Police Violence And Misconduct To African Americans: Literature Review

The purpose of this book is to reveal how heavily policed areas, especially in black neighborhoods, develops a feeling of fear and distrust of police officers. With this, Alice Goffman wants to inform her target audience of higher authorities such as prosecutors and local lawmakers, the implication of this article, which is to show that policeman should aid in solving the significant problems of crime and violence in black neighborhoods, rather than relying on incarcerating or harming black minorities. She claims that police officers are creating more obstacles for the black community for the reason that they view the whole community as criminals.

Goffman emphasizes the words, “on the run” and “caught up” to show that no matter how hard these young black men try to run away from the policeman, “their legal entanglements” will eventually lead them to being captured since the police officers’ main priority is to “hunt, capture, try, and confine”. This implies that there should be more limitations to police officers’ authority to arrest such as reviewing the police’s reason to incarcerate, especially when there is a racial motive. Goffman arranges the text by providing her experience as a sociologist to observe the black community, particularly Mike and Chuck, to get a better glimpse of the reality between police officers and black minorities. By doing this, she was able to understand the black minorities’ perspective about police officers. For example, the feelings of fear and distrust of police officers usually begins when the victim’s family is being harassed by the police to reveal where the victim has run off to. Due to this, black minorities fear to seek for help from the police officers. Besides Goffman’s observation, she also provides evidence from a credible sociologist named Loic Wacquant and Civil Rights advocate Michelle Alexander, who have drawn “parallels between the current levels of targeted imprisonment and earlier systems of racial oppression”.

Excessive Use of Force: One Mothers Struggle against Police Brutality and Misconduct by Loretta P. Prater

This book aims to reveal how police brutality injures not only the victim, but also the victim’s family. Loretta Prater reveals to her primary audience of black minorities that police officers who are part of this police brutality and misconduct will be held accountable for causing such great affliction towards them. She arranges the text by explaining her son’s tragic death, her personal experience as a heartsick mom, and similar cases of her son’s death. As a heartsick mom, she does not want any colored families to go through such agony. Using mainly her son’s tragic death as evidence, Prater emphasizes the phrase “brutally beaten, without cause” to demonstrate that her son was unarmed and did not acted out where he seemed like he was a harm to others. Her son was “handcuffed, pepper-sprayed, hog-tied, and held on the ground” even though he did not resist arrest. With so much evidence, the police department still ruled her son’s death as “accidental”, which infuriated her even more because she knew that the four police officers had a racial motive. She claims that the police officers’ racial motive was the only reason for them to use such violence towards a young man. The implication in this book is to start an external police department audit to teach police officers to not judge the appearance of a person by color, but to assist in decreasing crime and violence in communities as a whole. She targets her secondary audience of local lawmakers and head of police department to assist her in starting this audit, which will hopefully reduce police brutality and misconduct towards black minorities. As an retired dean of Missouri State University, Prater also hope to educate college students on police brutality by advocating workshops for the police department to recruit sincere and obliging police officers.

Pulling the Trigger: Dehumanization of African Americans and Police Violence by Themal I. Ellawala

The purpose of this research journal is to identify whether there is a role of racial bias present in police violence against African Americans. Themal Ellawala arranges this research journal by adding subheadings for each topic that he wants to discuss about such as dehumanization, the presence of racial bias, and future directions specifically for his audience of college students. He also includes statistics such as over 65% of black minorities are either imprisoned or gunned down by white police officers annually to show that there may be a racial motive.

Ellawala compares how the treatment of white police officers towards black minorities is similar to how the Nazis treated the Jews. He specifically uses the word “dehumanizing” constantly to demonstrate that police officers are stripping away basic human rights of black minorities by imprisoning or arresting them for “no good reason”. He provides evidence from historians, anthropologists, and philosophers on how black communities are being deprived from their rights such as the claims from many police officers that view black minorities as “ape-like” and not as humans. This claim provides proof that there is a role of racial bias present. Ellawala also noticed that black males are imprisoned and harassed more than black females after listing names of African Americans that have been murdered or imprisoned by white police officers. The implications of this research journal is that he wants to further explore the “dehumanization of various overlapping genders and racial identities” to see whether the gender of black minorities have a role on imprisonment from police officers. Furthermore, he wants the Department of Justice call for reforms in the law enforcement, so they can start reviewing the police officers’ files and to start investigating the imprisonments of African Americans to see whether the incarceration was for racial reasons.

When policing stats do more harm than good by Giacalone, Joseph and Alex Vitale

The purpose of this article is to convey a message to their audience of United States citizens, specifically minorities, that police officers are pressurized to show productivity to their police department, which is why they are constantly incarcerating black minorities. Due to the fact that the statistic of crimes from black minorities are high, police officers creates a stereotype that black minorities are criminals. Joseph Giacalone and Alex Vitale arranges this article by showing the statistics from CompStat and personal experience of NYPD precinct captain, John Eterno. The authors uses evidence from the NYPD precinct captain who explains that CompStat, which is used in police departments, led to “abusive police practices in the communities of color”.

The high statistics of crimes and violence from African Americans basically “encourages” the police officers to pass out citations and imprison black minorities more. By constantly passing out citations and incarcerating African Americans, police officers are not decreasing the statistics of crime and violence in the community, but increasing it. Giacalone and Vitale explains that if police officers weren’t using CompStat and was not being pressurized to show productivity, then police brutality and misconduct towards African Americans would have decreased. The authors of this article emphasizes on the phrase “problem-solving” to show that police officers need to start focusing on larger social issues in the community and work with “other agencies to try to address them”. This will help African Americans become less intimidated of police officers and trust the polices more when they are in need of help. The implications of this article is to reform CompStat and to bring back the “creativity at the heart of policing”. The limitations of this implication is that many police departments will not admit that there was a problem with the way they are handling “crimes” in the first place.

Yes, Black America Fears the Police. Here’s Why by Nikole Jones-Hannah

The purpose of this article is to explain why black minorities do not trust and rely on police officers to assist them during life-threatening emergencies. Nicole Hannah-Jones arranges this article by providing her own personal experience about living in an all-black community, where police officers mistake the black minorities as suspects. She emphasizes on the words “frightening” to demonstrate that many families in the black community fear for each other’s safety when being confronted by the police since police officers do not care whether the colored person has committed a crime or not. The police officer’s main goal is to torment black minorities due to the statistics of high crime from specifically black minorities. Due to this, many police officers assumed that if the person has colored skin, then he must be a criminal. Hannah-Jones also asserted that police officers are not there to protect the community, but to protect themselves from the black community. She reference to multiple murders of black minorities such as Michael Brown, Tarner Rice, and Eric Garner as evidence to this assertion. She explains that there are more deaths than the ones that she has reference in this article, and it is constantly increasing. This caused the black minorities to view police officers as distrusting and violent. Hannah-Jones suggested future directions for her audience of higher authorities to create a more strict background check for police officers. She believes that creating a stricter background check for police officers will aid in decreasing misconduct among the community since it will let the recruiter know if the policeman have a role in racial bias.

This will also help the police department to gain trust from the minorities, so they can start relying on police officers whenever they are in an emergency, making the community more safe.