Police Misconduct – Is it Getting Better?

by Makis Antzoulatos

The Occupy Wall Street protests have captured the nations attention, as they have spread to 1,500 cities around the country.  A central image of this new wave of resistance has been the countless photographs and videos documenting police abuse of individuals participating in the protest. Beginning with waves of reports from New York City showing demonstrators violently attacked by police, the problem has only grown. Here in Boston, the Boston Police Department, enforced by Boston Transit and special squad units, almost 200 officers total, raided one of the Occupy Boston sites and arrested over 140 people on Monday, October 10th night.  They punched, pushed, and choked peaceful protesters, and in one instance, captured on video, threw a 70-year old veteran to the ground. The National Lawyers Guild has been integral in providing legal support to these activists and to an NLG New York City legal observer who have been the victims of violence themselves. The arrests have continued with nearly 100 people arrested in Arizona, 175 people arrested in Chicago, and 35 arrested in Sacramento. This is just a small sampling of the arrests so far, with dozens more in cities including Long Beach, CA; Denver, CO; and Washington, DC.

On September 26th, Lawrence O’Donnell presented one of the most honest and critical accounts of police misconduct ever seen on mainstream television. In a short segment on MSNBC, he called the NYPD to task for their attacks on peaceful protesters at Occupy Wall Street. However, the most important part of his report was the connections that he made between that violence, and the violence suffered daily at the hands of the police. O’Donnell accurately reflected that the behavior of the  NYPD was anything but unordinary, pointing out that particularly in communities of color, this level of violence is expected. He stated that there is “a Rodney King every day in America.”

O’Donnell got it right, and when looking at reports of police misconduct throughout the country the problem only seems to be getting worse. USA Today reported in 2007 about the rise in police misconduct since September 11th. They found that instances of civil rights violations at the hands of law enforcement officers increased 25% between 2001 and 2007. The numbers continue to be appalling. The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) reported that in 2010 there were 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct, and 247 fatalities resulted from these incidents.  Nearly 25% of these misconduct reports involved excessive force. These figures are not surprising when we look at the level of interaction between people and police. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 1999 alone, 43.8 million people had contact with law enforcement, and that 422,000 people over the age of 16 had contact which involved force or the threat of force.

The last year has seen countless incidents of serious violence on the part of law  enforcement. In July, Kelly Thomas, a homeless man diagnosed with schizophrenia was beaten to death by police in Fullerton, CA. Earlier in May, the Pima County Sheriffs Department shot and killed Jose Guerena, an Iraq War Veteran. Guerena was shot over 20 times, and there are reports that police waited to complete their search of his home before allowing medical personnel access to Mr. Guerena. In August of 2010 a Seattle police officer shot and killed John Trouble Williams. Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer of the Firearms Review Board stated that “These are among the most egregious failings I’ve seen.” The Board went on to recommend that the Officer involved be stripped of his badge and gun immediately.

What is most disturbing about the murder of John Trouble Williams, is that after the release of the Review Board’s report, the District Attorney still declined to prosecute the officers involved. We have seen this trend repeated throughout the country. David Burnham, co-founder of the TRAC database at Syracuse University, found that in 2006 96% of federal law enforcement cases referred for prosecution were declined. In September of this year, Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley determined that criminal charges were not warranted after Boston Police beat a 16-year old boy at Roxbury Community College.

The type of violence that we are seeing at Occupy protests throughout the country are tactics that police officers regularly employ to control low-income communities and communities of color. These daily uses of excessive force, which often go undocumented, create a culture of violence and oppression that allows for the most heinous abuses to occur. While the most grotesque examples of police violence sometimes make it into the news, we must ensure that police are held responsible every time they abuse their power.

Makis Antzoulatos is a public defender at CPCS and a member of the Chapter Board.