Kylie Ninow

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.

This graph from

Nancy Kriegers research

shows eight cities where there

was been police brutality. The

top five cities where people

killed by police are Los

Angeles, CA; Houston, TX;

New York, NY; Phoenix, AZ;

San Francisco, CA but, this

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

for African-Americans and whites.

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

cities with high risks of death by police officers.

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

unfortunately plentiful. Especially among police, stereotypes of minorities as dangerous and

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

be opened minded and accepting to all people.

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,

Jeffrey Adler shows a

time line from just

before 1880 to 1920 of

people killed by police

officers. We can see

that in 1882 it was the

lowest death number,

but it continued to rise

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

to be killed (Adler, J., pg. 241).

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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