Slave Patrol Research Paper

Law Enforcement use of force is becoming a serious issue in American society in this generation. In Ferguson, Mo the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson caused a uproar across the nation and got worse when a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy was shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio for playing with a toy gun. Walter Scott was shot by Officer Michael T. Slager after a traffic stop in North Charleston, SC and was charged with murder based on a cellphone video from a bystander. The same month Freddie Gray died in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland causing riots and protests across the city. Police officers are some the best trained professionals in the world, but how they are trained may be the

problem. Rookie officers are being taught that hesitation kills and if you don’t act within a matter of seconds you could lose your life. According to The Law Dictionary, police brutality is the use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians. “Excessive use of force” means a force well beyond what would be necessary in order to handle a situation. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice statistics report from 2006, large state and local law enforcement agencies (those with 100 or more sworn officers) receive more than 26,00 citizen complaints annually about officer use of force and 92% of those complaints went uninvestigated (Hickman).
The development of policing in the United States followed the policing system used in England.

The early policing system known as the watch system was composed of community volunteers whose duty was to warn of incoming danger. Slave patrols emerged in South Carolina in the early 1700s; Samuel Walker identified slave patrols as the first publicity funded police agencies in the South. Slave patrols or “paddyrollers” were created to manage maintain control over slave populations and they later extended their responsibilities to include control over white indentured servants (Archbold). Slave patrols were known for their high level of brutality and ruthlessness. In the early mid-1800s the development of modern policing began in the United States. These newly created police agencies adopted three distinct characteristics from the English: (1) limited police authority—the powers of the police are defined by law; (2) local control—local governments bear the responsibility for providing police service; and (3) fragmented law enforcement authority—several agencies within a defined area share the responsibility for providing police services, which ultimately leads to problems with communication, cooperation, and control among these agencies (Archbold). A distinct characteristic of policing in the United States during the 1800s is the direct and powerful involvement of politics. Police chiefs had little control over the decision making that would impact their officers and agencies.

Many police chiefs did not accept the strong political presence in their agencies, and as a result, the turnover rate for chiefs of police at this time was very high. With help from the Progressives, in the 20th century reform efforts began to take hold and made significant changes to policing in the United States. A goal of police reform included the removal of politics from American policing. This effort included the creation of standards for recruiting and hiring police officers and administrators instead of allowing politicians to appoint these individuals to help them carry out their political agendas. Another goal of police reform during the early 1900s was to professionalize the police. Which would be would be achieved by setting standards for the quality of police officers hired, implementing better police training, and adopting various types of technology to aid police officers in their daily operations (Potter). The professionalization movement of the police in America resulted in police agencies becoming centralized bureaucracies focused primarily on crime control (Potter).
When police officers are in the academy, officer safety is highly emphasized.

Officers are taught that their main goal every day should be is to return home at the end of their shift. Rookie officers are taught that complacency kills so every encounter and every individual is a potential threat. While in the academy, officers are shown dash-c am footage of officers being beaten, disarmed, or gunned down after a moment of inattention or hesitation (Lawrence). Hesitation can be fatal, one common scenario taught is that a suspect leaning into a car can pull out a gun and shoot at officers before they can react. In most police shootings officers don’t shoot out of frustration or anger, they shoot because they are afraid. They are constantly taught that they should be afraid because their survival depends on it. In the case of Timothy Thomas, a Cincinnati officer followed Thomas down a dark alley and opened fire because he thought he had a gun. The officer fired a single bullet to his heart and no gun was ever found on Thomas. Could Timothy Thomas still be alive today if the officer wasn’t taught to hesitate? Or was it because the officer was trained to think that all suspects have weapons? Alliston T. Chappell from Old Dominion University proposed the question to compare the academy performance of rookie officers trained under traditional academy curriculum and rookie officers trained based on community policing. The difference between academy policing and community policing is

that academy policing focuses on traditional way such as psychological evaluations, physical fitness exam, and weapons training. Whereas community policing is based on the concept that police officers and private citizens should work together in creative ways can help solve contemporary community problems related to crime, social and physical disorder, and neighborhood decay. Chappell found that the effectiveness of community policing training is largely dependent on the instructor. Academy instructors are often veteran officers, police insiders who may have strong internalized definitions about traditional policing, and therefore may struggle to accept the ideals of community policing. If the officers in the academy have never been to a poverty stricken area in the community it will be hard for them to relate to what is going on in the community. Another issue found in traditional academy curriculum is the unconscious racial bias that leads officers to think that black men are a greater threat than others. Since officers use more force when they perceive a greater threat, unconscious bias can lead officers to react more aggressively when confronting black men than they would when confronting others in otherwise identical situations (Terrill). In the African American community it’s common to react when we feel disrespected, many time when an officer approaches it’s in a hostile manner so African Americans react in a “flight or fight” manner. Disrespect has always been one of the most consistent predictors of police force and citizens who displayed disrespectful behavior toward officers were no more likely to have force used on them than those who were respectful (Terrill). Defying police authority can be seen as either disrespect, citizen resistance, or both. A citizen who aggressively complains (example: what the hell is wrong with you cops?) to an officer about his or her treatment during an encounter may be defying police authority because of his or her displeasure with the officers understanding of the situation. The Garner study (1996) in Phoenix was the first to show that male officers were more forceful in the course of their duties than female officers. Although it may be impossible to completely eliminate every aspect of unconscious bias, research strongly suggests that more sophisticated training could lead to more accurate threat identifications, correcting for racial bias that officers may not even be aware of. Use-of-force training should be taught in the academy emphasize de-escalation and flexible tactics in a way that minimizes the need to rely on force, particularly lethal force. Police agencies that have emphasized de-escalation over assertive policing; have seen a substantial decrease in officer uses of force, including lethal force, without seeing an increase in officer fatalities (Lawerence). In early 2014 officers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, relied on tactics and communication rather than weaponry to deal with a aggressive man carrying a rifle. As a result, a 40-minute standoff ended with a handshake. By changing officer training, agencies could start to shift the culture of policing away from the “frontal assault” mindset and toward an approach that emphasizes preserving the lives that officers are charged with protecting (Chappell).
Police reform requires more than changes to training, of course. The policing mission needs to be focused on keeping communities safe and free from fear, including from fear of officers themselves. There are deep racial tensions in law enforcement that will only be healed through a long-term, sustained commitment to cooperative policing and community engagement. Training programs should designed to promote ethical behavior, enhance police community relations, or train officers in verbal techniques for achieving compliance from civilians