Police Use Of Force Essay, Research Paper

As Robert Cover established in his essay, Violence and the Word, violence is an integral aspect of legal practices. From the arresting officer s use of force, to the sentence a judge passes down, to the actual implementation of the sentence, the legal process is riddled with violent acts and interpretations. In this essay, I will argue that if the use of violence by police officers is primarily a racial issue. I will also show that if limits on police force are not well defined, they will lead to increased separation, mistrust, and violent acts within communities.

The issue of race has always been fundamental to the topic of police violence. Perhaps the most prominent time period for racially spawned police violence was after the civil war when slaves were emancipated. The south was known for its strong racial biases, and the south s police were no exception. With the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, many blacks were being victimized, and the police did nothing to help. In fact, at least one-half of the lynchings were carried out with police officers participating, and in nine-tenths of the others the officers either condoned or winked at the mob action (Skolnick 24). This type of activity, although well over one hundred years ago, still affects the relationships between blacks and the police in the south today.

It is not just the south that has experienced its share of racially generated violence. In 1900, New York erupted into a huge riot that stemmed from competition between Irish workers and Negro workers. The Irish felt that their jobs were threatened by blacks offering to work for less money. During these riots, the police (mostly Irish) engaged in cracking the heads of Negroes and doing nothing to restrain the Irish mob (Skolnick 72). Similar riots occurred in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, accompanied by similar acts by the police. More recent examples of racial tension and actions between police and blacks are the civil rights movement of the 1960 s and most recently the riots in 1992 that followed the Rodney King verdict. In these incidents, police did such things as hose down black protesters.

The first question that enters my mind, is why this violence persists. An answer to this question is not easy to come by. One explanation is that the police receive mixed messages from the public and from legislatures. Many people voice their opinion that police should be tough on crime , and should do whatever is necessary to get criminals of the street. It is easy for people to say this, but police have the tough job of doing it without angering anyone. Nobody supported the police brutality shown in the Rodney King videotape, but many supported the system that produced it (Skolnick 81). The system that produced the King beating was Daryl Gates war on crime system that the public supported because it produced good arrest statistics.

Another explanation for the persisting violence is that Los Angeles police officers, like the group in the King incident, were only accountable to their chief. This usually resulted in little or no disciplinary action following a complaint. The chief was able to get away with this, because he was held accountable to no one. As Skolnick said, just as an army led by generals who do not have to report to the president has no place in a democracy, this insular system with its lack of accountability to a mayor has no place in any American city (Skolnick 22). This type of confined system allowed for a corrupt or unpopular police chief to do whatever he wanted, because he knew that the public had no way of reprimanding or removing him. This problem, however, is not as significant as it was a few years ago. After the King incident, the voters passed Amendment F which gave City Hall more power to remove the chief of police and it limited the chief s tenure to two five year terms.

Another reason that police officers continue the excessive use of force is that they simply act upon the orders of their superiors. Their superiors, like Daryl Gates, are the ones that come up with policies and rules by which officers respond to. One example of a person in power that made rules encouraging the use of extreme force was Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia s Police Commissioner and Mayor. He was known for making such statements as I m gonna make Attila the Hun look like a faggot after this election s over The way to treat criminals is spacco il capa (to bust their heads) (Skolnick 139). This type of message trickled down through the ranks of the police force from the chief to the officer on the streets. Although scholars have found that it is rare for officers to act out these type of messages violently, but it does ultimately determine whether and how officers distinguish among citizens as good or bad (Skolnick 138). The Rodney King beating was an example of this filtered down message. Although the vast majority of the officers did not act violently at the scene, the same number also didn t do anything to stop the abuse. This was because it was thought of as an acceptable way to teach King a lesson, acceptable because of ideals sent down from the officer s superiors.

Before the Rodney King video was broadcast across the world, many people were oblivious to the type violence being administered to citizens, usually the minority lower class. Why were people unaware? One reason is the code of silence. This term refers to the habit of police officers to hear and see nothing when it came to other officer s acts of violence. An example of this code is the recent occurrence in New York, when a person was taken into a precinct and had a plunger shoved up his rectum. Despite the victim s cries of pain, not a single officer reported the incident until two days later. This silence transpires because an officer does not want to rat on another officer that may save his life the following day. It is not easy in any group to be identified as the rat, the squealer, the busybody, the one person who cannot be trusted (Skolnick 111). The code of silence is not only found in police departments, it is evident in almost any group. However, the feeling that cops protect other cops is extremely strong within the police community. This is because cops rely on other cops, and other cops only. The day a person joins the force he leaves society behind to enter a profession that does more than give him a job, it defines who he is (Skolnick 91).

Whether or not police violence originates from racial issues, a major problem with the use of force is defining how much is too much. Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe define police brutality as a conscious and venal act committed by officers who usually take great pains to conceal their misconduct (Skolnick 19). They make a point to distinguish this brutality from the use of unnecessary force in which there is no intent to exert more force than what is necessary. One way to define what is acceptable and what is not, is to have complaints about officers reviewed by boards made up of officers outside of the district where the complaint was filed. If these boards handled the complaints and handed out the punishments, officers would begin to see what was acceptable and what was not. Also, the victims of the act would feel justified, and in turn, view the police in a more positive way. The positive feeling of the police would in turn produce a feeling of self-worth for cops. This is not how things are handled today however.

Under today s system, police are in a bind. They are stuck with the difficult job of defining what exactly the thin blue line is. The officer on the street has the most discretion of any person in the force, and they receive the brunt of the public s scrutiny. This in turn results in police getting the idea that nobody cares and they become understandably cynical and sometimes even brutal (Skolnick 236).

Violence has and will continue to be a very important aspect of police work. The relationship between the two, no matter how ingrained, does have room for improvement. Society must proceed to look for the underlying causes of excessive force, and ways to combat them. This ongoing struggle to improve our police system is summed up by Thomas Repetto of The Blue Parade: Police administration is not applied mechanics, but a living, breathing organism shaped by the political, social, and economic trends of time and place (Skolnick 172).