How can police brutality be reduced

The fact that police abuse remains a significant problem does not mean there has been no progress. In communities all across the United States people have organized to bring about change, and some of the most successful strategies are described in this manual, now in its 3rd printing. This manual was not inspired by, nor is it intended to generate, animosity toward the police, or to promote the perception that all police officers are prone to abuse.

They are not. Rather, it arose out of our realization that, ultimately, it will take a strong and sustained effort by community groups to bring about real and lasting reform. And it is to those efforts that this manual is dedicated. It has a long history, and it seems to defy all attempts at eradication. The problem is national: no police department in the country is known to be completely free of misconduct. Yet it must be fought locally: the nation's 19, law enforcement agencies are essentially independent.

While some federal statutes specify criminal penalties for willful violations of civil rights and conspiracies to violate civil rights, the United States Department of Justice has been insufficiently aggressive in prosecuting cases of police abuse. There are shortcomings, too, in federal law itself, which does not permit "pattern and practice" lawsuits. The battle against police abuse must, therefore, be fought primarily on the local level.

Policing has seen much progress. Some reforms do work, and some types of abuse have been reduced. Today, among both police officials and rank and file officers, it is widely recognized that police brutality hinders good law enforcement. To fight police abuse effectively, you must have realistic expectations. You must not expect too much of any one remedy because no single remedy will cure the problem.

A "mix" of reforms is required. And even after citizen action has won reforms, your community must keep the pressure on through monitoring and oversight to ensure that the reforms are actually implemented. Nonetheless, even one person, or a small group of persistent people, can make a big difference.

Sometimes outmoded and abusive police practices prevail largely because no one has ever questioned them. In such cases, the simple act of spotlighting a problem can have a powerful effect that leads to reform. Just by raising questions, one person or a few people — who need not be experts — can open up some corner of the all-too-secretive and insular world of policing to public scrutiny.

Depending on what is revealed, their inquiries can snowball into a full blown examination by the media, the public and politicians. You've got to address specific problems. The first step, then, is to identify exactly what the police problems are in your city. What's wrong with your police department is not necessarily the same as what's wrong in that of another city.

Police departments differ in size, quality of management, local traditions and the severity of their problems. Some departments are gravely corrupt; others are relatively "clean" but have poor relations with community residents. Also, a city's political environment, which affects both how the police operate and the possibilites for achieving reform, is different in every city. For example, it is often easier to reform police procedures in cities that have a tradition of "good government," or in cities where racial minorities are well organized politically.

This includes illegal mass stops and arrests, and demanding photo IDs from young men based on their race and dress instead of on their criminal conduct. This "war" wastes scarce resources on unproductive "buy and bust" operations to the neglect of more promising community-based approaches. How common is police brutality? Unfortunately, measuring this problem in a scientific fashion has always been very difficult. In the first systematic study, The Police and the Public , Albert Reiss found the overall rate of unwarranted force to be low — only about one percent of all encounters with citizens; even less than that by another calculation.

But Reiss hastened to point out that individual incidents accumulate over time, and since poor men are the most frequent victims of police abuse, they experience both real and perceived harassment by the police. In , the federal government funded a "Police Services Study," in which 12, randomly selected citizens were interviewed in three metropolitan areas.

The study found that Yet, only 30 percent of the people filed formal complaints. In other words, most instances of police abuse go unreported.

Community activists, take note: Your local police department or local news media may produce official figures showing a low rate of alleged abuse, but those figures do not reflect unreported incidents. Moreover, a low overall rate masks the higher rate of abuse suffered by poor men — poor men of color in particular. Obtaining the most relevant information on the activities of your police department can be a tough task. That's the first thing to bear in mind about the "homework" community residents have to do in order to build a strong case for reform.

In answer to critics, police chiefs often cite various official data to support their claim that they are really doing a great job.

Forget the "crime rate. To name only a few: First, the UCR only measures reported crime. Second, since the system is not independently audited there are no meaningful controls over how police departments use their crime data.

Police officers can and do "unfound" crimes, meaning they decide that no crime occurred. They also "downgrade" crimes — for example, by officially classifying a rape as an assault. Third, reports can get "lost," either deliberately or inadvertently. There are many other technical problems that make the UCR a dubious measure of the extent of crime problems. Justice Department, provides a far more accurate estimate of the national crime rate and of long-term trends in crime.

But it is a national-level estimate and does not provide data on individual cities. So the NCS isn't much help on the local level. Forget the "clearance rate. The fact that one department "clears" 40 percent of all robberies, compared with 25 percent by another department, doesn't necessarily mean it is more effective.

There are too many ways to manipulate the data, either by claiming a larger number of crimes "cleared" inflating the numerator , or by artificially lowering the number of reported crimes lowering the denominator. Forget the arrest rate. Police officers have broad discretion in making and recording arrests. The Police Foundation in Washington, D. In many departments, police officers take people into custody, hold them at the station, question and then release them without filling out an arrest report.

For all practical purposes, these people were arrested, but their arrests don't show up in the official data. Other departments record such arrests. Thus, the department that reports a lower number of arrests may actually be taking more people into custody than the department that reports more arrests. Forget the citizen complaint rate. Official data on the complaints filed by citizens regarding police conduct are important but present a number of problems.

Many departments do not release any information on this subject. Some publish a smattering of information on complaints and the percentage of complaints sustained by the department. In more and more cities, a civilian review agency publishes this data. Thus, the official "complaint rate" complaints per 1, citizens , rather than being a reliable measure of police performance, more than likely reflects the administrative customs of a particular police department.

Police shootings. You need to know about police firearm discharges, which refer to the number of times a police weapon has been fired. This information is more complete than statistics on the number of persons shot and wounded or killed. However, information on the race of persons shot and wounded or killed is important. Particularly important is data on repeat shooters, which can tell you whether some officers fire their weapons at a suspiciously high rate.

The most detailed analysis of police shootings was produced by James Fyfe, a former police officer who is now a criminologist and expert on police practices. He concluded that the single most important factor determining patterns of shooting is place of assignment. Fyfe's findings showed that: Black and white officers assigned to similar precincts fired their weapons at essentially the same rate; since new officers are assigned to less desirable, high crime precincts based on the seniority system, younger officers shoot more often than older officers; and since a disproportionate number of black officers are young due to recent affirmative action programs, black officers shoot more often than white officers — but as a function of assignment, not race.

Fyfe found significant differences in shooting patterns between police departments. The overall shooting rate in some departments was significantly higher than in others, a disparity that he attributed to differences in department policy. Fyfe, "Who Shoots? With this information, you can evaluate the use of deadly force in your department. You can also evaluate the long-term trends in shootings.

Are shootings increasing or decreasing? Has there been a recent upsurge? How does the department compare with other departments — are officers shooting at a significantly higher rate in your department than elsewhere? Use of physical force. You need to know how frequently police officers in your city use physical force in the day-to-day course of their encounters with citizens. Do officers try to refrain from using such force against citizens, or do they quickly and casually resort to force?

In its report on the Los Angeles Police Department in the aftermath of the March beating of Rodney King, the Christopher Commission confirmed a long held suspicion: A small number of officers were involved in an extraordinarily high percentage of use-of-force incidents. Ten percent of the officers accounted for The Commission was able to identify 44 such officers who were not disciplined despite the fact that they were the subjects of numerous citizen complaints. In , the U.

Civil Rights Commission found a similar pattern in Houston and recommended, as a remedy, that police departments establish "early warning systems" to identify officers with high rates of citizen complaints. Patterns in the use of physical force reveal a lot about the "culture" of a particular police department.

Clearly, a department whose officers repeatedly engage in physically coercive conduct needs reform. Police officials often deny that their personnel are prone to using force inappropriately, so if your community believes it has a problem in this area citizens must be able to support their claims with existing data, or data they have gathered themselves.

Official policies. You need to know what your local police department's formal, written policies are on how officers are supposed to behave in particular situations. How does the department treat domestic violence complaints? What is the policy on how officers are supposed to deal with homeless people? Does the department use canine patrols and, if so, under what circumstances?

In examining official policies, you need to evaluate them in comparison to recommended standards. You need to know how many lawsuits citizens have filed against your local police department. You'll want to know what the charges were, the number of officers involved, whether certain officers are named repeatedly in suits, what was the outcome and, in the case of successful suits, how much the city paid in damages. The number of lawsuits filed against a police department can be very revealing.

This kind of information can be used to mobilize middle-class taxpayers and "good-government" activists, who can then be brought into a community coalition against police abuse. These data indicate a clear pattern of racial discrimination. The disparity between whites and blacks shot and killed is extreme in the category of persons "unarmed and not assaultive. These are classic "fleeing felon" situations in which, prior to , Memphis Police Department policy and the common law of many states permitted officers to use deadly force.

Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for a police officer to shoot a suspected felon in flight who does not pose an immediate danger to the officer or public. The case — Tennessee v. Garner — involved Edward Garner, a 15 year-old black youth who, though unarmed, was shot and killed while trying to flee the scene of a suspected burglary. Minority employment. You'll need to know how many African Americans, Latinos, Asians, other minorities and women are employed by your police department and their distribution throughout the department's ranks.

This information is useful in assessing, again, the "culture" of your local police department — is it internally diverse, fair and equitable? It also suggests how much value the department places on the "human relations" aspects of its work, and how responsive it is to community concerns. Police business is generally shrouded in secrecy, which conceals outdated policies and departmental inertia, encourages cover-ups and, of course, breeds public suspicion.

But remember: Police departments are an arm of government, and the government's business is your business. Police policies, procedures, memoranda, records, reports, tape recordings, etc. Demanding information about police practices is an important part of the struggle to establish police accountability.

Indeed, a campaign focused solely on getting information from the police can serve as a vehicle for organizing a community to tackle police abuse. Regarding all of the following categories, one of the tactics your community could employ is to interest a local investigative journalist in seeking information from the police for a series of articles.

Once in hand, the information your community has collected or helped to expose is a tool for holding the police accountable for their actions. Police work remains dangerous, and many police officers contend that they need greater freedom to use deadly force today because of the increase in heavily armed drug gangs. But in fact, police work is much less dangerous than it used to be.

The number of officers killed in the line of duty is half of what it was nearly 20 years ago. According to the FBI, the number of officers killed dropped from in to 67 in That reduced death rate is even more dramatic considering the increase in the number of police officers on duty in the field. Police officers are rarely the victims of "drive-by" gang shootings.

Innocent by-standers and rival gang members have been the victims. Police Shootings. Virtually every big city police department has this information on hand, since officers are required to file a report after every firearms discharge.

However, departments don't usually release the information voluntarily. Strong civilian review boards in a few cities now publish the information. As for repeat shooters, this information exists in police reports, but police departments vigorously resist identifying repeat shooters. There are several ways to proceed —. Physical Force. There are three potential sources of data on police use of physical force —. Official Policies. Your police department has a Standard Operating Procedure SOP manual it may have another title that contains the official policies of the department.

The SOP manual is a public document and should be readily available. Some departments place current copies in local libraries. Others treat it as an internal document not available to the public — a practice which is unacceptable. Demand to see the manual, if your department withholds it. As a last resort, you may be able to file suit under your state's open records law to obtain the SOP manual. Lawsuits brought against police departments are matters of public record.

Records of suits brought in state courts reside at your local state courthouse; of suits brought in federal district court, at the nearest federal courthouse. The Lexis computer database is a source of published opinions in civilian suits brought against the police. However, collecting information from any of these sources is a very laborious task.

In the back of this manual, find the name and address of your local ACLU and other organizations. Minority Employment. Official data on this issue are generally available from your local police department. If the police stonewall, you can get the information from the city's personnel division.

The point is to evaluate the police department's minority employment record relative to local conditions. Using current data, compare the percentage of a particular group of people in the local population with that group's representation on the police force. If, for example, Latinos are 30 percent of the population but only 15 percent of the sworn officers, then your police department is only half way toward achieving an ideal level of diversity.

Civilian review of police activity was first proposed in the s because of widespread dissatisfaction with the internal disciplinary procedures of police departments.

Many citizens didn't believe that police officials took their complaints seriously. They suspected officials of investigating allegations of abuse superficially at best, and of covering up misconduct. The theory underlying the concept of civilian review is that civilian investigations of citizen complaints are more independent because they are conducted by people who are not sworn officers.

At first, civilian review was a dream few thought would ever be fulfilled. But slow, steady progress has been made, indicating that it's an idea whose time has come. By the end of , more than 75 percent of the nation's largest cities more than 80 cities across the country had civilian review systems.

Civilian review advocates in every city have had to overcome substantial resistance from local police departments. One veteran of the struggle for civilian review has chronicled the stages of police opposition as follows —.

Strong community advocacy is necessary to overcome resistance, even after civilian review is established. Civilian review systems create a lot a confusion because they vary tremendously. Some are more "civilian" than others. Some are not boards but municipal agencies headed by an executive director who has been appointed by, and is accountable to, the mayor.

Your community's campaign should seek a strong, fully-independent and accessible civilian review system. But even with a weak system, you can press for changes to make it more independent and effective.

Considerable progress has been made in the area of police misconduct in the use of deadly force. Although the rate of deadly force abuse is still intolerably high, national data reveal reductions in the number of persons shot and killed by the police since the mids — as much as to 40 percent in our 50 largest cities. This has been accompanied by a significant reduction in the racial disparities among persons shot and killed: since the s, from about six people of color to one white person, down to three people of color to one white.

This progress serves as a model for controlling other forms of police behavior. And was achieved though hard work and perseverance. In the mids, police departments began developing restrictive internal policies on the use of deadly force. They adopted the "defense of life" standard: the use of deadly force only when the life of an officer or some other person is in danger. In , the Supreme Court finally upheld this standard in the case of Tennessee v.

Garner see table. However, the majority of policies adopted by police departments go beyond the Court's Garner decision, prohibiting warning shots, shots to wound and other reckless actions. Most important, these policies require officers to file written reports after each firearm discharge, and require that those reports be reviewed by higher-ranking officers. Citizens should also be able to find out whether the department disciplines officers who violate its policy, and whether certain officers are repeatedly involved in questionable incidents.

The department's policies, rules and procedures are designed to ensure that this value guides police officers' use of firearms. RULES — The policy stated above is the basis of the following set of rules that have been designed to guide officers in all cases involving the use of firearms —.

RULE 1 — Police officers shall not discharge their firearms except to protect themselves or another person from imminent death or serious bodily injury. RULE 2 — Police officers shall discharge their firearms only when doing so will not endanger innocent persons. RULE 3 — Police officers shall not discharge their firearms to threaten or subdue persons whose actions are destructive to property or injurious to themselves but which do not represent an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or others.

RULE 4 — Police officers shall not discharge their firearms to subdue an escaping suspect who presents no imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. RULE 5 — Police officers shall not discharge their weapons at a moving vehicle unless it is absolutely necessary to do so to protect against an imminent threat to the life of the officer or others.

RULE 6 — Police officers when confronting an oncoming vehicle shall attempt to move out of the path, if possible, rather than discharge their firearms at the oncoming vehicle. RULE 7 — Police officers shall not intentionally place themselves in the path of an oncoming vehicle and attempt to disable the vehicle by discharging their firearms.

RULE 8 — Police officers shall not discharge their firearms at a fleeing vehicle or its driver. RULE 10 — Police officers shall not draw or display their firearms unless there is a threat or probable cause to believe there is a threat to life, or for inspection.

Your community's principal aim here should be to get the police department to adopt and enforce a written policy governing the use of physical force.

This policy should have two parts —. Your community's second objective should be to get the police department to establish an early warning system to identify officers who are involved in an inordinate number of inappropriate physical force incidents.

The incidents should then be investigated and, if verified, the officers involved should be charged, disciplined, transferred, retrained or offered counseling, depending on the severity of their misconduct. Police spying or intelligence gathering on legal but politically unpopular activities is a problem. And it's particularly difficult to deal with because spying, by definition, is a covert activity, unknown to either the victim or other witnesses.

During the s, the ACLU and other organizations brought lawsuits against unconstitutional police surveillance in several cities around the country, including New York City, Chicago, Memphis and Los Angeles.

The result was increased controls on police spying. In , Seattle residents discovered local police were spying on organizations of black construction workers, local Republican Party operatives, Native Americans, advocates for low-income housing and other activists whose conduct was perfectly lawful. After several years of hard work and lobbying, the coalition succeeded in bringing about passage of a comprehensive municipal law — the first of its kind in the country — that governs all police investigations and restricts the collection of political, religious and sexual information.

Critics say it teaches cops to be afraid, and to shoot first, think later. In , Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey banned cops from attending "warrior-style" training, even on their own time with their own money. But the local police union called the ban "illegal" and continued to offer the training. There is research to show that militarisation leads to police violence.

In , a study published in Research and Politics found that the more military weapons police have, the more likely they are to use them. Citizens who try to sue the police in civil court for excessive force frequently see their cases thrown out because of a legal doctrine known as "qualified immunity". It was designed by the Supreme Court to protect government employees from frivolous lawsuits and give police legal breathing room surrounding their split-second decisions.

In order for a case to move forward, the court directs that it must ask two questions: first, was excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment used?

And if so, is there a "clearly established" prior court ruling on the behaviour that would mean the officer knew his or her conduct was illegal?

This second question is where advocates say courts give officers a free pass, throwing out cases if there has been no previous, precedent-setting case with an almost identical set of facts. A Reuters analysis found that more than half of excessive force cases in the US get thrown out on "qualified immunity" grounds. A portion of the sweeping Justice in Policing Act introduced this week by House and Senate Democrats would eliminate qualified immunity for police.

Supreme Court Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas have both said they believe the doctrine needs to be revisited. There are currently eight qualified immunity cases before the country's highest court. Sometimes, police violence against black people is attributed to a "bad apple" - an angry and racist cop who overreacts in the line of duty. In an effort to keep them out, some forces have fired police officers who publicly admit to racist ideas.

Last July, the Philadelphia Police Department fired 13 officers who posted racist, violent messages on social media - but only after an advocacy group brought the messages to light. But the reality is a bit more complicated than just one bad apple ruining the bunch. Police work in what social researchers call a "closed system" where there is little external oversight and loyalty is highly prized.

If one officer crosses the line, others will back him or her up. Without a video of the incident, it often comes down to just the word of an alleged "criminal" and a respected police officer. That's why many are pushing for police to be required to wear body cameras, to record police interactions.

They were adopted in New York a few years ago after the death of Eric Garner , and Congress is proposing making them mandatory nationally. But there is little evidence that shows they reduce violence , according to a recent analysis of 70 studies looking at their efficacy. Campaign Zero, the non-profit behind the 8cantwait hashtag pushing for police reforms, says they have limited use.

While footage of police brutality has played a vital role in exposing the problem , most of it was filmed by citizens, not police. Body cameras can easily be turned off, and the footage is more likely to be used by prosecutors against civilians during criminal trials, than as a means of proving police brutality. There is no doubt that black Americans are more likely to be killed by police and subjected to other forms of police violence.

The first order of business is to curb the excessive use of force. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has described "use of force" as the "effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject. Perhaps it is not surprising that some officers shoot first and ask questions later.

It also does not help that U. Proposals to ban chokeholds, strangleholds, and other neck restraints such as the ones that killed George Floyd are good first steps, but much more needs to be done.

In the United States, national and state lawmakers are hastily introducing bills to reduce the use of force, improve civilian oversight, require the use of body cameras, and monitor officer misconduct. They would do well to consult the 30 guiding principles recommended by the Police Executive Research Forum, an association of U.

According to Campaign Zero, a nongovernmental organization mobilizing against police brutality, restrictions on the use of force—especially in relation to lower-level infractions—have resulted in fewer killings of innocent people in big U.

Adoption of de-escalation training and techniques may also lead to improvements, but experts say more research is required. Given the political opportunity for reform, these promising measures should be incorporated into new national policing standards, along with a commitment to ongoing evaluation. Another priority is getting more and better data on police use of lethal force. Despite the large number of homicides involving police in the United States, there is no reliable government database tracking the exact number of fatalities.

To fill the gap, newspapers such as the Guardian and the Washington Post have assembled data repositories, and activists are mapping police-related deaths , though all are using unofficial sources. Without better data, police and citizens are flying blind. Despite the large number of homicides involving police, there is no reliable U. Police departments and their unions should also include more stringent accountability mechanisms in employee contracts.

Too often, police are legally shielded from any consequences of their actions. At a minimum, complaints levied against officers must be investigated, disciplinary measures for misconduct need to be swiftly enforced, and any appeals for reinstating police officers after they use excessive force should be more carefully reviewed.

An investigation by the Washington Post found that at least 1, officers were fired for misconduct between and from the largest U. Police departments should also monitor complaints about the use of force more carefully, not least because evidence shows that officers with a record of abuse can negatively influence the behavior of others.

Policies to strengthen internal discipline and prevent officers terminated for serious abuses from being rehired are also associated with improved overall performance. Recruiting more women into the police may also contribute to reducing excessive force. A study of police use of force found that male officers were three times more likely to have discharged their firearm while on duty than their female counterparts.

In another study published in , men were two to three times more likely to be accused of citizen complaints and cost police forces at least two-and-a-half times more in liability payouts to victims of excessive force or their families. Increasing the diversity of police by boosting minority recruitment is important, but the evidence on the relationship between diversity and misconduct is surprisingly unclear.

Responders outside law enforcement must play a greater role in maintaining public safety. Police certainly need more training for situations involving mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness. Just as importantly, however, other services need to be available when police are in over their heads.

In practice, however, this is harder than it seems: Mental-health crisis intervention teams have been around since the s, but their overall effectiveness is questionable. Prevention strategies—based on ample U.