Quoted in Edwards, "Beanbag Guns." A police investigation revealed that six members of the SWAT team were responsible for the attack, two of them instructors at the Cincinnati Police Training Academy. Jennifer Edwards, "No Explanation Given Yet in Beanbag Case," Cincinnati Post, April 17, 2001, http://www.cincypost.com/200l/apr/17/shoot04l701.html (accessed April 25, 2002).
Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department [The Christopher Commission], Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (July 9, 1991), 6-7.
Christopher Commission, Report, 3.
Quoted in Christopher Commission, Report, 8.
Quoted in Christopher Commission, Report, 14. Ellipses in original.
Stacey C. Koon with Robert Deitz, Presumed Guilty: The Tragedy of the Rodney King Affair (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1992), 22.
Christopher Commission, Report, 8 and 15.
Christopher Commission, Report, 11 and 13.
"The second development that made the outcome of the trial predictable, in retrospect, was the defense attorneys' ability to put Mr. King, instead of the four white police officers, on trial.... It is our contention that the jury agreed with the defense attorneys' portrayals of Mr. King as dangerous and uncontrollable, and thus rendered a verdict in favor of the four white police officers, notwithstanding the seemingly irrefutable videotaped evidence." Melvin Oliver et al., "Anatomy of a Rebellion: A Political-Economic Analysis," in Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising. ed. Robert Gooding-WiIIiams (New York: Routledge, 1993), 119-120.
Charles E. Simmons, "The Los Angeles Rebellion: Class, Race, and Misinformation," in Why LA. Happened: Implications of the 92 Los Angeles Rebellion, ed. Haki R. Madhubuti (Chicago: a: Third World Press, 1993), 150.
Oliver et al., "Anatomy of a Rebellion," 118.
David O. Sears, "Urban Rioting in Los Angeles: A Comparison of 1965 with 1992," in The Los Angeles Riots: Lessons for the Urban Future, ed. Mark Baldassarc (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 238.
Oliver et al., "Anatomy of a Rebellion," 118.
Robin D. G. Kelley, "'Slangin' Rocks...Palestinian Style': Dispatches from the Occupied Zones of North America," in Police Brutality, ed. Jill Nelson (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 50.
Oliver et al., "Anatomy of a Rebellion," 134.
Joan Petersilia and Allan Abrahamse, "A Profile of Those Arrested," in Baldassarc, The Los Angeles Riots: lessons for the Urban Future, 141.
Paul A. Gilie, Rioting in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 174-75.
David Sears uses these terms to characterize the various explanations of the disturbance. Scars, "Urban Rioting," 248-250.
Christopher Commission. Report, 55.
Christopher Commission, Report, 57-58.
Oliver et al., "Anatomy of a Rebellion." 120.
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders [The Kerner Commission], Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968). 117-18.
Kerner Commission, Report, 206.
James Baldwin, "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem," in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (New York: The Dial Press, 1961), 65-67.
Bob Blauner, "Whitewash Over Watts: The Politics of the McCone Commission," in Still the Big News: Racial Oppression in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 115.
Kerner Commission, Report, 37-38: and Sears, Urban Rioting," 238.
Bruce Porter and Marvin Dunn, The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1984), 33 and 36-38.
Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, 37.
Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, 38 and 43.
Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, 62-63.
Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, xiii.
Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, 53-54.
Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, xiii.
Quoted in Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, 55-56.
These vigilantes acted not from panic, or in self-defense, but in planned drive-by attacks. Porter and Dunn, Miami Riot, 71.
Baldwin, "Fifth Avenue, Uptown," 66.
See, for example: Egon Bittner, "The Capacity to Use Force as the Core of the Police Role," in The Police and Society: Touchstone Readings, ed. Victor E. Kappeler (Prospect Heights, IL: Wave-land Press, 1999).
Kenneth Adams, "What We Know About Police Use of Force," in Use of Force by Police: Overview of National and Local Data (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 1999), 3.
Adams, "Police Use of Force," 4.
Quoted in Danny Goodgame, "Police Operate in World of Hostility," Miami Herald, July 25, 1979. For more on this point, see: Adams. "Police Use ofForce," 10.
Both quoted in Amnesty International, United States of America: Rights for All; Race, Rights and Police Brutality (London: Amnesty International, September 1999), 23. The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence ofa public official or other person acting in an official capacity." U.N. General Assembly, "Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" [General Assembly Resolution 39/46: December 1984] Basic Human Rights Instruments (Geneva: United Nations Centre for Human Rights; and Turin: International Centre of the Internatioal Labour Organization [ILO], 1998), 116. The use of torture is not so remote from the practices of American policing as many people a would like to believe. According to U.S. district court Judge Milton Shadur, it was "common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions." In fact, the allegations against Burge cover a twenty-year span from 1973 to 1993. A Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards investigation identified about fifty victims, and dozens of inmates claim that Burge extracted false confessions from them. Burge's tactics included electric shock, Russian Roulette, beatings, and suffocating inmates with typewriter covers. Steve Mills and Janan Hanna, "Counsel to Probe Torture by Police," Chicago Tribune, April 25, 2002, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-0204250299apr25.story (accessed April 2002).
Tom McEwan, National Data Collection on Police Use of Force (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau ofJustice Statistics and National Institute ofJustice, April 1996), 46. Emphasis in original.
David Bayley and Harold Mendelsohn, Minorities andthe Police: Confrontation in America (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 125.
Amnesty International discusses these problems in greater detail. Amnesty International, Race, Rights, and Police Brutality, 31.
Adams, "Police Use of Force," 10. Emphasis in original.
McEwan, National Data Collection, 63-64.
Charles Ogletree, Jr. et al., Beyond the Rodney King Story: An Investigation of Police Misconduct in Minority Communities (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), 52-53.
Patrick A. Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public: Findings fiom the 1999 National Survey (U.S. Department ofJustice, Bureau ofJustice Statistics, February 2001), 34. This study represents one promising variation on the victim-reporting approach - the victim survey. Of course, the survey still relies on the victim's willingness to discuss the abuse (with a representative of the Justice Department, no less), but it does not rely on the victim's initiative in reporting it.
Adams, "Police Use of Force," 10.
Joel Garner and Christopher Maxwell, "Measuring the Amount of Force Used By and Against the Police in Six Jurisdictions," in Use of Force by Police: Overview of National and Local Data (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of ustice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 1999), 27.
McEwan, National Data Collection, 67.
Sociologist (and former reporter) Rodney Stark explains that the American news media are not well suited for covering chronic social problems and face additional hurdles when reporting on police abuse because they rely on police for information concerning other stories. Rodney Stark, Police Riots: Collective Violence and Law Enforcement (Belmont, CA: Focus Books, 1972), 217-218.
Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, iii. This figure only represents the number of victims. It does not indicate how many distinct incidents of violence occurred, their severity, or the number of police involved. Also, because of the surveying methods used, it almost certainly under-represents the experiences of certain populations-the homeless, to cite an obvious example.
Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, iii and 2.
Atlanta had 416,474 residents in 2000. Fresno had 427,652. "Top 50 Cities in the U.S. by Population and Rank, 1990 and 2000," in Time Almanac 2002, ed. Borgna Brunner (Boston: Information, Please, 2002), 201. Our hypothetical metropolis would be the thirty-ninth largest city in the United States.
Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2.
Langan etal., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 3. In nearly half (49.7 percent) of arrests involving force, the most severe tactic reported was classified as a "grab." Garner and Maxwell, "Measuring the Amount of Force," 41.
Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2. The police themselves report that force is used at a much lower rate. "The IACP [International Association of Chiefs ofPolice] calculation of the use-of-force rate is based on dispatched calls for service. For example, based on 1995 data reported by 110 agencies [in the United States], the police use-of-force rate was 4.19 per 10,000 responded-to calls for service, or 0.0419 percent." Mark A. Henriquez, "IACP National Database Project on Police Use ofForce," in Use of Force by Police: Overview of National and Local Data (Washington, DC: U.S. Department ofJustice, National Institute of Justice and the Bureau ofJustice Statistics, October 1999), 21.
Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 24.
Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department; Colorado Springs (Colorado) Police Department; Dallas (Texas) Police Department; St. Petersburg (Florida) Police Department; San Diego County (California) Sheriff's Department; and the San Diego (California) Police Department. Garner and Maxwell, "Measuring the Amount of Force," 25.
Garner and Maxwell, "Measuring the Amount of Force," 30-32. Chemical weapons like pepper E spray were the type most commonly used by police (being employed in 1.2 percent of all adult arrests). The second most common weapon was the flashlight, being used in 0.5 percent of arrests. Batons were used somewhat less frequently, in 0.2 percent of arrests. If we class batons a and flashlights together as clubs, we learn that such weapons were used in 0.7 percent of arrests, and threatened twice as often (in 1.5 percent of arrests). Handguns were used in 0.1 percent of arrests, and shotguns or rifles in another 0.1 percent. Oddly, "firearms are infrequently used but are the most frequent weapon displayed." Counting handguns, shotguns, and rifles, guns were displayed in 3.1 percent of the arrests, and used in 0.2 percent. Garner and Maxwell, "Measuring the Amount of Force," 30-31. It is worth remembering that, even when they are not drawn or brandished, police firearms are always, to some extent, on display.
See, for example: Adams, "Police Use of Force," 3 and 5: Garner and Maxwell, "Measuring the Amount of Force," 25, 30, 33, and 41; and McEwan, National Data Collection, 41. It's hard to know what to say about such views, except perhaps to suggest that the researchers are not giving the numbers the weight they deserve. One exception is the NAACP's report on police brutality, based on testimony and documents from six cities around the country (Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Norfolk [Virginia], and St. Louis). They found that "Excessive Force has become a standard part of the arrest procedure." Ogletree et al., Beyond the Rodney King Story, 29.
David Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes Toward Abuse of Authority: Findings from a National Survey (U.S. Department ofJustice, National Institute ofJustice: May 2000), 2.
Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes, 3.
Stark, Police Riots. 74.
Christopher Commission, Report, 36.
Christopher Commission, Report, 40.
Christopher Commission, Report, 169.
Erica Leah Schmitt et al., Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 1999 (U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs and Bureau of Justice Statistics, March 2002), 14, "Persons ages 16 to 29 were 34.5 percent of the estimated 44 million who had a police contact but 68.1 percent of those experiencing force during a contact. Persons age 32 or less accounted for about 75 percent of all persons who reported experiencing police use of force. The median age of those experiencing force was 23." Langan et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 29.
Langan, Contacts Between Police and the Public, 4 and 24; and Schmitt et al., Drivers Stopped by Police, 14-16. Police racism will be discussed at greater length in chapter 4.
Jodi M. Brown and Patrick A. Langan, Policing and Homicide, 1976-98: justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, March 2001), iii. "From 1976 to 1998, young black males (black males under age 25) made up about 1 percent ofthe population but 16 percent of felons killed by police in justifiable homicides', young white males made up about 8 percent of the population but 16 percent of felons killed by police..." Brown and Langan, Policing and Homicide, 8.
Police officers, for the most part, do not feel that these statistics reflect prejudice on the part of their colleagues. Only 17 percent thought that "Police officers often treat whites better than they do Black people and other minorities." (57.8 percent of the cops surveyed disagreed, and 25.2 percent strongly disagreed.) Likewise, even fewer (11.1 percent) suspected that "Police officers are more likely to use physical force against Black people and other minorities than against whites in similar situations." (55.6 percent disagreed and 33.3 percent strongly disagreed.) Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes, 6.
The opinions of police diverge sharply according to the race of the officer. Among Black cops, 51.3 percent think that the police treat White people better than Black people, but only 11.9 percent of White cops agree. Concerning the use of force, the difference is even greater: 57.1 percent of Black cops and 5.1 percent of their White colleagues think police use force more readily against Black people. Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes, 9.
Perhaps more surprising, "Use of force appears to be unrelated to an officer's personal characteristics, such as age, gender, and ethnicity." Adams, "Police Use of Force," 6. (This claim is, by Adams's own admission, made only "with moderate confidence," based on an analysis of the available data. Given our current state of knowledge about police violence, it can hardly be conclusive.)
Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 1996), 40. I have added the numbers here for the reader's convenience. 240
This parallel was brought to my attention by the Portland Copwatch Women's Caucus at a May 17, 2001, training. Unfortunately, the analogy between police brutality and domestic violence is often entirely literal. In September 1997, Chief Soulsby of the DC Metropolitan Police told Human Rights Watch that "domestic violence is one of [the department's] worst behavior problems." Quoted in Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1998), 381. 3
DC is not alone. Between 1990 and 1997, the LAPD investigated 227 domestic violence cases involving officers as perpetrators. In Boston, domestic violence is the single most common reason police are arrested. Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 211 and 149.
Seattle Police Department, The Seattle Police Department After Action Report: World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference; Seattle, Washington; November 29 - December 3, 1999 (April 4, 2000), 2.
Arch Puddington, "The Extent of Police Brutality is Exaggerated," in Police Brutality: Opposing Viewpoints, ed. Helen Cothran (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2001), 29.
The phrase is from LAPD sergeant Stacey Koon's report of Rodney King's arrest. Koon describes King's injuries: "Several facial cuts due to contact with asphalt. Of a minor nature. A split inner lip. Suspect oblivious to pain." Quoted in Christopher Commission, Report, 9.
Cincinnati Police sergeant Harry Roberts, after the killing of Timothy Thomas: "We didn't kill fifteen black men. We killed fifteen criminals who resisted arrest. They didn't die because they were black. They died because they were criminals." Quoted in Jennifer Edwards, "Police Union Defends Deaths," Cincinnati Post, April 14, 2001, http://www.cincypost.com/2001/apr/14/union041401.html (accessed April 25, 2002).
San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, describing an incident in which three off-duty cops attacked two men to rob them of a bag of fajitas. Quoted in Lance Williams, "SFPD Indictments; The Mayor's Reaction: He Protects His Friends, Feuds With the D.A.," San Francisco Chronicle, March 3, 2003 [database: NewsBank Full-Text Newspapers, accessed March 4, 2003].
"Well, there are cases. For example, when you stop a fellow for routine questioning. Say a wise guy, and he starts talking back to you and telling you you are no good and that sort of thing. You know you can take a man in on a disorderly conduct charge but you can practically never make it stick. So what you do in a case like that is to egg the guy on until he makes a remark where you can justifiably slap him and then if he fights back you can call it resisting arrest." Quoted in William A. Westley, Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of law, Custom, and Morality (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1970), 124.
"The use of force is necessary to protect yourself. You should always show that you are the boss. Make them respect the uniform and not the man. Suppose you are interrogating a guy who says to go fuck yourself You are not supposed to take that." Quoted in Westley, Violence and the Police, 126.
Portland Police Association Rap Sheet editor Loren Christensen Quoted in Dan Handelman, "Police Shootings ... We're Tired of Having To Write About This," The People's Police Report 13 (January 1998), 2.
Portland Police officer Ed Riddell, concerning an incident during which police shot and killed an epileptic Latino man inside a psychiatric hospital. Quoted in Steve Duin, "Silver Medals for the Guys with the Golden Guns," Oregonian, November 21, 2002.
LAPD chief Daryl Gates, announcing his finding that two cops acted within policy when they shot and killed a mentally unbalanced African American woman who threw a knife at them. Quoted in Daryl F. Gates with Diane K. Shah, Chief My sze in the LAPD (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 199.
Adams, "Police Use of Force," 8.
Daryl Gates, to the media, regarding the Rodney King beating. Quoted in Gates, Chief, 316.
A Black NYPD officer told Nicholas Alex: "There are a lot of Negroes, the only thing they understand is a boot in the right direction. They are not different than a lot of children. The only thing they understand is physical force and pain." Quoted in Nicholas Alex, Black in Blue: A Study ofthe Negro Policeman (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), 155.
Sergeant Dennis Mullen, Atlanta Police Department Office of Professional Standards. Quoted in Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 41. A similar sentiment was expressed by Detroit Police Department chief investigator Thomas Elder, who said that people who file complaints "are not part of the community in a positive way." Quoted in Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 181.
Robert Coles, "A Policeman Complains," New York Times Magazine, June 13, 1971, 11.
Seymour Martin Lipset, "Why Cops Hate Liberals-And Vice Versa," in The Police Rebellion: A Quest for Blue Power, ed. William Bopp (Springfield, IL: Charles T. Thomas, Publisher, 1971), 38.
This grotesque overstatement originated with former LAPD chief William Parker. Quoted in Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 239.
Duin, "Silver Medals.
August Vollmer. The full quotation is: "Whatever else may be said of the American police, this fact should be more widely known; namely. that without the police and the police organizations, with all their many defects anarchy would be rife in this country, and the civilization now existing on this hemisphere would perish." Quoted in Center for Research on Criminal Justice, The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: An Analysis ofthe U.S. Police (Berkeley, CA: Center for Research on Criminal Justice, l975), 21.
"In responding to the mandate for order maintenance, the police create a sense ofcommunity that makes social life possible. Where police are unwilling or unable to play this moral leadership role or define the community boundaries of right conduct. the quality of life declines and the existence of every other cherished value may be jeopardized. Where the civil libertarian fears repression and the denial of due process. others see the emancipation from fear and the creation of community as the result of police peacekeeping activities." Gary W Sykes. "Street Justice: A Moral Defense of Order Maintenance Policing." in The Police and Society: Touchstone Readings. ed. Victor Kappeler (Prospect Heights. IL: Waveland Press. l999), 142.
This poetic exaltation first appeared in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin in l967. Quoted in Robert Reiner, The Blue-Coated Worker: A Sociological Study of Police Unionism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, l978). 5.
Koon, Presumed Guilty, 20-21. Koon was so proud of the job he had done that when he learned of the video his first thought was that it should he used for training purposes: "This is great! They got it on tape! Now we'll have a live, in the field film to show police recruits. It can he a real life example of how to use escalating force properly. Watch what the suspect does. If he moves, control him. If he doesn't, cuff him. The guys are going to love this one. It's true stuff." Koon, Presumed Guilty. 22.
Koon, Presumed Guilty. 19.
Quoted in "Response of City Officials to the Federal Charges," Philadelphia Inquirer, August 19, l979.
FBI National Press Office, press release (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, May 15. 2002).
Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2000 (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 14, 2001), 1.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2000, 3 and 4.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 4,: The rate of deaths is a more reliable indicator of danger than the rate of work-related injuries: deaths are more reliably reported, and the severity of injuries varies enormously.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2000, 3.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2000, 4.
Stark, Police Riots, 135.
Stark, Police Riots, 135.
Stark, Police Riots, 135.
Ogletree et al., Beyond the Rodney King Story, 43.
Brown and Langan, Policing and Homicide, iv.
Brown and Langan, Policing and Homicide, 19.
Brown and langan, Policing and Homicide, 1.
The police are also injured at a lower rate than those they oppose. IACP data indicates that "About 10 percent of 2,479 officers using force sustained injuries. Less than 1 percent of the injuries were major; none resulted in death. About 38 percent of the subjects were injured as the result of police use of force, including approximately 1.5 percent with major injures. (Data spanning the 1995-97 period indicate that use-of-force incidents, 3,274, or about 4 percent, resulted in officer injuries, all but 39 minor.)" Henriquez, "IACP National Database Project," 21.
Quoted in Goodgame, "World ofHostility."
An anonymous NYPD sergeant told New York Times Magazine: "Look, in any organization. you'll find no-good people. There are rotten apples right in my own back yard; our precinct has some crazy cops who are ready to use machine guns on the 'college kids and niggers,' that's how they are called. But for every cop like that I can find you two that you'd just have to admire." Quoted in Coles, "A Policeman Complains," 74.
"The effect of the rotten apple theory is to offer scapegoats to public indignation and to evade basic questions about the organization and character ofpolice institutions." Stark, Police Riots, 10.
Lundman uses the term "organizational deviance" to describe behavior that violates rules or norms mandated by those outside the department, but that is nevertheless supported by internal organizational norms. "Police misconduct is organizational deviance when actions violate external expectations for what the department should do. Simultaneously, the actions must be in conformity with internal operating norms, and supported by socialization, peers, and the administrative personnel of the department." Richard Lundman, Police and Policy: An Introduction .96 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980), 141. One book outlines the competing explanations in terms of "Rotten Apples" and "Rotten Barrels." Charles H. McCaghyet al., Deviant Behavior: Crime, Conflict, and Interest Groups (Boston: Allyn and Brown, 2003), 244.
In her statement before the NAACP, one former Miami officer described a field training exercise in which she was reprimanded for not using force against a mentally ill man who shouted at her. Ogletree et al., Beyond the Rodney King Story, 19. Two of the four cops who beat Rodney King had participated in a training exercise earlier that evening, focusing on baton techniques. Christopher Commission, Report, 12.
In 1990, a White Indianapolis police officer received his department's medal of valor for shooting an unarmed African American robbery suspect. Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 190. In 2002, Portland (Oregon) Police Chief Mark Kroeker stirred controversy by awarding medals to each ofthe twelve officers involved in fatal shootings during the two previous years. Duin, "Silver Medals."
Rizzo advised his officers to "break their heads before they break yours." Quoted in James T. Fyfe, "Police Use of Deadly Force: Research and Reform," in Policing Perspectives: An Anthology, eds. Larry K. Gaines and GaryW Cordner (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing, 1999), 429. Fyfe's research quantifies the results of Rizzo's leadership: "Overall, the [Philadelphia Police Department's] police homicide rates were 2.09 [civilians killed annually, per 1,000 officers] while Rizzo was police commissioner; 2.29 while he was mayor; and 1.05 after he was out of office (as compared to the annual PPD homicide rate of 0.61 over 1950-1960...)." Fyfe concludes that "knowing what Frank Rizzo was doing was far more valuable for estimating the PPD homicide rate than were data on public homicides." Fyfe, "Police Use ofDeadly Force," 417.
"To a considerable extent the police regard all citizens as 'outsiders' - as unsympathetic and a threat to order-because the police are a distinctive and relatively socially isolated subculture." Stark, Police Riots, 124. See also: Victor E Kappeler et al., "Breeding Deviant Conformity: Police Ideology and Culture," in The Police and Society: Touchstone Readings, ed. Victor E. Kappeler (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1999), 251 and 252.
According to one study, police consider excessive force to be of intermediate seriousness." Asked to evaluate the severity of eleven misconduct cases, police ranked brutality seventh, just ahead of covering up an officer-involved traffic accident (number 8), and below management favoritism (number 6), accepting kickbacks (number 4), accepting bribes (number 2), and theft (number 1). Carl B. Klockars et al., The Measurement of Police Integrity (U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute ofJustice, May 2000), 3.
Fogelson described the police as suffering from "a strong sense of alienation, a sharp feeling of persecution, and other severe anxieties which for want of a better term might be called occupational paranoia." This disorder was characterized by complaints about the incompetence of the civil authorities, a "frenzied reaction to criticism from outside," and advocacy of reactionary and draconian measures. Fogelson, Big-City Police, 120. See also: Stark, Police Riots, 92-93.
In 1994, NYPD officer Bernard Cawley testified before the Mollen Commission: "We'd just beat people in general...to show who was in charge." Quoted in Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 268. Cawley admitted to involvement in 400 beatings, using nightsticks, flashlights, and lead-lined gloves. Only one citizen ever filed a complaint against him, and no officers did. Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 272.
William A. Westley, "Violence and the Police," in Police Patrol Readings, ed. Samuel C. Chapman (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1964), 284.
Human Rights Watch, Shielded from justice, 62.
Amnesty International, Race, Rights, and Police Brutality, 28.
Quoted in Christopher Commission, Report, 32.
Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes, 5. Many supervisors share this perspective: 16.7 percent agreed or strongly agreed that whistle blowing is not worth it. Almost as many (16.4 percent) felt that it was acceptable to use illegal levels of force against a suspect who assaults an officer, and 7.6 percent (about one in every thirteen supervisors) felt that the Code of Silence was an essential part of policing. Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes, 11. The Christopher Commission found that police commanders often enforce the code of silence by singling out whistle blowers for discipline. Christopher Commission, Report, 170.
Weisburd et al., Police Attitudes, 2.
Westley, "Violence and the Police," 289-90.
William Chambliss explains the institutional basis for this tendency: "The bureaucratic requirement that police action be designed to maximize rewards and minimize strain for the organization leads to looking for crime among the powerless and ignoring the crimes of the powerful." William Chambliss, Power, Politics, and Crime(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 100. This idea will be expanded in later chapters.
"The [Christopher] Commission also spoke with a deputy chief who...stated that the discipline imposed by the [Los Angeles Police] Department is more severe for conduct that embarrasses the Department than for conduct that reflects improper treatment of members of the public. By way of example, he said that an officer caught in a liaison with a prostitute is likely to receive more a severe discipline than an officer who beats an individual. A former high ranking officer with broad experience within the Department also corroborated this view, telling us that excessive force is treated leniently because it does not violate the Department's internal moral code." Christopher Commission. Report, 166. This pattern seems to hold at all levels of discipline. For instance, in June 1999, there were 655 former cops in federal prison. The majority of them were serving time for corruption, not brutality. Amnesty International, Race, Rights. and Police Brutality, 28.