Police Brutality Resolutions

Police Brutality: Causes and Resolutions

In 2011, around 158,107 people complained about “excessive [police] force” during their traffic stops or pedestrian stop and searches (Langton and Durose 2013, as cited in Hirschfield, 2015, p. 1109). Besides these reports, the police had been involved in high profile cases of brutality, from the deaths of young African Americans, such as Michael Brown in Fergusson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City to many other instances of excessive aggression when conducting stops and searches involving people of color. Although police brutality is a global challenge, it has become one of the most burning issues in the U.S. By definition, police brutality involves law enforcement officers utilizing excessive

Furthermore, while police brutality has many possible causes, three of the most common, according to research, are the low risk of legal liability that decreases the incentive for the police to exercise caution when conducting their duties, the minority threat hypothesis, and the violence-oriented police culture. To address these causes, the three recommendations consist of law reforms in the use of deadly force, a deep-seated change in the police culture, and the widespread use of body cameras. Finally, while effectiveness and cost concerns are possible disadvantages, they can be addressed through additional organizational components, cost-saving measures, and emphasis on long-run benefits.

Causes of Police Brutality The first cause of police brutality is the reduced risk of legal liability that decreases the incentive for the police to exercise care when interacting with and handling citizens, including suspects. The Associate Vice Chancellor of BruinX for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and

Bradley W. Smith from the Department of Criminal Justice at Wayne State University and Malcolm Dwight Holmes from the Sociology Program at the University of Wyoming tested if two structural-level explanations can explain police brutality implicated in civil rights criminal complaints. The theories referred to the community accountability and threat hypotheses. The community accountability hypothesis believes that formal and informal features of police departments can result in police-minority tensions and endorse police violence (Smith & Holmes, 2003). On the contrary, the threat hypothesis implies that the existence of threatening minorities increases the employment of coercive crime control mechanisms (Smith & Holmes, 2003). The researchers collected data from the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice and for the Police Services Study (PSS) which came from 24 jurisdictions in New York, Missouri, and Florida. Findings indicated moderately strong evidence for the threat hypothesis. The presence of minorities considered as threats to safety and peace predicted higher police brutality complaints (Smith & Holmes, 2003). This research supports the findings of Carbado (2016) that in communities where minorities are both considered as threats and which have numerous interactions with the police, aggression by the police force is higher too. Police officers who see