Excessive racially-based police brutality was a huge social issue in the days of the 1950s and 60s during the Civil Rights Movement. An example of this would be the Birmingham Campaign in 1963. Meant to be a peaceful protest in one of the most racially-divided cities at the time, the march led to police using ridiculous forces on the protestors. After arresting thousands, the officials began to use water hoses and attack dogs on the marchers, including bystanders and children. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the brutality in his speeches, which brought media coverage and captured the attention of the nation, furthering the spark of the Civil Rights Movement. The media not only helped continue the flare of the movement, but it brought public …show more content…
The conflict theory originated with differences in power, usually from economic status, but now includes race identities as well. Every competing population and class is using every resource possible to keep its economic and social position. This means that police violence could be seen as a way for higher class people to control the lower classes and ensure that they are the only ones that continue to be at their status. The role of police is essential in the idea of having social control. Police work can be fairly racial because it follows and reflects the behaviors of society, meaning that it continues to support and further the racial divide between social and economic classes. Given that this is America, the social and economic classes are still divided, partially due to racism, because it is still very present in this society. Regarding the conflict view of racially-based police brutality, there are a couple hypotheses that could be made. One suggests that police violence is higher in cities with more non-white residents. Another statement that could be made is that it is lower in cities with a higher income or a smaller income gap between …show more content…
With a greater gap of income, there is greater inequality between each class. This causes a lot of conflict and competition with each other, each individual trying to keep their status or climb their way to the top. The higher class has a higher power to impose on people, which includes law enforcement agents. If the higher class feels threatened or unsafe by anyone lower than them, they will likely put more pressure on cops to feel more secure. If police violence is lower with small income gaps, this would mean that it’s higher in cities with growing or large inequality gaps. A study done in 2007 by Colorlines and the Chicago Reporter reveals that there is a lot of police violence occurring within the city of San Diego. This study showed that the percentage of black people murdered by the police “was at least twice that of their percentage of the city’s population,” (Lulu Chang, bustle.com). Many African-Americans believe that the force being used against them by the police was unnecessarily harsh. Combining this with a study done by the Brookings Institution shows that this city also has a high inequality gap. It explains that “the top 5% of earners in San Diego county make nearly 9 times as much in household income as those in the bottom 20%.” The income gap has showed that it grew from 2007 to 2012, because the highest earners went from a ratio of about 8.4 to 1 to
Throughout the risk assessment process, ideas for action were identified and documented. The documentation of these ideas led to the development of potential action item worksheets which were then selected, prioritized, and refined. Detailed risk assessment information for each hazard is included and located through this document.
Police Brutality Police work is dangerous. Sometimes police put in situations that excessive force is needed. But, because some officers use these extreme measures in situations when it is not, police brutality should be addressed. The use of excessive force may or may not be large problem, but it should be looked into by both the police and the public. For those people who feel racism is not a factor in causing the use of excessive force, here is a startling fact. In Tampa Bay, Florida, five men died while in the custody of the
This semester, we talked about how important it is to keep a positive relationship present between the police officers and the community. This theme really starts to emerge in the book in the chapter called, Across the Racial Divide. “There are cities where “clearing corners” is an accepted administratively supported practice: Officers routinely roll up on groups of blacks in public and order everybody to leave” (Kennedy 2011:143). This contradicts the focused deterrence approach they were implementing in cities, and knowing who were committing crimes, and instead officers racially profiling citizens. Also, this correlates to investigatory traffic stops in Pulled Over. “People are especially likely to look beyond respectfulness when, as is true of African Americans, they are a stigmatized group that is commonly and repeatedly subjected to a process that disproportionately disadvantages members of the stigmatized group, and the members of this group have developed a share knowledge of these disparities and of the process that generates them” (Epp, Maynard-Moody, & Haider-Markey 2014:117). This shows that when one race group is always being questioned, or stopped by the police, then there will never be a good relationship between the community and the police. Also, when you had the focused deterrence approach in the cities that implemented in, and police was decreasing crime so that families and business owners can live in a safe place, the relationship will be
According to Dr. Carl S. Taylor, the relationship between minority groups and police in the United States has historically been strained. Some cities have a deep and bitter history of bias and prejudice interwoven in their past relationships. The feeling in many communities today is that the system pits law enforcement as an occupying army versus the neighborhood. Dr. Taylor wrote about easing tensions between police and minorities, but stated “If there is any good news in the current situation, it is that the history of this strain has found the 1990’s ripe for change.
When hearing the phrase “police brutality,” many people imagine batons cracking skulls, tasers electrocuting bodies and bullets penetrating innocent teens. While police officers have been known to use violence, police brutality does not occur as often as many believe. In many situations, officers have to act on impulse and curiosity, despite the backlash the media may create.
In America, police brutality affects and victimizes people of color mentally and socially. Social injustice has become a major issue, which involved the principle of white supremacy vs minorities. The current police brutality that has been occurring is culturally disconnecting ethnicities from one another. According to Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, “…the cultural disconnect is very real; you have the weight of generations of abuse on African Americans,” (Flatow, 2016). For example, over the past four years, there have been countless acts of police brutality. The three key deaths of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling have become the face of police brutality in the year 2016. People knew that it was unequal treatment of black people by police in the United States and they made it known by creating #BlackLivesMatter.
Police corruption, misconduct, and brutality in the United States have been issues since the creation of watch system in the United States (Grant& Terry, 2012). New policy and training is now in place and the corruption, misconduct, and brutality has gone down since the beginning of policing. This is a huge issue that impacts all police organizations in the United States. The extent of police corruption, misconduct, and brutality is hard to track in the United States. A lot of these crimes go unreported, tossed aside, or the officer responsible gets little or no punishment. This is huge issue in the United States criminal justice system.
Police corruption is a difficult issue cities have to deal with and one of the oldest problems in the police force. Corruption can be defined as the mistreatment of public power for personal benefit or private and the use of excessive force either emotional or physical. In this essay I will explain in detail federal indictments of Los Angeles Country Sheriff officers use of mistreatment of jail inmates and visitors. Another topic I will explain is the transfer of Los Angeles Country Sheriff hired officers with questionable background. Finally I will end by analyzing the hiring of new Sheriff deputies under the “Friends of the Sheriff” program. There are several ways police departments could take to reduce police corruption. The three areas I think should change are the training officers further in how to diminish abuse, improving personal character of officers, and incentives program.
America is currently living in a period where racial divide is the highest it has been in a long time. There is a divide between police officers and citizens, but most notably a divide between police officers and people of color. Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Sandra Black, Philando Castile, etc. have all been cases where a life has been lost at the hand of a police officer.
From the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Civil Rights Movement and the Pro-Life Movement of the 1960s, to the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street Movement of current times, “those struggling against unjust laws have engaged in acts of deliberate, open disobedience to government power to uphold higher principles regarding human rights and social justice” (DeForrest, 1998, p. 653) through nonviolent protests. Perhaps the most well-known of the non-violent protests are those associated with the Civil Rights movement. The movement was felt across the south, yet Birmingham, Alabama was known for its unequal treatment of blacks and became the focus of the Civil Rights Movement. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, African-Americans in Birmingham, began daily demonstrations and sit-ins to protest discrimination at lunch counters and in public facilities. These demonstrations were organized to draw attention to the injustices in the city. The demonstrations resulted in the arrest of protesters, including Martin Luther King. After King was arrested in Birmingham for taking part in a peaceful march to draw attention to the way that African-Americans were being treated there, their lack of voter rights, and the extreme injustice they faced in Alabama he wrote his now famous “Letter from Birmingham.”
This article was on research or study on police brutality using the conflict theory and analysis. In this article, the research is tested by using the number of threatening acts and citizens depended by the number of complaints filed to the U.S. Department on police violence. The research helps to test the measurement of minority threats connecting with criminal control. Inside this article shows a table with civil rights criminal complaints, which are positively affected by the city population. The hypothesis of the threats resulted consistently with the measurements of threatening people.
Kennedy received praise for these strong and moving words yet was criticized for his weak legislative proposals to remedy the situation. By May of 1963, his proposal would change greatly however, after two men, from opposite positions set the civil rights movement into intense motion. Martin Luther King despite advice to do otherwise began massive protests in the street of Birmingham. To combat these protests, Police Commissioner “Bull” Conner used any means, including dogs, fire hoses, and electric cattle prods on protestors. Making newspapers and televi...
Young people and the police have, for many years, experienced a tense and confrontational relationship (Borgquist & Johnson et al., 1995). This has led to a great wealth of literature based upon the notion of police-youth interaction. Much of this literature has tended to focus upon juvenile criminality and the reasons why young people commit such seemingly high levels of crime. Whilst the relationship between young people and the police force has been widely theorised and explained, there is very little literature on juvenile attiudes towards the police. Research that concerns societies attitudes towards the police force tends to focus upon the views and opinions of adults (Hurst and Frank, 2000). In this first section of my literature review I am going to focus upon work that allows us to gain a deeper understanding of why young people are so important when looking at crime. This section will allow us to comprehend the ways in which, literature suggests, young people view the police. This knowledge will provide a basis for my research in which I look more specifically at youth attitudes towards PCSO’s.
Police brutality is one of the most serious human rights violations in the United States and it occurs everywhere. The reason why I chose this topic is because police brutality happens all the time in the United States and still remains unrecognized by many. Additionally, the public should be knowledgeable about this topic because of how serious this crime can be and the serious outcomes that police brutality can have on other police officers and the public. The job of police officers is to maintain public order, prevent, and detect crimes. They are involved in very dangerous and stressful occupations that can involve violent situations that must be stopped and controlled by any means. In many confrontations with people, police may find it necessary to use excessive force to take control of a certain situation. Sometimes this makes an officer fight with a suspect who resists being arrested. Not all cops in communities are great cops. At least once a year, the news covers a story about a person being beat by an officer. The article “Minority Threat and Police Brutality: Determinants of Civil Rights Criminal Complaints in U.S. Municipalities” by Malcolm D. Holmes from the University of Wyoming, uses the conflict theory to explain why officers go after minorities sometimes causing police brutality. It explains the police’s tension with African American and Latino males. Those minorities are the ones that retaliate more against police officers which causes the officer to use violent force to defend themselves.
Departmental discipline has been imposed by various police stations to ensure that police officers do not violate agency policy. It is mandatory for officers to obey departmental restrictions on how to initiate an investigation, when to pursue it and when to discontinue it. Although failure to follow departmental policy may lead to internal discipline, it is not in itself enough reason to impose civil liability. However, in cases where officers go too far and violate the rights of citizens, the victim of misconduct is entitled to take action through federal and state laws. Civil rights laws protect citizens from abuse by government authorities and law enforcers. These laws allow attorney, compensatory and disciplinary damages as incentives to compensate injured parties and enforce their rights.