk duty or suspended with pay, four were suspended from duty without pay for 10 to 60 days, and only two officers were charged with criminal offenses.
The percentage of these cases with officers being punished is a bit higher than the comparable percentages reported by several departments cited in the newspaper accounts. This may be because incidents reported in the newspapers probably of a more serious nature. For example, in Long Island, New York, out of 600 complaints of excessive force over a four year period (1987-1990), only nine of the complaints (1.5 percent) resulted in any punishment. In these cases the most severe penalties involved officers losing a few days pay or some accrued time. In 31 years, only one officer has been fired for the use of excessive force on Long Island (Tayler and Bessent, 1991). Similarly, the Chicago Tribune reported that in 1989-1990, there were 15,596 citizen complaints filed against the city of Chicago Police Department, with only 329 (2.1 percent) upheld. Many of these cases resulted in a suspension of less than 30 days. Additionally, the Justice Department reported that of 48,000 complaints against officers over the past six years, only 2 percent resulted in charges against the officer involved (Jackson, 1991). In complaints where black citizens are involved, there seems to be an even greater likelihood that the officers will not be punished. In a study of 4,400 complaints from 1987 through mid 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that only 8.4 percent of the complaints were substantiated. The study indicated that black citizens who filed complaints against white officers had the worst chance of substantiation, with only 4 percent of these complaints found to be valid by Internal Affairs investigations. Black citizens in the city of Los Angeles comprise only 13 percent of the city population, but account for 41 percent of the official complaints against officers (Rohrlich and Merina,1991).
Several reasons have been proposed for the few penalties given to police officers because of malpractice: the lack of credible witnesses and victims; the tendency for jurors not to convict officers; and the need to maintain a working relationship between the District Attorney’s office and the police department. In a trial, the defense attorneys for the accused officers have access to school, work, medical, and arrest records of complainants and victims. However, personal information concerning the officers is not obtainable (Tayler, 1991). If the victim has a long criminal history, the jury may not find the testimony credible. Jurors are reluctant to convict officers who are charged in brutality cases. In one of the cases analyzed in this study two officers admitted on the stand that they had beaten a car theft suspect, and that something inside of them had "just snapped." The officers were found not guilty (Freed, 1991).
Table 3. Summary of Penalties
Before a complaint can ever be considered for prosecution, the complaint must first be filed with an agency. While some departments have outside agencies that also take complaints, in most cases the complaint must be filed directly with the police department the victim is complaining against. According to the Hartford Courant, when a complainant first enters the station to file a complaint against the Hartford Police Department, he or she is first told that they could be arrested for filing a false police report (Barger and Thibault, 1991). Further, in a sworn testimony given by Robert Sobel, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff Sergeant, Sobel stated that he had "shortstopped" citizen complaints against those under his command to protect them. Sobel called the complainants and gave them the impression that their complaint was being thoroughly investigated (Merina, 1991).
In his public testimony, Cawley gave an example of how the "Us vs. Them" mentality works in a real-life situation. He explained, in his experience, the treatment a civilian would receive at the precinct if he attempted to report an officer's brutality:
He [the Desk Officer] would give [the complainant] the paperwork to fill out. Then they'd ask him for a pen. He'd tell you listen there's a bodega across the street, go there and buy it. I'm not helping you. Then if they needed any help with [the complaint form], he wouldn't help them. Then if the person went through all the aggravation to fill out the complaint report ... they'd tell you, 'Listen, we have to get it typed now. There's a waiting line for the typing. It's going to be about three hours, so sit right there and wait.' Half the time people would say, 'Three hours, you got to be crazy', and they would leave. As soon as they left, he'd crumple it up and throw it right in the garbage. (Tr. 130)
-- The City of New York: Commission Report: Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department, by Milton Mollen
In a review of practices within the Oakland, California, police department, Skolnick and Bayley (1986) have discussed problems associated with departmental investigation of officers. James Chanin, an attorney who advises citizens on the filing of brutality complaints, says that he never advises clients to seek redress through Internal Affairs: "If someone comes in with black and blue marks and says this officer beat me, they will not seriously entertain the notion that the officer could have done it -- or even if they do, there’s no set of circumstances where they’ll find the complaint substantiated" (quoted in Skolnick and Bayley: 157).
Discussion and Conclusions
Our data suggest that police brutality is a national problem. The major newspapers we examined from January 1, 1990 to May 31, 1992 reported 130 detailed and important cases in 15 different states. Significantly, the nation’s leaders do not seem to be willing to face these facts. The early 1990s report prepared by the Justice Department, the only nationwide review of police brutality, has not been released in any detail. While our data have some flaws, they are among the best available at this time.
The Kerner Commission report, which was prepared more than two decades ago, stated that to earn respect, police officers and the courts must administer justice in a way that is free from discrimination or prejudice. Unfortunately, the findings of our study suggest that street-level justice still is not administered in a color-blind fashion. Minority citizens accounted for the vast majority of those who were abused in a serious manner by (mostly white) police officers. These findings suggest that some serious racial discrimination exists in the application of U.S. law enforcement in the 1990s.
Our analysis uncovered several interesting findings. One was the possible existence of a "ladder of dominance" among the racial groups. In terms of who gets targeted, whites were found to be the least likely, then the Latinos, and finally the blacks. In addition, there is a similar pattern for the officers. In the few cases involving allegations against black officers, the citizens were all black. For the few cases of Latino officers, the complainants were either black or Latino, not white. Only in the case of white officers were the complainants from all three groups. This finding held true for both male and (the few) female officers. This pattern suggests that officers may only assault those whom they view as members of an equal or inferior racial group. However, before a definite conclusion can be drawn, more cases involving minority police officers would need to be analyzed. Our finding here is only suggestive.
Another interesting finding is the relative lack of penalties given to the officers involved in violent altercations with citizens. Even though the percentage of officers who were penalized in this analysis was somewhat higher than other reported statistics, in this analysis only 13 percent of the officers received some sort of penalty for their alleged involvement in assaults against citizens. Further, in only 3 percent of the cases was the officer ultimately relieved of duty. If harsher penalties were applied, perhaps the rate of police brutality against citizens would decline. We can also recall that the Los Angeles Times study found that black officers were twice as likely as their white peers to be found guilty of misconduct. If the complainant was white, the substantiation rate for black officers was twice that for white officers, while Latino officers were penalized three times more often. It would be interesting to see if this finding could be replicated on a national scale, perhaps controlling for offense of the officer and other important considerations.
Some might suggest that the higher violent crime rates of black Americans might be one reason for the higher rate of police violence against black Americans, especially black men. The idea is that violent criminals are more threatening and thus more likely to provoke police violence. Thus, according to 1992 Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics, black citizens accounted for 45 percent of the total number of arrests for violent offenses (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993). Mutalia (1982) found that black citizens accounted for 60 percent of those who died in 1,428 justifiable shootings by police officers from 1975 to 1979. According to Mutalia, the disproportionate rate of black victims who were fatally shot by the police was in direct proportion to the level of crime committed by black citizens. However, the data suggest that this proportion is much higher than the arrest-for-violent-crime rate.
Our data suggest some serious problems with this argument. The proportion of black citizens who are victims of police brutality is higher (86.9 percent) than the rate reported for their involvement in violent criminal activity that resulted in arrest (45 percent). Furthermore, as the examination of situational characteristics demonstrates, African American citizens do not have to be involved in the commission of a crime to be victimized: having a disrespectful attitude towards the officer, being involved in a routine traffic stop, or just resembling a violent criminal could very well make an otherwise law-abiding citizen become a target for abuse. In nearly 75 percent of the cases, the victim was not recognized by the officer at the scene as being a direct threat to the officer or other citizens.
In our data more minority citizens were assaulted for lack of compliance/respect to an officer than for posing a serious threat to the officer or another civilian. It is significant that all the victims of abuse in these circumstances of "disrespect" were black or Latino. According to the earlier Kerner Commission report (1968), a criminal justice system cannot function effectively unless it receives the respect of the people it serves. However, by the same token, the criminal justice system must prove itself deserving of respect before the people will defer to it or its agents. Acts of brutality do not instill respect, only resentment and fear.
In the categories in which the officers’ behavior was more proactive in nature, the social class of the victim seemed to have some relation with the assault. Pro-active cases included the traffic stop and mistaken identity categories. In these incidents, the officer stopped the victim on his or her own accord; the civilian did not come to the officer’s attention as a result of answering an assigned call. In the mistaken identity incidents, the officer stopped the citizen because he or she resembled a bank robber, mugger, or drug dealer that was reportedly loose in the neighborhood. According to the descriptions given in the media, the victims whose assault stemmed from a case of mistaken identity were of middle or upper class status. Further, half of those assaulted as a result of an incident related to traffic were of middle or upper class: college students, a former Los Angeles Lakers star, a former police liaison officer, and a successful entrepreneur. In situation where the civilians were indeed of middle or upper status and victims of pro-active enforcement by police officers, the victims were all black. These data suggest that these African Americans may have come to the attention of the police because of their "violation" of the white image of their racial group, that is, they were not lower-class blacks. The middle and upper class status of these black individuals may have indicated to the officers that the victims possessed wealth and resources that rightfully belonged to whites like themselves.
James Q. Wilson (1968) has argued that the class of the victim is more important than race as a determinant of police mistreatment. In his view race only accentuates the brutality. However, our data seem to contradict this argument. If Wilson were correct, more lower-class whites should be the victims of police brutality, and reports of police abuse against higher- class blacks should not be so common.
Finally, in our view the cost to the taxpayer of the misconduct of police officers needs to be addressed at the level of public policy. In reviewing cases for this analysis, we found that since 1989 taxpayers have paid out at least $134 million in awards to citizens alleging police brutality, with another $116 million in lawsuit awards pending. These costs did not include legal fees, which in many cases can be substantial. In the County of Los Angeles alone, $20 million had been paid to citizens alleging police brutality since 1989; this figure does not include $34 million in litigations fees in the same time period. Since only 22 different cities were found to report costs associated with lawsuits alleging police misconduct, the actual nationwide figure is certainly much higher. The costs of police brutality are not simply the scars on the minority victims, which are the most serious, but also the high costs for local governments in the United States.
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Notes:
1. The number of incidents reported by state were: Alabama (1), California (35), Connecticut (3), Florida (1), Georgia (1), Illinois (7), Louisiana (1), Maryland (2), Massachusetts (7), New Jersey (1), New York (52), Tennessee (1), Texas (4), Virginia (2), Washington (6), Washington, D.C. (4).
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