CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE Police Brutality and Communities of Color 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 Edith Jacqueline Gonzalez August 2019 i The thesis of Edith Jacqueline Gonzalez is approved: _________________________________________ ______________ Dr. Sarmistha Majumdar Date _________________________________________ ______________ Dr. Boris Ricks Date _________________________________________ ______________ Dr. Henrik Minassians, Chair Date California State University, Northridge ii Dedication Above all I would like to thank God almighty for giving me the strength and determination to complete this Master’s program. I am grateful to everyone who believed in me and encouraged my journey to higher education. I would like to dedicate this research project to my mother, who crossed borders so that that I could be here. Mom, thank you for making the biggest sacrifice—leaving your family, leaving your country, leaving everything you knew to provide me with the opportunities you never had. I am the product of your sacrifices, hard work, and love. Thank you for being the shining example of what I wanted to be, for every hug, every prayer, word of encouragement, and act of love. All that I am or hope to be, I owe to you. To my younger siblings, Stephanie and Genesis, whom without knowing it inspired me to pursue higher education. If I can do it, you can do it too. For every first generation student who came before me and for those who will follow after me—¡Sí, se puede! Yes, We Can! iii Table of Contents Signature page.………………….………………………………………………………………….ii Dedication….....…………………………………………………………………………………...iii Abstract…………...……………………………………………………………………………….v Section 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….1 Section 2: Literature Review……………………………………………………………………...3 Militarization of Law Enforcement Agencies……………………………………………..3 Criminalization of Communities of Color………………………………………...............5 Police Perceptions/Race Relations………………………………………………...............8 Autonomy………………………………………………………………………………..10 Section 3: Background…….…………………………………………………………………......12 Section 4: Methodology………………………………………………………………………….16 Research Design………………………………………………………………………….16 Data Collection…………………………………………………………………………..16 Study Population and Sampling………………………………………………………….17 Ethical Considerations…………………………………………………………………...18 Section 5: Recommendations…………………………………………………………………….20 Section 6: Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………24 References………………………………………………………………………………………..26 Appendix A: Survey……………………………………………………………………………..29 iv Abstract Police Brutality and Communities of Color By Edith Jacqueline Gonzalez Master of Public Administration in Public Sector Management and Leadership Police brutality is a national phenomenon in America that primarily affects communities of color that may have increased due to the lack of accountability and civil control in law enforcement agencies. Due to this ongoing phenomenon, there is a need for law enforcement officers to perform their duties within a set of fair, public, and accountable guidelines. While there have been attempts to improve relations between law enforcement officers and communities of color such as the implementation of community policing by some agencies, the main problem with policing is how to regulate law enforcement officers while protecting civilians constitutional and civil rights. According to the author of Managing diversity in organizations, law enforcement agencies are institutions within the pubic domain that are staffed by public servants who exist in and for the interest of those whom they are sworn to protect and serve. However, when the same public institutions for one reason or another, lose sight of their mission and turn against the very communities for which they serve, they put both their legitimacy and relevance in peril. They also violate the fundamental precepts of what constitutes a representative bureaucracy (Golembiewski, 1995). This study explores the potential factors that led to the prominence of police brutality in communities of color and further intends to determine whether police officer training on alternatives to use of force leads to a reduction of police brutality incidents. v Section 1: Introduction Police brutality has become a national phenomenon in America that primarily affects communities of color. In Racism and Police Brutality in America, the authors credit Walker for defining police brutality as "the use of excessive physical force or verbal assault and psychological intimidation" (Chaney & Robertson, 2013, p. 482). Law enforcement agencies have a history of systemically criminalizing and brutalizing poor and marginalized communities. For decades minority communities have complained about abuses of police power, and for decades their complaints have gone ignored. However, recent controversial incidents between law enforcement officers and civilians, primarily people of color, has led to an increased scrutiny of law enforcement officers by the media, community stakeholders, and policy makers (Mac Donald, 2016). According to the authors of Perceptions of Police, Racial Profiling, and Psychological Outcomes: A Mixed Methodological Study, “the current social climate in the United States calls for a review of police practices and relations with community members, especially regarding people of color…While Black Americans have been harassed and murdered by police officers throughout history, these recent incidents and subsequent empirical investigations have brought Americans’ perceptions of the police to the forefront of public conversation—influencing mainstream media, community organizations, school settings, social media, and even political candidate platforms” (Nadal et al., 2017, p. 809). The increase of violence in communities of color by law enforcement officers has had a detrimental impact in the perception of law enforcement officers by minority communities. In fact, research suggests that people of color are less likely to trust the police in comparison to their white counterparts, due to racial profiling and racial disparities in police behavior (Cochran & Warren, 2012). In order to better understand the phenomenon of police brutality and communities of color we will take a 1 deeper look into previous research that has been conducted on this particular issue. Research suggests that some of the factors that result in police brutality against communities of color include but are not limited to the militarization of law enforcement agencies, the criminalization of communities of color, police perceptions and race relations, and police autonomy. 2 Section 2: Literature Review Militarization of Law Enforcement Agencies Research suggests that the militarization of law enforcement agencies was established to combat increasing crime in urban areas. In The Problem of Policing, the author states that “Police officers are granted immense authority by the state to impose harm. They walk into houses and take property. They stop and detain individuals on the street. They arrest. And they kill. They do all these things in order to reduce fear, promote civil order, and pursue criminal justice” (Harmon, 2012, p.762). Law enforcement officers are entrusted by the public to protect and serve the communities they police. Unfortunately, policies adopted by law enforcement agencies have also resulted in police brutality against the public such as unlawful arrests, and other forms of misconduct by law enforcement officers which most often occurs within communities of color. The increase in police brutality and misconduct can be attributed to policies that have been adopted by law enforcement agencies in an attempt to reduce crime. Research suggests that following the success of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) war on criminals, urban police departments decided to adopt a different approach in which law enforcement agencies changed from being a responsive force that reacted primarily to citizens’ complaints to a preventive force that aggressively confronted criminals (Escobar, 2003). Under the pretense of the war on crime, law enforcement officers aggressively patrolled neighborhoods identified as high crime areas to demonstrate that violation of the law would result in some form of punishment. This emphasis on crime-fighting created an us vs. them mentality, alienating law enforcement agencies from the communities they have sworn to protect and serve. In Bloody Christmas and the Irony of Police Professionalism: The Los Angeles Police Department, 3 Mexican Americans, and Police Reform in the 1950s, the author describes that "in the years after World War II, the LAPD officially adopted sociological explanations for Mexican American crime and extended the linkage between race and criminality to African Americans and institutionalized it in the training and deployment of officers. The adoption of the war on crime orientation and the labeling of racial groups as the criminal element in society resulted in perpetual conflict between the LAPD and the minority communities" (Escobar, 2003, p. 178). This particular example demonstrates how the LAPD has become militarized by adopting guerilla-like tactics to combat crime. However, the militarization of law enforcement agencies expands beyond LAPD and seems to be a systemic issue across the nation. The militarization of law enforcement agencies has enhanced