Police are still killing people at the same rate as before they killed George Floyd. And many of us are not surprised.
We have seen this movie before, where the monster lives on to keep attacking innocent people. True to form, the beast that is way too many police officers using deadly force marches on.
One reason this assault on civilization continues is that very few roadblocks have been put in the way of violent policing. While any policing reform is beneficial, many reforms that are being discussed and enacted will not reduce the police use of excessive force.
There are many critical issues in policing that affect African Americans. I will mention several that are pertinent to the police use of force, and I will do it with a bit of context.
A primary issue with policing is racial profiling. Racial profiling, sometimes called Driving While Black has not decreased, although it is illegal. African Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than whites, even though they are less likely to be found possessing contraband or committing a criminal act. Racial profiling is often the first step in the all too frequent violent encounters that African Americans have with police officers.
The late Congressman John Conyers introduced a racial profiling bill in every Congress for 20 years, but it never received passage in both Houses of Congress.
Last year’s Black Lives Matter protests were mainly about the excessive use of force by police against African Americans. This excessive use of force includes homicides.
In the U.S., police kill around 1,000 persons per year; police kill blacks at three times the rate of whites (2013-2019). Blacks are 30% more likely than whites to be unarmed when killed by police.
Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Of all the police killings documented between 2013 and 2019, one data source, Mapping Police Violence, found only 1 percent of cases led to a conviction of a police officer.
Some laws and practices condition police officers to use excessive force against citizens, especially African Americans. Two are Qualified Immunity and Graham v Conner’s Reasonableness standard.
Qualified immunity is a federal doctrine that protects officers accused of violating the Constitution while on duty. While it protects state and local officials and applies only in civil cases, not criminal, it also extends that protection questionably to police officers.
The U.S. Supreme Court established the Reasonable Officer standard in Graham v Connor. “Reasonableness” is based on the circumstances viewed through the lens of the officer in the field. The application of this rule sometimes bends so far as to excuse an officer for using excessive force on an unarmed person if the officer claims that at the time he thought the citizen was about to shoot the officer even if no gun is later found.
The Graham v. Connor Supreme Court decision in 1989 in effect changed the view of the police use of force from that of an individual encountering a state action that could potentially be a violation of the person’s constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment to that of the police officer’s right, the right to act if they have reasonable fear.
Some other laws and practices protect police officers from accountability for their misdeeds. Two of these are police union contracts and the state law enforcement officer bill of rights.
After analyzing police union contracts in close to 600 cities, Campaign Zero noted six ways “police unions obstruct, delay or defeat local efforts to hold police accountable.”
Police unions have managed to get 20 or so states to establish law enforcement officers bill of rights (LEOBRs). Typically, these rights result in accused police officers being treated differently from accused everyday citizens. LEOBRs make it very difficult to hold police officers accountable for their excessive use of force. For example, the Virginia LEOBR statute requires authorities to wait five days before interviewing an accused police officer.
Until we address these critical issues, the policing monster will continue its rampage unabated.
