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Download a PDF of This Report Page | 2 ​ TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Objective II. Key Takeaways III. Historical Context – Relationship Between Race and Law Enforcement IV. Modern Context – Racial Profiling and Police Brutality V. Modern Context – Militarization of the Police VI. Modern Context – High-Profile Victims of Police Brutality VII. Modern Context – Accountability Barriers and Reform VIII. The Current State – Assessment of Existing Efforts to Reduce Police Brutality IX. The Way Forward – Institutional Reforms X. Civic Engagement in Creating Reform XI. “Defund the Police” – Efforts and Outcomes XII. Additional Resources Page | 3 ​ Objective This memo examines police brutality in the US, including historical context and recommendations. Key Takeaways ● Accurately assessing the current state of police discrimination among minority communities requires understanding the history of law enforcement, race, and the justice system. ● Measurement and evaluation of law enforcement’s use of lethal force is particularly challenging due to the absence of a comprehensive national database of shootings by officers. ● As of June 2020, only 25 of the 100 largest police departments require officers to report all uses of force, ​ including threatening another civilian with a firearm.1 ​ ● The highest levels of inequality in mortality risk from police lethal force are experienced by black men; Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the life course than are white men.2 ● Social-psychological research and anecdotal evidence indicate that militarized policing inflames situations that might otherwise be concluded peacefully. ● Whites, Blacks and Hispanics have extremely disparate views about local police; whites are most likely to express confidence in police and their discretion in using excessive force, and blacks are least likely to do so. ● Postsecondary education significantly reduces the likelihood that officers will use force as their first option in subduing citizens. ● Reforms to address police brutality center on developing a national database of transparent information, implementing universal use of body cameras, fostering greater community engagement, ‘use of force’ policies and reducing police militarization. Historical Context – Relationship Between Race and Law Enforcement Early American law enforcement officials, particularly in slave states, were authorized and expected to enforce laws enacting the most extreme forms of racism. In the American South, the first policing occurred in the form of “slave patrols,” developed and implemented by White slave owners as an oppressive method to maintain 3 control of and order among slaves. The system deputized groups of people to patrol public properties, approach any Black person unattended by a White person, and demand proof, in the form of a pass, that he or 4 she could be alone beyond plantation boundaries. Further, the patrols’ authority extended to private property where they were empowered to enter any plantation and search the houses of Black people for weapons and 5 ammunition. If the stop or search produced unfavorable results, the patrols were authorized to inflict corporal punishment on any slave. 1 https://8cantwait.org/compare/ ​ 2 https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/34/16793.full.pdf ​ 3 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10511250500335627 ​ 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRP5JK5CebI ​ 5 B. Wood, Slavery in Colonial Goergia, n. 14 above: 123-4. ​ ​ Page | 4 ​ Following the abolishment of slavery, the sanctioned vigilante-style behavior of the slave patrols evolved into the de jure mandates of Southern police departments. The police were the tip of the spear in enforcing laws which strategically criminalized the black population, leading to a perception that Blacks were inherently 6 criminal. Black Codes were established following the Civil War to perpetuate the social system of slavery; the laws targeted the recently-liberated Black population by outlawing homelessness, unemployment, preaching the Gospel without a license and gathering in public. Whites staffed urban police forces and State militias,constituting law enforcement apparatuses in which Blacks enjoyed virtually no representation and were disproportionately targeted. As one Mississippi White phrased it in 1865, Black Codes existed “to keep good 7 order and discipline among the negro population.” Following the Civil War, two pieces of landmark legislation offered Black Americans a temporary respite from relentless de jure violence and discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 defined United States citizens as all males born in the United States (with the exception of indigenous Americans) and granted all citizens “full and equal benefit of all laws.”8. The Civil RIghts Act of 1875 effectively outlawed racial segregation.9 As a result, during Reconstruction, states began to forbid excluding Black people from public transportation, accommodations, and locations. Blacks began to experience increased representation in law enforcement as Black officers joined historically white-dominated police departments across the country, particularly in the 10 South. However, this progress was short-lived; two major Supreme Court decisions - Civil Rights Cases (1883) ​ ​ and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation. The impact on Black Americans ​ ​ and their equal enjoyment of rights was swift. In law enforcement (among myriad other professions), Blacks experienced a dramatic reversal in representation. In one notable example, the New Orleans Police Department employed 177 Black officers in 1870; in the years following Plessy v. Ferguson, the number had plummeted to 5 ​ ​ Black officers. Legal segregation and the Jim Crow laws, established to create “separate but equal” treatment, essentially reversed five decades of civil rights progress. Adopted by every Southern state and many Northern cities by 1914, the Jim Crow laws encouraged a system of segregation that defined Blacks as second-class citizens, with limits on their civil rights. The role of the police was to enforce Jim Crow laws and keep minorities and people of color contained; White-dominated departments throughout the country enacted policies that disproportionately arrested minorities for low-level crimes, overpoliced minority neighborhoods, and encouraged the use of excessive force. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the urban riots of the late 1960s directly confronted minority civil and legal rights, de facto discrimination by police continued to occur. Law enforcement practices in the 1980s and 1990s were influenced by heightened criminal activity particularly affecting lower-income communities and 6 Davis, A.Y. (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete? Canada: Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd 7 P.S. Foner, History of Black Americans: From Africa to the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 1975: 206 8 https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-Civil-Rights-Bill-of-1866/ ​ 9 https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilRightsAct1875.htm ​ 10 https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/121019.pdf ​ Page | 5 ​ 11 communities of color. The response was a push for stricter laws, longer sentences, and more vigilant policing that disproportionately and adversely affected communities of color. In the 1970s, President Nixon declared a “War on Drugs” and in the 1980s, President Reagan continued to promote rhetoric and policies intended to address America’s drug problem. At the time, the Mental Health 12 Services Administration estimated that 76% of illicit drug users in the U.S. were White and 14% were Black. However, 37% of people arrested for drug violations were Black. Said another way, the Black population arrested for drugs was two and a half times greater than the Black population of drug users.13 The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 illustrates (and codifed) the inherent racial discrimination the “War on Drugs.” The Act established mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug trafficking crimes and created a 100:1 sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine.14 Despite the fact that powder and crack cocaine are comparable in chemical composition, the sentencing for crack offenses was 100x harsher than that of cocaine offenses. The racial disparity was clear: Blacks were - and are - more likely to be convicted of crack cocaine offenses, while Whites are more likely to be convicted of powder cocaine offenses. Before the 1986 law, the average federal drug sentence for Black Americans was 11% higher than for White Americans. By 1990, the average federal drug sentence for Blacks was 49% higher than for Whites.15 By 2000, there were more Black men in jail or prison than there were enrolled in higher education.16 Through centuries of oppressive justice systems, racial discrimination has evolved from explicit laws to the implicit bias that exists today. Racial discrimination and profiling remains ever-present in the interactions between minority communities and law enforcement, as demonstrated by modern stop-and-frisk programs and traffic stops. Modern Context – Racial Profiling and Police Brutality Investigative activity is a standard practice of sound police work. This includes undercover operations, street patrols and traffic violation stops with the aim of discovering more serious criminality. These activities require that officers exercise discretion – from determining which citizens are suspicious and which cars to tail, to assessing what behavior warrants
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