Police Brutality and Corruption in the USA - Research Paper Example

Police Brutality and Corruption in the USA Police officers' duties include, but are not limited to protecting, patrolling, and controlling law abiding citizens along with daily activities all around. However, cases and accusations of authority abuse and police officers’ misconduct circling the media have caused mistrust from citizens, resulting in demands for harsher measure to be taken against those officers. Such demand can hardly be overstated, given the tremendous authority vested on the police as the “cornerstone of democracy and the rule of law” (Prenzler 85). The crucial role that law enforcement plays in the criminal justice system highly demands police integrity (Bayley, qtd. in Jenks, Johnson and Matthews 4) because without it justice will become illusive. As Schweizer noted, police brutality and corruption is against the rule of law, which law enforcers have sworn to enforce; most alarmingly, these can seriously challenge the quality of life of the affected citizens (361). In fact, the Human Rights Watch 1998 report described police brutality as "one of the most serious, enduring, and divisive human rights violations in the United States" (qtd. in Johnson and Paromchik 349 and Prenzler 85). Similarly, Massaquoi described bad cops as “one of the most serious threats to civil liberty by the very people whose job is to protect it” (60). Police brutality is “the use of excessive physical force or any force than is more than reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose” (Walker et al. 96, qtd. in Barkan and Bryjak 288). But when is force excessive and when is it reasonable? Perhaps, some well-known cases of police brutality would help shed light on these ambiguities. On March 3, 1991, several white LA police officers beat almost to death the Black American Rodney King after a car chase involving him (Nicas 1). In August 1997, police officer Justin Volpe, using a broken broomstick handle sodomized the Haitian immigrant Abner Louima while being detained in a Brooklyn precinct house (Chan 1). In February 1999, four plainclothes New York City police officers fired 41 times at and killed the unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo who was mistaken for a rapist or robber (Fritsch 1). In 2003, a West Virginia police sergeant rammed the pick-up truck of Kevin Tinger, even went into Tinger’s house and drew his gun on Tinger’s family (Barkan and Bryjak 289). In January 2005, four Pasadena, California police officers removed from his wheelchair and hung across a concrete wall the quadriplegic Cornell Greathouse accused of public drunkenness (Pierce 1). In 2006, the Atlanta police officers killed the 92 year-old Black American woman, Kathryn Johnston in a shootout at her home after police in plainclothes barged in her house under wrong suspicion of drug trade. Johnston who mistook them for burglars fired a single shot which the police returned with 39 shots. (Goodman 1) In February 2007, Washington D. C. airport police in a routine bag search at Reagan National Airport beat, dragged, threw across the room, and bashed into a metal ball the head of the marketing executive Robin Kassner, causing her concussion and brain damage (Maxfield 1). In March 2008, four white and one black Alabama police officers, using their fist, feet and bill clubs, beat the defenseless unconscious African American man who was ejected from the van these police were pursuing in a high-speed chase (Barkan and Bryjak 290). On January 1, 2009, Oakland BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot in the back and killed the unarmed, unresisting and lying on the ground Black American Oscar Grant (Lendman 1). In 2011, the California SWAT team killed another innocent civilian, Rogelio Serrato due to mistaken identity (Smith 1). Observably, victims of these cases of police brutality were mostly Blacks. In fact, Black Americans identify police brutality and misconduct as their persistent problem; thus they perceive police brutality and misconduct to be “the major contemporary forms of State-sponsored racist violence” (Contemporary Police Brutality and Misconduct 2), since minority police victims seldom get justice (Lendman 1). If police brutality has been across America ever since, expectedly so is police corruption, as both practices nurture each other (Police Must Be Held Accountable 67). Police brutality persists because police corruption is rampant. To Brown’s description, police corruption is the non-declining crime (48). Goldstein defined police corruption “as the misuse by police personnel of their office or authority for personal or other particularistic ends… not restricted to pecuniary or material values… Nor is the beneficiary restricted to the constable involved; it may also be an institution…” (qtd. in Harriott 48) The ugly truth is; police corruption is systemic, reaching the highest level of command and contaminating even well-run police departments (Tyre 38). As Swope rightly noted, police corruption cannot thrive, if it is not tolerated in any way (83). But the uglier part of the truth is; police officers, themselves, are corrupt. Gane-McCalla named ‘the top 5 most corrupt US police officers of all-time’ as follows: (1) Robert Gisevius, Kenneth Bowen, and Anthony Villavaso of the New Orleans police department who gave falsified reports and conspired to cover-up the shooting of the 17 year-old innocent and unarmed James Brissette during Hurricane Katrina; (2) Detective Jon Burge of the Chicago Police Department who in 1972 to 1991 masterminded the torture of hundreds of Black men to get their false confessions; (3) David Mack and Rafael Perez of the LAPD Rampart division who were themselves members and protectors of gangsters and drug dealers; (4) Joseph Miedzianowski of the Chicago police who was both a police officer and a drug lord; and, (5) Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa of the NYPD who themselves worked for the mafia. (1-2) Police brutality and corruption greatly threaten national stability because these involve one of the pillars of nationhood, affecting the moral fibers of society. These greatly erode public respect for the law that would most likely result to lawlessness. (Brown 48) Take for instance the case of Rodney King. The acquittal of the four police officers who repeatedly beat King almost to death resulted to a four-day riot in South Central Los Angeles that killed 55 people, injured 2,383 others, arrested 8,000 protesters and caused a $1 B worth of damage to property (Rodney King 2). Police brutality and corruption also raise doubts on honest citizens that police visibility would warrant crime reduction. In fact the 1968 Kerner Commission Report admitted the counter-productiveness of police high visibility, noting that this often triggered violent confrontation between citizens and police authorities. And there is not enough evidence to refute this today. Furthermore, police brutality and corruption are too costly. For instance, the settlement pay out of the city of Philadelphia for the 225 civil cases against its police force reached $20 million in two years. On the other hand, New York City’s pay out in 1994 was $2 million. But these pay outs cannot bring back the eroded public trust on the police; neither can these bring back the dignity of the unfortunate victims of police brutality (Brown 48), because there is nothing more frightening than being victimized by the very forces that have sworn to protect you; it leaves you defenseless. No one is above the law; thus law enforcers must be made to abide by the laws they swore and are paid to enforce (Dempsey and Forst 213). But more than this, police brutality and corruption should demand greater sanction to stress the delicateness of their work and also to dissuade them from abusing their authority. As the old maxim says, ‘authority entails greater responsibility’. Thus abusing ones authority entails greater sanction. 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