police brutality and the media essay

How the Media Covered Police Brutality Three Decades Ago

The first stories about the beating of Rodney King in two major newspapers focused on racial injustice. But that changed.

This spring, the news media is closely watching the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd in 2020. Twenty-nine years ago, another police brutality trial captured the attention of newspapers and TV news. Four white officers from the Los Angeles Police Department were changed in the severe beating of Black motorist Rodney King. Journalism and media studies professor William L. Solomon looks at the coverage of that trial by the nation’s two most influential papers , the New York Times and the Washington Post .

Solomon writes that the initial stories about the assault on King on March 3, 1991, focused on the response by community and civil rights groups. They pointed to the beating as an example of persistent racism and brutality in the LAPD. The Times quoted a legal advocacy group that noted it received complaints similar to what King had suffered on a regular basis, as well as a criminal justice professor who described police as “blatantly and openly hostile to nonwhite minorities.” The papers also covered local leaders’ calls for Police Chief Daryl F. Gates to resign.

But within a few weeks, the coverage shifted to political feuding among city leaders, culminating in Gates’s announcement of his retirement in June 1992.

“Voices of the underclass were re-marginalized, just as they had been absent from the media before the beating,” Solomon writes.

As the trial of four police officers approached, Solomon writes, the dominant media narrative was that these moves were “setting the stage for the four errant police officers to receive justice.”

When the trial began, the papers reported on the defendants’ legal strategies. While the Post referred to the “chilling tape” of the defendants “savagely beating” King, the Times downplayed King’s injuries. Both mentioned the decision to move the trial to “a conservative, overwhelmingly white area,” as the Times put it, but neither paper paid close attention to the defense tactic of breaking the video down frame by frame .

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, a Times reporter took part in a ride-along with an LAPD officer, reporting on the difficult situations officers dealt with on the job. The Times also interviewed members of the public in local Black and white communities, reporting that everyone agreed the police should be punished for their actions.

Unlike when the assault on King first took place, there was little focus on the broader issue of societal racism and the role of the police in Black communities. Solomon notes that neither paper analyzed the way the defense drew on racist tropes to present King as “at once all-powerful, animalistic, dazed by drugs, and insensate to pain.”

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Overall, Solomon writes, the coverage suggested that Gates’s removal had solved the police department’s internal issues, and the trial should prove that misbehaving officers would be brought to justice.

It was only after the jury’s acquittal of the officers, and the uprising that followed, that the media once again began to examine the deeper roots of racism in policing.

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Police brutality and racism in America

The Schwartzreport tracks emerging trends that will affect the world, particularly the United States.  For EXPLORE it focuses on matters of health in the broadest sense of that term, including medical issues, changes in the biosphere, technology, and policy considerations, all of which will shape our culture and our lives.

After getting arrested several times for participating in civil rights demonstrations as I walked down Constitution Avenue, past what were then known as the Old Navy buildings, now long gone, on that warm Wednesday afternoon on the 28th of August 1963, I thought we had reached the turning point. I and thousands of others were moving quietly and peacefully towards the Lincoln Memorial where we were going to hear the Reverend Martin Luther King give what history now knows as the “I have a Dream" speech.

I was walking with a Black friend, a reporter for The Washington Star, an historic paper now long gone. I looked over Richard's shoulder and saw walking next to us two young partners of the then conservative Republican law firm, Covington & Burling. Richard saw where I was looking and turned to watch them as well. To him they were just two more White men; a large proportion of the crowd were White, and men. When I explained who they were he smiled, and I said, “I think we've won.” It was such a happy day; I remember it still.

And a little less than a year later, on 2 July 1964, almost unthinkably, a Southern politician, President Lyndon Johnson, signed into law the bipartisan Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of public schools, and facilities, and made employment discrimination based on race illegal. It seemed Dr. King's dream was coming true.

Then a year after that when Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, I thought all was now well. It had taken a hundred years, since the end of the Civil War, but we were finally throttling the monster of racism.

And yet here I sit, looking day after day at the searing television images of the new civil rights demonstrations, watching videos of White policemen murdering Black men for no reason except they could, thinking they would get away with it, as they had so often in the past. The mass demonstrations with their clouds of tear gas and rubber bullets. The gross misuse of the American military against American citizens. The eight minutes and 46 seconds of video showing four policemen in Minneapolis murdering an unarmed handcuffed Black man, George Floyd, as he lay in the street handcuffed, that has caused, as I write this, 19 days of civil rights demonstrations involving millions all over the world.

It is important to remember also, I think, that this historic event, the murder and everything that has followed from that death is known to us only because of the bravery of one 17-year old girl, Darnell Frazier, who would not be intimidated and kept her phone camera on creating a video record of what was happening. As her hometown paper, the Star Tribune reported, Frazier wasn't looking to be a hero. She was “just a 17-year-old high school student, with a boyfriend and a job at the mall, who did the right thing. She's the Rosa Parks of her generation.” 1 I completely agree. I have written often about the power of a single individual at the right moment. 2 Could there be a clearer example?

What made this event historic, so catalyzing, so emotionally powerful that people all over the world in their millions took to the streets, even though it could mean their life because the Covid-19 pandemic which, in the U.S. alone, had infected over two million people and was still killing a thousand people a day? I think it was because it illustrated the conjunction of two major trends in America: the blatant racism that still infects the country, and the racially biased police brutality which has become outrageous.

George Floyd is one of a thousand police killings that will probably happen in 2020. There were that many last year. The statistics about American law enforcement are astounding when compared to those of other developed nations, like those that make up the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). According to Statistia in the U.S. there have been, “a total (of) 429 civilians ...shot, 88 of whom were Black, as of June 4, 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 increased to 1004 (see Figure 1). Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 30 fatal shootings per million of the population as of June 2020.” 3

Credit: The Washington Post.

By way of contrast, in Norway, which I pick because it is a nation with high gun ownership, the police in 2019 armed themselves and displayed weapons 42 times, and fired two guns once each, and no one was killed. Few Americans even realize that “A police officer does not have to shoot to kill and, in several countries, a police officer does not even have to carry a gun. In Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Britain, and Ireland, police officers generally do not carry firearms.” 4

Intermixed with racial brutality on the part of the law enforcement system in the U.S. is the gross misuse of the American military against the American people they are sworn to protect. And then there is the American gulag. It's prisons and jails dot our national landscape holding millions of incarcerated men and women a large majority of them Black and Brown.

Until this June I don't think most Americans really understood how violent and racist policing in America has become. If you are White like me, professional and relatively affluent, you never have any interactions with the police. They don't come to your door, and should it happen that you are stopped for a traffic ticket you don't feel threatened; it is no more than an annoyance that is going to cost you a few dollars for the fine. And even then, how often does that happen? I haven't been stopped since 1973, when a taillight on my car had gone out without my noticing. You see the police, they are there. But it is not an issue.

But if you are Black or Brown you live in another world.

Three weeks before George Floyd was murdered during a traffic stop by four police officers, an exhaustive study carried out by a research team at Stanford University led by Emma Pierson and Camelia Simoiu, was published in Nature Human Behavior Entitled, “A Large-scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police stops Across the United States”. It presented the truth of America, and it is horrifying.

“We assessed racial disparities in policing in the United States by compiling and analysing a dataset detailing nearly 100 million traffic stops conducted across the country. We found that black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a ‘veil of darkness’ masks one's race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and the likelihood that searches turned up contraband, we found evidence that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers. Finally, we found that legalization of recreational marijuana reduced the number of searches of white, black and Hispanic drivers—but the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was still lower than that for white drivers post-legalization. Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities.” 5

Some years ago I was on the board of a foundation to help children in medical distress. Also on the board was the then Deputy Chief of Police of the Los Angeles Police Department. We became friendly and one night went out to dinner together after a board meeting. This was not long after the 1992 riots that occurred when Rodney King, a Black man, was savagely beaten by police in a traffic stop. I asked the Deputy Chief, who had told me he had risen through the ranks and been a sworn officer for almost 30 years, how many police officers would participate in something like the King beating? I have never forgotten his answer. He said, “About 15% of police are heroes, the very best you could ever ask for. Another 15% are thugs and bullies who become police because they think they can act out without fear of punishment. The remaining 70% go with the flow. If they are with heroes, they behave heroically; if they are assigned to work with thugs, well bad things happen.” He explained that what he was trying to do was identify the thugs before they were hired. And to break through the “Blue Wall” if they were hired. He told me it was not easy, and one of the problems was the police union which protected its members at all cost.

How bad is it? I mean real numbers, not just the conjecture and political commentary that fills the airwaves. It turns out that it is very hard to get this information. Because of the power of the police unions and the racism of the U.S. Congress under the last four presidents, both Democrats and Republicans — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump — as police violence has grown worse each year, creating a real federal data base on police violence has proven almost impossible.

Congress passed H.R. 3355 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. 6 It provided funds for local and state law enforcement entities and the State Attorney Generals to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” across the nation and to “publish an annual summary of the data acquired.” It didn't go well. In 1996, the Institute for Law and Justice and the National Institute of Justice on behalf of the DOJ, in a carefully worded report, described the failure to do what was mandated two years earlier. “Systematically collecting information on use of force from the Nation's more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies is difficult given the lack of standard definitions, the variety of incident recording practices, and the sensitivity of the issue.” 7

So in 2020, do we know any more? We do, although still far from enough. In 2019, a research team led by Frank Edwards of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, published a report, “Risk of being killed by police use-of-foce in the U.S. by age, race/ethnicity, and sex.” They reported:

“We use novel data on police-involved deaths to estimate how the risk of being killed by police use-of-force in the United States varies across social groups. We estimate the lifetime and age-specific risks of being killed by police by race and sex. We also provide estimates of the proportion of all deaths accounted for by police use-of-force. We find that African American men and women, American Indian / Alaska Native men and women, and Latino men face higher lifetime risk of being killed by police than do their white peers. We find that Latino women and Asian / Pacific Islander men and women face lower risk of being killed by police than do their white peers. Risk is highest for Black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1000 chance of being killed by police over the life course. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. Risk peaks between the ages of 20 and 35 for all groups. For young men of color, police use-of-force is among the leading causes of death.” 8

Just to put that in a little finer focus, what they are saying is: “African American men were about 2  1 / 2  times more likely than White men to be killed by police. Men of color face a non-trivial lifetime risk of being killed by police” 9

The Washington Post looked into this issue and tuned the data even finer: “Although half of the people shot and killed by police are white, black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for just 13 percent of the U.S. population, but more than a quarter of police shooting victims. The disparity is even more pronounced among unarmed victims, of whom more than a third are black.” 10

And if you are Black or Brown, while being murdered is the worst case scenario it is not the only misery that awaits any interaction with America's racist police. A study carried out by Megan T. Stevenson and Sandra Mayson that was published in 2018 in The Boston University Law Review described the reality of being a Black person on the streets of America. In doing their research Stevenson and Mayson discovered first that the hysteria about crime built up in America by conservative politicians and commentators, who are overwhelmingly White, is unfounded. “the number of misdemeanor arrests and cases filed have declined markedly in recent years. In fact, national arrest rates for almost every misdemeanor offense category have been declining for at least two decades, and the misdemeanor arrest rate was lower in 2014 than in 1995 in almost every state for which data is available.” 11

But they also found, “there is profound racial disparity in the misdemeanor arrest rate for most—but not all—offense types. This is sobering if not surprising. More unexpectedly, perhaps, the variation in racial disparity across offense types has remained remarkably constant over the past thirty-seven years; the offenses marked by the greatest racial disparity in arrest rates in 1980 are more or less the same as those marked by greatest racial disparity today.” 12

The truth that almost none of us who are White get is that 57 years after Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, 56 years after the Civil Rights act of 1964, and 55 years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, if you are Black or Brown, and particularly if you are a young Black man, for you America is like living in an occupied country where any interaction with the police is to be avoided. It can send you to prison for a trivial offense at the least, and may, and often does, result in your murder at the hands of those whose supposed but not actual job is to “serve and protect.”

Speaking as a White man, I am fed up with that, and I think that this November all of us who are White and who believe the function of the state should be to foster wellbeing at every level, for everyone, need to check off our ballots only for candidates who are willing to do that, and vote out of office all politicians not so committed. What do you think?

Scientist, futurist, and award-winning author and novelist Stephan A. Schwartz , is a Distinguished Consulting Faculty of Saybrook University, and a BIAL Fellow. He is an award winning author of both fiction and non-fiction, columnist for the journal EXPLORE, and editor of the daily web publication Schwartzreport.net in both of which he covers trends that are affecting the future. For over 40 years, as an experimentalist, he has been studying the nature of consciousness, particularly that aspect independent of space and time. Schwartz is part of the small group that founded modern Remote Viewing research, and is the principal researcher studying the use of Remote Viewing in archaeology. In addition to his own non-fiction works and novels, he is the author of more than 200 technical reports, papers, and academic book chapters. In addition to his experimental studies he has written numerous magazine articles for Smithsonian, OMNI, American History, American Heritage, The Washington Post, The New York Times, as well as other magazines and newspapers. He is the recipient of the Parapsychological Association Outstanding Contribution Award, OOOM Magazine (Germany) 100 Most Inspiring People in the World award, and the 2018 Albert Nelson Marquis Award for Outstanding Contributions.

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• NEWS FEATURE
• 19 June 2020
• Update 26 May 2021

What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work

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Lynne Peeples is a science journalist in Seattle, Washington.

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For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. This deadly use of force by the now-former Minneapolis police officer has reinvigorated a very public debate about police brutality and racism.

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Nature 583 , 22-24 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01846-z

Updates & Corrections

Update 26 May 2021 : On 20 April 2021, Derek Chauvin was convicted of causing the death of George Floyd. The text has been modified to include updated information on how long Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.

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The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality, Updated Edition

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This book considers how media coverage of unexpected, dramatic events shapes public consciousness about important social and political problems. It argues that when incidents of police brutality become news, they offer one of the few real battlegrounds available for marginalized voices and activists to find a public platform and take on the powerful. Including new chapters that look more closely at race and racial justice in incidents of police force, the text reflects on the context in which the first edition was written—a time when race and policing were rarely discussed in the news or in the field of political communication—and considers what has changed in media studies since the year 2000, what hasn’t changed, and why. It considers coverage of more recent incidents of police violence and the ways in which the voices of citizen activists are treated in the news today. The text also addresses the important question of how defining political problems through such events might or might not produce more lasting policy change.

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What works to reduce police brutality

Psychologists’ research is pinpointing the factors that lead to overly aggressive, biased policing—and intervention that can prevent it

Vol. 51, No. 7 Print version: page 30

• Physical Abuse and Violence
• Forensics, Law, and Public Safety
• Racism, Bias, and Discrimination
• Race and Ethnicity

When the Las Vegas Police Department applied a psychology-informed “hands off” policy for officers involved in foot chases, use of force dropped by 23%. In Seattle, officers trained in a “procedural justice” intervention designed in part by psychologists used force up to 40% less. These are just a few examples of the work the field is doing to address police brutality.

“There’s much more openness to the idea of concrete change among police departments,” says Joel Dvoskin, PhD, ABPP, a clinical and forensic psychologist and past president of APA’s Div. 18 (Psychologists in Public Service).

That shift is backed by support from the public. Since 2016, the share of Americans who say that police use the right amount of force, treat racial and ethnic groups equally and hold officers accountable for misconduct has declined substantially, according to the Pew Research Center ( Majority of Public Favors Giving Civilians the Power to Sue Officers for Misconduct , 2020).

Psychologists have already played a critical role in the reform process—from collecting data on biased police stops, searches and use of force to designing and delivering interventions that reduce the chances that police will rely on stereotypes, for instance by limiting the amount of discretion officers have during searches.

Now, psychologists are promoting those interventions to more police departments, conducting research to determine how well they work and continuing to collect and organize data on police behavior and department culture.

“Criminal justice—police, courts, prisons—has been called an evidence-free zone,” says Tom Tyler, PhD, a professor of psychology at Yale Law School and an expert in the psychology of justice. “People in positions of power tend to make policy decisions based on intuition and common sense—presumptions that we as psychologists recognize are often in error.”

“What’s really needed is an evidence-informed model of criminal justice,” he says. “And a lot of that evidence can come from psychologists.”

Psychological research in action

In 2015, President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing reviewed scientific data on policing, recommending major policy changes at the federal level to improve oversight, training, officer wellness and more ( Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing , 2015).

Federal efforts have slowed in recent years, with most changes happening at the local level. But with around 18,000 police departments nationwide, that response has been fragmented and inconsistent ( National Sources of Law Enforcement Employment Data , Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016).

Still, psychologists have forged ahead with efforts that are making a difference. One key contribution involves spurring policy changes and interventions based on psychological insights.

“One of the most influential approaches coming from psychology is training in procedurally just policing,” says Calvin Lai, PhD, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

That approach aims to increase the public’s trust in police by drawing on psychological research on justice and fairness. It involves teaching officers strategies such as explaining to citizens why they’ve been stopped and how it will benefit public safety ( Principles of Procedurally Just Policing , The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, 2018).

“We know that the policing model of using force to compel compliance lowers the crime rate but does not build trust,” says Tyler, who has developed and studied models of procedurally just policing. “The crime rate has declined about 75% in the last 30 years, but public trust in the police hasn’t increased at all.”

His research has shown that what community members really want is for police to treat them with respect and to give them a voice—a chance to explain their situation before action is taken. People also want to know that police are sincere, care about the well-being of their community, and act in an unbiased and consistent way—for example, by explaining the rules they use and how they’re applying them.

A study in Seattle randomly assigned officers to receive training in procedurally just policing, leading to a reduction in use of force of between 15% and 40%, depending on the situation (Owens, E., et al., Criminology & Public Policy , Vol. 17 , No. 1, 2018).

“It seems to be doing what we’d hope in terms of promoting better relationships between police officers and community members,” says Lai.

The Center for Policing Equity (CPE), led by psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, of Yale University, has also led a number of psychology-driven policy changes in police departments around the country. In an effort to cut down on high-adrenaline encounters—where police officers are more likely to rely on stereotypes—Goff urged the Las Vegas Police Department to bar officers involved in a foot pursuit from handling suspects when the chase ends. The policy led to a 23% drop in use of force at the department, an 11% reduction in officer injury and a simultaneous drop in racial disparities in use of force data. CPE has also pioneered efforts to recruit racially and ethnically diverse officer candidates and to make immigration enforcement more consistent.

Another key area that psychological interventions target is implicit bias, which has been documented across a range of domains and populations ( State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review , Kirwan Institute, 2017). One study led by Jennifer Eberhardt, PhD, professor of psychology at Stanford University, reviewed body camera footage and found that police officers in Oakland, California, treated Black people with less respect than whites (Voigt, R., et al., PNAS , Vol. 114, No. 25, 2017).

Eberhardt and others, including Lorie Fridell, PhD, a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, have designed and begun to deliver training programs on implicit bias to law enforcement agencies around the country (“ Producing Bias-Free Policing: A Science-Based Approach ,” Springer Publishing, 2017).

Those programs, which typically mix instruction, discussion and role-playing, aim to help agencies reduce high-discretion policing and hold officers accountable for biased practices. But there’s no standardized curriculum—and experts say more research is needed to determine whether implicit bias training has a lasting impact and how such training can work alongside other agency reform efforts.

“There seem to be some forms of training that are effective, but the studies on these interventions are still pretty limited,” says Lai. “We just don’t know that much one way or the other.”

The power of peer intervention

Another intervention that has shown promise for reducing violence among police is known as  Project ABLE , or Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement. Based on the work of psychologist Ervin Staub, PhD, an emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and past president of APA’s Div. 48 (Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence), the program promotes a culture of peer intervention. It teaches officers to prevent their peers from perpetrating unnecessary violence, which can save both lives and careers. Developed by the New Orleans Police Department in 2014 and originally named Ethical Policing Is Courageous (EPIC), Project ABLE is now being adopted by all police departments in New Hampshire and Washington state, as well as those in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, several other cities and the FBI National Academy.

When an officer commits an act of unnecessary violence, his colleagues face a tough choice, Dvoskin says. Report the act and get a reputation as a “rat”—which may mean your next call for backup goes unanswered—or lie, which is a crime.

“What if, instead, you can prevent the bad thing from happening in the first place?” he says. “What if you manifested your loyalty to a fellow officer by helping him or her stay out of trouble?”

Staub says minor interventions can be highly effective. During recent protests of confederate monuments in New Orleans, an officer stopped a peer from attacking demonstrators by putting an arm around his shoulder. Trainees also apply strategies taught by the program to themselves. One officer in New Orleans reported using EPIC to avoid retaliating against a protester who had spit in her face.

That sort of behavior requires culture change. Police officers need to get comfortable both giving and receiving such interventions—and that culture must be modeled and supported by the highest levels of leadership within an organization, Dvoskin says.

To test his model of active bystandership, Staub studied examples of group violence, such as genocide, observing how hostility and violence evolve progressively. He has also conducted experimental research to understand how people respond to emergencies depending on the actions of those around them. In one study, participants’ helping behavior in response to a simulated emergency ranged from 25% to 100% of the time depending on a confederate’s response to the emergency. He also found that those who are asked to help once are more likely to volunteer later (Staub, E., “ The Roots of Goodness and Resistance to Evil ,” Oxford University Press, 2015).

Now, Project ABLE has support from Georgetown University and the international law firm Sheppard Mullin, which will help fund free training in active bystandership for any interested U.S. police department—and they’ve had hundreds of inquiries since June. Dvoskin, Staub and their team are now working to standardize lesson plans and policy guidelines.

“If this training is introduced in many police departments and done effectively, I believe that policing in America will be transformed,” Staub says.

Understanding and changing officer behavior

Psychologists are also helping agencies collect, report and understand data on their officers’ behavior—data that can point to further policy changes to reduce unnecessary violence and racial bias.

Simply changing the definition of a “police stop,” for instance, can help identify patterns of racial profiling that might otherwise be missed, says social psychologist Jack Glaser, PhD, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Glaser has advised the California attorney general’s office on how to collect policing data, including revising the regulations on police stop reporting.

“Some police-civilian encounters are very casual and are not typically recognized as stops—but they are done with investigatory intent and can escalate to a detention,” he says.

For example, a pedestrian might voluntarily speak with a police officer who says, “Hi, can I ask you a question?”—but that conversation could lead to a search and even an arrest. Those stops typically aren’t reported, so racial bias in such practices could go unchecked.

Glaser has also partnered with CPE for a nationwide effort to aggregate data on police behavior with the  National Justice Database , which draws from nearly 100 police departments representing more than a third of the U.S. population. He has worked to standardize and harmonize that data—which includes hundreds of thousands of entries on police stops, searches and use of force and can vary a lot from one agency to the next—so that researchers can start making comparisons and looking for larger trends.

Glaser says reporting officer behavioral data in different ways can paint a very different picture about whether racial disparities exist—so it’s important to get it right. For example, some departments consider officer presence or unholstering a weapon instances of police use of force, while others do not.

Goff, Glaser and their team delved into police use of force data to explore why some researchers, such as economist Roland Fryer, PhD, of Harvard University, have reported no racial differences in officer-involved shootings (Fryer, R.G.,  Journal of Political Economy   , Vol. 127, No. 3, 2019). Their preliminary analysis shows that racial disparities may not exist in all officer-involved shootings, but that there’s a clear bias against African Americans when the victim is unarmed.

“Given that the protest movement is overwhelmingly about unarmed people getting killed by police, that seems to be the most important data point—but it seems to be getting lost,” Glaser says.

One major takeaway from the National Justice Database so far is that police are more likely to display racial bias when they conduct a “high-discretion search”—usually done on a hunch in ambiguous circumstances—versus a “low-discretion search,” a more routine activity, for instance when a person has already been detained for a crime. When the California Highway Patrol banned high-discretion searches, racial disparities began to level off (   Racial & Identity Profiling Advisory Board Annual Report   , 2020).

“The obvious implication there is to try and minimize high-discretion searches,” Glaser says. “The tremendous amount of discretion given to police promotes decision-making under ambiguity and uncertainty, which psychologists know is ripe for stereotype influence.”

Screening officer candidates

Other psychologists have worked to adapt the police selection process to address the issue of implicit bias. Portland-based forensic psychologist David Corey, PhD, ABPP, has urged departments to add “cultural competence” as a criterion for screening law enforcement officers. “On the surface, the implicit bias literature is dismally depressing, because it tells us that everybody has automatic stereotypes that operate unconsciously and affect behavior,” says Corey, who also founded the  American Board of Police and Public Safety Psychology .

Because of measurement issues, it’s not practical to screen candidates for policing jobs based on their implicit biases. But studies show that some personality dimensions can help officers temper those biases (Ben-Porath, Y.S., “ Interpreting the MMPI-2-RF ,” University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Specifically, people high in executive functioning, emotional regulation skills and metacognitive abilities are better able to prevent implicit biases from affecting their behavior. A capacity for theory of mind formation—the ability to anticipate how others will behave based on their actions or tone of voice—also helps officers learn to bypass their initial instincts.

“Those competencies render implicit bias more malleable,” says Corey. “So, my focus, and that of a growing number of colleagues around the country, is to evaluate applicants for those qualities.”

The Portland Police Bureau, as well as several other agencies in the Pacific Northwest, have added such measures to their selection battery.

Answering more questions

Looking ahead, psychologists are working to address gaps in the data in crucial areas such as use of force, says Shauna Laughna, PhD, ABPP, a Florida-based police and public safety psychologist and chair of APA Div. 18’s Police and Public Safety section. She adds that recruitment, training, discipline and retention of personnel can vary greatly across the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. That points to a need for more data, standardized measures—for instance, what constitutes excessive use of force—and a comprehensive national database on policing incidents.

“Attempting to generalize from data gathered at one agency to another may not always be prudent,” she says.

As reform efforts continue at the local and state levels, there’s one other essential thing the field can do, says Colby Mills, PhD, a clinical psychologist who works with the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia: Provide more formal training opportunities for police psychologists, including during graduate school and in the form of continuing education. The limited police psychology coursework currently available within forensic psychology programs often does not include adequate training on the culture, ethics and special skills required to do such work, he says.

“It takes a lot of courage for a police officer to reach out to a mental health professional, because of the stigmas and the pressures they experience,” Mills says. “But once they do it, we owe it to them to provide a qualified professional who knows what they face and understands their culture.”

Critical incident response

In addition to their involvement with department-wide training efforts, psychologists are also increasingly providing ongoing mental health services, for instance after an officer-involved shooting occurs, says Colby Mills, PhD, a clinical psychologist who contracts with the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia.

Along with peer support officers and the station’s police chaplain, Mills deploys immediately after a critical incident occurs and delivers Stress First Aid, a model developed for the military that can support officers in processing emotions ( Stress First Aid for Law Enforcement , National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, 2016).

“We want to strike a balance where we offer support without implying that an officer will automatically need help to recover,” Mills says.

The Fairfax County Police Department works with about a dozen psychologists who provide critical incident response, therapy, psychoeducation, consultations and pre-employment screenings.

“In general, police and public safety agencies are starting to embrace these sorts of psychological services more and more,” Mills says.

Further reading

A Meta-Analysis of Procedures to Change Implicit Measures Forscher, P.S., et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 2019

The Science of Justice: Race, Arrests and Police Use of Force Goff, P.A., et al. Center for Policing Equity, 2016

Preventing Violence and Promoting Active Bystandership and Peace: My Life in Research and Applications Staub, E., Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 2018

Recommended Reading

Apa’s recommendations for police reform.

• Promote community policing
• Ban chokeholds and strangleholds
• Invest in crisis intervention teams
• Increase the number of mental health professionals in law enforcement agencies
• Involve psychologists in multidisciplinary teams to implement police reforms
• Encourage partnerships between mental health organizations and local law enforcement
• Discourage police management policies and practices that can trigger implicit and explicit biases
• Strengthen data collection
• Bolster research

Read more about APA’s recommendations online .

Contact APA

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Protecting Against Police Brutality and Official Misconduct

Amendments to the criminal civil rights law could provide the federal government with a powerful tool to pursue law enforcement accountability.

• Eric H. Holder Jr.
• Download Report
• Download Annotated Proposal

The protest movement sparked by George Floyd’s killing last year has forced a nationwide reckoning with a wide range of deep-rooted racial inequities — in our economy, in health care, in education, and even in our democracy — that undermine the American promise of freedom and justice for all. That tragic incident provoked widespread demonstrations and stirred strong emotions from people across our nation.

While our state and local governments wrestle with how to reimagine relationships between police and the communities they serve, the Justice Department has long been hamstrung in its ability to mete out justice when people’s civil rights are violated.

The Civil Rights Acts passed during Reconstruction made it a federal crime to deprive someone of their constitutional rights while acting in an official capacity, a provision now known as Section 242. Today, when state or local law enforcement are accused of misconduct, the federal government is often seen as the best avenue for justice — to conduct a neutral investigation and to serve as a backstop when state or local investigations falter. I’m proud that the Justice Department pursued more Section 242 cases under my leadership than under any other attorney general before or since.

But due to Section 242’s vague wording and a series of Supreme Court decisions that raised the standard of proof needed for a civil rights violation, it’s often difficult for federal prosecutors to hold law enforcement accountable using this statute.

This timely report outlines changes to Section 242 that would clarify its scope, making it easier to bring cases and win convictions for civil rights violations of these kinds. Changing the law would allow for charges in cases where prosecutors might currently conclude that the standard of proof cannot be met. Perhaps more important, it attempts to deter potential future misconduct by acting as a nationwide reminder to law enforcement and other public officials of the constitutional limits on their authority.

The statutory changes recommended in this proposal are carefully designed to better protect civil rights that are already recognized. And because Black, Latino, and Native Americans are disproportionately victimized by the kinds of official misconduct the proposal addresses, these changes would advance racial justice.

This proposal would also help ensure that law enforcement officers in every part of the United States live up to the same high standards of professionalism. I have immense regard for the vital role that police play in all of America’s communities and for the sacrifices that they and their families are too often called to make on behalf of their country. It is in great part for their sake — and for their safety — that we must seek to build trust in all communities.

We need to send a clear message that the Constitution and laws of the United States prohibit public officials from engaging in excessive force, sexual misconduct, and deprivation of needed medical care. This proposal will better allow the Justice Department to pursue justice in every appropriate case, across the country.

Eric H. Holder Jr. Eighty-Second Attorney General of the United States

Introduction

Excessive use of force by law enforcement, sexual abuse by public officials and others in positions of authority, and the denial of needed medical care to people in police or correctional custody undermine the rule of law, our government, and our systems of justice.

When public officials engage in misconduct, people expect justice, often in the form of a federal investigation and criminal prosecution. In 2020 alone, instances of police violence, including the killings of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Jacob Blake, led to demands for increased police accountability and federal civil rights investigations. footnote1_Fawha1FYqsvkLw5mi0UDbqd56t1-qP65DciM-xxgaBo_pZxZoMzAaoYq 1 See Rashawn Ray, “How Can We Enhance Police Accountability in the United States?,” in Policy 2020 , Brookings Institution, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-can-we-enhance-police-accountability-in-the-united-states/ [ https://perma.cc/8Z9S-GRCU ]; and Elliot C. McLaughlin, “Breonna Taylor Investigations Are Far from Over as Demands for Transparency Mount,” CNN, September 24, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/24/us/breonna-taylor-investigations-remaining/index.html [ https://perma.cc/4SR6-FG85 ]. See also, e.g., U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, “Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement Statement on the Death of George Floyd and Riots,” press release, May 31, 2020, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/federal-state-and-local-law-enforcement-statement-death-george-floyd-and-riots [ https://perma.cc/V69J-49JR ]; and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, “Statement Regarding Federal Civil Rights Investigation into Shooting of Mr. Jacob Blake,” press release, January 5, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edwi/pr/statement-regarding-federal-civil-rights-investigation-shooting-mr-jacob-blake [ https://perma.cc/5GCM-WJ7H ].

For almost all incidents involving violence by law enforcement, there is one federal criminal law that applies: 18 U.S.C. § 242. Unlike nearly all other criminal laws, the statute does not clearly define what conduct is a criminal act. It describes the circumstances under which a person, acting with the authority of government, can be held criminally responsible for violating someone’s constitutional rights, but it does not make clear to officials what particular actions they cannot take. footnote2_jVznL0jcAWRS-L0y6GqCBLyIu0zx82oljRQ10h2UBI_oxVN5VaIYi3L 2 Throughout this report, people who could be charged under § 242 are most often referred to as “public officials” or “law enforcement.” The Supreme Court has held, however, that § 242 may also be used to prosecute private actors whose authority to act in a given situation is derived from the state, such as a guard at a privately run prison. United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787, 794 (1966), https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/383/787.html [ https://perma.cc/V6FU-ZQR6 ] (“To act ‘under color’ of law does not require that the accused be an officer of the State. It is enough that he is a willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents.”).

It need not be this way. The federal government must renew our national commitment to civil rights by enacting a criminal statutory framework that protects the fundamental constitutional rights of people who come into contact with public officials, including those who are being arrested or are in custody. footnote3_nbjs6gurOI89ADvV9yHxEYFmzU4bCmU0RlxKEX4dWuc_fiDJeH7ISO3i 3 This report proposes changes to federal criminal civil rights laws that would apply to any public official who is acting with governmental authority, including police, prosecutors, judges, correctional officials, and more. Even though the law would apply to any public official who violated it, this report frequently uses the term “law enforcement” or “police” instead of “public officials” in discussions of violence and use of force since law enforcement officers — including police, correctional officials, sheriffs and their deputies, and federal agents — are the public officials most frequently involved in these incidents.

Recent instances of racialized police violence have made this matter all the more urgent. In 2020 alone, police killed more than 1,100 people. footnote4_ADF1Ki1V8kWZ1S19dmQP78rIFmshdl1OhvIrNV3mM_gO5bU1q5DbOJ 4 Mapping Police Violence, last accessed February 5, 2021, https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ . Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by a police officer than white Americans and nearly twice as likely to be killed as Latino Americans. footnote5_FQbVnbws9PUhbVbj8rNDfksVa1vWlH2RnJ8xs2eJTVc_x0LlicRfrs6B 5 Mapping Police Violence. See also Timothy Williams, “Study Supports Suspicion That Police Are More Likely to Use Force on Blacks,” New York Times , July 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/study-supports-suspicion-that-police-use-of-force-is-more-likely-for-blacks.html (“African-Americans are far more likely than whites and other groups to be the victims of use of force by the police, even when racial disparities in crime are taken into account.”). Police killing is a leading cause of death for Black men in the United States — one in every 1,000 Black men will die at the hands of police. footnote6_vzBQQuOeklrkMNIRHR3HV-apmoULwOFPrSmXF4xUU4M_fDst5Ku0XA92 6 Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito, “Risk of Being Killed by Police Use of Force in the United States by Age, Race-Ethnicity, and Sex,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116, no.34 (2019): 16793, 16794, https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/34/16793.full.pdf [ https://perma.cc/8W88-XWR9 ]. In 2019, Black people represented 24 percent of those killed, despite making up only 13 percent of the population, and although Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by the police than white people, they are 1.3 times more likely than whites to be unarmed in such incidents. footnote7_H36iXqatsCZpLpde-EHx9vW6mclRNBHohVoEjHQaSc_wQXDLfQEFzi4 7 Mapping Police Violence. These disparities have led unprecedented numbers of Americans to demand justice for victims of police violence and changes to our criminal justice system. footnote8_5A0qu0yhS3hDQYK1ybp-jJdiaiShj7gRjGMZFBKTVGs_bMFxrgLUznuP 8 Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, “Widespread Desire for Policing and Criminal Justice Reform,” June 15, 2020, https://apnorc.org/projects/widespread-desire-for-policing-and-criminal-justice-reform/ [ https://perma.cc/HYU2–8J9R ].

In addition to law enforcement brutality, other types of official misconduct shock the conscience. These include sexual misconduct by public officials; officials’ failure to provide medical treatment to people who are under arrest or in jail or prison; and pervasive violence by correctional officers in jails and prisons, where excessive force against incarcerated people is often shielded from public view. footnote9_0kl1rMqOXmLxvglDGjUYK1qOF4KoxpielGxblxLl0_sj8j86t7uOdt 9 Lauren Brooke-Eisen, “The Violence Against People Behind Bars That We Don’t See,” Time , September 1, 2020, https://time.com/5884104/prison-violence-dont-see/ [ https://perma.cc/GLP4-Y9XP ]. The “shocks the conscience” standard is the long-established test for a Fourteenth Amendment violation under Rochin v. California , 342 U.S. 165 (1952), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/342/165 [ https://perma.cc/ZJ6S-UEDZ ]. Yet cases are rarely prosecuted under § 242. footnote10_YgXuUXJNZLAUBLZsgMGaXd4a0qU5GbSHs5zhEAvXc_doWeEc5kRg5Q 10 TRAC Reports, “Police Officers Rarely Charged for Excessive Use of Force in Federal Court,” June 17, 2020, https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/615/ [ https://perma.cc/9LTD-VN9N ] (reporting that “between 1990 and 2019, federal prosecutors filed § 242 charges about 41 times per year on average, with as few as 19 times (2005) and as many as 67 times in one year”). See also U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division Highlights: 2009–2017 , January 2017, 32–34, https://www.justice.gov/crt/page/file/923096/download [ https://perma.cc/Q3Y3-FQCB ] (reporting that the Civil Rights Division prosecuted 580 law enforcement officials for committing willful violations of civil rights and related crimes between 2009 and 2016); Brian R. Johnson and Phillip B. Bridgmon, “Depriving Civil Rights: An Exploration of 18 U.S.C. 242 Criminal Prosecutions 2001–2006,” Criminal Justice Law Review 34, no. 2 (2009), 196, 204 (observing that prosecutions under § 242 are a relatively rare event, and identifying a very small number of sexual misconduct cases); and Paul J. Watford, “ Screws v. United States and the Birth of Federal Civil Rights Enforcement,” Marquette Law Review 98, no. 1 (2014), 465, 483, https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5229&context=mulr [ https://perma.cc/737F-XGW4 ].

Congress should make structural changes to our laws to help protect the civil rights of all people. If passed, the legislation recommended in this report would impact how law enforcement, corrections, and other public officials operate nationwide. By more specifically defining what actions violate civil rights, the law would put officials on clearer notice of what is forbidden. In addition, the proposed statute would specifically codify the authority to prosecute fellow officers or supervisors who know a civil rights violation is occurring but fail to intervene something the law already allows. footnote11_QpwKDXaha3CjhIAMTtlSAofRge6d6sdsc4U-TpUhMjA_bvMsClxOOqTc 11 See U.S. Department of Justice, “Law Enforcement Misconduct,” updated July 6, 2020, https://www.justice.gov/crt/law-enforcement-misconduct [ https://perma.cc/LW5V-HZ8G ] (“An officer who purposefully allows a fellow officer to violate a victim’s Constitutional rights may be prosecuted for failure to intervene to stop the Constitutional violation. To prosecute such an officer, the government must show that the defendant officer was aware of the Constitutional violation, had an opportunity to intervene, and chose not to do so. This charge is often appropriate for supervisory officers who observe uses of excessive force without stopping them, or who actively encourage uses of excessive force but do not directly participate in them.”). These changes to § 242 should result in modifications to police and law enforcement training across the country and also deter civil rights violations. footnote12_k6Z5CP009PAQBHSGHJQRuppWjLYVcrfIfOyOjjC5TWM_z600UsgyWlME 12 Local law enforcement policies often provide vague, imprecise direction on use of force. These policies may focus on the extent of what is legally permitted rather than on best practices. Police Executive Research Forum, Guiding Principles on Use of Force , 2016, 15–16, https://www.policeforum.org/assets/30%20guiding%20principles.pdf [ https://perma.cc/AQ5S-3Q5F ]. For those public officials and law enforcement officers who do deprive someone of his or her civil rights, these changes would lower some of the barriers to federal prosecutions and civil lawsuits. footnote13_80WJHXpNGFWFjFlBvOzU2Olp-yqDV82CcTjWUXD-s0_t6eNwDk6qXkC 13 The amendments proposed herein could also be made to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, although the specifics of § 1983 are beyond the scope of this report. In either event, a clarification of the civil rights protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States would make more plain which rights are “clearly established” in the context of civil lawsuits. See discussion of qualified immunity below at notes 47–49 and in accompanying text.

What It’s Going to Take to Fix Policing

The former director of President Obama’s community oriented policing strategies office warns that incremental reforms will not be enough.

Biden’s Budget Steps up Spending for Criminal Justice Reform

The administration is leveraging Justice Department grants to state and local governments to try to improve outcomes.

What the Federal Government Can Do to Help Fix Policing in America

Policing is local, but the need for change is so vast that it is a national project.

Informed citizens are democracy’s best defense

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

The long, painful history of police brutality in the u.s..

A 1963 protest placard in the Smithsonian collections could almost be mistaken for any of the Black Lives Matter marches of today

Katie Nodjimbadem

Last month, hours after a jury acquitted former police officer Jeronimo Yanez of manslaughter in the shooting death of 32-year-old Philando Castile , protesters in St. Paul, Minnesota, shutdown Interstate 94. With signs that read: “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice, No Peace,” the chant of “Philando, Philando” rang out as they marched down the highway in the dark of night.

The scene was familiar. A year earlier, massive protests had erupted when Yanez killed Castile, after pulling him over for a broken taillight. Dashcam footage shows Yanez firing through the open window of Castile’s car, seconds after Castile disclosed that he owned and was licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

A respected school nutritionist , Castile was one of 233 African-Americans shot and killed by police in 2016, a startling number when demographics are considered. African-Americans make up  13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 24 percent of people fatally shot by police. According to the Washington Post , blacks are "2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers."

Today's stories are anything but a recent phenomenon. A cardboard placard in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and on view in the new exhibition “ More Than a Picture ,” underscores that reality. 

The yellowing sign is a reminder of the continuous oppression and violence that has disproportionately shaken black communities for generations—“We Demand an End to Police Brutality Now!” is painted in red and white letters.

“The message after 50 years is still unresolved,” remarks Samuel Egerton, a college professor, who donated the poster to the museum. He carried it in protest during the 1963 March on Washington. Five decades later, the poster’s message rings alarmingly timely. Were it not for the yellowed edges, the placard could almost be mistaken for a sign from any of the Black Lives Matter  marches of the past three years.

"There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?" said Martin Luther King, Jr. in his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 march. His words continue to resonate today after a long history of violent confrontations between African-American citizens and the police. "We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality."

"This idea of police brutality was very much on people’s minds in 1963, following on the years, decades really, of police abuse of power and then centuries of oppression of African-Americans," says William Pretzer, senior history curator at the museum.

Modern policing  did not evolve into an organized institution until the 1830s and '40s when northern cities decided they needed better control over quickly growing populations. The first American police department  was established  in Boston in 1838. The communities most targeted by harsh tactics  were  recent European immigrants. But, as African-Americans fled the horrors of the Jim Crow south, they too  became  the victims of brutal and punitive policing in the northern cities where they sought refuge.

In 1929, the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice published the  Illinois Crime Survey . Conducted between 1927 and 1928, the survey sought to analyze causes of high crime rates in Chicago and Cook County, especially among criminals associated with Al Capone. But also the survey provided data on police activity—although African-Americans made up just five percent of the area's population, they constituted 30 percent of the victims of police killings, the survey revealed.

"There was a lot of one-on-one conflict between police and citizens and a lot of it was initiated by the police," says  Malcolm D. Holmes , a sociology professor at the University of Wyoming, who has researched and  written  about the topic of police brutality extensively.

That same year, President Herbert Hoover established the  National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement  to investigate crime related to prohibition in addition to policing tactics. Between 1931 and 1932, the commission published the findings of its investigation in 14 volumes, one of which was titled  “Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement.”  The realities of police brutality came to light, even though the commission did not address racial disparities outright.

During the Civil Rights Era, though many of the movement's leaders advocated for peaceful protests, the 1960s were fraught with violent and destructive riots.

Aggressive dispersion tactics, such as police dogs and fire hoses, against individuals in peaceful protests and sit-ins were the most widely publicized examples of police brutality in that era. But it was the pervasive violent policing in communities of color that built distrust at a local, everyday level.

One of the deadliest riots occurred in Newark in 1967 after police officers severely  beat  black cab driver John Smith during a traffic stop. Twenty-six people died and many others were injured during the four days of unrest. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson organized the  National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders  to investigate the causes of these major riots.

The origins of the unrest in Newark weren't unique in a police versus citizen incident. The commission  concluded  "police actions were 'final' incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders.”

The commission identified  segregation  and poverty as indicators and published recommendations for reducing social inequalities,  recommending  an “expansion and reorientation of the urban renewal program to give priority to projects directly assisting low-income households to obtain adequate housing.” Johnson, however,  rejected  the commission’s recommendations. 

Black newspapers reported incidents of police brutality throughout the early and mid-20th century and the popularization of radio storytelling spread those stories even further. In 1991, following the beating of cab driver Rodney King, video footage vividly  told  the story of police brutality on television to a much wider audience. The police officers, who were acquitted of the crime, had hit King more than 50 times with their batons.

Today, live streaming, tweets and Facebook posts have blasted the incidents of police brutality, beyond the black community and into the mainstream media. Philando Castile’s fiancée, Diamond Reynolds, who was in the car with her daughter when he was shot, streamed the immediate aftermath of the shooting on her phone using Facebook live.

"Modern technology allows, indeed insists, that the white community take notice of these kinds of situations and incidents," says Pretzer.

And as technology has evolved, so has the equipment of law enforcement. Police departments with military-grade equipment  have become  the norm in American cities.  Images  of police officers in helmets and body armor riding through neighborhoods in tanks accompany stories of protests whenever one of these incidents occurs.

"What we see is a continuation of an unequal relationship that has been exacerbated, made worse if you will, by the militarization and the increase in fire power of police forces around the country," says Pretzer.

The resolution to the problem, according to Pretzer, lies not only in improving these unbalanced police-community relationships, but, more importantly, in eradicating the social inequalities that perpetuate these relationships that sustain distrust and frustration on both sides.

'There’s a tendency to stereotype people as being more or less dangerous. There’s a reliance upon force that goes beyond what is necessary to accomplish police duty," says Holmes. "There’s a lot of this embedded in the police departments that helps foster this problem."

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Katie was formerly the staff reporter for Smithsonian magazine.

Breonna Taylor, police brutality, and the importance of #SayHerName

Subscribe to how we rise, melissa brown and melissa brown assistant professor - santa clara university rashawn ray rashawn ray senior fellow - governance studies , race, prosperity, and inclusion initiative.

September 25, 2020

“Today is a good day to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.” This phrase started as a call for the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office to hold accountable the officers that shot and killed the 26-year-old Louisville resident in her home in March 2020. In the months after Taylor’s killing, social media influencers and celebrities adopted the phrase to draw attention to her death as a way to disrupt the picturesque and cavalier digital culture of platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok. Oprah Winfrey even gave up her coveted spot on the cover of O Magazine by putting a picture of Taylor, an emergency medical technician, on the cover. Winfrey also placed billboards around the city of Louisville (one of which were vandalized ) to demand the arrest of the officers involved.

For a moment, this attention seemed to bring attention to Breonna and by extension Black women who are victims of police brutality. Louisville’s police chief resigned, the city council voted to ban no-knock warrants (naming it Breonna’s Law ) and make body-worn cameras mandatory. The city also settled with Taylor’s family for $12 million for wrongful death.

Nonetheless, earlier this week, a Kentucky grand jury voted not to bring charges against the officers—Brent Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove—accused of participating in Taylor’s killing. Instead, Hankison, a former Louisville detective fired after the incident, was charged with three counts of  “ wanton endangerment ” for his role in a botched no-knock warrant raid on Taylor’s home. What was most troubling about the grand jury announcement was that Hankison’s charges are not for what he did to Taylor. Instead, the grand jury indicted Hankinson because the bullets from his gun went through Taylor’s walls and into her neighbor’s apartment occupied by three people (none of whom were shot).

Once again, a Black woman’s fatal encounter with the police was minimized. Taylor’s neighbors’ mental anguish and property received more justice than her life.

It is exactly this privileging of property over the bodies of Black women that illuminates why the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) headed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw created the #SayHerName campaign. According to the 2015 Say Her Name Report , Crenshaw and her team coined Say Her Name to shed “light on Black women’s experiences of police violence to support a gender-inclusive approach to racial justice that centers all Black lives equally.”

While the founders of Black Lives Matter intended the motto to encompass all Black people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, a study we conducted with a team of researchers at the University of Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities found a gender discrepancy in how the message of Black Lives Matter played out when it became a hashtag on Twitter. We analyzed a collection of 31 million tweets generated between August 2014 and August 2015 on Ferguson after the killing of 17-year-old Missouri resident Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, an officer for the Ferguson Police Department at the time. Our findings indicate that opponents to police violence used hashtags for multiple reasons, one of which was to name Black people killed by police. However, of the nearly 300 phrases used as hashtags we collected, not even one named a Black woman or girl.

Though Black women are 13% of the women population in the United States, they represent 20% of women killed by police and nearly 30% who are killed while unarmed. About 36% of women killed by police since 2015 were killed in their homes , like Taylor. It is a troubling pattern of Black women’s killings being justified as “caught in crossfire.” Still, we have to wonder how a $12 million settlement leads to a justifiable police killing with none of the officers being held accountable for that killing. Instead, taxpayers’ money , including Taylor’s own, was used to pay her family for her death.

The results of this study demonstrate why #SayHerName is so necessary as a corrective to the erasure of the deaths of Black women in the narrative associated with the broader Movement for Black Lives. The Say Her Name report states that “Just as the officers who killed Mike Brown and Eric Garner escaped punishment for these homicides, officers who killed Black women and girls were not held accountable for their actions.” The Kentucky grand jury’s decision not to hold anyone accountable for Breonna Taylor’s death underscores this point.

It is also worth noting that, beyond the gender differences in tweets that we analyzed, the level of public outcry about Breonna Taylor’s murder also points to differences in how Black women’s encounters with the police are perceived by the public. The online activism in support of Breonna Taylor did not appear to motivate the same public outcry as the protest activity that continues following the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. While some argue that video evidence makes the difference in the killings of Floyd and Taylor, the 2014 video in the beating of California resident Marlene Pinnock would seem to undercut that argument.

In a subsequent study conducted in 2016, we found that beyond the differences in public outcry for Black women, news outlets also mentioned male victims of police brutality more often than female victims of police brutality.  We analyzed over 460,000 tweets generated between January 2016 and October 2016 and explicitly included the phrase #SayHerName. While journalists or news organizations retweeted nearly 40% of user accounts that mentioned Ferguson, only 18% of the retweeted users that tweeted about #SayHerName fell into that category. Our results show how news outlets contribute to police violence against Black women receiving less attention.

Media outlets and journalists use social media to generate traffic for news websites. However, they also make choices about the narratives they amplify on Twitter and other mediums. Our findings suggest that the media often brings more awareness to #BlackLivesMatter and Black men’s experience with police violence relative to #SayHerName and the killings of Black women.

Therefore, hashtags like #SayHisName or #SayTheirNames “muddle the very reasoning behind the creation of the #SayHerName,” as Precious Fondren notes. Moreover, online activism for Black women should not be compromised or splintered due to how calls to action obfuscate their intersectional plight.  

Despite the grand jury’s failure to implicate anyone in Breonna Taylor’s death, the groundswell of online activism in her name means that more people now know how the justice system disempowers Black women victims of police brutality. Supporting the #SayHerName campaign means remaining steadfast in the struggle to upend how systemic racism and sexism intersect to disproportionately affect Black women.

Melissa Brown is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and an incoming Assistant Professor of Communication at Santa Clara University. Rashawn Ray is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at The Brookings Institution and a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland. 

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10 things we know about race and policing in the U.S.

Days of protests across the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the custody of Minneapolis police have brought new attention to questions about police officers’ attitudes toward black Americans, protesters and others. The public’s views of the police, in turn, are also in the spotlight. Here’s a roundup of Pew Research Center survey findings from the past few years about the intersection of race and law enforcement.

How we did this

Most of the findings in this post were drawn from two previous Pew Research Center reports: one on police officers and policing issues published in January 2017, and one on the state of race relations in the United States published in April 2019. We also drew from a September 2016 report on how black and white Americans view police in their communities. (The questions asked for these reports, as well as their responses, can be found in the reports’ accompanying “topline” file or files.)

The 2017 police report was based on two surveys. One was of 7,917 law enforcement officers from 54 police and sheriff’s departments across the U.S., designed and weighted to represent the population of officers who work in agencies that employ at least 100 full-time sworn law enforcement officers with general arrest powers, and conducted between May and August 2016. The other survey, of the general public, was conducted via the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) in August and September 2016 among 4,538 respondents. (The 2016 report on how blacks and whites view police in their communities also was based on that survey.) More information on methodology is available here .

The 2019 race report was based on a survey conducted in January and February 2019. A total of 6,637 people responded, out of 9,402 who were sampled, for a response rate of 71%. The respondents included 5,599 from the ATP and oversamples of 530 non-Hispanic black and 508 Hispanic respondents sampled from Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. More information on methodology is available here .

Majorities of both black and white Americans say black people are treated less fairly than whites in dealing with the police and by the criminal justice system as a whole. In a 2019 Center survey , 84% of black adults said that, in dealing with police, blacks are generally treated less fairly than whites; 63% of whites said the same. Similarly, 87% of blacks and 61% of whites said the U.S. criminal justice system treats black people less fairly.

Black adults are about five times as likely as whites to say they’ve been unfairly stopped by police because of their race or ethnicity (44% vs. 9%), according to the same survey. Black men are especially likely to say this : 59% say they’ve been unfairly stopped, versus 31% of black women.

White Democrats and white Republicans have vastly different views of how black people are treated by police and the wider justice system. Overwhelming majorities of white Democrats say black people are treated less fairly than whites by the police (88%) and the criminal justice system (86%), according to the 2019 poll. About four-in-ten white Republicans agree (43% and 39%, respectively).

Nearly two-thirds of black adults (65%) say they’ve been in situations where people acted as if they were suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity, while only a quarter of white adults say that’s happened to them. Roughly a third of both Asian and Hispanic adults (34% and 37%, respectively) say they’ve been in such situations, the 2019 survey found.

Black Americans are far less likely than whites to give police high marks for the way they do their jobs . In a 2016 survey, only about a third of black adults said that police in their community did an “excellent” or “good” job in using the right amount of force (33%, compared with 75% of whites), treating racial and ethnic groups equally (35% vs. 75%), and holding officers accountable for misconduct (31% vs. 70%).

In the past, police officers and the general public have tended to view fatal encounters between black people and police very differently. In a 2016 survey  of nearly 8,000 policemen and women from departments with at least 100 officers, two-thirds said most such encounters are isolated incidents and not signs of broader problems between police and the black community. In a companion survey of more than 4,500 U.S. adults, 60% of the public called such incidents signs of broader problems between police and black people. But the views given by police themselves were sharply differentiated by race: A majority of black officers (57%) said that such incidents were evidence of a broader problem, but only 27% of white officers and 26% of Hispanic officers said so.

Around two-thirds of police officers (68%) said in 2016 that the demonstrations over the deaths of black people during encounters with law enforcement were motivated to a great extent by anti-police bias; only 10% said (in a separate question) that protesters were primarily motivated by a genuine desire to hold police accountable for their actions. Here as elsewhere, police officers’ views differed by race: Only about a quarter of white officers (27%) but around six-in-ten of their black colleagues (57%) said such protests were motivated at least to some extent by a genuine desire to hold police accountable.

White police officers and their black colleagues have starkly different views on fundamental questions regarding the situation of blacks in American society, the 2016 survey found. For example, nearly all white officers (92%) – but only 29% of their black colleagues – said the U.S. had made the changes needed to assure equal rights for blacks.

A majority of officers said in 2016 that relations between the police in their department and black people in the community they serve were “excellent” (8%) or “good” (47%). However, far higher shares saw excellent or good community relations with whites (91%), Asians (88%) and Hispanics (70%). About a quarter of police officers (26%) said relations between police and black people in their community were “only fair,” while nearly one-in-five (18%) said they were “poor” – with black officers far more likely than others to say so. (These percentages are based on only those officers who offered a rating.)

An overwhelming majority of police officers (86%) said in 2016 that high-profile fatal encounters between black people and police officers had made their jobs harder . Sizable majorities also said such incidents had made their colleagues more worried about safety (93%), heightened tensions between police and blacks (75%), and left many officers reluctant to use force when appropriate (76%) or to question people who seemed suspicious (72%).

• Criminal Justice
• Discrimination & Prejudice
• Racial Bias & Discrimination

Drew DeSilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center .

Michael Lipka is an associate director focusing on news and information research at Pew Research Center .

Dalia Fahmy is a senior writer/editor focusing on religion at Pew Research Center .

Most Black Americans Believe U.S. Institutions Were Designed To Hold Black People Back

Cultural issues and the 2024 election, what the data says about crime in the u.s., fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted in 2022, before release of video showing tyre nichols’ beating, public views of police conduct had improved modestly, most popular.

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How unjust police killings damage the mental health of black americans.

Harvard Chan’s David R. Williams, whose research looks at how discrimination affects Black people’s health, appeared on “60 Minutes” in April.

Courtesy of Harvard Chan School

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Research tracks the ways racial discrimination wreaks a physical, psychological toll

Since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, many African Americans have reported feeling overwhelmed at times by the trauma, anguish, and outrage stirred up by Floyd’s death, as well as other incidents of police violence against Black victims. The disturbing frequency of these events, and the relentless news coverage of them in the last year, has been taking a real emotional toll.

A first-ever study in 2018 found that a police killing of an unarmed African American triggered days of poor mental health for Black people living in that state over the following three months — a significant problem given there are about 1,000 police killings annually on average, with African Americans comprising a disproportionate 25 percent to 30 percent of those. The accumulation of painful days over the course of a year was comparable to the rate experienced by diabetics, according to the study’s author, David R. Williams , Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health .

Williams, a leading expert on the social influences of health and a professor of African and African American Studies and Sociology at Harvard University, spoke with the Gazette about what he’s seen in the past year, the mental and physical tolls discrimination take on Black lives and what individuals can do to help mitigate them.

David R. Williams

GAZETTE:   This is a new area of scholarly inquiry. What have you found thus far about the causal links that police killings have on Black people’s mental health?

WILLIAMS:  What we sought to do was to identify if a police killing of civilians had negative effects not just on the victim’s family, immediate relatives and friends, but on the larger community. We looked at every police shooting in America over a three-year period [between 2013‒2015] and then linked that, in a quasi-experimental design, with data from the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] on the mental health of the population in every state. And what we found was that every police shooting of an unarmed Black person was linked to worse mental health for the entire Black population in the state where that shooting had occurred for the next three months.

It wasn’t every police shooting that did that. If the Black person was armed, there was no negative effect on Black mental health. We also didn’t find any effect of police shootings of Blacks, armed or unarmed, on the mental health of whites in those states. And we didn’t find any effect on Black mental health of police shootings of [unarmed] whites. So we found a very specific effect. We think it’s both the perception of it being unfair and the greater sense of vulnerability that it creates.

GAZETTE:   Were you surprised at all by those results?

WILLIAMS:  It’s a striking finding, and it’s the first time it has been documented in that way. On the other hand, it’s not totally surprising. There’s a body of evidence emerging that suggests these incidents are having a negative impact not just on [victims’] family members, but there’s a broader community grieving; there’s a broader “threat” to the community; there’s a broader increase in personal vulnerability that’s having mental health consequences. … We are still in the beginning of understanding of what is happening.

“ … it is not just what happens in the big things, like at discrimination at work or in interactions with the police. But there are day-to-day indignities that chip away at the well-being of populations of color …”

GAZETTE:   Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, there’s been a heightened focus on police violence and anti-Black racism in the country. Between video, audio, expert analysis, and ordinary conversation, as well as acts of police violence and intimidation of Black Lives Matter protestors, how do you think this last year has affected the mental health of Black people?

WILLIAMS:  I haven’t done any specific work on this specific topic in the last year, but I want to emphasize that we’re dealing with two pandemics. On the one hand, we’re dealing with the pandemic of racial injustice, as captured by police shootings. But we’re also dealing with the pandemic of COVID-19, which has had a disproportionate, negative impact on populations of color. If you look at the data for the African American population, for the Latinx population, for the Native American population, for Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, all those populations have death rates from COVID-19 that are at least twice that of whites. So we are looking at populations that are dealing with increased experiences of grief and loss at a time when people can’t come together and mourn and go through the grieving process in the normal ways because of the pandemic.

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has also been much more severe on poor Americans of all racial/ethnic groups, and on African Americans and Latinos, in particular. So we are looking at populations that are also dealing with elevated levels of financial stress.

The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) it is used as a measure of subjective experiences of daily discrimination against the minority population. This measure contains nine elements that assess the person’s daily life, followed by a follow-up question about what the person believes was the reason for that daily discrimination. This measure also presents a short version of five elements. It takes five to 10 minutes to administer.

In your day-to-day life, how often do any of the following things happen to you?

• You are treated with less courtesy than other people are.
• You are treated with less respect than other people are.
• You receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores.
• People act as if they think you are not smart.
• People act as if they are afraid of you.
• People act as if they think you are dishonest.
• People act as if they’re better than you are.
• You are called names or insulted.
• You are threatened or harassed.
• You are followed around in stores.

Recommended answer categories for all items

• Almost every day
• At least once a week
• A few times a month
• A few times a year
• Less than once a year; never

There is a vaccine for the COVID 19 virus, but there is no vaccine for mental health. So as a nation, as community leaders, as public health leaders, we need to think about how we provide the support and the resources and create the spaces to help people deal with the trauma, the emotional, physical symptoms — anxiety, helplessness, nausea, headaches — that they may be struggling with.

I believe we are seeing emerging mental health effects right now. Longer term, I would expect that we would see some adverse physiological effects. There is a body of research — I haven’t done most of it, but my work is consistent with it. Some scientists use the term “accelerated aging”; in other studies, they use the term “biological weathering.” What that body of research is suggesting to us is that in the United States, African Americans are aging biologically more rapidly than whites. At the same chronological age, African Americans are 7.5 years older or 10 years older, on average, compared to their white counterparts. We think that what this more rapid aging and physiologic deterioration reflects is the accumulation of all of these negative, stressful exposures in the physical, chemical, and psychosocial environment.

GAZETTE:   You also study the effects that racism has on Black physiological health. You developed a very widely used scale to measure a person’s exposure to everyday discrimination that you say is highly predictive of health problems. What have you learned so far?

WILLIAMS:  The evidence is clear that discrimination matters for health. And it is not just what happens in the big things, like at discrimination at work or in interactions with the police. But there are day-to-day indignities that chip away at the well-being of populations of color: How often do people act as if you are not smart? How often do people act as if they are afraid of you?

We found what we call in scientific research a “dose-response relationship” between the number of stressors individuals score high on and the number of depressive symptoms. So the more domains of stress you are high on, the higher are your levels of depressive symptoms. So reports of discrimination are linked to worse mental health, and also linked to lower levels of engagement with the health care system. People who score high on the everyday discrimination [scale] are less likely to follow through on the recommendations from their [health care] provider in terms of screening and follow-up tests.

A review of studies of discrimination and sleep found that in every single study, no exception, discrimination was associated with poorer sleep, both in quantity and in quality. We also see higher levels of everyday discrimination linked to increased obesity. We see it linked to a broad range of health outcomes … incident diabetes, incident cardiovascular disease, incident breast cancer … as well as a range of other underlying indicators of chronic disease, such as inflammation. So the evidence is clear: These little indignities add up and take a toll on individuals.

GAZETTE:   One key revelation is that while income and education levels are influential drivers of health for every racial group, they provide less of a buffer from the negative effects of discrimination for Black people.

WILLIAMS:  My motivation for developing the everyday discrimination scale was to try to understand the stress of racial discrimination and the contribution that it makes to the racial disparities in health. When my career started, most researchers thought that racial differences in health were simply a function of racial differences in income and education and occupational status. For most indicators nationally, the gaps in health between whites with a college degree and whites who have not finished high school is bigger than the Black/white gap. And the gap within African Americans between the college-educated and those who have not finished high school is bigger than the Black/white gap. So income and education matter for your health, regardless of your race.

But at the same time, race still matters. At age 25, for example, the worst-off whites, in terms of future life expectancy, [are those] who have not finished high school. But they live 3.1 years longer than African Americans who have not finished high school. The gap widens as education increases, with a 4.2-year gap among college-educated whites and Blacks.

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There is a stunning statistic [from] analyses we did: The best-off African Americans in terms of life expectancy at age 25, those with a college degree, have lower life expectancy than whites with a college degree; have lower life expectancy than whites with some college education; and have lower life expectancy than whites who have finished high school. [That] tells us there’s something profound about income and education that drives health regardless of your race, but there’s something else about race that matters even after we’ve taken income and education into account. That’s why I began to look at what else is it in the social environment? What does it mean to be Black in our society, and how does that shape health?

GAZETTE:   Aside from stopping these police killings and eliminating racism, what steps can individuals take today to protect their own mental and physical health?

WILLIAMS:  What research shows quite compellingly is that the quality of social relationships can have a huge impact in reducing the negative effects of discrimination and of other types of stressful experiences. One study looked at African American teenagers at ages 16, 17, and 18 and measured the discrimination that those adolescents reported. Those kids who [scored] consistently high on reported discrimination at 16, 17, and 18 had higher levels of stress hormones — cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine — higher levels of inflammation (C-reactive protein), higher BMI [Body Mass Index], and higher blood pressure by age 20, not age 30 or 40. However, that association is completely erased, it’s not evident, among those teens who had good, supportive relationships with their parents, their teachers, and their peers. So the quality of social ties seems to be an effective strategy to reduce all or at least some of the negative effects of discrimination. Building that sense of community is important.

Another resource that’s particularly powerful in the African American community is religion: A national study of Black Americans found that higher levels of religious engagement, as measured by church attendance, by greater supportive contact with members of their religious community, and by “seeking God’s guidance in their everyday life,” those three religious strategies, reduced the negative effects of exposure to racial discrimination on mental health.

Another example [comes from] a study done among First Nation communities in Canada, indigenous communities. As a group, this population had some of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world. But researchers were struck by the fact that half of the almost 200 communities had no suicides at all in the previous five years. What they found was that those communities that were involved in challenging the federal government of Canada over treaty rights, over control of their public services (their schools, health care, etc.), and that had places in the community where their traditions were celebrated, had lower rates of suicide. Each of those indicators — of protest, advocacy, and empowerment — was associated with the lower rates of suicide. It suggests that being engaged and fighting for one’s future and trying to make a difference is actually a resource that is protective for at least some mental health outcomes.

Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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How Police Violence Weighs on Black Americans

We spoke to more than 100 people about the psychological strain from repeated reports of police brutality.

By Tiffanie Graham

This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here .

“It’s almost paranoia, a paranoia that there’s no safe place,” said Thomas Mayes, a 70-year-old pastor from Aurora, Colorado, reacting to police brutality against Black people.

When police officers injure or kill someone, the psychological effects can stretch beyond those who are directly involved. As video footage spreads, viewers may see themselves or loved ones reflected in the victim.

In a 2021 study of emergency room data from hospitals in five states, researchers found a correlation between police killings of unarmed Black people and a rise in the number of depression-related E.R. visits among Black people. A 2018 study found that Black people who were exposed to news about police shootings in the states where they lived reported adverse mental health effects for up to three months after the shootings.

The research leads to a question: What is the personal impact behind these statistics?

To answer that, The New York Times spoke to 110 Black people of varying generations and socioeconomic groups in 20 American cities. My colleague and reporting partner Patia Braithwaite and I combed through the interviews, hearing from people whose experiences ranged in intensity from numbness to panic attacks. Some people said they did not have the time or resources to address their emotions. Many were unsure of how to process this unique set of repeated circumstances.

We also teamed with Morning Consult, a polling company, to survey more than 1,500 Black Americans about whether exposure to police brutality had affected their lives or their mental state.

The people included in our article, “The Toll of Police Violence on Black People’s Mental Health,” make up only a small portion of the many who shared their stories.

This four-month process of reporting and editing took its own emotional toll on Patia and me. We stepped away when the stories began to weigh heavily on us, but remained motivated to dive back in soon afterward. It was important to us to make sure that everyone who took part was heard and given the attention they deserved, and for us to provide a balanced report.

We chose to narrate these stories using intimate portraiture. That allows you to see who these words are coming from, and we hope, interpret the world from their perspective, even if only for a moment.

The photographer Cornell Watson’s black and white photo illustrations provide evocative representations of the statistics. The people’s faces bring these vulnerable accounts to life and connect you to the human being behind them.

The reality of police brutality is not new, so we wanted to focus on the emotional and psychological ripple effects of these incidents and explore how people who feel those effects cope while living their lives.

We hope you’re left with a deeper understanding of the lasting impact, beyond the headlines and video images.

Read the full story →

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Police Brutality — Police Brutality: Exploring Arguments and Solutions

Police Brutality: Exploring Arguments and Solutions

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Published: Mar 16, 2024

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Andrew Coster: The commissioner who tried to tackle racial bias from within the Police

Outgoing Police Commissioner Andrew Coster shone the spotlight on police bias - unconscious or otherwise - towards Māori.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster resigned to become the first secretary for social investment and chief executive of the Social Investment Agency.

In his new role, he will serve as the lead advisor to the Government and be responsible for delivering on social investment initiatives.

Part of Coster’s mahi since his appointment as commissioner in 2020 has been to acknowledge, understand and address bias within the police, which has led to inequitable policing of communities across Aotearoa.

His latest Police Minister, Mark Mitchell, denies there is any systemic bias or racism within the police despite a landmark report that revealed systemic bias and racial profiling within policing is continuing.

Who commissioned the report? Andrew Coster.

Understanding policing delivery

In 2020 Coster commissioned a study called Understanding Policing Delivery, following the death of George Floyd in the US and the outcry over police brutality, which targeted people of colour across the world. There were also concerns over the use of AI unfairly targeting Māori and Pasifika.

The long-term research focused on examining where biases existed, and how police could ensure people are treated fairly. At the time criminologist Emilie Rākete told Newshub there was no need for another review because the bias against Māori was well-documented.

In 2020, data from the Tactical Options Report showed Māori were seven times more likely to receive police violence. This has also been found in other reports.

In August the first report from the Understanding Policing Delivery was released. It found Māori were 11% more likely to be prosecuted for an offence compared to New Zealand Europeans when all other factors were constant.

Coster said then to Newsroom, “The extremely difficult position for policing in terms of this is many of the failings that lead to Māori being in the criminal justice system happen upstream of police.”

In his new role in social investment, Coster may be able to help the problems happening ‘upstream’ that lead to Māori criminalisation.

2019 armed response teams

The public outcry against police violence spiked in 2019 after the implementation of the six-month Armed Response Teams trial, which was criticised for targeting Māori and Pasifika.

During the trial 50 per cent of people arrested were Māori.

Groups such as Just Speak, Action Station and Arms Down NZ led campaigns to shut the trial down and it spurred conversations about police brutality.

Action Station surveyed 1155 Māori and Pasifika participants and found 85 per cent weren’t in support of the trial and 91 per cent were less likely to call the police in family violence situations if they knew the police were armed.

After the trial Coster announced they would not incorporate the armed response teams into the police model. The decision was based on the findings, feedback from the public and consultation with community forum groups.

In an interview with The Hui , Coster said an unconscious bias still existed within the police but said, “All humans have unconscious bias and we’re no exception to that.”

‘Bias’ as scapegoat for not addressing racism

In 2020 then police minister Stuart Nash said there was no systemic racism in the police but there was “unconscious bias”.

Coster defended the minister saying Nash meant it wasn’t intentional and believed most were doing their best.

He said the potential biases were difficult to raise with officers because the topic triggered strong responses, and defended them for doing a great job but needing to be open to challenge themselves in areas where they need to shift the practice.

Coster didn’t want to offend officers by using the term “racism”, and told Morning Report the word meant different things to different people.

“If you say racism to our officers, they will feel like we are calling them individually racist. Whereas a lot of the advocates in this area, when they use the word racism, they are talking about a system that consistently gets worse outcomes for one group of people than another.”

Former police commissioner Mike Bush admitted there was unconscious bias but rejected the use of the word ‘racism’.

In 2022, the Herald reported the Grey literature review for the Understanding Policing Delivery programme found “bias” was a scapegoat for not addressing racism directly.

The authors said the police needed to be accountable and address the racism and historical traumas left by colonisation within the police framework.

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Police urged to be transparent in discovery of seven bodies in Bekasi River

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number of police watchdogs have urged the law enforcement authorities to be transparent in probing the discovery of the bodies of seven male teenagers in the Bekasi River, West Java, who are thought to have been chased by the police for initiating a brawl via social media. 

The call comes amid various reports about police negligence and brutality when it comes to dealing with juvenile delinquency, including the unresolved case of the death of a 13-year-old teenager identified with the initials AM in West Sumatra on June 9. 

AM’s body was discovered the morning after the police arrested some teenagers suspected of inciting a violence fight. An initial report by the Padang Legal Aid Institute in West Sumatra found that police had beaten the boy because of the evidence of bruises found on his body.

The Jakarta Police, meanwhile, announced on Sunday that they recovered seven bodies in the river in Jatiasih, a district in Bekasi, after a local resident spotted five of them floating. They were thought to be part of the same teenage group the Bekasi Police arrested on Saturday night, three of whom were found carrying bladed weapons.

An initial investigation led the local police to suspect that the victims were about to have a brawl, but ended up jumping into the river to evade officers who were patrolling the area. 

Read also: Rights commission investigating death of teen allegedly killed by police

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