Police Brutality and Abuse in Our Society Part 3

According to Human Rights Watch, in a study they conducted it was concluded that efforts to dissuade complainants have become extreme in some cities, and officers are thus striking back by filing complaints against their own complaints. Efforts by officers have reached such a level that recently officers have even filed civil lawsuits against plaintiffs and attorneys. In Seattle, the police officers’ union filed defamation lawsuits against six citizens who had filed complaints that were not sustained by the Internal Investigations Section of the police department in 1994 and 1995. In the six months following this retaliation, there was a drop of almost 75 percent in citizen complaints (1998).

A national survey conducted by the Police Foundation found that the majority of officers feel that is not unusual for them to turn a “blind eye” to improper conduct by other fellow officers. It was found that six out of 10 officers admitted that even when it came to reporting serious criminal violations involving abuse of power by other officers they do not always report them (Alpert & Dunham, 2004). Police departments as a whole are characterized with a certain degree of secrecy that aids to the concept of brutality. “Secrecy is loyalty, for it represents, sticking with a group, and its maintenance carries with it a profound sense of participation…Secrecy is also solidarity, for which it represents a common front against the outside world and consensus in at least one goal (Jacoby, 1988). This code of secrecy functions as a social bond among the police, by giving them something in common (Niederhoffer & Blumberg, 1990). As a whole, is important to recognize that within police departments officers work together like family and unfortunately many times these same family ties allow for more serious crimes to be concealed.

Minorities as Targets

 Virtually all police departments subscribe to the principle of equality, however, this is not the reality when it comes to victims of police brutality. Today, race continues to play a central role in police brutality in the United States. In all major cities in the United Sates, the study conducted by Human Rights Watch found that police have subjected minorities to all types of discriminatory treatment and have physically abused minorities while using racial epithets. “Mistreatment may be non-violent harassment and humiliation, such as allegations of racial profiling in which drivers are temporarily detained often for driving in certain areas or for driving certain types of cars” (Shielded From Justice, 1998). The 1991 Christopher Commission report and the 1992 St. Clair Commission report, which focused on Boston’s police department, showed that race still plays a central role in the use of excessive force. The St. Clair Commission report found that during the period studied, 50 percent of complainants in the sample group were African-American, while 26 percent of Boston’s population was African-American (Shielded from Justice, 1998).