Police Brutality in Society
Introduction
Abuse by law enforcement! The common shout from the victim, and these victims are usually low level citizen of the country. Police brutality happened anywhere in this world whether it develop countries and much practice in underdeveloped countries. The police act in degrading their suspect are serious and it could give effects to the society.
Excerpted from the (Human Rights Watch).
Officers in the United States are one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the country. The violations persist nationwide, in rural, suburban, and urban areas of the country, committed by various law enforcement personnel including local and state police, sheriff’s departments, and federal agents. Police have engaged in unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal choking’s, and unnecessarily rough treatment. While the proportion of repeatedly abusive officers on any force is generally small, responsible authorities— including law enforcement supervisors, as well as local and federal government leadership—often fail to act decisively to restrain or penalize such acts.
In its July 1998 report, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, Human Rights Watch documents police misconduct in fourteen cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Providence, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Human Rights Watch found that all the cities share a lack of effective public accountability and transparency, a persistent failure to investigate and punish officers who commit human rights violations, and a variety of obstacles to achieving justice.
Police brutality in society 3
Amnesty International (1996) has collected information on more than 90 cases of alleged ill-treatment or excessive force by New York City police officers dating from the late 1980s to early 1996. The allegations include people being repeatedly struck with fists, batons or other instruments, often after minor disputes with officers on the street; deaths in custody from alleged excessive force; and shootings in violation of the NYPD’s own very strict guidelines for the use of deadly force. The victims include men and women, juveniles and people from a variety of social, racial and ethnic backgrounds. However, the evidence suggests that the large majority of the victims of police abuses are racial minorities, particularly African-Americans and people of Latin American or Asian descent. Racial disparities appear to be most marked in cases involving deaths in custody or questionable shootings, an issue Amnesty International believes should be the focus of particular inquiry.
Amnesty International is concerned that, while the incidence of corruption has reportedly fallen in the past two years, allegations of police brutality have continued to rise. Deaths in custody and police shootings also rose substantially between 1993 and 1994 (the last year for which figures were available).
Although most major inquiries into the NYPD have involved corruption, police brutality has also been a recurrent concern. There were calls for an inquiry into police brutality in the mid 1980s, following a series of highly publicized cases in which black people died or were ill-treated in custody. They included the cases of Michael Stewart, a young African American who died in September 1983 13 days after being taken to hospital hogtied, bruised and in a coma following his arrest by 11 officers from the New York City Transit Police Department for spraying graffiti in a Manhattan subway, and Eleanor Bumpers, a elderly, mentally disturbed woman shot dead in October 1984 by armed police who broke into her Bronx apartment to evict her after she had
Police brutality in society 4
fallen behind with her rent. In both cases officers were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing after trials, although some officer’s tactics were later criticized by internal inquiries. In April 1985 officers from 106th Precinct in Queens were accused of torturing three suspects with an electronic stun gun to force them to confess to having sold small quantities of marijuana. Two officers and a sergeant were subsequently convicted of assault and other charges and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 2 to 6 years, and several high ranking police commanders were dismissed.
Although these and other cases were dismissed as isolated examples by the police department, public concern led New York State Governor Mario Cuomo to appoint a commission of inquiry in 1985. The remit of The New York State Commission on Criminal Justice and The Use of Force (also known as the Curran Commission, after its chair Paul Curran) was to investigate the use of force by police departments throughout the state and to examine, among other things, whether racial minorities were more likely to be victims of excessive or deadly force than other groups. The Curran Commission, which looked at procedures rather than individual cases, subsequently concluded in 1987 that there was no systematic misuse of deadly and physical force by law enforcement officials in the state and that race did not play a significant part, although it did find abuse of suspects through police use of racial slurs. It made a number of recommendations for strengthening procedures, aimed at improving public confidence in the police. The reports findings have been dismissed as inadequate by several civil rights groups. Although there have been other concerns about police brutality since then, and some inquiries into specific incidents (or specific precincts (For example, the CCRB started a review of complaints of brutality in a number of Bronx precincts in 1994 following a rise in complaints in that area.), there have been no further general inquiries into police use of force in New York.
Police brutality in society 5
The Brutality case that happened above gained lots of response from the society. Various community groups criticized police brutality. Theses groups often stress need for oversight by independent citizen review boards and other methods of ensuring accountability for police action. (Wikipedia Encyclopedia Online).
The Society felt negative to police department and they condemned all police even those who are not practicing police brutality. The tendency are, if there are incident happened they tend to put justice in their hands instead of calling police to help them. This negative impact to society create barrier between the police good relation and the citizens which the police are serving. The citizen instead of running to police they run to civic organizations to solve their case and might be resulted in a one sided discussion.
Finally, if the police brutality would not be given enough attention by the government the society losses their trust and more accident will happen that will result to the head ache of the society. The Government will expect no collaboration from the citizen and the peace and order situation will not be achieved.
Presented by Ron D. Daniels, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York (1998), all citizens should become involved in the issue of police brutality. He characterized brutality as a threat to democracy. “Efficiency should not be at the cost of people’s liberties. Too many police officers take liberties with the law. Instead, if they’re engaged with the community, the community will protect them.” Although he admits that persuading communities of color to trust the police will be a major battle, the combination of reform within the city and police department and community partnership and grassroots efforts to offer better economic opportunities and quality education in public schools will go a long way to curbing police brutality.
Police brutality in society 6
References
Daniel, Ron. (1998). Police Brutality. November 15, 2006, from http://gbgm-umc.org/mission/news/br981124.html
Police Brutality (2006). Human Rights Watch. November 15, 2006, from http://www.hrw.org/about/initiatives/police.htm
Police brutality and excessive force in the New York City Police Department. (1996). Amnesty International Working to Protect Human Rights World Wide. November 15, 2006, from http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510361996
