Police Brutality in the South:

Police Brutality in the South: Three Case Studies and Their Constitutional Effects

Amnesty International has said that "Police brutality and use of excessive force has been one…systematic patterns of abuse across America, including "police beatings, unjustified shootings and the use of dangerous restraint techniques to subdue suspects.," (Lendman, 2010). In this paper, the author will center in on a few examples in the southern United States to illustrate this very point.

Disturbingly, this experience is becoming a nationwide reality.

Examples of police brutality in the South are legion and would fill many encyclopedias. An excellent example of this can be seen in the shootings of black students at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi on May 14, 1970. Hardly a campus was immune at this time from the wave of student protests that spring against the Nixon's administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. In addition to the general tension over the escalation of the Vietnam War, Jackson State students were protesting the deaths of four Kent State University students in Ohio killed by Ohio National Guardsmen. According to reports, the riot began around 9:30 PM with a small group of students, reportedly mixed with non-students. Seventy-five city police armed with carbines, submachine guns, shotguns, service revolvers and personal weapons advanced and opened fire and continued their barrage for 30 seconds at approximately 12:05 A.M., May 15, 1970. Their volley struck not only demonstrators, but also a five-story dormitory building where investigators later counted at least 160 bullet holes in the outer walls of the dormitory stairwell. One student was killed and twelve others were struck by gunfire. Several other students were treated for hysteria and injuries from shattered glass ("Jackson state," 2001).

Fast forward almost three decades to Memorial Day Weekend 2009 in Miami Beach, Florida. Police officer David Socarras arrested photojournalist Carlos Miller photographed while he was on assignment. Admittedly, the officer did not beat Miller, but he did arrest the journalist and was verbally abusive to him after Miller was engaged in constitutionally protected activity. Film and video footage showed that the journalist was not engaged in any illegal activity. The charge of disorderly intoxication was dropped at trial because Miller was not endangering the safety of another person or causing a public disturbance while drunk, the definition of the disorderly intoxication charge under Florida law. The remaining charge of resisting arrest without violence was they only charge that stuck. Evidentally asking an officer who runs up to you yelling at you to delete a constitutionally protected photo and then having the temerity to ask for his name and badge number constitutes resisting arrest (Miller, 2010).

These types of typical police procedures in Miami have been called the "Miami Model." This term refers to tactics used in Miami in 2003 during peaceful, constitutionally protected free speech protests on the streets outside of the event. Naomi Archer who witnessed the events stated that "Protesters were beaten with tear gas, sticks, rubber bullets . . . You can watch police stun cowering protesters with Tasers on YouTube." In 2009, the city agreed with court complaints that it had trampled citizens' protected rights to free speech by forcing marchers back from planned protests and then settled out of court with Amnesty International, the filer of the suit (Porter, 2010). Evidentally, walking while holding a protest sign is still not a criminal offense, but tell that to arresting Miami police officers who are lauded publicly while privately settling court complaints and acknowledging that they systematically violated individual constitutional rights. If you do not yell too loudly in pain while you cowering and being tasered by police, you might just win at your court date.

While these incidents could and in many cases are mirrored in many other parts of America outside of the South, it is clear from all of these incidents is that police in places like Jackson, Mississippi and Miami, Florida are acting in typical fashion. Their actions are habitual and systematic and reflect decades of historical and flagrant disrespect for constitutional rights in a country that supposedly protects and holds dear the ideals of the Fourth Amendment and other Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Such incidents reflect the reality on the streets of America where such radical actions as "driving while black" habitually results in traffic stops and arrests that are really too numerous to catalog.