Public Perceptions of Police Misconduct Along Racial Lines
This essay explores how communities perceive police misconduct differently depending on race and generation. Drawing on historical examples — including the Wickersham Commission's 1931 report on third-degree interrogation methods — and contemporary cases such as the Chicago police torture ring, NYPD stop-and-frisk statistics, warrantless surveillance of Muslim Americans, and the killing of Oscar Grant, the paper argues that public outrage over police misconduct is largely concentrated among the communities most directly affected. The rise of citizen journalism and online video-sharing has amplified minority voices, yet broad-based political will to prosecute misconduct and reform policy remains elusive. The essay concludes that racial and demographic factors heavily shape whose grievances receive mainstream attention.
- Introduction: Overview of police misconduct cases and thesis
- Historical Perspectives on Police Misconduct: Third degree methods and the Wickersham Commission
- Contemporary Perspectives: Chicago torture ring and ban on torture
- Where Is the Public Outcry?: Citizen journalism, racial disparities, and limited outrage
- Discussion: Demographic divides shape police accountability responses
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper anchors its argument in concrete, well-documented cases — the Wickersham Commission, Jon Burge's Chicago torture ring, the Oscar Grant killing, and NYPD stop-and-frisk statistics — giving the thesis strong empirical grounding.
- It traces a clear historical arc from the 1870s through 2012, demonstrating that police misconduct is not a new phenomenon but that public responses to it have shifted along demographic lines over time.
- The integration of statistical evidence (e.g., 54% of stop-and-frisk subjects were African-American despite comprising only 25.5% of the city's population) sharpens the racial disparity argument effectively.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative historical analysis — juxtaposing the broad cross-racial public outrage that followed the 1931 Wickersham Commission report with the narrower, community-specific protests of the 2000s and 2010s — to support a nuanced sociological claim about how racial identity mediates civic engagement with police accountability.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with an introduction establishing the contemporary relevance of police misconduct. It then moves chronologically through historical (pre-1931) and post-1931 perspectives before surveying a series of modern cases in which citizen-documented incidents of misconduct generated uneven public responses. A brief discussion section synthesizes the evidence and connects it to the broader political climate shaped by the War on Terror. The references section follows APA format throughout.
Introduction
For anyone paying attention to the news, the conduct of police has been under increasing scrutiny. The news media and the internet have been following a number of major stories concerning alleged police misconduct. These stories range from the New York Police Department's (NYPD) warrantless spying on Muslims (Sacirbey, 2012) to the pepper-spraying of Occupy protesters on a University of California campus (Newcomb, 2012). This essay discusses evidence suggesting that communities view police misconduct differently along racial and generational lines.
Historical Perspectives on Police Misconduct
The infamous "Third Degree" was probably first coined in the 1870s by police officers to describe the brutal interrogation methods used to gain information, confessions, and guilty pleas from suspects (Leo and Koenig, 2010, pp. 4–14). By the 1920s, newspapers had begun reporting allegations of police brutality on a regular basis, yet everyone — from prosecuting attorneys to trial judges — was complicit to varying degrees. The use of brutal interrogation methods became so widespread that the methods were incorporated into plays, motion pictures, and crime novels. Investigations were launched by bar associations, civil liberties organizations, and grand juries, all to no avail. The perception of widespread police misconduct had become so commonplace that even the mere mention of coercion in front of a jury could sway the verdict in favor of the defendant.
Finally, with the publication of the Wickersham Commission report in 1931, titled Lawlessness in Law Enforcement, the resulting public outrage was sufficient to cause third-degree methods to fade from use (Leo and Koenig, 2010, pp. 12–14). This report revealed the widespread, systematic use of third-degree methods at the national level. Rather than using these methods to obtain incriminating information from hardened criminals, police had employed them to clear criminal case backlogs through false confessions and guilty pleas, to take revenge on suspects, and to discourage claims of abuse and coercion.
Contemporary Perspectives
Although the widespread use of third-degree methods faded after the publication of the Wickersham Commission report in 1931, police forces have continued to struggle with self-policing. In January 2012, the Chicago City Council voted unanimously to ban torture — the first municipality in the United States to do so (Coffey, 2012). Close to 3,500 signatures had been collected by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the Illinois Coalition Against Torture, and other religious organizations to bring this issue before the city council.
Although the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S.-run detention facilities was cited in part to justify raising this issue before the city council, the fact that this vote took place in Chicago is particularly significant. Between 1972 and 1991, Chicago police officer Jon Burge and fellow officers tortured suspects to gain information, confessions, and guilty pleas (University of Chicago Human Rights Program, 2007). An estimated 135 African-American men, women, and children — one as young as 13 years old — were subjected to electric shocks, suffocation, beatings, burns, and mock executions.
The city government of Chicago reportedly took drastic, public steps to interfere with both local and federal investigations into the police torture allegations, and the Illinois legislature subsequently pulled funding from the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (Mills, 2012). The executive director of this commission, David Thomas, stated that support for their efforts appeared to be limited to the wrongfully convicted and their families. The commission had been actively preparing cases for judicial review so that wrongfully convicted individuals could be released from prison. Moreover, there did not appear to be sufficient public outrage to compel prosecuting attorneys to convict the many police officers accused of torturing suspects. The police commander accused of being the torture ringleader was the only one then serving time, and only for the federal charge of perjury (Brown, Ruzich, and Cox, 2010).
References
Brown, Andrea, Ruzich, Joseph, and Cox, Brian. (2010). Jurors say evidence made Burge's denials hard to believe. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-06-28/news/ct-met-burge-trial-jurors-20100628_1_jurors-jon-burge-chicago-police.
Coffey, Sister Benita. (2012, January 25). Chicago's ban on torture should spur others to act too. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-25/news/ct-oped-0125-torture-20120125_1_torture-chicago-police-cmdr-solitary-confinement.
Honan, Edith. (2012, June 7). Occupy Wall Street lawsuit over NY arrests can go forward. Reuters. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from
Kies, Marianne F. (2011–2012). Policing the police: Freedom of the press and the right to privacy, and civilian recordings of police activity. George Washington Law Review, 80, 274–310.
Leo, Richard A. and Koenig, Alexa. (2010). Police interrogation and coercion in domestic American history: Lessons for the War on Terror. Social Science Research Network, 1–178. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1533402.
McLaughlin, Elliot C., Martin, Augie, Simon, Dan, and Simon, Mallory. (2009, January 9). Hundreds demand answers, action in subway shooting. CNN.com. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/08/BART.shooting/.
Mills, Steve. (2012). State torture panel faces an abrupt ending: Legislature stripped funding for commission, which is to submit its first recommendations Tuesday. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-04/news/ct-met-torture-commission-20120605_1_police-torture-jon-burge-chicago-police.
Newcomb, Alyssa. (2011). Videos show 'Occupy' protesters pepper sprayed, beaten. ABC News. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://abcnews.go.com/U.S./occupy-protesters-beaten-pepper-sprayed/story?id=14990310&page=2.
NYCLU (New York Civil Liberties Union). (2012). Stop-and-frisk campaign: About the issue. NYCLU.org. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices.
Ramos, George. (1992, May 4). When loving L.A. turns to heartache: A native son's affection for the city is lost amid the flames and the violence. Los Angeles Times, p. A1.
Sacirbey, Omar. (2012, June 6). Muslims sue to stop NYPD spying program. Washington Post. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/muslims-sue-to-stop-nypd-spying-program/2012/06/06/gJQACOvYIV_story.html.
Taylor, Kate. (2012, June 10). Stop-and-frisk policy 'saves lives,' Mayor tells Black congregation. New York Times. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from
University of Chicago Human Rights Program. (2007). Facts at a glance. Human Rights at Home: The Chicago Police Torture Archive. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2012). New York (city), New York. Census.gov. Retrieved 11 June 2012 from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html.
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