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ISSUE
RELATED ORGANIZATIONS
About.com's
civil liberties site:
With links to police conduct.
ACLU:
Fighting Police Brutality:
Information from ACLU on how to deal with the police,
police abuse, and where to turn for help.
Amnesty
International's Rights For All:
Human rights organization's call to the US to task
for rampant police brutality, abuse of prisoners, and
a dysfunctional legal system.
Capital
Region Justice for Diallo Committee:
Coalition of local groups concerned with issues of
race, police brutality, and criminal justice.
National
Coalition on Police Accountability:
Organization of religious, community, legal groups
and progressive law enforcement representatives working
to hold police accountable to their communities.
October 22nd Coalition:
Organization united to stop police brutality, repression,
and the criminalization of a generation.
The
Vera Institute of Justice:
An very complete bibliography of policing literature
with select annotations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AND PUBLICATION LINKS:
Brock, Alan. Ambush at Ruby Ridge. Irvine,
Calif.: Dickens Press, 1995. A reminder of how far law
enforcement can go wrong.
Cruelty in Control? The Stun Belt and Other Electroschock
Weapons in Law Enforcement. June 1999. Amnesty International's
report on American police abusing prisoners and suspects
with a new generation of "non-lethal" toys.
Driving
While Black: Racial Profiling on Our Nation's Highways
ACLU special report from June 1999 on racial profiling
among American cops.
Bouvard, James. Freedom in Chains: the Rise of the State
and the Demise of the Citizen. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1999.
Bouvard attacks the modern worship of "democracy"
as the source of much of the slack cut abusive government
agencies.
Oink!:
Official newsletter of Action for Police Accountability.
Police
Brutality & Excessive Force in the New York City Police
Department:
Amnesty International Report from June 1996.
Shielded
from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the
US:
1998 report from Human Rights Watch examines police
brutality in major cities throughout the US.
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In the early hours of March 3, 1991, a police chase in Los Angeles ended
in an incident that would become synonymous with police brutality: the
beating of a young man named Rodney King by members of the Los Angeles
Police Department. An amateur video, televised nationwide, showed King
lying on the ground while three officers kicked him and struck him repeatedly
with their nightsticks. The Rodney King incident projected the brutal
reality of police abuse into living rooms across the nation. Political
leaders condemned police use of excessive force and appointed special
commissions to investigate incidents of brutality. The media covered the
issue extensively, calling particular attention to the fact that people
of color are disproportionately victims of police abuse.
Six years later, police abuse is still very much an American problem with
annual incidents numbering in the thousands. Most reported incidents take
place during arrests, searches, traffic stops, or in street altercations.
In New York City, a series of egregious incidents over the past several
years, such as the 1997 station house torture of Haitian immigrant Abner
Louima, has heightened tensions and precipitated a number of investigations.
One such investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office found a pattern
of brutality in the NYPD and called upon federal authorities to oversee
the conduct of the city’s police. Other large, urban police forces
have faced similar scrutiny.
Yet police brutality must be fought locally: the nation's 19,000 law enforcement
agencies are essentially independent. While some federal statutes specify
criminal penalties for willful violations of civil rights and conspiracies
to violate civil rights, the Department of Justice has been insufficiently
aggressive in prosecuting cases of police abuse. There are shortcomings,
too, in federal law itself, which does not permit "pattern and practice"
lawsuits. The battle against police abuse must therefore be fought primarily
on the local level.
Source: Amnesty International and ACLU
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