The Brutal Truth about Police Brutality - Essay Example

Justice with Iron Fists: The Brutal Truth about Police Brutality In 1991, a videotape taken by a bystander of a man being beaten up by four armed policemen – three of whom were white and one, Latin American -- was given prominent airtime in news and public information shows all over the United States. The footage showed officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) violently striking one Rodney King with a baton until he could no longer stand up and using an electroshock weapon on his person. In a controversial verdict, the police officers were acquitted of the charges that they used “assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury” and with assault “under color of authority.” This triggered massive riots in the streets of Los Angeles, now referred to as the LA Riots, and is known to be one of the worst and most destructive civil disturbances in the history of melting-pot State. More than fifty people lost their lives in the three-day frenzy of violence. The main cause of furor was the belief that the police violence was racially-motivated and the ferocity of the attack would not have happened if Rodney King were white. As unfortunate as the outcome was, the incident could be said to be a good learning tool in that it invites us to revisit the issue of police brutality and the question of whether or not such brutality by law enforcement officers made while in the line of duty actually result in effective law enforcement. And if it were so – i.e., if apprehension of criminals was actually more certain if the police engage in strong-arm tactics – is this enough reason to bend or relax human rights standards in the Constitution and in various human rights instruments? Overview of Human Rights Law Legal systems in the civilized world – whether in civil or common law jurisdictions -- have, at least in theory, given primacy to the rights of the accused, understanding that ambiguity should be resolved in his or her favor. This, however, does not mean that one must let down his or her vigilance and stop guarding against possible infringement of constitutional guarantees by overzealous judges, particularly at a time when human rights advocacy for the accused has been made unpopular by the rising rate of crime. It used to be that the primacy of the State is the core principle of the international legal regime as it is traditionally known. This, however, has been challenged by the alarming rise of state-sponsored human rights violations that has prodded the community of nations to recognize that its more pressing duty is to protect the individual from systemic and institutional atrocity, even at the expense of its legal fictions. To quote from Hersch Lauterpacht, in his article International Law and Human Rights (1950, p. 70), An international legal system which aims at effectively safeguarding human freedom in all its aspects is no longer an abstraction. It is as real as man’s interest in the guarantee and the preservation of his inalienable rights as a rational and moral being. International law, which has excelled in punctilious insistence on the respect owed by one sovereign State to another, henceforth acknowledges the sovereignty of man. For fundamental human rights are superior to the law of the sovereign State. This is the raison d’etre behind the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights which entered into force in 1966. State parties were cognizant of the need to protect civil and political rights of citizens from possible encroachment by the state. The ICCPR explicitly declares: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” It is undeniable that this includes protection of citizens from agents of the state such as members of the police force. And yet, we see how police officers routinely violate the human rights of those they apprehend. The implicit message is that these are criminals anyway – thugs, petty thieves, gangsters, punks, drug addicts, alcoholics – and they are doing society a favor by treating them brusquely. An oft-heard justification is that you cannot treat hardened criminals with kid gloves or you will be perpetrating crime even further. But this argument has no regard for the fact that even hardened criminals are covered by the human rights guarantees in the Constitution and in human rights conventions. Human rights are inalienable and imprescriptible, and they apply to everyone. Effectivity of police brutality The question must be asked if, to begin with, police brutality has been effective in countering crime and in promoting law and order. The answer would, unfortunately, be no. Firstly, there is a higher incidence of crime in states where the police force is known for their brutality. For example, in states like New York and Los Angeles where there is a relatively great number of cases filed against members of the police force for misconduct, the crime rate is astronomical. The strong-arm tactics of law enforcement officers have done little to quell the rising tide of crime and have in fact exacerbated it. In an interview with Kevin Gomez, an Asian member of the Los Angeles Police, he disclosed that it was very hard to curb crime in the area because when they try to apprehend a criminal, retribution almost always follows from the arrested persons’ network or gang. “When we bust a gang and arrest the leader, we later find out that this particular gang is only part of a broad network in the area engaged in petty crime. They take their revenge on us by breaking our windshields, stealing items from us, and even trying to kill us. It then becomes a vicious cycle.” Secondly, police brutality is inimical to crime prevention because of a legal system that upholds the right of the accused to fairness and due process, and operationalizes this by making evidence procured through illegal means inadmissible in any court of law. This concept, known as the “exclusionary rule”, was created in 1914 in the case of Weeks v. United States. So for example, if an accused had been bullied by the police and physical injuries were inflicted on his person in order to extract a confession from him, such confession, if extracted, may not be used in court. In many cases, evidence procured where there is also police misconduct does not get revealed in the court room. In some instances, otherwise guilty offenders walk free because of shoddy police work and questionable law enforcement practices. This is of great import given the realities of a criminal justice system in ghetto areas, where the accused is almost always underprivileged. The economic class divide combined with society’s repulsion of crime are twin roadblocks that render it virtually impossible to gain access to legal remedies against erroneous decisions and police misconduct. And since probable cause is a matter of judicial discretion, errors will not be called such unless they are glaring and completely flout the law. The ideological dimension usually involved in the decision-making process is suppressed and denied. There are of course alternative viewpoints. Says Paulsen (257): Any fair-minded observer will find the case against excluding illegal evidence an impressive one. Under the rule, a great many obviously guilty people must be acquitted. If the tainted evidence is barred from trial, the prosecution will frequently fail to carry its considerable burden of proof. The aim is to deter law enforcement officers from violating individual rights; however, the rule does not impose money damages or loss of liberty upon the offending officers, nor does it provide compensation for persons injured by official overreaching. Opponents have often emphasized the startling result achieved under the rule: to deter the police both the guilty defendant and the law-breaking officer go unpunished. As Judge Cardozo once put it, “The criminal is to go free because the constable blundered.” By freeing the criminal to return to his trade, the argument goes, the rule punishes not the official law-breaker, but rather, the law abiding citizen. Be that as it may, it cannot be gainsaid that the legal restrictions on evidence make police brutality inimical to law enforcement, rather than the opposite. Given the propensity of law enforcement agents to manhandle an accused or use unnecessary force to restrain and subdue him, they should be taught that such behavior only bolsters crime instead of eliminating it. This point has been discussed on two levels. First: it emboldens criminals to seek revenge and go on “vendetta killings” and perpetuates a vicious cycle of crime that exacerbates the situation even further. Second: evidence procured by virtue of such rough manhandling will not be admissible in evidence and the criminal they seek to put behind bars will be allowed to go back to the streets. The Question of Race The Rodney King incident was not the first time that an incident of police brutality was reported that contained a race dimension. Indeed, what was so shocking about what happened and what generated so much public outrage was the fact that it was in 1991 when the world is comparably more tolerant and openminded. However, it is all too easy to forget that there are looming issues that need to be resolved and ugly truths that have to be confronted. And while much has changed and new developments have been introduced that have sought to alleviate the racial divide not only in this country but in the world as well, it is incorrect to believe that the problem has been completely solved. Indeed, the issue of police brutality seems to be inextricably intertwined with racial prejudice, with many African-Americans claiming that white policemen often beat up blacks because they can and that this sense of impunity is rooted in perceived racial superiority. Gomez, the policeman from LAPD, admits as much: “Yes, the victims of police brutality are blacks. They are the ones who get beaten up, manhandled and punched in the gut.” His next statement however, is more telling. “But that is because most of the petty criminals are blacks.” With such a statement, he has managed to demonstrate that racial stereotyping still very much exists. Blacks are considered to be criminals that one must be wary of. Even news reports, for all its declarations of impartiality and objectivity, may be guilty of racial stereotyping. In his landmark study, Ungerleider, states that a news report has the implicit agenda of “casting” characters as heroes, victims or villains. Members of minority groups end up either ignored or cast in the role of villains. Since these stories are repeated over and over with this same angle, they become the "accepted understandings among those to whom alternative interpretations are not evident." (158) It has been argued that one key angle to look into is the profile of the average policeman. A Duke study maintains that a policeman has deeply embedded authoritarian values. It proceeds even further (755): A key element of the authoritarian personality is conventionalism, a chauvinistic loyalty to middle class values. Given this political and normative philosophy, it is easy to understand why police disparage the lower-class mentality of often displayed by most black ghetto residents and why they exhibit less respect for these blacks and for white suburbanites. The typical policeman identifies with short hair and business suits and the mere sight of afros and head scarves trigger hostility. It is difficult to imagine how this problem is ever going to end. Seeing how deep-seated the issue is and how it triggers an emotional reaction in a nation still living with wounds from a painful history of slavery, racial segregation and separatism, meaningful inroads can only be made if changes in legislation are coupled with changes in perception. This is true for both blacks and whites. Said Tuch (1): Previous research has shown that Blacks are more likely than Whites to hold unfavorable opinions of criminal justice agencies in America, but the literature has rarely examined whether social class also affects these opinions. Using recent national survey data on perceptions of racial discrimination by the police and the criminal justice system, this study examines the effects of race and class on citizen attitudes. The findings indicate that (1) race is a strong predictor of attitudes and (2) class affects several of these views. An important finding is that middle-class Blacks are sometimes more critical of the police and justice system than are lower-class Blacks. It is this mutual distrust that makes it virtually impossible to resolve the problem of racially-motivated police violence, and further down the line, of rising criminality. The case of Rodney King and the bloody riots that followed it serves as a reminder not only that the issue is far from solved and that the racial divide is still wide, but that one act of violence and brutality could only lead to more acts of violence and brutality. In the case of Rodney King, the mayhem that followed was truly of disastrous proportions. People were killed. Hundreds were injured and millions of dollars was lost. Conclusion The bottomline is still human rights. It is human rights that we must constantly insist on defend. Due process for the accused is an important part not only of our domestic laws enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution but also of the human rights instruments and conventions that this nation is a party to. In coming to the defense of a pickpocket, a gang member, or even a murderer when his rights are being violated by an overzealous law enforcement agent, we are coming to the defense of a system, a policy framework that believes that the test of a civilized society is how it treats its most reviled and that to genuinely espouse human rights means to espouse it for everyone – for sinner or saint. Works Cited “Socio-Legal Aspects of Racially Motivated Misconduct.” Duke Law Journal, Vol. 1971, No. 4. (Sep., 1971), pp. 751-783. Gomez, Kevin. Personal Interview. 8 December 2006. Paulsen, Monrad. “The Exclusionary Rule and Misconduct by the Police” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, Vol. 52, No. 3. (Sep. - Oct., 1961), pp. 255-265. Ungerleider, Charles. "Media, minorities and misconceptions: The portrayal by and representation of minorities in Canadian New Media," Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol. 23, no. 3 (October 1991), 158. Tuch, Steven. “Race, Class and Perceptions of Discrimination by Police” Crime & Delinquency, Vol. 45, No. 4, 494-507 (1999): 1. Read More