Police Killings Are On the Rise
More and more, deaths at the hands of police continue to become justified as a necessary function of society
HOUSTON - In the U.S., justice by the barrel of the gun goes back prior to the founding of the nation. Today, the concept is more popular than ever. A large part of the motivation behind gun sales is based on the idea that civilians are willing to dole out justice as they see fit, to protect material possessions, or against those they perceive as a threat to their way of life.
Similarly, policing was built on the premise of violence and vigilante justice. One only needs to look at the history of so-called law enforcement to verify this. What we call police were initially established to protect property - including those who were enslaved and considered valuable assets as recently as one lifetime ago. Many principles behind policing remain the same today.
Being policed does not equal being protected. The enforcement of laws rarely shields anyone from anything. We see instances of this everywhere. From tens of thousands of untested rape kits across the country and restraining orders - whether granted or denied - that rarely stop people from being harmed to unabated gun violence and threats of violence from extremists, enforcers of the law have a disgustingly poor record of protecting the public.
Confidence in police is much more complicated than simple slogans. According to the Pew Research Center, 31% of U.S. citizens had little trust in police (10% of Black people, 18% of Latinos, and 32% of white people), while only 23% of Black people, 16% of Latinos, and 13% of white people support defunding police and using that money for social programs that work to combat crime before it happens.
A paltry 26% of those polled said they have a great deal of confidence in cops.
With such low numbers of citizens trusting law enforcement, the public overwhelmingly supports requiring training in alternatives to deadly force, a federal database to track police misconduct allegations, giving civilian oversight boards investigative and disciplinary powers, and requiring officers to live in the places they police. The vast majority also backs outlawing chokeholds and the ability to sue individual officers for misconduct.
License to Kill
The will of the people is rarely met by politicians. The majority of citizens support a whole host of legislative policies to serve the nation better. However, if one party isn’t standing in the way of the other, we typically have representatives that dance around the issues by telling us what people support and what they don’t despite the countless studies that say otherwise.
The policies the majority of the country supports regarding policing also serve to protect officers on the job as well. Many of the policies surround accountability. The threat of responsibility will require officers to adhere to the law and department policies while taking the burden of being the main solution to all of society’s problems off of them.
Solutions to policing in the U.S. isn’t one-sided. The public has a responsibility to hold police accountable as well as protect individual officers. But protecting the police from harm doesn’t mean giving them a license to kill. Despite what the Supreme Court argues when it comes to whether police are required to protect the public, their contracts with the cities in which they work dictate their duties quite clearly. Shirking these duties often results in death.
The criminal justice system isn’t only responsible for death when cops pull the trigger. It's often liable for deaths that rarely get discussed. Police chases on city streets that result in innocent bystander deaths are one example. Not taking initiative to protect 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas is another. Even deaths in jails with inhumane conditions qualify.
Policing is much more than what you see on television. Misconduct goes deeper than what we hear or see on the news. When it comes to police brutality, the nation rarely discusses sexual assault, brutal beatings that don’t result in death, trumped-up charges, and officers “testilying” in court to keep people in jail despite their right to a fair trial and a presumption of innocence.
Cover-up culture and inadequate systems to protect officers if they should ever decide to report misconduct only serve to embolden cops to act outside of their designated parameters. Deficient vetting processes when recruiting cops allow for dangerous people to adopt the profession as a career choice. Thus, making the job appealing to racists and extremists who use their given authority to oppress, brutalize, and kill those they deem inferior.
Media Responsibility
It almost goes without saying how media bias plays a role in all of this. Programs that have been successful in making cities safer are treated as failures. Misdemeanor bail reform in Houston, for example, has netted positive results in reducing crime. But a quick glance at local news and nearly every crime they report involves someone out on bail creating an image of a failed policy to the public at large. These portrayals cost lives because police are influenced by them too.
We often discuss how news outlets portray Black, Latino, and Indigenous people compared to white people and its impacts on how society as whole views those communities. For decades, it has impacted how police view non-white people. Leading to the disproportionate over-policing, incarceration, and murder of Black people in particular.
Major media outlets also failed in their responsibility to clearly explain what funding social programs instead of more police would accomplish. Rather than continuing to demand that officers be social workers, they used the slight uptick in violent crime last year to falsely claim that defunding the police was the cause. In the U.S., people often ignore the power of the media and how it shapes people’s views and ideas, and how much damage they routinely do.
All major media, in general, is also failing in their responsibility to accurately report on the rise in brutality and death at the hands of police. They report only on what is often referred to as “copaganda” using anecdotal evidence as data to convey a script dictated by police. National and local outlets all do this. The public not challenging these narratives and those who report them is also problematic as it continues the legacy of policing outside the law.
Joe Biden’s additional $37 billion in federal funding for police and another 100,000 cops on the street and in our schools won’t solve anything. The burden on police officers is greater than ever and it behooves society to ensure the proper services to stop crime before it happens are available in every community. Defunding those services in favor of policing is counterproductive and the media is largely responsible for not being more forthcoming about the facts.
Police brutality is on the rise at a higher rate than we’ve seen in decades. Yet, local and national news outlets are dropping the ball in informing the public. When it comes to media bias, there is very little impartiality with regard to law enforcement. Meanwhile, hate groups and extremists continue to infiltrate every aspect of our criminal justice system.
As we fail to address this, authoritarianism is creeping in.
Arturo is a journalist navigating the intersection of politics and race and the publisher of The Antagonist Magazine. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. One-time donations are accepted here.