Tamir Rice. Micheal Brown. Eric Garner. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Each of these people died at the hands of police officers for no good reason. Despite social media coverage and protests following these deaths, police violence in America has not decreased. Nothing has changed.
More than 1,100 people are killed due to police violence each year, making America one of the worst nations for police brutality in the western world. And the risk is 2.5 times more likely for an African-American man to be killed by the police than a white person.
We are seeing a needless amount of casualties- and it’s not just because of a few bad apples. The entire American policing system contributes to the problems that we see today. We need not just to protest, but to push for specific legislative changes. In a series of posts, we hope to inform you about the reformable problems in the police system.
Specifically, we will focus on:
The problems of fear-based training
The abuse of power by police unions
The Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights
The dangers of prosecutor relationships
And the injustice in qualified immunity
First, through an emphasis on fear-based training, officers are primed to see the community that they are supposed to serve as a threat- no wonder they find enemies where there are none.
This is in contrast to other nations, such as the U.K, where most police officers aren’t even armed with guns. They are trained instead in conflict de-escalation to talk down an armed suspect to eliminate the threat, without the need for force. The UK reported 55 fatal shootings between 1990 and 2014, which in over two decades is 20 times less than the amount of deaths in a single year in America, even though their population is only 6 times less than ours.
And because the investigation and trial process is biased towards officers, they are often not even held accountable for any misconduct.
In the past 15 years, only 35 officers were convicted of crimes related to on-duty fatal shootings. Only 3 of those officers were convicted of murder. This means that an officer has less than .02% chance of being convicted of a crime after killing someone.
We have the problem of the abuse of power of police unions, who have taken their role of protecting employees too far. For example, some make sure officers receive desk-duty or paid leave while being investigated, and even after being charged for a felony. Provisions like these in police union contracts deliberately make it difficult to punish officers, and allow them to get off easy.
Unions are also responsible for the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, a set of rules that make it more difficult to investigate an officer and give them an unfair advantage. For example, officers are entitled to a “cooling off” period of a couple of days before they can be interrogated. During this period, officers have ample time and ability to access the plaintiffs’ testimonies before they even have to give their statement- an opportunity that a member of the general public does not have..
The corruption does not end with the investigation.
Local prosecutors rely on the police to produce witnesses and gather evidence to prosecute criminals, and develop a working relationship. When they are then expected to prosecute these same cops, it creates a conflict of interest. Because of this, prosecutors will often choose not to press charges, or be less harsh on the police officers who they are supposed to be holding accountable.
In April 2015, Norman Cooper, a 33 year-old African American man drove to his brother’s house while having a mental health episode. Concerned for Norman’s health, his brother called 911. He expected officers to be able to talk Norman down, or take him to the hospital. Instead, officers Flaig and Sanchez quickly lost patience with Cooper’s delirium. Within 5 minutes of arriving at the scene, the officers began shouting at Cooper. After 11 minutes, Sanchez began to tase Cooper. Over the next three minutes, Flaig and Sanchez shocked Cooper
“a total of nine times, shooting a 50,000-volt current through his body for nearly a minute total.”
Cooper’s heart stopped beating 4 minutes later, leaving his wife without a husband and his 2 children without a father.
Cooper’s family sued the officers at fault, but Flaig and Sanchez were still given something called “qualified immunity.” This immunity is granted when a grand jury determines that an officer should not have been expected to know that their actions were an abuse of power. For immunity to be rejected, the accused crime must be “clearly established” by a previous case that took place in a similar situation. This allows ‘unique’ cases where charges are dropped even though an officer is clearly at fault.
Flaig and Sanchez are not the only ones-the fact that offenses must be “clearly established” is why
in 2019 more than half of police use of force cases were thrown out,
as the defendants were granted qualified immunity.
This lack of accountability only reinforces the violence used by cops- it increases distrust between the cop and their community and sends the message that they will get away with whatever force is used.
It is not enough to protest for individual officers to be held accountable- we need true reform, and we need your help. Find your local representatives and senators, and use this information to push them to take action. Help end unnecessary police violence one and for all.
