Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Professor C. Howe
ENG 2010
March 31, 2017
Police Brutality
Over the past two year we have seen an up rise in police brutality all over the news. This
problem has been going on since the 1800s. It has not always been this extreme as it has been
lately, but it also had some bad moments in the 1900s. Police Brutality is when law enforcement
uses excessive or unnecessary force to deal with civilians. The police are the ones we are
supposed to have complete trust in and not be scared of. Since 2015, the number of people killed
by police has gone up, and still continues to rise. This issue is not something people know a lot
history and we should know it so we know how we can put an end to police brutality.
In 2015, over 850 people have died from police shootings, of that 217 were African
Americans. The same year a British newspaper named The Guardian, came out with a website
named The Counted, this website would track real-time police caused deaths. They would use
US local news outlets, research groups and open resource research programs to get their
information from. It showed geographic locations, race/ethnicity, age and a photograph of the
victim. The website would also list if the victim had a weapon on them and if they did, it would
list what type of weapon it was. The Counted would list five different ways for the cause of
death; gunshot, taser, struck by vehicle, death in custody or unknown (Krieger, et al., pg. 2). This
website was used to show foreign countries and the US how bad of an issue it is.
Police brutality is not just an issue of violence or criminal justice, it is an issue of public
health as well. Nancy Krieger wrote At issue are not only the direct harms to individuals but the
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toll taken on family members and communities, both for persons killed by the police and for
police killed in the line of duty (Krieger, et al., pg. 2). This quote shows that a problem like this
in our country does not only effect those involve but everyone around it as well. A communitys
trust is violated when they hear of a cop shooting someone or when an officer is killed in the line
of duty. This shacks people up and deters them from trusting their neighbors and officers.
does not include the three cities where the most protests took place such as Ferguson, MO;
Baltimore, MD and Cleveland, OH. The graph also shows that African-Americans males are at
an extremely higher risk than a white male but we can also see that the graph shows that over
time it has been declining and that some cities risk rate is much higher than the national average
In many research papers, you can find that behind police brutality it can come down to
racism and discrimination. In a research paper by Cassandra Chaney, she quotes Marger (2012) it
reads racism is an ideology, or belief system, designed to justify and rationalize racial and
ethnic inequality (p. 481). Discrimination is the behavior aimed at denying members of
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particular ethnic groups equal access to societal rewards (Chaney, C., pg. 481). Officers can be
using unnecessary force to take out their feeling on those they are targeting. With these two
issues, it can turn into police brutality. Since the peak of police brutality in 1920s New York, the
New York Police Department has improved their risk rate due to the increase in diversity and
gender (Chaney, C., pg. 482). You can see that the NYPD has improved but is still one of the top
To go along with racism and discrimination you could say stereotyping plays a role with
this issue as well. Dennis Mares said Stereotypes of minority group members remain
disrespectful can have negative consequences (pg. 109). This statements shows that cops have
stereotypes and we can even have them as well. Officers may have them because they are dealing
with certain minority groups first hand, but this is no excuse to believe all minorities are this
way. Knowing this they treat them unfairly and can get away with it. Knowing this people should
In the early stages of police brutality Chicago was one of the worst cities. Through 1870
and 1880 officers would use extreme force to maintain the peace. They would do this by
beating striking workers, harassing homeless people, or even forcing suspects to confess to
something they may have not even done. At this time, American history had a lot going on like
unfair wages, hours, child labor and major civil right protests and riots. With all of this history
going on and police brutality, the people were done with the police mistreating them because of
the power the police may hold. Although, there was a time between 1875 and 1890, they used
deadly force twenty times (Adler, J., pg. 239). Which doesnt seem like that many in a 15-year
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span, but this is still something that made the people angry. The Police did have guns, but they
were quick to use their batons to beat people instead of pulling out a gun.
In this graph,
with a few ups and downs along the way, in 1919 it hit its peak at 34 people. This also shows
how for the first half of the decade the Chicago police killed sixty- five people and in the 1910s
153 were killed by officers (Adler, J., pg. 240). A good majority of these deaths happened at
protests and riots. We should also take in 103 policemen were killed from 1875 to 1920.
Nonetheless, Chicago law enforcers were three times more likely to kill in the line of duty than
This paper goes over some of the history and currents events of police brutality. We have
learned about the top eight cities with the highest rates of death by police and the top three cities
where protests have happened, where only one of the three were in the south and the other two
were in the north-eastern part of the US. We should take in to account that all these cities have a
high African-American population, and we saw from one of the graphs they are at a higher risk
than other races and ethnicities. We can learn from this history and put an end to police brutality.
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Work Cited
Adler, Jeffrey S. "Shoot to Kill: The Use of Deadly Force by the Chicago Police, 1875-
1920." Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 38, no. 2, Oct. 2007, pp. 233-
254. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com.
Chaney, Cassandra and Ray Robertson. "Racism and Police Brutality in America."
Journal of African American Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, Dec. 2013, pp. 480-505.
EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s12111-013-9246-5.
Krieger, Nancy, et al. "Police Killings and Police Deaths Are Public Health Data and Can
Be Counted." Plos Medicine, vol. 12, no. 12, 08 Dec. 2015, pp. 1-7. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001915.
Mares, Dennis. "Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Urban Dilemma." Journal of
American Ethnic History, vol. 30, no. 4, Summer2011, pp. 108-110. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com.
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