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From Enforcers to Guardians Cooper, Hannah L From Enforcers to Guardians Cooper, Hannah L. F., Fullilove, Mindy Thompson Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Cooper, Hannah L. F. and Mindy Thompson Fullilove. From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.72591. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/72591 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] From Enforcers to Guardians From Enforcers to Guardians A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence Hannah L. F. Cooper, ScD Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2020 Hannah L. F. Cooper and Mindy Thompson Fullilove All rights reserved. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cooper, Hannah L. F., 1970– author. | Fullilove, Mindy Thompson, author. Title: From enforcers to guardians : a public health primer on ending police violence / Hannah L. F. Cooper, ScD, and Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD. Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019017732 | ISBN 9781421436449 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1421436442 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421436456 (electronic) | ISBN 1421436450 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Police brutality—United States. | Violence—United States. | MESH: Police | Violence | Social Determinants of Health | United States Classification: LCC HV8141 .C635 2020 | NLM HV 8141 | DDC 363.2/32— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017732 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. “A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay is used with permission of the author and Split This Rock. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever possible. To all the victims of distorted policing, with hope that your suffering will inspire change A Small Needful Fact Ross Gay Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe. Contents List of Illustrations xi Preface xiii Timeline xxi 1 Coming to Terms 1 Part I. Distorted Policing and Its Origins 2 Peelers and Slave Patrols 25 3 Community Collapse 41 4 War on Drugs 58 Part II. Measuring Distorted Policing and Its Effects 5 Public Health Investigations 79 6 Pattern or Practice Investigations I: Distorted Policing in Urban Contexts 101 7 Pattern or Practice Investigations II: Types of Violence Documented 123 Part III. Getting to Guardianship 8 Interventions That Have Been Tried 141 9 A Magic Strategy 170 x Contents Conclusion. Moving Forward 195 Acknowledgments 213 Notes 215 Bibliography 229 Index 247 Illustrations 1.1 Toxic triad 4 1.2 Life cycle of the schistosome 19 2.1 Irish Iberian, Anglo-Teutonic, and Negro profiles 27 3.1 Police arresting union leader 45 3.2 Rise in defense spending 46 3.3 Distribution of the federal budget 48 3.4 Manufacturing jobs 50 3.5 Occupied housing units in the Bronx 51 3.6 Household wealth 57 4.1 SWAT raids 69 4.2 Racialized incarceration 73 6.1 Police in riot gear 119 6.2 Abandoned Baltimore street 120 7.1 Discriminatory arrest form 133 8.1 “Know Your Rights” 143 8.2 Statue of Jerry rescue 147 8.3 Genocide Convention 151 8.4 We Charge Genocide 152 xii Illustrations 9.1 Transforming the police fortress 184 9.2 Kit for social emergency response centers 192 9.3 Recovery tasks 193 C.1 Officer with flower 198 C.2 Policy Wheel for a safe space 203 C.3 Step-by-step investment strategy 204–205 C.4 Belmont Avenue restoration 208 C.5 Policy Wheel for public safety 211 Preface Excessive police violence has many facets. It is a tragedy for its vic- tims, for the people who love them, and for their broader communi- ties. It is a violation of civil and human rights. It provides evidence that policing policies have strayed from the collective vision of en- suring public safety. It poses a challenge to the nation’s health. Because of this threat to health, in this primer we approach police violence as a public health problem. Public health is concerned with the health of the whole population, especially as a function of our federal, state, and local governments. Public health workers identify patterns of illness and death across and within populations; develop interventions to maximize well-being and eliminate inequities in health treatment and outcomes; implement these interventions through the nation’s public health system; and evaluate their impacts. We use our discipline’s tools to examine the nature of excessive police violence in the United States. We review what we have learned thus far about its distribution and its impact on individual and pop- ulation health. These data demonstrate that the police serve as en- forcers of inequality, which undermines population health. In 2015, President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing pro- posed that instead of the current system, which we call “distorted policing,” police should act as guardians of us all. In this primer, we chart a path toward guardianship. Most public discussions about excessive police violence focus, un- derstandably, on the horrors of civilian deaths and on the unaccept- xiv Preface able, incontestable fact that people of color—particularly boys and men of color—bear an exceptionally high burden of these deaths. Media and protests have highlighted the deaths of children and adults like Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, and so many others. At the same time, the public health framing that we propose here challenges all of us to recognize that the suffering created by exces- sive police violence extends far beyond deaths to include experiences with police sexual violence, psychological violence, neglectful vio- lence, and nonfatal physical violence. This expanded perspective re- veals that excessive police violence is far more common than the deaths alone would suggest. A population-based study of adults liv- ing in four cities, for example, found that 18 percent of civilians have experienced police psychological violence in their lifetime; a similar number reported police neglect in their lifetime.1 That study and other studies also confirm what we know from police killings: peo- ple living at the margins—because of their race/ethnicity, gender, or another facet of their social position—are far more likely to experi- ence excessive police violence. A public health framing also challenges us to take an ecological approach to understanding excessive police violence, understanding how this form of violence unfolds within broader contexts of urban disruption and marginalization. A public health framing asks us to consider that police violence holds consequences for our health far beyond the immediate impacts of bullets and batons. Experiences with excessive police violence may reverberate across the life-span, taking a toll on the victim’s mental and physical health in the years to come. The health consequences of excessive police violence may also ripple through the victim’s family and communities. Jacob Bor and colleagues, for example, found that police killings affect the health of the population of the entire state in which the victim lived, with Black residents of the victim’s state experiencing 0.14 additional poor mental health days during years when the police killed an un- Preface xv armed Black person.2 The rippling consequences thus extend far be- yond the apparent targets to endanger the health of all. Excessive police violence is part of a toxic triad of marginalization, distorted policing, and violence. Princeton scholar Patricia Fernandez- Kelly observed that marginalized communities do not experience the institutions of the US democracy in the same manner that dominant groups do.3 Rather, they are exposed to a “distorted engagement” characterized by extreme resource limitation, abuse, and neglect. Distorted policing is one facet of this distorted engagement, and it is characterized by abuse, neglect, and the misallocation of resources. The state uses distorted policing to create and sustain marginaliza- tion. Because distorted policing is resistant to change, it can feel in- surmountable. It has been a part of the US social fabric since we were colonies, and, although shifting as society shifts, it seems locked into the nature of policing. Because of its many tools for interceding in social processes that shape patterns of life and death, public health can potentially con- tribute to the solution of what seems an impossible problem. We pro- pose an ecological solution—what Rodrick Wallace and Deborah Wallace call a “magic strategy”4—that operates at multiple scales to end excessive police violence and that encompasses this violence, the broader contexts in which it operates, and the traumas it has cre- ated. This magic strategy will help us transition to guardianship, a form of policing proposed by the President’s Task Force on 21st Cen- tury Policing, which is committed to protecting civilians.5 Why Write This Book Now? We could not have written this book ten years ago.
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