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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE the Impact of Police Violence on African Americans: a Case Study of the Pasadena Police

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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE the Impact of Police Violence on African Americans: a Case Study of the Pasadena Police CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE The Impact of Police Violence on African Americans: A Case Study of the Pasadena Police Department A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Public Administration in Public Sector Management and Leadership By Michael Oliver Armstrong December 2020 Copyright by Michael Oliver Armstrong 2020 ii The graduate project of Michael Oliver Armstrong is approved: Dr. Ravi K. Roy, PhD Date Dr. Ariane David, PhD Date Dr. Anaïs Valiquette L’Heureux, PhD, Chair Date California State University, Northridge iii Table of Contents Copyright Page ii Signature Page iii Abstract vi Introduction 1 Review of the Literature 2 Definition of Police Violence 2 History of Police Violence 2 Mental Health 4 Policies that Foster Police Brutality 5 Community Policing 6 Body Worn Cameras 7 Impact on Youths and Children witnessing Police Violence 9 Limitation in Existing Research 10 Literature Summary 11 Research Question and Aim 12 Research Design 12 Methodology 12 Stakeholders 12 Approach: Survey 14 Discussion 15 iv Conclusions 17 References 20 Appendix A : Survey Questionnaire Part 1 25 Appendix B : Survey Questionnaire Part 2 26 Appendix C : Survey Questionnaire Part 3 27 v Abstract The Impact of Police Violence on African Americans: A Case Study of the Pasadena Police Department By Michael Oliver Armstrong Master of Public Administration in Public Sector Management and Leadership Historically, the police have used excessive force on individuals who participated in significant political and social justice movements, including the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the anti-war demonstrations, and the war on drugs. However, research shows that this excessive force continues. Statistical data released by the Bureau of Justice statistics showed that from 2003 to 2009, at least 4,813 people died while being arrested by the local police. There were 2,876 deaths; 1,643 or 57.1 % of the deaths were "people of color." In 2014, the U.N. Committee against Torture condemned police and excessive force by law enforcement in the U.S., highlighting frequent and recurrent fatal police shootings of unarmed black men. The United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent's 2016 Report noted that recent United States police killings and the trauma are reminiscent of lynching's past racial terror of lynching. An FBI homicide report from 2012 showed that while blacks represent 13% of the U.S. population, they amounted to 31% of those killed by police. Some possible solutions are community policing, body-worn cameras, and replacing police officers with mental health experts for non-violent crimes. vi Introduction Several social science disciplines, including psychology, have researched police violence against racial minorities (Bryant-Davis, 2017). George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and Andres Guardado are but a few names of some members of minority populations who have recently appeared in the news media due to their untimely deaths at the hands of local police officers. There is a problem when police officers have to apply knees to the neck, break down the door of the wrong person's home, shoot someone who wants to walk to his sister's house or shoot an 18-year-old in the back six times. These individuals died under questionable circumstances and were ultimately brutalized or shot to death by police (Dreyer, 2020; Pillay, 2020; Stone, 2017; Nieto del Rio, 2020). Hirschfield (2015) argues that American police officers kill many more citizens than European police officers. The United States has developed a reputation for police brutality and has reported far more police officers' incidents than the rest of the Western World. U.S. police killed 1,093 people in 2016 and 1,146 people in 2015 (Hirschfield, 2015). Why do American cops kill so many compared to European cops? (Hirschfield, 2015). Racism helps explain why African Americans and Native Americans are particularly vulnerable to police violence (Hirschfield, 2015). This paper will explore why an FBI homicide report from 2012 showed that while blacks represent 13% of the U.S. population, they amounted to 31% of those killed by police (Lopez, 2018). Why were Leroy Barnes Jr, Kendrec McDade, Reginald Thomas Jr, Matthew Jonathan Luis Hurtado, and Anthony McClain were all killed by the Pasadena Police Department officers who suffered no consequences? Also, why are the arrests by police officers so violent that it results in permanent injury? 1 Review of the Literature There have been more killings by police officers in the United States than any other country in the Western World (Hirschfield, 2015). This literature review will explore the systemic causes of police violence against the Black community in the United States, such as laws that reinforce explicit and implicit policies that foster police brutality, police force bias, police training, tactics, and police hierarchy that contribute to police brutality. It will then review the research into ways to mitigate and end this violence, such as community policing and body- worn cameras. Finally, it will address gaps in the research for further interrogation into solutions to end police brutality in the Black community. Definition of Police Violence Police violence, which researchers define as repeated beatings, evident brutality, and excessive force, has been prevalent against minority communities (Conyers, 1981). According to Lyle (2016), police brutality is the application of excessive force by police on citizens. Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (2011) showed that from 2003 to 2009, at least 4,813 people died while being arrested by the local police. There were 2,876 deaths; 1,643 or 57.1% of the deaths were "people of color" (Kappolar, 2014). An FBI homicide report from 2012 observed that while blacks represent 13% of the U.S. population, they amounted to 31% of those killed by police (Lopez, 2015). At least 4,813 people died while being arrested by the local police between 2003 and 2009 (Burch, 2011). History of Police Violence History demonstrates that five years after the Ferguson protest, when officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown, the officer-involved shooting deaths have not diminished (Sekhon, 2019). The police violence has been inflicted on minority communities throughout the 2 nation since the 1700s. While white southern landowners relied almost exclusively on slave labor, they were afraid of a black rebellion, and thus, the police aimed to employ the Slave Patrol to catch runaway slaves to beat and whip escaped slaves. These patrols were meant to control the movements and behavior of the slave population. As a result, the Slave Patrol was one of the earliest forms of policing in the South (Potter, 1985). According to Grabiner (2016), the similarities between the slave patrol and modern American policing are too noticeable to ignore or dismiss. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement. The Slave Patrol had three main functions: to chase down, apprehend, and return runaway slaves; to engage in organized terror to deter slave revolts; and to maintain a form of discipline for slave workers subject to summary justice outside the law (Turner et al., 2006, p. 186). Police racial violence has been an issue for a long time. President Lyndon Johnson initiated the Kerner Commission to determine how and why the violent 1967 riots killed 43 people in Detroit and 26 in Newark. President Johnson had three questions; "What happened?" "Why did it happen?" "What can be done to prevent it from happening again?" (Gooden, 2018). The most recent investigation of rioting up to that point had been the McCone Commission, which explored the 1965 Watts riot and accused "riffraff" of starting the unrest. In contrast, relying on social scientists' work and in-depth studies of the nation's impoverished black urban areas, the Kerner Commission reached an entirely different interpretation of the riots' cause (George, 2018). In March 1968, the Kerner Commission declared white racism—not black anger—is the cause of the violent uprising (George, 1968). 3 The Kerner Report outlined a goal of moving toward "a single society and a single American identity" (Gooden, 2018, p.2). It called for substantial federal funds to assist African American communities and prevent further racial polarization and violence. The recommendations were in education, employment, housing, police-community relations, and welfare. The Johnson Administration reacted harshly to the recommendations, and the Nixon Administration made the recommendations an impossibility to become policy (Loessberg & Koskinen, 2018). Mental Health Almost half of the people shot dead in the United States by police officers have a mental illness (McCarthy, 2015). The Treatment Advocacy Center, a non-profit organization, states that the number of individuals killed by police is unknown because there is no federal database that collects all information regarding the use of deadly force by law enforcement agencies (McCarthy, 2015). "Young black men are also 21 times more likely to be killed by cops [police] than young white men, according to one Pro Publica analysis of the data we have. In short, people who belong to marginalized communities are at a higher risk of being shot than those who are not" (Gabrielson, 2014, p. 1). One of the solutions suggested is psychological testing using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which looks at racial bias. It is suggested that both psychological testing and IAT should be administered to police officers every three years during their first ten years on the force (Grabiner, 2016, p. 69). 4 Policies That Foster Police Brutality In more recent times, because of the redlining, there were no blacks in white neighborhoods. Therefore, the white police officers became agents and protectors for the white suburbanites' neighborhoods (Anderson, 1990). In more recent times, the white police have been agents for white, and affluent communities have become agents helping the white suburbanite's neighborhood protect their neighborhoods.
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