A Decade's Tale

Dasha J Rhodes,Paul C Archibald,David L Robinson,Laurens Van Sluytman

doi:10.18060/22599

Abstract

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (US DOJ, 2016), African Americans have experienced disproportionate instances of police use of excessive force as a result of discriminatory practices and insufficient training. Officers are permitted to use appropriate force in specific situations; however, when force is excessive and deemed unnecessary, it then becomes an issue of concern. The U.S. Department of Justice was invited to investigate police departments that participated in the use of excessive force and a consent decree was developed with those departments to remedy the DOJ's findings. The researchers conducted a consent decree analysis examining government investigations of police practices throughout the U.S. between 2008 and 2018 comprising the following terms: police reform, consent decrees, settlement agreement, investigation reports, use-of-force, and policy to determine how prevalent excessive force was used towards African Americans. Findings indicated that within the decade, 14 cities were investigated, 12 were identified as using excessive force, with nine having their use-of-force policies available, and four municipalities using excessive force against African Americans. Social work values, advocacy, and cultural training were also identified to aid in the decrease of excessive force complaints.

Highlights

According to the U.S Department of Justice (US DOJ, 2016), African Americans have experienced disproportionate instances of police use of excessive force as a result of discriminatory practices and insufficient training
Findings of the DOJ reports indicated that African Americans were disproportionately represented among those who experienced excessive force
In Ferguson, 90% of reported excessive force incidences were against African Americans, they comprised 67% of the population (DOJCRD, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Discriminatory practices and unnecessary force, toward African Americans, were identified in some of the investigations due to lack of training, which led agencies to enter a consent decree or settlement agreement (US DOJ, 2016). In 2016, the Center for Policing Equity conducted a study involving 12 agencies with approximately 600,000 city residents across the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, South, and West regions of the United States (Goff, Lloyd, Geller, Raphael, & Glaser, 2016) Their findings indicated that, on average, for every 100,000 residents, excessive force was used on 108 individuals; the mean for Whites was 76 per 100,000, while the mean for African American residents was 273 per 100,000—a rate 2.5 times higher than the overall average and 3.6 times higher than Whites (Goff et al, 2016). Still others have argued that both neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideological forces have engineered crime prevention as a vehicle to achieve individual responsibility and social welfare dependence deterrence in resource-poor communities (Gilling & Barton, 1997)

Results

Discussion

Conclusion