Showing posts with label law enforcement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law enforcement. Show all posts

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Racism and Police Homicides in America

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Once again, an egregious police homicide of a Black man caught on videotape shatters the calm and erupts into national protests and outrage. This time it is George Floyd of Minnesota. His life was slowly squeezed out of him as he lay bound and helpless while a seemingly depraved and indifferent cop pinned Mr. Floyd’s neck to the pavement with his knee.

PHOTO: Minnesota State Patrol and National Guards stand in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Photo Date: 5/29/2020 - https://www.newscenter1.tv/minneapolis-overwhelmed-again-by-protests-over-floyd-death/

Once again, the eyes of the nation turn towards the seemingly intractable problem of racism that, among its many forms, would cause African Americans to be nearly twice as likely to die at the hands of law enforcement than White Americans. Racism is our greatest barrier to becoming a more perfect union and at present, the racists seem to have ascended to power.

And once again, this despicable racial killing by a cop in broad daylight has ignited a blaze that masks an underlying outrage behind the numbers. About one-thousand American civilians are being killed every year by our civilian police force. From January 1, 2015, through December 31, 2019, there have been 1,179 police homicides of Black citizens, 2,242 homicides of White citizens, 843 police homicides of Hispanic civilians, and a total of at least 4,947 civilians killed by police.

Data is from the Washington Post database. Analysis by the author. 

Civilian homicides by police always rise to public attention because they so disproportionally target African-Americans. Once the problem is framed as a systemic racial issue the proposed remedies never reach beyond the disproportionality question. The fact that our highly aggressive and militant police training is resulting in thousands of needless deaths never comes to light. Until that is addressed, the proposed solutions will never be to anyone’s satisfaction.

Data from the Washington Post database. Analysis by the Author
Civilian homicide rates by law enforcement in America are orders of magnitude higher than in Great Britain, France, or Germany. Yet, the actual number of civilian deaths could be considerably larger still. There is no mandatory federal tracking of homicides caused by police in the line of duty. Federal reporting is all voluntary and spotty at best. The countries best numbers come by combing through local newspaper accounts and gleaning what can be learned from the public account of police-involved civilian deaths. This civilian effort to track police homicides only started about five years ago. It is an imperfect system. Clearly, not all police shootings make it into the local newspapers. The information reported is rarely investigated by local reporters. They are the accounts given to the press by the local police officials. And there are undoubtedly police-related fatalities of civilians that are never reported in the local press.

No racial activist would be or should be satisfied if successful remedies to the racial problem merely end racial disparities. In practical terms that would mean about 103 fewer Black minority deaths each year while still tolerating 133 annual minority homicides. It would be equally crazy to accept 448 White civilian death by the police as long as this carnage is in proportional to the number of Blacks and Hispanics that are also killed each year.


Data is from the Washington Post database. The analysis is by the author.

The militarization of the American police force is a big part of the problem that must be addressed. If German laws and police practices were adopted here, adjusted for our larger population, the United States might expect only about 40 police homicides per year, mostly justified uses of force, as opposed to nearly 1,000.

The arguments for this position on police homicides are in numbers found in the tables I created from the data contained in five year’s worth of information collected by the Washington Post. Seeing all the names as you scroll down that database of the dead is sobering, like visiting the Vietnam Nam War Memorial. 

--------------------------------------------

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

"Serve and Protect" or "Enforce and Collect" The Changing Character of Local Police

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Police come in two basic flavors, I was once told, the "serve and protect" peace officers and the "enforce and collect" officers. These represent (in overly simplified terms) two fundamentally different and incompatible philosophies that are competing for the heart and soul of the profession. I needn't mention which view is winning out since 9/11. Still, the drama playing out among departments also plays out within departments, which may account for some of the local police department infighting described in a recent WNYC News article and how it is costing New Jersey taxpayers. You might not see it at first, but so often the emotional motivations behind what seems like petty disputes are really underlying rifts involving fundamentally different world views. That's what I suspect is happening here in New Jersey and elsewhere around the country, although the WNYC article doesn't mention this.

http://j.mp/1nP5kBV

Good Cop, Bad Cop: How Infighting Is Costing New Jersey Taxpayers

Tuesday, June 17, 2014


WNYC

In the opening account in this article a female officer in Camden, New Jersey, is made Chief of Police. When she inspects the unmarked car that comes with her new promotion she discovers that one of her fellow officers planted crack cocaine in the vehicle to derail both her promotion and her career. Incidents like this reveal just how serious the clash of ideologies can be. In this case it may involve attitudes towards woman. In another example elsewhere in New Jersey an officer was handed a 30 day suspension for loosing an $8 Slim Jim. Such punishments often convey a more personal message. 

I had a good friend who spent his entire career in local police departments. He dedicated himself to serving the public. Sometimes that meant arresting people who endangered others or disturbed the peace, but it also meant engaging with people in the community and going the extra mile to help out local residents in a pinch. In small towns especially it isn't "all bad guys all the time". Narrowing the focus of police work to strictly law enforcement activity results in a jaunted view of the community. My friend was never cynical or jaded by his work, but his outlook on small town policing set him at odds with a segment of his fellow officers. It played out in many internal conflicts and seemingly irrational personnel decisions over the course of his career. In the end he retired early, in part because the hostility he felt in the workplace had taken its toll.

I have other police officer friends, some who are of the "enforce and collect" variety who received negative attention in their careers whenever they strayed a bit from that philosophy. Another person I know who aspires to be a police officer was turned off by the militancy and hardnosed cynicism built into the police training curriculum. Just what does the current police training curriculum look like these days? The public should be asking this question.

What all this really means is that the drama playing out in society as a whole between ultra-conservative ideologies and more mainstream thinking is also playing out in all our public institutions, including police agencies. Local departments are not immune to what affects society as a whole. What's different here is that even small, local police departments shun transparency. While they work for the public they tend to view us as civilians outside of their fraternity. It is hard to penetrate a Departments cultural view. At the same time, there is clearly money and military style equipment flowing into even local law enforcement agencies, which serves to alter the character of local policing.

These changes are real. What is missing, in addition to transparency, is a robust public debate on what role we want local police to play in our communities. Are we aware of the changes character of our local police departments and are we comfortable with those changes?

I just learned of a new report out by the ACLU on the militarization of our police. Of the report they say, "Our neighborhoods are not war zones, and police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies. Any yet, every year, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment flows from the federal government to state and local police departments. Departments use these wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color.
You can read their report here:  https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf

----------------------------------------------------

Related Stories on this Blog

Three People Die in Police Custody Every Day
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2015/04/three-people-die-daily-in-police-actions.html

Police Action Fatalities in America
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2015/04/police-action-fatalities-in-america.html

New Data Exposes Racial Bias in Fatal Police Encounters Nationwide
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2015/04/new-data-exposes-racial-bias-in-fatal.html

Police Homicides, What We Know and Don't Know
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2014/09/police-homicides-what-we-know-and-dont.html

Police Killings Not Uncommon, Exact Numbers Are Unknown
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2014/08/police-killings-not-uncommon-exact.html

Consequences of Militarized Police Departments in America
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/05/consequences-of-militarized-police.html

Stop-and-Frisk and Racial Profiling, What We Should Know

http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/06/stop-and-frisk-and-racial-profiling.html

Counter