No Justice-No Peace

Brutality of Police in the United States

Justin Berding

Writing Seminar II: Art of the Scholar

Professor Sarah Richards-Graba
November 17, 2014

The United States history of war and penchant for violence goes unrivaled across the vast

sprawl of all seven continents. In only the last 50 years, the United States have perpetrated
violence in the form of aerial bombings or infantry invasions on nearly 30 foreign countries, the
most recent endeavors being Syria, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.1 Over the same time
frame, this violence has also been manifested domestically under various presidential
administrations as exemplified by the "War on drugs," the "War on Terror," the "War on
Obesity," and the "War on poverty." This violent mentality has painted a disturbing scene in
which America has declared war on its own people. The heavily armed, and government funded,
militants engaged on the domestic battlefront are the United States local and state Peace
Officers, those that are sworn by oath to serve and protect the people. The following document
will address the alarming trends of disturbing violence and the state-of-war perpetuated by the
police force by means of brutality, racially motivated agendas, legally justified slayings of
unarmed citizens, and the realistic plausibility of an impending police state.
Police brutality has been a prominent human rights issue for the stronger part of a
century. In the early 1900's era of United States policing, excessive use of force was most
commonly perpetrated on poor laborers as a means of control of the masses by fear. Later during
the civil rights movement, it was exhumed extensively on African Americans and today, most
commonly, on people of color and marginalized groups. The tendency of violent police affliction
to be perpetrated on oppressed groups has a discernable correlation. Statistics from the
American Civil Liberties Union report that although the US citizens comprise only five percent of
the worlds population, it holds 25 percent of the worlds inmates, making it the largest
incarcerator in the world.2 (https://www.aclu.org/safe-communities-fair-sentences/prison-crisis)

1 Statistics compiled by Ellen C. Collier, Specialist in U.S. Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs and National
2 ACLU Report on vast project done by Jenifer Warren Under the PEW Organization in 2008

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Of that staggering population, over 60% of those inmates are of oppressed and racially
marginalized groups like Blacks and Latinos.3
In recent years, the prevalence of seemingly incriminating video evidence of police
brutality has become alarmingly prominent in both the social and corporate medias. It would
appear that this excessive use of force is on a sharp rise when, in actuality, it is most likely due to
an increased number of civilians recording these events on mobile devices. Sickening and
inhumane footage continually floods the media, showing the gruesome injustices enacted by an
organization that citizens are commanded at gun point to trust and obey. However,
accompanying the copious amount of complaints and videos surrounding police brutality, is
distressing lack of statistical data regarding the polices use of excessive force. This dearth of
valid corroborated data, which, constitutionally speaking, should be free public information, is
caused mainly by the fact that there exists thousands of different police municipalities
nationwide, each agency enforcing different standards and documentary procedures. Despite the
fact that congress passed a federal law in 1994 requiring the accurate compilation of police
brutality statistics by law enforcement agencies, there has been no unified data system instituted
within the last decade.4 While this lack of statistics is disconcerting, there is an abundance of
literature and video evidence depicting the horrors of this human rights issue. The following will
examine a miniscule sampling of the vast amount of recent excessive force used by police,
specifically regarding the use of "Less Lethal"5 weaponry.
Less Lethal Tactics
On the morning November 23, 2004, Malaika Brooks was dropping off her son for school
at the African American Academy. Seattle PD officers Donald Jones and Juan rnelas issued

3
4

Marginalized groups being the more contemporary phrasing of the now obsolete term, "Minority groups"
U.S Congress. 1994. 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., 25 January.

"Less lethal weapon" means any device that is designed to or that has been converted to expel or propel
less lethal ammunition by any action, mechanism, or process for the purpose of incapacitating,
immobilizing, or stunning a human being through the infliction of any less than lethal impairment of
physical condition, function, or senses, including physical pain or discomfort.

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Mrs. Brooks a citation for speeding that she refused to sign. After a brief discussion the officers
ordered Malaika to step out of the car and be arrested for refusing to sign the traffic ticket. When
Malaika said she would not comply, officers then threatened to use their Tasers, to which Mrs.
Brooks responded that she was seven months pregnant. After the officers deliberated for a
moment on how they should react to this new information of an unborn child being at risk, the
officers reached into the vehicle and Officer Jones then discharged his Taser on Brooks's thigh,
shoulder, and neck, all within approximately one minute.'6 This left the pregnant mother face
down on the pavement in front of her child's school to be arrested. Brooks launched complaints
with both the city and the officers involved and eventually the case was settled out of court.
Brooks settled for 45, 000 dollars from the city of Seattle while the city, "admits no wrongdoing
on the part of the officers,7 and neither officer involved received any sanctions. In other words,
the perpetrators of the violence did not pay for their crime but rather, tax-payer dollars were used
to make amends for injustice. This is a brutal example of the unnecessary violent escalations of
police officers. Judge Marsha Berzon, one of the 11 judges that presided over the case, spoke out
in the aftermath reiterating the fact that "Failure to sign a traffic infraction is not an arrestable
offense, and it's not illegal to resist an unlawful arrest..8
In the Brooks case, officers had significant time to consider the circumstances and
consult a decision, many times when the element of haste is added to police confrontations, the
results are much more devastating. In 1989, Minneapolis police performed a raid, breaching the
home off an elderly couple Lloyd Smalley and Lillian Weiss in a search for drugs. It would
eventually become clear the police had the wrong house, only after the flash bang grenades used
in the botched raid, set fire to the home killing both Smalley, 71 and Weis 65, due to smoke

From database analysis of court documents.

Court statement on behalf of Seattle Police Department
8
Judge Berzon's post-court comments
7

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inhalation.9 A few years later the very same police department would come under scrutiny after
"The deployment of a flash bang during a drug raid on a triplex would cause the entire building to
catch fire, ruining the two homes surrounding the target of the raid."10
The travesties of the use of flash bangs, a grenade meant to disorient and temporarily
blind its target, (also known as concussion grenades) are almost too numerous to document. On
May 28th 2014, A Georgia swat team raided the house of Wanis Thonetheva at 3 am, incidentally
tossing a flash bang grenade into the crib of a 19-month-old child during the no-knock breach.
The child, who was severely concussed and burned, was put into a medically induced coma while
he received surgery and recovered from a skin grafting. Thonetheva, the suspect of a 50 dollar
drug transaction to an undercover agent, was not present at the home at the time of the invasion,
nor were any illegal drugs found in the subsequent search of the house.11 There would be no
indictment in this gross assault. Habersham County Sherriff Joey Terrell, who was chosen to
represent his department and speak on the issue stated, "Our team went by the book. Given the
same scenario, we'll do the same thing again. I stand behind what our team did.12 Sherriff Terrell
spoke further on the issue saying, "Wanis Thonetheva, thats the person I blame in all this. They
are no better than a domestic terrorist, because they dont care about families... Its domestic
terrorism and I think we should treat them as such."13 This contextualization of criminals as
terrorists is an alarming example of how widespread police mentality is creating a domestic
battlefield and escalating situations to extreme violence. Supreme Court Justice Anthony
Kennedy
While these gruesome examples of police brutality to serve a purpose of calling attention

9 No ambulance was called as house burned because police failed to search home for inhabitants after
breach
10 Ibid.
11 Confirmed by various Associated Press articles
12 Link to full video of interview with Sheriff Terrell regarding the incident in subsequent
bibliography
13 Ibid.

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to a serious issue, the small sampling of events offered in this document could never do the
justice of raising awareness to the amplitude to this situation. In the absence of a federally
regulated system of statistics, various human rights groups have stepped up to accurately record
excessive use-of-force statistics. The most meticulous organization involved in a commitment to
provide the general population with accurate data regarding police complaints is The Cato
Institute.14 Recently The Cato institute implemented a project pertaining to National Police
Misconduct Statistics in which about 8,300 credible reports of police wrong doing were
investigated nationwide over a period of 21 months in 2010. More than a third of all police
misconduct sampled involved excessive force or sexual assault. Of the 8,300 allegations, only
3,238 were formally brought to criminal charges. This number was then curtailed further, as only
1,063 officers were convicted, most often of lesser crimes than the original allegations. Of the
officers convicted, 36 percent received any jail time.15 This leads to a final conclusion that less
than 22 percent of law enforcement officials were sentenced for their alleged crimes.
In an overwhelming majority of these cases, the police officers involved easily avoid
serious penal sanctions. There are many factors involved with the lack of punishment of police,
such as perfunctory complaint procedures, however the rift of justice is mainly due to a
widespread mentality of qualified immunity. This qualified immunity dictates a superior
importance of the life of a police officer over a civilian, it also values the testimony of these
officers over the testimony of the citizen in court. This immunity gives officers the right to take
the lives of unarmed citizens the moment their survival instincts tell them they are in danger,
which may or may not be an accurate assessment of the situation in the heat of the moment.
These are supposedly highly trained professionals, often backed up with ample man-power in any

14 The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization. Its scholars and analysts conduct
independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues. -Institute website
15 From the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, Anuual report 2010, The Cato Institute

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given situation. These are men and woman that have vowed to engage in the once respected job
of a police officer as testament to their beliefs of honor an justice. These men and woman have
made a commitment to protect and serve the rights of the American people as their duty. These
officers sought out a profession knowing their life would be on the line every night. Are not these
the type of highly trained men and woman that should take the initiative to enforce their duties
honorably, receive proper training both physically and cognitively, and exhibit a relentless value
of human life? Shouldnt these people be held to a higher standard than the people which they
subject to oppression?
This sanctioned violence and brutalization by police too often escalates to outright
murder and slayings. Over the last decade, here has been a chilling steadfast in the number of
unarmed men and woman shot and killed by trigger-happy officers. While the entire police force
of Germany fired a total of 85 bullets in 2011,16 American police officers often fire close to that
amount of rounds at a single suspect. This point is reminiscent of the tragic shooting of a
mentally ill man named Milton hall, who was surrounded by six officers and a barking police
dog, for allegedly stealing a cup of coffee. Standing at a few yards distance from the officers and
holding a small penknife, the band of police unleashed a hail of 46 bullets, hitting the mentally ill
man 14 times.17 Media described the event as a "firing squad"18 style killing, no officers were
brought up on charges. Compared to Germanys sic killings of civilians in 2011, FBI Reports
indicate that American police on average, kill roughly 400 citizens annually in justifiable
homicide,19 18 percent of which being African American youth under the age of 21.20 The
following will detail in short a few of the most heinous and humanly degrading police murders of
the last few years

16

Der Spiegel, German News Source

Link to Video of "Firing Squad" altercation in subsequent bibliography
18
IBID.
19
Justifiable Homicide-the killing of a person committing a felonious act by a peace officer in the line of
duty.
20
From Federal Bureau of Investigation "expanded homicide data table"
17

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Lethal Tactics
Eric Gartner, a Staten Island man, was cornered and questioned by plain-clothes police

for allegedly selling loose untaxed cigarettes on July 17th. 2014. The man who had six children,
was surrounded by six officers, Gartner was assaulted by an officer using the controversial chokehold and forced down to the ground by the accompanying police and restrained.21 Eric Garner
would later die from the cardiac arrest he suffered in response to the incident. According to the
medical examiner death was ruled a homicide due to "compression of neck (choke hold),
compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.22
On New Years day, 2009, Oscar Grant was pulled off the California BART railway at
Fruitvale Station for allegedly causing a disturbance on the train. Vicious video shows that the
unarmed Grant was restrained by three officers, one with his knee pressed against Grant's neck
when an officer stands upright, pulls his service revolver, and fires one shot execution style into
Grants back. BART police officer Johannes Mehserle claimed he mistook his service revolver
for is Taser, the two weapons are located on opposite sides of the police issued holster.
Surprisingly, in complete discordance to the customary qualified immunity, Mehserle was
actually brought to trial and even convicted in this case. The catch being the charge was not
murder but rather involuntary manslaughter, for which he served only 11 months in prison.23
On February 4th, 1999, four white police officers opened fire on an unarmed New Guinea
Immigrant as he stood in the doorway of his apartment. The officers let out a barrage of 41
bullets when the police claim they saw Amadou Diallo reach for a gun, which in reality ended up
being his wallet. The unarmed man was hit a total of 19 times.24 After the first few bullets
passed through Diallos' main arteries and spine, dropping him to the floor paralyzed, the four

21

Link to video evidence supplied in subsequent bibliography

Official medical examiners report
23
"On the Epidemic of Police Killings." Martinot, Steve
24
Peer Reviewed document, Joshua Price
22

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officers continued to fire in unison. Medical examiners report that the last of the bullets actually
entered through the bottom of his feet, "canaling through his legs."25 All four officers were
acquitted of any charges.
These travesties of human dignity are only becoming more prevalent as the judicial
system continues to justify and be lenient on the violence, subsequently encouraging the use of
excessive force. When reparations are given to victims, they come out of the tax-payers pocket
with no admission of guilt from the organizations involved. While police aggression continues
blanketed in immunity, the apprehension of the American people is directed elsewhere by media
fear mongering, eerily reminiscent to war time propaganda tactics. Disproportionally inaccurate
portrayals of foreign threats are used to scare citizens into allowing compromises sacrificing their
constitutional rights in the name of the "War on Terror" and other false threats. Yet the
constitutional infringements of legal wire tapping, overt camera surveillance, and the trampling of
rights protecting citizens against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the 4th
amendment, are disregarded in the chaos of the fear of an unseen enemy. This trend continues in
a country where, according to statistics compiled by the National Safety Council, American
citizens are 8 times more likely to be killed by their own police officers than in a domestic
terrorist attack.26 Police use of paramilitary tactics and armament continue to perpetuate a
battlefield on American soil while local police departments continue to receive automatic
weapons, tanks, surveillance drones, grenades, and riot equipment from the federal government.
This drastic form of militarization of police is also heavily perpetuated through shoot-to-kill
training and racially based target assessment and profiling.
The recent events in Ferguson, Missouri surrounding the killing of an 18-year-old
unarmed African American youth by a white police officer, has drawn heavy attention to the issue

25
26

Official medical examiner reports

From National Safety Council reports regarding likelihood of death from various causes

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of police militarization. After heavy unrest following the incident, local areas are currently busy
boarding up windows, while KKK flyers circulate the region and police stock up on "Less Lethal"
riot gear in preparation for the forthcoming Grand Jury decision of whether or not to indict the
officer involved. While mainstream media portrays the mostly peaceful protestors as the
aggressors in the so-called rioting, others say police response tactics can be a major cause of
adding fuel to the fire. Amnesty International, a well-respected organization of reporters and
human rights delegates, recently dispatched a team to observe the happenings and offer deescalation techniques to protestors in Ferguson and surrounding areas. Their reports depicted
major injustices in protestors right to peacefully assemble, and be free of intimidation in the
process, as media and other innocents were subjected to tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and
police dogs.27 The following is one facet of the hostility experienced by the neutral media team.
"Shortly before midnight on Aug. 19, Amnesty International witnessed an officer with the
St. Ann Police Department in Missouri point his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle at a group of
journalists and threatened to kill them. The incident was filmed by a journalist and went
viral on Aug. 20.28 The video shows the officer walking toward a group of protestors with
his rifle raised. Voices can be heard telling himto put his gun down. The video shows the
officer approaching the crowd with his rifle raised yelling, "I'm going to fucking kill you!
Get back, get back." A voice in the crowd asks, "What's your name, sir?" To which the
officer responds, "Go fuck yourself!" Another officer quickly approaches and escorts the
officer away from the crowd. The officer was immediately placed on indefinite, unpaid
suspension and resigned several days later."29
In response to this steadfast volley of recent protests and days before Michael Browns
family would travel to Geneva to speak to the UN, United Nation's High Commissioner for

27

"On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson"- Amnesty International
IBID.
29
IBID.
28

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Human Rights, Navi Pillay, had this to say regarding the events,
"I condemn the excessive use of force by the police [in Ferguson] and call for the
right of protest to be respected. These scenes are familiar to me and privately I

was

thinking that there are many parts of the United States where apartheid is
flourishing."30
Police State a country in which the activities of the people are strictly controlled by the
government with the help of a police force31As police hostility continues to be funded by
government payouts, as armed riot police continue to threateningly surround and blockade
protesters, the free land guaranteed by the right to assemble will continue to be perpetuated as a
battlefield. As long as violent, lethal, tactics are used as a deterrent to crime, there will continue
to be blood-shed. Within the events of Ferguson, many of the violent outbreaks were a result of
police escalation of peaceful assemblies, destruction of property only coming into play after
peaceful demonstrators accompanied by their young children are dispersed with teargas and
rubber bullets. The friendly neighborhood cop has been replaced with an overly-armed
aggressive militant, consequently, future generations are learning the taste of tear gas and
institutionalized racism at a painfully early point in cognitive growth. Black parents are having
"The Talk" with their children, and its not about sex, its about the dangers of being a young
person of color in a racist police state. As thousands of protestors continue to stand in solidarity
outside the Ferguson police department calling for justice, they chant in unison, NO JUSTICE!
NO PEACE! While Americas police force continues to brutalize and terrorize its citizens, while
Americas thirst for violence and intimidation persists, the war on her soil will not cease.

30

United Nations High Commissioner comment on unrest in Ferguson in Geneva, Switzerland.

Merriam-Webster dictionary definition. 2014

31

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OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND. October 7, 1993.
Accessed October 27, 2014. http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm.
Warren, Jenifer. "One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008." The Pew Charitable Trusts-Public
Safety Performance Project. February 28, 2008. Accessed November 1, 2014.
IBID.
One Hundred Third Congress of the United States of America. Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994. H. R. 3355. Washington D.C, January 25, 1994
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-103hr3355enr/pdf/BILLS-103hr3355enr.pdf
California Penal Code. Sections 12600-12601 Article 6. 2005. Less Lethal Weapons." Justia Law.
January 1, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2014.
http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2005/pen/12600-12601.html.
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Excessive Force Claims Against Police Officers Who Tased Them." Harvard Law Review 125,
no. 7 (May 2012): 1844-1851. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 13,
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September 3, 2014. Accessed November 14, 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/03/ususa-seattle-taser-idUSKBN0GY2J420140903.
"New Hearing for Mom Scarred by Taser in Traffic Stop." The Seattle Times. Accessed
November 14, 2014. http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2013052630_momtazered02m.html.
Mills, Karren. ""City Image Tarnished By Allegations of Police Racism,"" Associated Press,
March 21, 1989. Accessed November 6, 2014. http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1989/City-ImageTarnished-By-Allegations-of-Police-Racism/id-962eed0dea6d4ccdadbbe151564b7413.
IBID.
McLaughlin, Eliott, Martin Savidge, and Devon Sayers. "SWAT Team Threatened after Grenade
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Lynch, Tim. "2010 Annual Report." The Cato Institute's National Police Misconduct Reporting

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Project. January 1, 2010. Accessed November 14, 2014.

http://www.policemisconduct.net/statistics/2010-annual-report/.
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"ACLU: American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan." The Shooting of Milton Hall. October 27,
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"Justifiable Homicide." US Department of Justice-Federal Bureau of Investigation. September 21,
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Sanburn, Josh. "Behind the Video of Eric Garner's Deadly Confrontation With New York Police."
Time. July 22, 2014. Accessed November 14, 2014. http://time.com/3016326/eric-garner-videopolice-chokehold-death/.fficers-chokehold-autopsy-finds.html?_r=0. *
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Autopsy Finds." The New York Times. August 1, 2014. Accessed November 13, 2014.
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(VIDEO)." The Huffington Post. August 20, 2014. Accessed November 14, 2014.
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* Notes presence of link to visual support.

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U.S Congress. 1994. 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., 25 January.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

by Ellen C. Collier, Specialist in U.S. Foreign Policy,Foreign

Affairs and National Defense Division Washington DC:
Congressional Research Service -- Library of Congress -- October
7, 1993

12

Conclude with suggestions for change

-Definition of police state- A country in which the activities of the
people are strictly controlled by the government with the help of
a police force

-Implementation of an arbitrary organization that disciplines injustice

perpetrated by police
-"The findings suggest more than a 50% reduction in the total number of
incidents of use-of-force compared to control-conditions, and nearly ten
times more citizens complaints in the 12-months prior to the experiment."
Police foundation.org, tcitizen complaintshagainst police fell 88% tot
al number of incidents of use-of-force compared to control-conditions,
and nearly ten times more citizens complaints in the 12-months prior to
the experiment."

Key concepts
-Police Brutality cases
-Recent police Killings of unarmed civilians (Oscar Grant, Michael
Brown, mentally disabled)
-Relation to struggles during civil rights movement, Malcolm X
-Police state militarization, drones, tanks, curfews, cameras, recent
Ferguson media impeachments
-Suggestions to improve hardship
Paragraph 1
Brutality statistics
4th amendment rights vs qualified immunityExcessive force
investigation

12

Fourth Amendment - Excessive Force - Ninth Circuit Holds Female Plaintiffs

Brought Valid Excessive Force Claims Against Police Officers Who Tased Them.
(2012). Harvard Law Review, 125(7), 1844-1851.
"Fourth Amendment - Excessive Force - Ninth Circuit Holds Female Plaintiffs
Brought Valid Excessive Force Claims Against Police Officers Who Tased
Them." Harvard Law Review 125.7 (2012): 1844-1851. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.
Martinot, S. (2013). Probing the Epidemic of Police Murders. Socialism &
Democracy, 27(1), 57-77. doi:10.1080/08854300.2012.755037
Martinot, Steve. "Probing The Epidemic Of Police Murders." Socialism &
Democracy 27.1 (2013): 57-77. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.
CHANEY, C., & ROBERTSON, R. V. (2014). "Can We All Get Along?" Blacks'
Historical and Contemporary (In) Justice With Law Enforcement. Western Journal
Of Black Studies, 38(2), 108-122.
CHANEY, CASSANDRA, and RAY V. ROBERTSON. "Can We All Get Along?"
Blacks' Historical And Contemporary (In) Justice With Law Enforcement."
Western Journal Of Black Studies 38.2 (2014): 108-122. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.
Graham v. Connor- "the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an
immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively
resisting arrest. "
Milton Hall, 49 Of the 46 shots fired, Hall had been hit 14 times. 8 cops After a
thorough investigation, federal authorities have determined that this tragic event does not
present sufficient evidence of willful misconduct to lead to a federal criminal prosecution
of the police officers involved,
https://www.ivcc.edu/stylebooks/stylebook5.aspx?id=14644

-Footnotes context and * if citation contains video evidence
-Bibiliogrophy will include scholarly articles and refrences als well as links to video
evidence

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