Andriana Johnson
Encyclopedia Term: Police Brutality in the United States
Photo: http://www.knuj.net/files/2017/09/Police-lights.jpg
In recent history, police brutality has become a very contentious issue in the United States. Broadly defined, police brutality describes “the use of any force exceeding that reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose” (Dictionary of American History, 2003). The killings of individuals including Michael Brown, Freddie Grey, Philando Castille, and Eric Garner and the protests that subsequently ensued pushed the issue to the forefront of the public eye. In 2008, police officers in the United States used physical force on approximately 344,000 people (Feldman). Even more recently, in 2013, interactions with police officers led to an estimated 100,000 emergency room visits (CDC, 2013). These statistics are significant because law enforcement agencies claim to be structured to protect the general public and keep people from harm. When incidents of police brutality or the killing of unarmed citizens become staples in public discourse, it becomes an issue of public health, not only for potential victims of violent crime at the hands of officers, but also in the distrust of law enforcement that can arise and has already risen, particularly in minority communities.
The Black Lives Matter Movement:
One of the most influential implications of the rise in attention of police brutality in the United States was the creation of the Black Lives Matter social movement. Founded in 2012 after the widely publicized death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by Patrise Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter (often abbreviated as BLM) was created to serve as a “call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society” (blacklivesmatter.com). Although the movement has come to be typically associated with combating police brutality not only in the United States, but all over the world, the organization also works with a multitude of other issues that affect the black community, including the marginalization of Black trans and queer individuals, negative treatment of African Americans with criminal records, and speaking up for undocumented blacks (blacklivesmatter.com).. Utilizing various platforms, including social media, marches, television, clothing, and even speeches, participants in the BLM movement have created a very loud voice in raising awareness to the issues of police brutality in the United States and other regions. As such, there have been a widely varied range of reactions to the movement, what is represents, and the steps its members choose to take in making their voices heard. One of the most popular criticisms of the BLM movement is that its radicals desire to stir up public discord and “advance inflammatory narratives” (French 2016). As a result, the “All Lives Matter” phrase popped up as a sort of counter to the original phrase. The saying “all lives matter” emerged as a retaliation against the original movement because of those who felt that the Black Lives Matter movement was valuing black lives over the lives of others. Celebrities and others who tweeted this received backlash because it seemed they were trying to draw attention away from the subject at hand which was black lives. Some critics have been very vocally harsh against the movement, such as Sheriff David A. Clarke who claimed that the BLM movement would soon “join forces with ISIS” (twitter.com/SheriffClarke).
Photo: A group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Seattle, Washington. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
Some of the loudest voices of protest again BLM and what it stands for have come from supporters of police officers. Similar to the #AllLivesMatter campaign, the phrase #BlueLivesMatter and a subsequent countermovement was founded by active and retired law enforcement officers after the murders of two police officers in the wake of the protests of Ferguson, Missouri (Blue Lives Matter). Many feel that the BLM movement can lead to and even encourages the distrust of police and disregard for their state-sanctioned authority (which would certainly serve as a threat to public health). Events such as the murders of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu by a deranged gunman in 2014 contributed to this discourse (Baker, 2014). The man who murdered the two police officers, presumably as some sort of payback for previous deaths of black men at the hands of police officers, wrote “They Take 1 of Ours…Let’s Take 2 of Theirs” (Holley, 2014). In another incident, two police officers in Ferguson, MO were ambushed and shot in the wake of the protests that stormed the city in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting (Berman, 2015). Events such as this led to calls to action against Black Lives Matter movement and claims that it was inciting violence and chaos. Some even went as far as to claim that the organization encourages “unthinking radicalism and cultural Marxism” (French 2016). The Black Lives Matter movement and the controversy and support that surround it have a definite impact on public health because public perception of law enforcement officers has a direct impact on these individuals’ abilities to do their jobs and maintain public safety.
The “Ferguson Effect”
One of the responses to police brutality as a public health issue is an idea known as the “Ferguson effect.” Coined by Chief Sam Dotson of the Ferguson police, the idea behind this concept is that increased scrutiny on police officers on account of the widely publicized civilian shootings has led to more reluctance from police officers to enforce the law in situations that may result in backlash, thus leading to higher crime rates in cities (Gold, 2014). Proponents of this theory claim that the anti-police rhetoric disseminated by organizations such as Black Lives Matter have resulted in the undermining of police officers as trustworthy authority figures and thus endangered the lives of an increased number of law enforcement agents as well as civilians. The phrase was developed after there was a noticeable spike in the violent crime rates of certain cities in 2014 including Los Angeles (a violent crime increase of 27%), Baltimore (a murder rate increase of 37%), and Houston (a murder increase of almost 50%) (Perez, 2015). There is considerable debate on the validity of the existence of such an effect, and whether or not it is truly an issue. In 2015, NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton claimed to have seen no indication of this effect in the city of New York (Eilperin, 2015). Then-president Barack Obama gave a speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2015 in which he stated that crime rates were historically low across the nation and “What we can’t do is cherry-pick data or use anecdotal evidence to drive policy or to feed political agendas.” (Neyfakh, 2015). Whether or not the Ferguson effect is a legitimate phenomenon, it remains beyond dispute that the issue of police brutality in the United States is a contentious and dividing issue that has real ramifications on both sides. Some feel that the increasing attention being brought to police brutality is finally shedding light on injustices that have taken place for years.
Photo: Protest sign from the 1963 March on Washington featured at the Smithsonian museum. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, gift of Samuel Y. Edgerton)
Although the contemporary issue of police brutality in America has risen to the forefront of public discourse in recent years, it is by no means a new topic of discussion. The use of excessive force against civilians by law enforcement officials has been an issue dating back to the days of Jim Crow (Nodjimbadem 2017). During a time in our nation’s history where certain racial and ethnic groups were considered legally inferior, police officers would often reinforce this ideology through increasingly violent tactics, including clubs, dogs, and pepper spray, even on nonviolent protesters. In 1991, the brutal beating of Rodney King was caught on camera and the subsequent acquittal of the police officers involved spurred a series of violent protests and riots in Los Angeles in April and May of 1992 (Sastry, 2017).
Photo: Water being sprayed on a burning building in LA on April 30, 1992. (CNN.com)
One of the ramifications of the infamous LA Riots was that police brutality was pushed to the forefront of public discussion, particularly regarding racial tensions. Rodney King was a black man seen being brutally beaten by white police officers who many people felt were not forced to pay for their actions. In this respect, the riots were very much racially charged, similar to the movements that have risen to the forefront today. Although the issue of police brutality is by no means just a minority issue, many feel that the lives of minority populations in the United States is undervalued, hence the acquittal or lack of charges for officers involved in the shootings of these individuals. In the case of the Rodney King riots, the demonstrations and protests were certainly a threat to public health of the individuals involved as well as the bystanders. There were open gunfights, fires, and looting of stores in the area that endangered the well-being of police officers and civilians alike (Sastry 2017).
Politics of Health
The issue of police brutality is very much related to politics of health because it directly impacts the safety and security of the general public as well as the people who are charged with protecting citizens. The impact of protests and riots on public discord reflects the influence that racial tensions and power dynamics have on the country. When society reaches a point where law enforcement is not trusted by large segments of the population, it threatens the safety and well-being of members of society. It is important to note that, while there are rough estimates of the amount of interactions between civilians and police, there is no reliable database to keep track of deaths at the hands of police (Krieger 2015). This is due in large part to the reluctance of law enforcement agencies to release this data (Krieger 2015). Because of this, there has been a push in recent years to classify police-related deaths as a public health condition, meaning that this data would thus be recorded by public health agencies, rather than relying in police departments or the government (Krieger 2015). Other agencies that exist to record U.S. mortality rates are often inaccurate due to underreporting of police deaths, lack of timeliness, and other factors. (Krieger 2015). Reporting deaths at the hands of police as a health condition means that these occurrences can no longer be swept under the rug by police departments nor overstated by groups with agendas. Instead these statistics would be regulated by official agencies the same way that suicides, automobile accidents, and civilian homicides would be reported. It is also important to point out that police brutality does not always end in death. The effects of excessive force can have long-term consequences for victims including: injuries, trauma, and stress (APHS 2016).
Racialization:
This issue of racialization is also heavily demonstrated in the way that instances of police brutality have divided the nation along racial lines. This term, coined by sociologist Robert Miles, describes the belief that humans can be biologically sorted into distinct groups and has been seen with the demonstrations and even simply the fact that some feel the need to emphasize that black lives in particular are valuable (Miles 2003). By the same token, when police officers abuse their power, it threatens the health and safety of the individuals that they are supposed to protect – individuals such as Justine Damond, a white Australian woman who was killed earlier in the year 2017 by Minneapolis police (Ross 2017). The response to this shooting was very different than responses to past shootings, and many people noticed. When a white woman was killed by police, there was much more widespread outrage across groups and demographics (Ross 2017). This speaks to politics of health in the ways that different bodies can be perceived to be more valuable than others. In our nation’s history, people who are socially identified as White have experienced more power, authority, and value than those who are socially identified as minorities.
Sources:
“About the Black Lives Matter Movement.” Blacklivesmatter.com, blacklivesmatter.com/about/. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
About Blue Lives Matter.” Blue Lives Matter,
www.themaven.net/bluelivesmatter/pages/rF54b2VNMUOrl7wfh8vRXQ?full=1. Accessed Oct. 10, 2017.
Baker, Benjamin Mueller and Al. “2 N.Y.P.D. Officers Killed in Brooklyn Ambush; SuspectCommits Suicide.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Dec. 2014. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Berman, Mark. “Two Police Officers Shot, Seriously Injured in Ferguson ‘Ambush.’” The Washington Post, WP Company, 12 Mar. 2015. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and ReportingSystem (WISQARS). Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Eilperin, Juliet, and Wesley Lowery. “Obama Says There’s No Evidence of a ‘Ferguson Effect’.”The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 Oct. 2015. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
French, David. “Black Lives Matter: Radicals Using Moderates to Help Tear AmericaApart.”National Review, National Review, 11 July 2016. Accessed Oct. 10, 2017.
Gold, Ashley. “Why Has the Murder Rate in Some US Cities Suddenly Spiked?” BBC News, BBC, 5 June 2015. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Holley, Peter. “Two New York City Police Officers Are Shot and Killed in a Brazen Ambush in Brooklyn.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 20 Dec. 2014. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Jr. David A.Clarke https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/659197285172166657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Krieger N, Chen JT, Waterman PD, Kiang MV, Feldman J (2015) Police Killings and Police Deaths Are Public Health Data and Can Be Counted. PLoS Med12(12): e1001915. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001915, Accessed Oct. 10, 2017.
“Law Enforcement Violence as a Public Health Issue.” AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTHASSOCIATION, American Public Health Association, 1 Nov. 2016.
Miles, Robert, and Malcolm Brown. Racism. Routledge, 2003. Accessed Oct. 10, 2017.
MSW, Justin Feldman MPH. “Harvard Public Health Review: A Student Publication.” Public Health and the Policing of Black Lives | Harvard Public Health Review: A Student Publication, Harvard Public Health Review. Accessed Oct. 10, 2017.
Nodjimbadem, Katie. “The Long, Painful History of Police Brutality in theU.S.”Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 27 July 2017. Accessed Oct. 10, 2017.
Neyfakh, Leon. “There Is No Ferguson Effect—but That Doesn’t Mean We Can Ignore UrbanMurder Spikes.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 20 Nov. 2015. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Perez, Evan, et al. “FBI Chief Tries to Deal with the ‘Ferguson Effect’ – CNNPolitics.” CNN,Cable News Network, 27 Oct. 2015. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017
“Police Brutality.” Dictionary of American History, Encyclopedia.com, 2003. Sept. 21, 2017
Ross, Janell. “In Minneapolis, Response to Police Shooting of White Woman by Somali Officer Has Been Different.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 Aug. 2017. Accessed Sept. 21, 2017.
Sastry, Anjuli, and Karen Grigsby Bates. “When LA Erupted In Anger: A Look Back At The
Rodney King Riots.” NPR, NPR, 26 Apr. 2017. Accessed /Sept. 21, 2017.
*Andriana Johnson
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