police officers argumentative essay

Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement

abstract . In police reform circles, many scholars and policymakers diagnose the frayed relationship between police forces and the communities they serve as a problem of illegitimacy, or the idea that people lack confidence in the police and thus are unlikely to comply or cooperate with them. The core proposal emanating from this illegitimacy diagnosis is procedural justice, a concept that emphasizes police officers’ obligation to treat people with dignity and respect, behave in a neutral, nonbiased way, exhibit an intention to help, and give them voice to express themselves and their needs, largely in the context of police stops. This Essay argues that legitimacy theory offers an incomplete diagnosis of the policing crisis, and thus de-emphasizes deeper structural, group-centered approaches to the problem of policing. The existing police regulatory regime encourages large swaths of American society to see themselves as existing within the law’s aegis but outside its protection. This Essay critiques the reliance of police decision makers on a simplified version of legitimacy and procedural justice theory. It aims to expand the predominant understanding of police mistrust among African Americans and the poor, proposing that legal estrangement offers a better lens through which scholars and policymakers can understand and respond to the current problems of policing. Legal estrangement is a theory of detachment and eventual alienation from the law’s enforcers, and it reflects the intuition among many people in poor communities of color that the law operates to exclude them from society. Building on the concepts of legal cynicism and anomie in sociology, the concept of legal estrangement provides a way of understanding the deep concerns that motivate today’s police reform movement and points toward structural approaches to reforming policing.

author. Climenko Fellow & Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Social Policy, Harvard University. I am deeply indebted to the Johns Hopkins Poverty & Inequality Research Lab, particularly the PIs and fellow co-PI of the Hearing Their Voices (HTV) Study—Stefanie DeLuca, Kathryn Edin, and Philip Garboden. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Grant GA-2015-X3039, and the Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative. I am grateful to the members of the HTV research team: Janice Bonsu, Steven Clapp, Meshay Clark, Kaitlin Edin-Nelson, Mitchell Generette, Marika Miles, Daveona Ransome, Larry Robinson, Trinard Sharpe, Geena St. Andrew, and Juliana Wittman. Many thanks also to two inspiring Baltimore organizations, Thread and the Youth Empowered Society (YES) Drop-In Center; special thanks to Sarah Hemminger and Frank Molina of Thread and Ciera Dunlap, Michael Jefferson, Sonia Kumar, and Lara Law of YES. For generous feedback and helpful suggestions, I thank Amna Akbar, Regina Austin, Ralph Richard Banks, Dorothy Brown, Jonathan Bruno, Devon Carbado, Guy-Uriel Charles, Matthew Clair, Beth Colgan, Sharon Dolovitch, Yaseen Eldik, Erik Encarnacion, Malcolm Feeley, Barry Friedman, Lisa Kern Griffin, Laurence Helfer, William Hubbard, Aziz Huq, Jeremy Kessler, Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Máximo Langer, Adriaan Lanni, Tracey Meares, Justin McCrary, Kimani Paul-Emile, Alicia Plerhoples, Megan Quattlebaum, Jed Shugerman, David Alan Sklansky, Seth Stoughton, Allison Tait, Shirin Sinnar, Tom Tyler, and Alexander Wang. I also thank Asad Asad, Amy Chua, Matthew Desmond, Michèle Lamont, Maggie McKinley, Judith Resnik, Robert Sampson, Stacey Singleton-Hagood, Jeannie Suk Gersen, and Bruce Western for consistent support and insight. This work benefitted from discussions at Boston College, Boston University, Brooklyn Law School, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Fordham, Georgetown, New York University, Northeastern, Seton Hall, Stanford, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut, University of Georgia, University of Pennsylvania, University of Richmond, University of South Carolina, University of Texas, William & Mary, and Yale University, and with participants in Yale Law School’s Moot Camp and The Yale Law Journal Reading Group. I am especially grateful for generative commentary and support from participants in the Duke University School of Law Emerging Scholars Workshop & Culp Colloquium, and for the editorial expertise of the staff of The Yale Law Journal , especially Peter Posada and Sarah Weiner. Most of all, I am grateful to the young Baltimoreans who shared their stories with us, whose lives are the reason that getting police reform right is so important.

Introduction

In the concluding paragraphs of her fiery dissent in Utah v. Strieff , 1 Justice Sotomayor invoked W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Marie Gottschalk in concluding that the Court’s decision, which further weakened the power of the exclusionary rule to deter unconstitutional police conduct, 2 sent a message—particularly to people of color—“that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.” 3 Justice Sotomayor laments “treating members of our communities as second-class citizens.” 4 Yet despite the boldness of her statements, in some ways Justice Sotomayor might not have gone quite far enough in articulating the troubling implications of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Justice Sotomayor’s analysis understates the problem on two fronts. First, in addition to the jurisprudential message that poor people of color are “subject[s] of a carceral state” or “second-class citizens,” research in sociology, criminology, political science, and other fields suggests that these groups often see themselves as essentially stateless—unprotected by the law and its enforcers and marginal to the project of making American society. Even as criminal procedure jurisprudence sets the parameters of what police may do under the law, it simultaneously leaves large swaths of American society to see themselves as anomic, subject only to the brute force of the state while excluded from its protection. The message conveyed in policing jurisprudence is not only one of oppression, but also one of profound estrangement.

A second understatement relates to the understanding of whose safety is at risk when the Fourth Amendment insufficiently checks the power of the police. Justice Sotomayor uses the second-person pronoun “you” to convey to a public audience both the universality and the personal proximity of the risk of police control. 5 Yet this literary technique, though effective, obscures the reality that the sense of alienation in a carceral regime emanates not only from what police might do to “you,” but from what they might do to your friends, your intimate partners, your parents, your children; to people of your race or social class; and to people who live in the neighborhood or the city where you live. In other words, estrangement from the American citizenry is not merely an individual feeling to which people of color tend to succumb more readily than white Americans do; rather, estrangement is a collective institutional venture.

The Black Lives Matter era has catalyzed meaningful discussion about the tense relationship between the police and many racially and economically isolated communities, and about how policing can be reformed to avoid deaths like those of Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and more. However, contemporary discourse has often neglected or obscured deeper discussion about the relationship between African Americans—especially poor African Americans—and the police. What is the nature of these relationships? How can scholars and policymakers more roundly understand their contours and potential strategies for change?

Many scholars and policymakers have settled on a “legitimacy deficit” as the core diagnosis of the frayed relationship between police forces and the communities they serve. The problem, this argument goes, is that people of color and residents of high-poverty communities do not trust the police or believe that they treat them fairly, and that therefore these individuals are less likely to obey officers’ commands or assist with investigations. 6 This argument took its most prominent position in the May 2015 Final Report of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing . The Report sets forth the goal of building trust and legitimacy as both the first pillar of its proposed approach to police reform and as “the foundational principle underlying [the Task Force’s] inquiry into the nature of relations between law enforcement and the communities they serve.” 7 “Trust” is a broad term, but the Report and much of the policymaking energy surrounding shifts in police governance adopt an understanding of trust that treats it as virtually synonymous with legitimacy. 8

Ample empirical evidence supports the idea that African Americans, and residents of predominantly African American neighborhoods, are more likely than whites to view the police as illegitimate and untrustworthy, along several axes. 9 Empirical evidence suggests that feelings of distrust manifest themselves in a reduced likelihood among African Americans to accept law enforcement officers’ directives and cooperate with their crime-fighting efforts. 10 According to much of this line of scholarship, the primary tool to achieve greater obedience to the law and law enforcement, regardless of race, is procedural justice: police officers treating people with dignity and respect, behaving in a neutral, nonbiased way, exhibiting an intention to help, and giving people voice to express themselves and their needs in interactions. 11

Yet many reformers would likely disagree that obedience to law enforcement is the central concern in America’s current conversation on police reform. Indeed, in many of the cases that have most catalyzed the Black Lives Matter movement, the victims of police violence were not disobeying the law, 12 were complying with officers’ demands, 13 or were suspected of violating petty laws that are likely unworthy of strong enforcement efforts or penalties. 14 A large body of scholarship on criminal justice attempts to denaturalize the assumed link between obeying the law and criminal justice contact. 15 Scholars have shown that recent trends in criminal justice such as pervasive stop-and-frisk, increased misdemeanor prosecution, and mass incarceration are not primarily consequences of increases in criminal offending. Instead, these scholars suggest that the American criminal justice system has dual purposes, only one of which is crime response and reduction. Its other, more insidious function is the management and control of disfavored groups such as African Americans, Latin Americans, the poor, certain immigrant groups, and groups who exist at the intersection of those identities. 16 From a social control perspective, increasing compliance and cooperation with law enforcement may well be valuable aims, but they should not be at the root of police reform efforts. Deploying legitimacy theory and procedural justice as a diagnosis and solution to the current policing crisis might even imply, at some level, that the problem of policing is better understood as a result of African American criminality than as a badge and incident of race- and class-based subjugation.

Reformers’ emphasis on police legitimacy has caused them to focus heavily on training of frontline officers to behave in a procedurally just manner during stops, with a goal of promoting legitimacy. The White House report, for example, names training and education of frontline officers as Pillar Five of a six-pillar approach, and training is mentioned as an “action item” under all of the five other pillars. 17 Numerous news reports, professional reports, and articles in professional magazines tout procedural justice as the key intervention that will resolve the problems that have catalyzed Black Lives Matter. 18 Police departments across the country, in wide-ranging cities such as Chicago, Illinois; Stockton, California; and Birmingham, Alabama, have implemented procedural justice training. 19 The Obama Justice Department’s consent decrees with troubled departments, such as Cleveland and Ferguson, mandate departments to adopt and implement procedural justice principles and training. 20 As the theory is at times presented, particularly among police officers, responding to the concerns of marginalized communities is as simple as following “the Golden Rule.” 21

While momentum for procedural justice training seems persistent on a local level, 22 the Trump Administration seems unlikely to embrace and advocate for this sort of reform. Trump has consistently indicated that he is generally supportive of police officers, but he has not fully articulated what support means at a concrete level. While Candidate Trump espoused the sanctity of state and local control over policing, 23 President Trump took to Twitter to threaten to send “the Feds” to Chicago to respond to shootings, which generally fall within the jurisdiction of local police departments. 24 Candidate Trump endorsed aggressive, ineffective “stop-and-frisk” policies 25 —meaning policies that target predominantly black and brown neighborhoods in the style declared unconstitutional in New York City, 26 not the stops-and-frisks based on individualized reasonable suspicion authorized in Terry v. Ohio . 27 Meanwhile, President Trump floated a preliminary federal budget, drafted by the Cato Institute, that indicated the administration would seek to eliminate funding for the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). 28 The COPS Office distributes federal funding to local departments to hire more police officers, which enables departments to hire enough officers to carry out intensive approaches like stop-and-frisk. 29 Without COPS funding, local departments may lack the staffing to fulfill Trump’s alleged goal of ratcheting up stop-and-frisk measures.

Recent executive orders on criminal justice, issued just one day after the Senate confirmed Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions, continue in the ambiguous vein of supporting the police while gently alluding to ways that impulse might conflict with responding to the concerns that yielded Black Lives Matter. One executive order, for example, creates a “Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety” that supports “law and order” and authorizes the task force to “propose new legislation that could be enacted to improve public safety and reduce crime”—language that sounds supportive of increased criminalization and expansion of the carceral state. 30 Another, which purports to prevent violence against police officers, similarly proposes “new Federal crimes, and increase[d] penalties for existing Federal crimes” against officers. 31 In the context of recent debates over police legitimacy and police-community relations, these orders implicitly paint the challenges facing criminal justice as stemming solely from criminality. They ignore the institutional failures of certain police departments and erase the structural underpinnings of tense police-community relations, specifically racial isolation and class marginalization.

The appointment of Jeff Sessions as United States Attorney General suggests that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will end its investigations of local departments, 32 as it did under Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey during the second George W. Bush Administration. 33 It is also likely that the DOJ’s funding support for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust & Justice, founded on legitimacy and procedural justice principles, will end. 34 Yet given the wide embrace of procedural justice on a local level and through national policing organizations, it would not be surprising if procedural justice remained the prevailing approach even if the federal government steps back from actively pushing it. 35

Choosing a theory of the policing crisis and its solutions is critical for advancing meaningful, effective reform. In the world of police governance and practice, perhaps more than in other spheres, theory matters for determining what police departments and officers do on the ground. Much of the impetus for broken-windows policing, 36 community policing, 37 “hot spots” (or focused deterrence) 38 and other predictive policing, 39 and now procedural justice and legitimacy came from or ripened in the academy. Through a panoply of large and small policy decisions, theory trickles into the daily work of frontline police officers. Thus, getting the theory right by accurately diagnosing the policing crisis is central to the practical project of reforming policing.

This Essay broadens the usual lens by proposing legal estrangement as a corrective to the prevailing legitimacy perspective on police reform. Like Justice Sotomayor in Strieff , 40 the legal scholars who are setting the police reform agenda have not fully captured the nature of the distrustful relationship between the police and poor and African American communities. The theory of legal estrangement provides a rounder, more contextualized understanding of this relationship that examines the more general disappointment and disillusionment felt by many African Americans and residents of high-poverty urban communities with respect to law enforcement.

Nearly twenty years ago, sociologists Robert J. Sampson and Dawn Jeglum Bartusch described “‘anomie’ about law” in predominantly black and poor neighborhoods in Chicago, a phenomenon they labeled “legal cynicism.” 41 By “anomie,” Sampson and Bartusch were describing ruptures in the social bonds that connect individuals to their community and, in particular, to the state through law enforcement. Building from their work and from other sociology and criminology scholarship on legal cynicism, 42 I introduce the concept of legal estrangement to capture both legal cynicism—the subjective “cultural orientation” among groups “in which the law and the agents of its enforcement, such as the police and courts, are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety” 43 —and the objective structural conditions (including officer behaviors and the substantive criminal law) that give birth to this subjective orientation.

The concept of legal estrangement has the power to reorient police reform efforts because it clarifies the real problem of policing: at both an interactional and structural level, current regimes can operate to effectively banish whole communities from the body politic. The legal estrangement perspective treats social inclusion as the ultimate end of law enforcement. This view extends and reformulates the legitimacy perspective, which tends to present inclusion primarily as a pathway toward deference to legal authorities. 44 The legal estrangement approach encourages a fuller, theoretically informed set of interventions into police governance.

Part I locates distrust of the police among many African Americans and in many disadvantaged neighborhoods as a particular, poorly understood problem. To illustrate the analytical advantages of legal estrangement over legitimacy theory, Part II tells the story of Shawna, a young African American woman living in Baltimore, Maryland. Part III explains how legitimacy theory and legal estrangement theory take different approaches to understanding the current policing crisis. It demonstrates the power of legal estrangement theory to improve legitimacy theory and its concomitant procedural justice approach, which has had great influence over the police reform agenda. 45 Part IV erects a tripartite theory of legal estrangement. It posits that three types of socio-legal processes contribute to legal estrangement: procedural injustice, vicarious marginalization, and structural exclusion. In addition, Part IV illustrates the lived experience of these phenomena using portraits from rich narrative data collected from youth in Baltimore, Maryland in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray. Part V moves from the critical and theoretical to the prescriptive. It argues that, in order to dismantle (or at least to reduce) legal estrangement, multiple levels of government must engage in policy reform aimed not only at procedural injustice, but also at vicarious marginalization and structural exclusion. These reforms have a greater likelihood of producing social inclusion, the deepest purpose of the policing regime.

I. the blight of police distrust in african american communities

For as long as scholars have studied the relationship between African Americans and criminal justice, they have documented deep distrust of the system. In the early twentieth century, W.E.B. Du Bois was likely the first scholar to empirically document this distrust. 46 As part of a series of studies of African American life, Du Bois and his collaborators collected survey, interview, and administrative data on crime, arrest, and incarceration . 47 They found, among other things, that white officials and black men had greatly divergent perspectives on the possibilities of justice for African Americans in Georgia courts. 48 Du Bois reasoned that punishment practices prevalent at the time, such as lynching, “spread[] among black folk the firmly fixed idea that few accused Negroes are really guilty.” 49 He also condemned the relative lack of legal protection for African Americans, as well as criminal justice practices such as the leasing of convicts, that sent a message to African Americans that the purpose of the system was to make money for the state rather than to rehabilitate supposed lawbreakers. 50

Du Bois’s research was prescient, at least with respect to the direction of research and scholarship on African Americans’ relationship to the crime control system over the next century. A high watermark was the 1968 Kerner Commission Report, commissioned by the Johnson Administration in the wake of twenty-three episodes of urban unrest during the mid- and late 1960s. 51 The Report concluded that, for many African Americans, the “police have come to symbolize white power, white racism, and white repression.” 52 Like Du Bois’s Georgia study, the Report documented “tension” and “hostility” between law enforcement and urban African Americans, blaming the “abrasive relationship” on a combination of increased demands for protection and service and the police practices thought necessary to provide those services. 53 In the South and in the Northeastern and Midwestern Rust Belt cities where many African Americans relocated during the Second Great Migration, police forces often functioned to maintain the expulsion of African Americans from the center of social and political life, at times violating the law in service of racial control. 54 Despite pervasive harsh policing that ostensibly was intended to suppress and deter crime, African Americans felt inadequately protected. 55

The litany of evidence confirming the existence of a tense and distrustful relationship between African Americans and law enforcement mounted steadily over the ensuing decades. John Hagan and Celesta Albonetti, for example, used data from a national survey conducted in the late 1970s to conclude that, although African Americans were more likely than whites to see all aspects of the criminal justice system as unjust, they perceived the police as the most unjust aspect of the criminal justice system. 56 Drawing from nationally representative survey data from the late 1980s, Tracey Meares argued that many African Americans experience “dual frustration” with drugs on the one hand and with harsh courts and law enforcement on the other. 57 More recently, Lawrence Bobo and Victor Thompson reached similar conclusions, finding that while sixty-eight percent of white respondents expressed at least “‘some’ or ‘a lot’ of confidence in the police,” only eighteen percent of black respondents would say the same. 58 Contemporary events, particularly the increased political, social, and academic attention directed at police use of force because of the Black Lives Matter movement, have shed new light on longstanding tensions between African Americans and law enforcement. 59 Newer research embeds the problem of police distrust within a larger framework of race- and class-based marginalization, examining a range of police practices and neighborhood conditions. 60

Much of this research documents African American distrust or dissatisfaction with the law and law enforcement without clearly articulating the meaning of distrust or the precise content of dissatisfaction. This omission could exist, in part, because the sources of distrust and dissatisfaction are seen as relatively obvious. A large body of historical research has documented the entanglement of police in the long-running national project of racial control. 61 Yet our failure to be specific about the meaning, origins, and content of distrust has produced a worrisome incompleteness in the diagnosis of the problem, and thus in the prognosis and program of treatment. 62

Trust is a multidimensional, difficult-to-define concept that scholars operationalize using myriad approaches. 63 Yet in the world of policing scholarship, the leading scholar and definer of trust is Tom Tyler. Rather than understanding trust and legitimacy as synonymous, Tyler conceptualizes trust as part of the larger umbrella of legitimacy. Theoretically, Tyler defines legitimacy as a person’s “perceived obligation to obey” the law, 64 or “the belief that legal authorities are entitled to be obeyed and that the individual ought to defer to their judgments.” 65 Different surveys and experiments define legitimacy in distinctive ways, but the core formulation considers people’s sense of obligation to follow the law; their sense of whether the law “operates to protect the advantaged” (which Tyler and Huo call “cynicism about the law”); 66 their trust in legal institutions, specifically police officers and judges; and their favorability toward the police and the courts in their city. 67 The conceptual distinctions between all of the manifestations of trust that appear in the large body of legitimacy scholarship can become blurry, and it is beyond the scope of this Essay to reconcile all of these iterations. The core insight to keep in mind is that, in the version of legitimacy theory that policing policymakers have adopted most completely, trust between police and communities is understood as a problem of illegitimacy: the key concern is the degree to which people will choose to obey the law and its enforcers.

Much literature has shown that, regardless of how trust is measured or conceived, African Americans, particularly those who are poor or who live in high-poverty or predominantly African American communities, tend to have less trust not only in police, but also in other governmental institutions, in their neighbors, and even in their intimate partner relationships in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. 68 The picture that emerges from the full body of research on race and trust is one of profound marginalization, a social diminishment that—while not encapsulating the fullness of the African American experience—indicates that poor African Americans as a whole tend to have a social experience distinctive from those of other ethnic and class groups in the United States. Structural disadvantage yields a broader cultural structure of mistrust. Most discussions of African American distrust of the police only skirt the edges of a deeper well of estrangement between poor communities of color and the law—and, in turn, society.

ii. two diagnoses

A. a crisis of legitimacy.

The most widely accepted diagnosis of the cleavage between the police and African Americans (particularly poor African Americans) centers on legitimacy . Scholars argue that African Americans are less likely than other groups to see the police as legitimate authorities, meaning that as a group they are less likely to have “a feeling of obligation to obey the law and to defer to the decisions made by legal authorities.” 69 Although trust and legitimacy are distinct concepts, scholars and policymakers tend to treat the ideas as functionally equivalent for reform purposes. The core determinant of whether law enforcement is perceived as legitimate, and thus worthy of obedience and assistance, is whether police officers behave in a procedurally just manner. 70 Procedural justice is believed to encapsulate several components, including treating people with dignity and respect, voice (which can include citizen participation and allowing individuals to express their concerns), neutrality (freedom from bias), and conveying trustworthy motives (explaining how the police are helping reach an important social goal). 71 Tyler and his colleagues were not the first to articulate a socio-legal rationale for procedural justice, 72 but their formulation has had the greatest influence over the push toward procedural justice in policing.

An overview of the genealogy of police legitimacy theory is helpful for distinguishing it from legal estrangement. Although the research on police legitimacy primarily draws from social psychology, the theoretical underpinnings of the concept (like much of the scholarship on legal legitimacy across domains) 73 usually derive from the work of sociologist Max Weber. 74 From Weber’s standpoint, legitimation is a subjective process: it does not inhere in an authority’s procedures or existence, but is continuously negotiated with subjects, taking into account their views. 75 Weber classified the types of authority that legitimate orders tend to exhibit into three “ideal types ” 76 : charismatic authority, or authority based on perceived personal divinity or exemplariness; traditional authority, based on custom and epitomized by the King; and legal-rational authority, the form of authority found most frequently in modern advanced society, which is based on process and consent. 77 Weber believed that legal-rational authority (the focus of nearly all research on legitimacy today) is, in some ways, the preferred version of legitimation because this legitimation strategy makes clear that, in choosing government through transparent, rational means, human beings are exercising their autonomy and free will. 78 While the threat of violence from the state always lurks, the state’s authority over its citizens primarily comes from the state’s adherence to process. 79

In the legal and political realms, 80 the purpose of legitimacy theory is to understand how the state, from a moral perspective, justifies its power and how, as an empirical matter, it most effectively exercises power over its subjects. 81 State power is the ultimate focal point of legitimacy analysis. 82 The question then becomes, how does the state attain power over its subjects? Theorists such as Habermas refined the concept of legitimacy to emphasize consent, adding a layer of deliberation and positing that legitimacy can be built through dialogue among equal citizens. 83 Along these lines, but with concern about the normative implications of consent, Gramsci argued that governments (and more precisely, capitalist governments) gained legitimacy through ideological and cultural hegemony: legitimation is a bundle of processes that elites use to procure public buy-in to oppressive systems. 84

Regardless of the normative valence of consent, its emphasis in the study of legitimacy has led social psychology research to focus largely on what makes people voluntarily obey and help the state. 85 This consent-based conception of legitimacy falls in line with a focus among policymakers on how to increase voluntary adherence to the law. 86 The empirical work also tries to ascertain how the circumstances under which the community sees legal authority as legitimate might vary across groups.

This focus on consent has produced some insights about the nature of racial divergence in police legitimacy. Two insights have been most central. First, across racial-ethnic groups, people tend to view police as legitimate when they are procedurally just , and people tend to interpret fairness similarly across ethno-racial divides. 87 Second, the primary reason African Americans do not see police as legitimate is because they tend to have more personal experiences in which police officers treat them in a procedurally unjust manner. 88 Although little is known about the specific behaviors and practices that people consider fair or unfair, 89 the police legitimacy literature empirically shows that people want the same type of treatment from police regardless of their race or class. This conclusion means that African Americans’ greater distrust of the police results not from supposed subcultural values or “bad culture,” but instead arises as the product of negative personal experiences.

This insight has driven legal scholarship in several directions. 90 Most central to the analysis of this Essay, police legitimacy scholarship encouraged legal scholars to explore ways that the law might better facilitate procedurally just policing and respond to procedurally unjust policing policies and practices. Steven Schulhofer, Tom Tyler, and Aziz Huq present one of the most fully elaborated applications of legitimacy theory to policing, applying the theory to both conventional and counterterrorism policing. 91 They set forth three policy goals that should emanate from the procedural justice policing model: (1) training officers to treat force as a last resort and “to view every citizen contact as an opportunity to build legitimacy through the tone and quality of the interaction”; 92 (2) eschewing regulation of the police through the blunt instruments of the law (for example, the exclusionary rule) in favor of internal department management policies designed to positively motivate police to treat the public fairly; 93 and (3) in the counterterrorism realm, avoiding the impulse to authorize the use of harsh tactics such as ethno-racial profiling and random checkpoints. 94 Schulhofer, Tyler, and Huq’s approach is distinctively what Rachel Harmon calls “non law,” 95 in the sense that it explicitly rejects legal intervention into policing. Their core suggestions are training, the substance of which is highly discretionary and rarely encoded directly into law, and avoiding litigation-based pathways toward systemic reform, such as the Department of Justice consent decree process. The solutions do not involve creating, changing, or enforcing the law. This means that, even if these approaches are effective, they largely leave intact the legal structure that has given birth to distrust and illegitimacy.

Meares has made several proposals to encourage departments to adopt principles of procedural justice. Conceptually, she has advanced the notion of “rightful policing,” the idea that policing should be designed to maximize both lawful conduct and community perceptions of police legitimacy. 96 Building in part from Schulhofer, Tyler, and Huq’s idea that persuading and incentivizing police to treat people fairly will be more effective than forcing them to do so, Meares’s scholarship has embraced community policing efforts such as Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois, Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia, and Operation Ceasefire in Boston, Massachusetts. These programs’ methods include organizing meetings with ex-offenders to build relationships and inform them of alternative opportunities to crime, as well as holistic problem-solving approaches, such as legitimacy-based “hot spots” policing (also known as focused deterrence). 97 These approaches are a sort of proactive policing that should, according to their proponents, avoid the pitfalls of earlier forms of broken-windows policing because they now emphasize procedural justice in the micro-level interactions of police contact. 98

Scholars have proposed a variety of other interventions to build legitimacy, as well. For example, some have proposed that law enforcement randomize police stops and searches. In theory, randomization should allow police to engage in hands-on crime prevention without negatively impacting the legitimacy of the system by making specific people, particularly young African American and Latino men, feel targeted. 99 Other scholars have incorporated these concerns about spatial and racial distribution of procedurally unjust policing into Fourth Amendment arguments. They propose that courts should consider whether officers were making an individualized determination of suspicion, as constitutionally required, 100 or rather engaging in a collective determination of suspicion based on race and geography. 101 Other recent work proposes using a disparate impact framework, similar to that used in Title VII analysis, to assess the spatial and racial impacts of stop-question-frisk. 102

The greatest strength of the police legitimacy approach is its deceptive simplicity. Its two core ideas—that people will accept unfavorable police decisions so long as the preceding processes are perceived to be fair, and that the police should treat all people, including African Americans and the poor, with dignity and respect in order to be more effective at the work of crime deterrence —are marked deviations from the prevailing wisdom about policing that preceded legitimacy theory. For example, as noted above, the Kerner Commission Report partly blamed African Americans’ cynicism about the police on the harsh tactics that police deemed necessary to control crime in predominantly black inner-city neighborhoods. 103 In one of the earliest in-depth studies of urban police, William A. Westley found that the police officers he studied tended to view both African Americans and residents of poor neighborhoods as requiring a fundamentally different type of policing than other groups because those two groups would “respond only to fear and rough treatment.” 104 Officers today are not as likely to overtly express racial animus, but they might use different language focused on class and “culture” to make a similar point. 105 Justifications for race- and class-differentiated policing partly derive from a view that police tactics must vary by the type of community in order to be effective. The procedural justice approach is a partial corrective to that common wisdom.

However, police legitimacy is not all-encompassing, and it is often disturbingly oversimplified in practice.Policymakers and police department leaders attempting to apply the theory often condense it to empirically informed officer politeness. 106 Most legitimacy scholars would not claim that the lack of legitimacy is the sole problem in the relationship between law enforcement and African American and poor communities, or that procedural justice is the only solution needed. 107 Yet much of the current reform conversation has drawn heavily on legitimacy theory and the procedural justice approach as if they are silver-bullet solutions to today’s policing crisis. Reformers have done so in part because the proposals that emanate from the procedural justice perspective, such as improved officer training, 108 are relatively easy for police agencies to implement, relatively inexpensive, and relatively noncontroversial—while offering some real, on-the-ground benefits to civilians who encounter the police. 109

If the solution to today’s social and legal policing problems is training, the path forward is clear. Yet some scholars have worried that without an emphasis on the problem of collective estrangement through social and racial control, the procedural justice solution could paradoxically teach officers more effective ways to discriminate and violate privacy. 110 Indeed, Fourth Amendment jurisprudence on the voluntariness of searches foregrounds this danger. Courts often mention the politeness or courtesy of officers when using a totality of the circumstances analysis to decide whether a warrantless search was voluntary, at times debating the relative importance of politeness in the voluntariness analysis. 111 Thin conceptions of procedural justice could produce what Jeremy Bentham called “sham security,” 112 leaving some individuals with a vague sense that they have been treated justly while neglecting more fundamental questions of justice.

An expanded theoretical approach understands distrust as a problem of legal estrangement: a marginal and ambivalent relationship with society, the law, and predominant social norms that emanates from institutional and legal failure. In the following Part, I discuss estrangement theory and its distinctions from police legitimacy theory in greater detail. The legal estrangement perspective can provide a fresh perspective in research and policy on the extent to which African Americans and people who live in high-poverty communities feel a sense of solidarity with law enforcement and other legal institutions. Moreover, this approach could help scholars and policymakers imagine new ways to promote solidarity and social inclusion through law and policy.

B. A Crisis of Estrangement

While legitimacy theory has its roots in Weber, 113 the distinctive elements of legal estrangement theory are rooted in Émile Durkheim. For Durkheim, the central project of modern society is to maintain “organic solidarity,” defined as social cohesion based on fulfillment of the different functions each person serves within society. 114 Ideally, law’s function is to create and maintain social cohesion. Law is not understood as an end in itself, nor solely a means of bodily control. 115 In the Durkheimian view, the purpose of criminal justice is to restore those who break the law, with the ultimate goal of increasing social cohesion by reinforcing moral and legal norms. 116 A society that does not reinforce moral norms, and does not promote social trust, leaves its inhabitants in a state of anomie, with broken social bonds.

Although Durkheim originated the concept of anomie, the idea gained greater precision (and liberation from its purely pro-state perspective) in the work of Robert Merton. For Merton, anomie is “a breakdown in the cultural structure” of society. 117 These breakdowns are particularly likely to occur “when there is an acute disjunction between the cultural norms and goals and the socially structured capacities of members of the group to act in accord with them.” 118 In other words, cultural structures break down when, despite a group’s adoption of “mainstream” cultural norms and goals, certain aspects of the social structure prevent them from being able to act in ways that support those norms and goals. Although the suitability of Durkheim’s comprehensive view of law and punishment for modern contexts is questionable, 119 the broadest reading of anomie theory—that the purpose of the legal system is to create a cohesive and inclusive society, and that a broken social order leaves some people without the resources for full social membership—is at the root of legal estrangement theory.

A century after Durkheim originated the anomie concept and decades after Merton refined it, sociologists Robert Sampson and Dawn Jeglum Bartusch offered “legal cynicism” as a framework for understanding how residents of predominantly African American neighborhoods in Chicago thought about the law and its enforcers. 120 Sampson and Bartusch defined legal cynicism as“‘anomie’ about law.” 121 Anomie is more than distrust. Instead, it is a sense that the very fabric of the social world is in chaos—a sense of social estrangement, meaninglessness, and powerlessness, often a result of structural instability and social change. 122 It is a sense founded on legal and institutional exclusion and liminality. 123 Perhaps the strongest articulation of legal anomie comes from eminent ethnographer Elijah Anderson, who credited the tendency to use extra-legal forms of violence among some of his research subjects in inner-city Philadelphia to “the profound sense of alienation from mainstream society and its institutions felt by many poor inner-city black people . . . . ” 124 In contrast, law that is well designed and properly enforced should reassure community members that society has not abandoned them, that they are engaged in a collective project of making the social world.

One concern with labeling “anomie about law” as “legal cynicism” is that the word “cynicism” suggests that the attitudinal perspective of communities is the issue of interest rather than the process that led to a cultural orientation toward distrusting the police. The “legal cynicism” term works for the approach taken by Sampson and Bartusch as well as that of Kirk and Papachristos, as both seek to link “legal cynicism” (as measured in a survey) with a number of outcomes. However, anomie refers not only to the subjective feeling of concern; it is also meant to implicate a particular set of structural conditions that produced that subjective feeling. 125 I use “legal estrangement” in this Essay to better capture the fullness of the idea of anomie about law. Legal estrangement can help scholars understand situations where, even despite the embrace of legality by African Americans and residents of high-poverty neighborhoods, and regardless of the degree to which they embrace law enforcement officials as legitimate authorities, they are nonetheless structurally ostracized through law’s ideals and priorities.

The theoretical and empirical genealogies of legitimacy and legal cynicism reveal important distinctions. First, the overwhelming majority of the legitimacy research has sought to describe a general perception of law enforcement and legal authority, based on a representative sample of the public. 126 In contrast, scholarship on legal cynicism—the attitudinal portion of legal estrangement theory—has generally sought to describe a contextualized, ecological view of law enforcement. This scholarship has particularly focused its efforts on understanding the nature of the fraught relationship between African Americans and high-poverty communities on the one hand, and the police on the other. 127

Legal estrangement is a cultural and systemic mechanism that exists both within and beyond individual perceptions. It is partly representative of a state of anomie related to the law and legal authorities, and it interacts with legal and other structural conditions—for example, poverty, racism, and gender hierarchy—to maintain segregation and dispossession. The salience of a targeted, collective, community-oriented analysis is even greater when seeking to understand the realities that gave birth to Black Lives Matter. Many scholars and advocates have argued that African Americans are particularly likely to assess the legitimacy, effectiveness, and justness of institutions based on their beliefs about how these institutions treat African Americans as a group , and not just their individual experiences. 128

A person could simultaneously see the police as a legitimate authority (believing that individuals should obey officer commands in the abstract) and feel estranged from the police (believing that the legal system and law enforcement, as the individual’s group experiences these institutions, are fundamentally flawed and chaotic, and therefore send negative messages about the group’s societal belonging). 129 Some scholarship on the legal mistrust of poor African Americans could be misread to suggest that a large subset of this group possesses values that are antithetical to law-abiding behavior, almost as if these individuals do not care what the law is and do not believe they should be bound by it. A better-supported interpretation is that many poor African Americans might see police as a legitimate authority in the ideal, and might even empathize with some police officers’ plight, but they find the police as a whole too corrupt, unpredictable, or biased to deem them trustworthy. 130 Even as they accept the ideal vision of the police as the state-authorized securers of public safety, their nonideal working theory might be, as earlier research suggests, that the police are “just another gang.” 131

Estrangement theory can improve legitimacy theory in three main ways. First—certainly in its initial stages—legitimacy theory has emphasized whether people feel voluntarily obligated to obey or cooperate with law enforcement. The theoretical starting point of legitimacy analysis is whether and how the state maintains and exercises its power. In an analysis based on legal estrangement theory, increasing the power of the state bears at most a spurious relationship to the outcome of concern, which is social inclusion across groups. From a robust legal estrangement perspective, the law’s purpose is the creation and maintenance of social bonds. An emphasis on inclusion implies concerns not only about how individuals perceive the police and the law (and thus whether those individuals cooperate with the state’s demands), but about the signaling function of the police and the law to groups about their place in society. While legitimacy theorists might acknowledge the value of these sorts of community feelings, they are not those theorists’ key variables of interest. 132 Shifting the orientation of legitimacy theory from governmental power to social inclusion is one way that theory can better capture the concerns of activists in the era of Black Lives Matter.

Second, given its origins in legal cynicism theory, a legal estrangement perspective emphasizes cultural orientation toward the police rather than individual attitudes about the police. A cultural inquiry is concerned with the symbolic and structural meaning of the police to particular groups of people, as opposed to those individuals’ opinions about police interactions. People’s opinions about their interactions with the police, their beliefs about whether the police in general tend to be helpful, and the symbolic meanings they attach to the police can be sharply divergent from each other. 133

Third, while most legitimacy theorists treat individuals as their unit of analysis and theorization, the legal estrangement framework is ultimately focused on groups and communities.Even as studies are unavoidably conducted by looking at individual experiences, the broader concern of legal estrangement is with understanding people in situ. Viewing distrust of the law as a problem of social psychological legitimacy suggests more micro-level solutions to the problem, centered on changing individual perceptions of the law and law enforcement. Conversely, seeing distrust as a problem of legal estrangement (legal anomie) focuses solutions on unsettling characteristics of the social structure. The goal is to enable marginalized groups to align their values of law-abiding and respect for law enforcement with their lived experiences and strategies for interacting with law enforcement.

table 1. legitimacy and legal estrangement 134

iii. the legal socialization

To more clearly illustrate some on-the-ground improvements that a legal estrangement perspective offers to legitimacy theory, this Part presents a portrait of Shawna. Shawna is one of sixty-four participants in Hearing Their Voices: Understanding the Freddie Gray Uprising , a study I led a few months after the Freddie Gray incident and subsequent unrest in Baltimore. 137 The purpose of this profile is to articulate, in a more grounded way, key distinctions between what scholars and policymakers usually learn from a police legitimacy perspective and what they can learn from a legal estrangement perspective. Shawna 138 has a complex, but largely distrustful, perspective on the police. This Part and the vignettes in Part IV capture, in a more textured fashion, the multitude of factors that can contribute to legal estrangement. 139

Growing up in West Baltimore’s Gilmor Homes in the mid-aughts, Shawna developed an affinity for chess, American Sign Language, and most of all, pick-up basketball. “I just played basketball all day, every day. Nine o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night when my mom was calling me to get off the court, that’s where I was at.” 140

During Baltimore’s sticky summers—the time of year when the rate of violent crime is at its apex 141 —Shawna sought freedom and community on Sandtown-Winchester’s asphalt basketball courts. One can imagine Shawna sucking in the steamy air, wearing basketball shoes not unlike the red and white Nikes she is wearing now, teasing her opponents, being a kid. “I wanted to stay outside as long as I can,” she explained. “Stay outside until nine or ten o’clock, in the summer time especially, yes. That’s when the most violence happens, but that’s when the most fun happens.” Shawna understood pleasure more viscerally than danger, despite everything she had seen.

One of Shawna’s first virtues was vigilance. She learned early how to manage the potentially deadly situation of being outdoors in the Gilmor Homes. “Just being so young, you have to be aware. I mean, you can have fun, but just be aware of what’s really going on around you. There was so much drug activity. But, being so young, I didn’t really pay a lot of attention because I was just worried about having fun.”

Despite the pestilence of untimely death that—then and now—marks her neighborhood, 142 Shawna has thus far been spared the memory of seeing a human being die. But she is familiar with the pop-pop-pop of gunshots interrupting a basketball game. She can still hear the hum of an open-windowed truck rolling closer while prowling for targets, the screams of neighbors recognizing a familiar horror, the thumps of her playmates’ chests hitting the ground seeking safety, and the thuds of their shoes rapidly beating the hot asphalt where they had been dribbling a ball moments earlier. She remembers that a sudden paralysis afflicted her limbs on those occasions. She remembers that her mother would run to her, corral her. “Somebody would get shot. Somebody would get killed. Somebody would get stabbed. Outside my house, in front of my house, on the basketball court, where I spent most of my time there, for real.”

Shawna’s mother Denise was, in Shawna’s estimation, “paranoid.” Every now and then, Denise got fed up and called the police about various neighborhood disturbances. “She’s a good person,” Shawna explained. But Denise avoided calling the police from her own phone and instead went to a neighbor’s home to call. To be sure, Denise sometimes called police from a neighbor’s phone because her own phone was disconnected. But Shawna suspects that the more usual reason Denise called from her neighbor’s phone was so the call would come from a number other than hers, making it more difficult for police and potential retaliators to learn that she was the snitch. “She had to call from some [other] number because she just—it was unsafe for her.” People can call the police “anonymously,” 143 but Denise suspected the police would find out who she was anyway, and that they would be too careless to protect her identity.

Denise warned Shawna about crime in the neighborhood and kept Shawna indoors as much as the active, extroverted girl could tolerate. Denise also warned Shawna about the neighborhood’s police, petrified by her daughter’s awe of them.

“[W]hen I was little,” Shawna recalled, “I used to idolize the police. And I used to be like, ‘Oh, can I be like you when I grow up? What is it that you do?’ Asking them a whole bunch of questions.” Her mother urged her to stay away from police officers. Once, when Shawna was about eight years old, she was chatting with two white police officers who she thinks were in the neighborhood to investigate drug activity. As Shawna remembers it, she asked the officers what they do, how she could become a police officer, and so on. “I was a serious young lady,” Shawna joked. Denise saw Shawna with the officers and panicked. “Get over here! Get over here! Get over here, girl!” Shawna asked, “[W]hat did I do?” Denise continued, agitated. “Who told you to talk to them? They can do anything to you. They can take you and kill you!” Shawna was perplexed. “They’re police. Why would they just take me and kill me?”

Over the decade or so since that incident, Shawna’s once-pristine view of police has grown ever more tainted. This tarnishing process has been propelled not only by her personal experiences, but also through witnessing the encounters of her friends and neighbors, hearing about other incidents through television and social media, and gaining folk wisdom from family and older community members. For example, several years before the Daniel Holtzclaw case broke, 144 as a pubescent girl, Shawna learned from her grandmother that the police could rape her.

I don’t know the whole story, but my grandma told me how one of the police in my community . . . some man had taken this little girl. She was about twelve. I don’t know if she was missing or if he just took her anyway. He took her and he raped her in the back of the police station and they caught it on camera. Then my grandmother told me about it. I was like twelve at the time, which was just a couple of years [after the rape]. I was like, “Wow.”

Shawna’s confusion grew. “The police is supposed to have power and supposed to be using it for good.” But the police also “did that to that little girl. It’s just terrible.” That story, funneled through her beloved grandmother, is now embedded in her psyche and colors her more recent experiences with and observations of police officers. “That just made me think twice about the police ever since then. I just don’t know.”

The case Shawna is likely referencing involved William D. Welch, a former Baltimore police officer who entered an Alford plea 145 to a charge of misconduct in office in early 2008, when Shawna was ten. 146 After another officer arrested a sixteen-year-old girl based on an open warrant for prostitution, Welch allegedly offered to dispose of marijuana that was in her possession if she sexually serviced him. According to the accuser, she and Welch flushed the marijuana down a police station toilet and returned to the interview room, where she complied with his conditions. 147 Prosecutors originally charged Welch with second-degree rape. However, after the police department’s Evidence Control Unit misplaced much of the physical evidence against Welch, prosecutors offered, and Welch accepted, a plea deal. 148 Welch thus avoided prison. A judge sentenced Welch to a suspended ten-year prison term after three years of probation and ordered him to resign from the Baltimore Police Department. 149

But Shawna might have been talking about a different case. There were other prominent rape cases against Baltimore police officers in roughly the same time period. Like the Welch case, the facts of those cases do not perfectly align with the story lodged in Shawna’s mind today. 150

Shawna’s understanding of the police grew darker still through encounters and observations at the bus station near the iconic Mondawmin Mall, arguably West Baltimore’s central hub. Mondawmin, one of the city’s oldest enclosed shopping malls, is more than a retail center. It is also the nerve center for ten West Baltimore bus lines and the location of government social services offices and various health clinics. 151 Inside the mall, uniformed private security guards are tasked with maintaining Mondawmin’s security, while on the outside, Western District police officers handle the job. Shawna does not distinguish between the public and private police. She just knows that when she is in or near Mondawmin, she encounters hostile people in uniform. 152 Shawna reports several negative encounters there, but nothing that would earn the attention of journalists, researchers, or most advocates. She has experienced, at most, (possibly idle) threats—that the next time a police officer sees her, he will mace or even arrest her. These threats, these forceful words, would not register as “uses of force” in the most sophisticated studies of police encounters. 153 Yet they have constrained her movement. The grind of injustice has led Shawna to avoid Mondawmin as much as possible, though the mall’s ubiquity makes it hard to fully escape.

I stopped going to Mondawmin because the police up there are rude. I mean, I know you’re trying to keep order and peace, but you don’t have to disrespect me and threaten me every five seconds. They threatened to mace people if they don’t get to their bus stop. Then the man told me he was going to arrest me because I was talking to my home girl and I wouldn’t get on the bus. It wasn’t my bus. I was at the bus stop talking to her. Why are you threatening to arrest me?

Shawna claims that the officer followed her and her friend after they began to walk away. “He kept getting smart with his little cowboy boots. I was just like, ‘Who are these police?’ Like, where did they come from?” Shawna had a few stories from Mondawmin, including watching a young man get arrested who “wasn’t probably all innocent” but in her view “wasn’t doing anything he wasn’t supposed to be doing.”

The Gilmor Homes, where Shawna spent the first sixteen of her nineteen years, has recently been in the national media as the home of Freddie Gray, the twenty-five-year-old Baltimore man who died in police custody on April 19, 2015. 154 Mondawmin was a starting site of the ensuing “riots.” 155 Shawna was nearby when the riots broke out, trying to head to a friend’s house for spaghetti.

Shawna’s views on the riots vacillate from empathy for the good police officers who have been unfairly demonized, to frustration at the destruction of already limited West Baltimore institutions, to condemnation of unjust police practices, to pragmatic belief in the necessity of the police. “I felt bad for the police though, when they were rioting. They were throwing bricks at the police cars and all this other stuff . . . . First of all, you’re going to need them. Second of all, every police officer is not bad.” Belying usual portrayals of people like Shawna in the media and in most research, Shawna readily acknowledges the humanity of officers and the heterogeneity of police forces. “[H]e’s got kids too. He’s got to live too. He’s got to eat too, and if he wanted to be a police officer, that doesn’t mean every police officer is bad.” Still, “some of them have to go.”

Despite the negative representation of Baltimore youth in the national media during the riots and what she sees as the inherent wrong of riotous behavior, Shawna has ambivalently started to believe that the riots were a necessary catalyst for the police officers to face criminal charges. 156 “It might not be right to riot, but if they wouldn’t have done that, they would never have pressed charges on [the police officers] . . . . It might have been terrible for our community and made us look a mess, especially to the nation, to everybody who saw it.” Shawna is upset that some leaders used the controversial term “thugs” when referring to Baltimore rioters. Despite not participating in the riot herself, Shawna felt that the label was directed at young African American West Baltimoreans in general. “It really hurt my feelings that they called us thugs. I saw a video on that too.”

“They” included President Obama, who described the rioters as “criminals and thugs who tore up the place”; 157 Maryland governor Larry Hogan, who depicted them as “gangs of thugs whose only intent was to bring violence and destruction to the city”; 158 Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who distinguished between legitimate Sandtown-Winchester residents and “thugs seizing upon an opportunity”; 159 and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who lamented that young rioters were disrespecting the legacy of people who had fought for the city in the past. “Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who, in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for,” Rawlings-Blake said. 160 After extensive criticism, Rawlings-Blake and Young backed away from using the term “thug.” 161 The White House stood behind the President’s choice of words. 162

Talking with us only a few weeks after the murder of nine people in Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 163 Shawna compared Charleston officers’ humane treatment of shooter Dylann Roof with Baltimore officers’ aggression toward Freddie Gray. She shook her head with disgust. “They bought him Burger King. They bought him Burger King, but they couldn’t even get Freddie Gray to a hospital.” 164 I asked Shawna how she knew about all of these things—the details of Freddie Gray’s arrest, the series of “thug” speeches, and the Burger King trip for Dylann Roof. “It was on Facebook. A lot of things are on Facebook,” Shawna pointed out.

Later, I asked her, “Do you want to be a police officer anymore?” “Whoa,” Shawna chuckled, “I gave that dream up.” Now entering her final year of high school, Shawna desultorily explained that her goals for the next several years are to “just better myself in the years to come. That’s what I want to do. I just want to be better.”

The legitimacy perspective would offer an incomplete diagnosis of the unsettled relationship between the police and someone like Shawna—a thoughtful young woman who has never had any serious police encounter, who has managed to avoid getting a criminal record, and who is a general law-abider, wanting to trust the police but convinced that the police are not trustworthy for people like her. Shawna is generally compliant with the law and believes police officers should be respected. She thinks that it is good to help police officers, and she appreciates that her mother would stealthily report crime. From a law enforcement perspective, people like Shawna are allies and assets to the community. Shawna behaves like someone who views the police as a legitimate legal authority.

Yet Shawna’s views also reflect a deep sense of alienation about police. She stopped going to the mall to avoid interacting with the officers there. She abandoned her childhood dream of becoming a police officer, even though she possesses the presence, personality, and background to be an excellent law enforcement official. She fears that police might kill or sexually assault someone like her: a young, low-income black woman who lives in West Baltimore. Although Shawna sees the law and its enforcers as worthy of obedience as a theoretical matter, she does not believe that law enforcement officials see her, and people like her, as a true part of the polity. She is nothing more than a “thug.” This understanding of her group’s place in the world does not lead to law-breaking or noncooperation, as a legitimacy perspective might predict. 165 Yet her words nonetheless reveal a cleavage, or estrangement, from the enforcers of the law. Her story reveals that the empirical outcome that legitimacy theory is best used to explain is the wrong outcome: Shawna’s problem is not noncompliance, but symbolic community exclusion.

iv. a tripartite theory of legal estrangement

To this point, this Essay has argued that scholars and policymakers should understand persistent police distrust among African Americans and residents of high-poverty communities as a problem of legal estrangement, a cultural orientation about the law that emanates from collective symbolic and structural exclusion—that is, both subjective and objective factors. In this Part, I further define legal estrangement theory. I argue that legal estrangement is a product of three socio-legal processes: procedural injustice, vicarious marginalization, and structural exclusion. All of these processes are supported in the empirical literature, although their primary justifications emerge from theory. Below, I explain each process in greater detail, drawing upon the literature and offering real-world illustrations from qualitative data.

A. Procedural Injustice

Building from the legitimacy and procedural justice scholarship described in Part II, I argue that experiences in which individuals feel treated unfairly by the police are one key provocateur of legal estrangement. The procedural injustice component operates at the individual and attitudinal level but, writ large, expands to the cultural level. 166 urvey research indicates that a feeling that the police have behaved disrespectfully feeds into an overall disbelief in the legitimacy of the law and law enforcement. 167 The path to legitimacy, from a procedural justice perspective, requires “treatment with dignity and respect, acknowledgment of one’s rights and concerns, and a general awareness of the importance of recognizing people’s personal status and identity and treating those with respect, even while raising questions about particular conduct.” 168

Consider the example of Justin, 169 an eighteen-year-old African American man living in Northeast Baltimore who is heading to a small religious college out of state on an athletic scholarship. (He had wanted to aim for an Ivy League school because his high school grades were strong, but according to him, his SAT score was nearly 100 points shy of the baseline.) Justin’s police encounters typify and bleed into a general feeling that he is socially and politically powerless. The criminal justice system “just get[s] so irritating, just to know you can’t do nothing about it,” he groused. “You have a voice, but then it’s your voice and billions of other voices. If everybody’s not together and its one side against the other, your voice basically doesn’t matter. It just gets so frustrating how disrespectful somebody with high power can be. It just gets annoying.”

To illustrate his point about disrespect from people in power, Justin told us about his most recent police encounter. 170 He and his friends were in Hunt Valley, a small suburb just north of Baltimore city limits, known for its expansive, recently reinvigorated outdoor shopping mall. At around 11:30 PM, as they walked toward the light rail station that would carry them home to West Baltimore, they were stopped by a police officer. They were walking in the street along one side; they felt more comfortable walking in the road than on the sidewalk because there were woods on either side of the street. “It’s night time. I don’t want to be over there. For one, you got to think, there’s mosquitoes, ticks, and stuff like that. People could be hiding over there.” 171 According to Justin, the officer pulled them over, questioned them about what they were doing, and ran all of their information. The officer ultimately only gave them warnings for walking in the street. Justin repeated the charge, still with a hint of disbelief. “For walking in the street. For walking in the street!” 172

What irked Justin more than the warning, though, was the police officer’s apparent disregard for their travel timetable. While they were stopped, Justin and his friends told the officer that they were on their way to the light rail station and that they needed to get there quickly because the rail stops running at midnight. They were not sure when the last train to Baltimore would depart, so they were trying to get there as soon as possible. The officer assured them that they would make their train. Yet by the time he checked their information and issued their warning tickets, it was approximately 12:05 AM. Justin’s bitterness about missing the train had not yet faded. “When I say they didn’t let us go until about 12:05! They didn’t let us go until 12:05 and only gave us warnings—for walking in the street.”

Justin now expects that the police will not value his time. He has resigned himself to this signal of his own inconsequentiality.

Whatever it is, whatever you need, go ahead, because now I know we on your time, now. Once you stop me, even if I did nothing wrong, we on your time. So I might as well just get it over with, let you do what you’re going to do. I know you’re going to be disrespectful. I’m prepared for that. I know you’re going to be disrespectful. It’s up to me how I’m going to react to that.

When asked if he had other experiences like that one, Justin could not answer precisely. He knows that he has been stopped many times, but he tries not to dwell on those encounters, preferring to focus on school, work, sports, and “females.” He also tries to minimize the importance of race in this unnamed number of police encounters.“I just hate the way how they can be so disrespectful to us like we’re not human or nothing. It’s like this stereotype where you think a young African American—or not even a young African American, just a young individual, period, just walking, you think they’re up to something.” He tries instead to look at his police encounters from a power and authority perspective, in part just to avoid the stress of seeing the world as racist. 173 “People who have never had power before, they finally get power, and they want to abuse it. I try my best not to look at it as a racial thing because I know that’s only going to make me mad and stress me out. So, I try to look at it from all angles.”

Justin is an ambitious young man, one of the few in the sample who had the good fortune of having solid college plans. He has carefully curated his group of friends to include only those who “keep each other focused,” mostly fellow college-bound athletes. If Justin had been answering a survey about legal compliance, there is a reasonable chance that he would have marked that he adheres to most laws and believes that it is important to do so. Yet he deeply distrusts the police, partly because he believes that they treat him and other young Baltimoreans with disrespect in order to assert their authority. 174 In addition, he has serious doubts about whether the police would be helpful if he needed them, saying that no matter what the issue was, he would not call the police: “I call the police—I’m not doing nothing for nobody. If I call the police, there’s a possibility they might turn on me.” Those feelings of being both under surveillance and unprotected have created a devil’s brew of legal estrangement such that even a youth like Justin, who has thus far been able to avoid the criminalization process common for young men of color, 175 would rather pursue extra-legal help with neighborhood concerns than trust in the police.

As for the midnight police encounter: on the facts as Justin presented them, there is little doubt that the stop was lawful. The officer saw Justin and his friends walking in the middle of the street in violation of Maryland state law. 176 He stopped them, asked them what they were doing, ran their identification (apparently finding no open warrants), and sent them on their way with only a warning. Justin had two problems with the stop: he feels that the very reason they were stopped was generalized suspicion of young people (and possibly young black people), and that the officer did not care that this stop caused them to miss their ride home.This stop was less awful than it could have been, but it factors heavily into Justin’s concerns about the police and the larger social structure.

Justin’s story illustrates how procedural injustice, even at a relatively minor level, creates and reinforces legal estrangement. The legitimacy literature, though concerned with procedural injustice, does not offer an account that illuminates Justin’s concerns about the police: he willingly complied with the officer’s commands, not out of fear but from a sense that, generally speaking, he ought to obey the instructions of law enforcement officers. However, the experience nonetheless contributed to his sense that there is a schism between young Baltimoreans and the police. Yet procedural injustice is only one leg of legal estrangement’s three-legged stool. The benefits of a legal estrangement perspective emerge more clearly when considering the additional processes of vicarious marginalization and structural exclusion.

B. Vicarious Marginalization

The second contributor to legal estrangement discussed here is vicarious marginalization: the marginalizing effect of police maltreatment that is targeted toward others. Although the literature on legal socialization, legitimacy, and legal cynicism vaguely acknowledges the influence of police experiences within people’s social networks and the impact of highly publicized misconduct on cultural orientations about the law, the scholarly treatment of vicarious experience is thin relative to the treatment of personal experience. 177 This deficit is, in part, a disciplinary artifact. Most legal socialization and legal legitimacy research draws from social psychology, which by definition focuses primarily on understanding individuals’ internal lives and how they relate to their personal interactions and behaviors. 178 The legitimacy literature has been interested in generalized views and “societal orientations,” but it focuses mostly on whether one can generalize from personal experiences instead of whether and how impersonal, vicarious experiences also contribute to social orientations. 179 Sociological and socio-legal theory, in contrast, provides a theoretical grounding for the idea that other people’s negative experiences with the police, whether those people are part of one’s personal network or not, feed into a more general, cultural sense of alienation from the police. 180 Legal estrangement is born of the cumulative, collective experience of procedural and substantive injustice.

In the study of incarceration, scholars have developed a clearer view of the cultural contagiousness of criminal justice contact. For example, Naomi Sugie finds that the female romantic partners of formerly incarcerated men are less likely to vote, to register to vote, and to believe that voting is important than similarly situated women who are not partnered with a formerly incarcerated man. 181 While voting and registering are behaviors, the belief that voting is important is an attitude that might, in the aggregate, reach the level of a cultural orientation. Along similar lines, Megan Comfort argues that the romantic partners of men serving time in prison undergo a process of “secondary prisonization,” adopting routinized behaviors, styles of self-presentation, ways of speaking, and even sexual desires that are shaped by their vicarious incarceration. 182 Researchers are exploring the effects of incarceration on the worldviews of the children of incarcerated parents. 183 Moreover, the vicarious effects of incarceration are not limited to the intimate partners and children of the incarcerated. For example, in their study of the relationship between race, mass incarceration, and distrust in the law, Christopher Muller and Daniel Schrage find that African Americans who had a formerly incarcerated close friend or family member were more likely than other African Americans to blame bias among the police and courts for the criminal justice system’s racial disparities. 184

Yet at the front end of the criminal justice continuum, scholars rarely probe these cultural emergences. 185 More work needs to be done to examine the collective memory of police interaction, defined as the cultural conception of what it is like to interact with the police that emanates in part from membership in a group or identity category (here, in various degrees, being African American or residing in a racially and socioeconomically isolated neighborhood). Collective memories are based on some combination of personal experience, observing and hearing about the experiences of others, passing accumulated wisdom from parent to child, observing interactions in public space, seeing (or not seeing) murals and other forms of public commemoration, watching television, scrolling through social media, and sharing all of these personal and vicarious experiences in the community. 186 In other areas of legal inquiry, such as constitutional interpretation, state-sponsored mass violence, interracial marriage, and general racial inequality, scholars have probed the role that collective memory plays in the law and legal institutions. 187 Through a combination of major social upheavals and everyday forms of information gathering, people come to understand themselves and gain perspective on what it means to be a part of a group (be it a religion, a race, or even a business). 188

Most studies of collective memory focus on clear, often tragic historical events that had a cognizable beginning and end, such as American slavery or the Holocaust. 189 However, some research and theory argue that there can be broader sorts of collective memory, such as a “collective memory of racism and discrimination,” that ground people’s interpretations of day-to-day interracial experiences. 190 In this sense, police maltreatment and discrimination can also become sites for collective memory and collective identity construction. Vicarious marginalization in the context of policing, then, is ultimately about how people draw upon information other than their own experiences as police targets or suspects to understand their group’s common experience with law enforcement.

There is no better illustration of how vicarious marginalization might operate, and what its repercussions might be, than current events involving police officer maltreatment of African Americans. As explained above, distrustful relationships between police officers and African American communities are longstanding and deep-seated. However, the recent stream of videos of violent police interactions has, along with organizing techniques, given birth to the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement has elevated police violence to the national collective consciousness, sparking community organizing and policy advocacy. 191 Some have claimed that the seemingly ceaseless stream of grisly scenes on television and social media are giving birth to a new form of race-based posttraumatic stress. 192 But short of (or in addition to) race-based trauma, the ritualistic observation of black men and women having unjust, and often deadly, interactions with law enforcement conveys a message to their coethnics and other similarly situated observers. 193 That message might be that the police as a whole are dangerous, untrustworthy, and opposed to the idea that African Americans and the poor are truly members of the polity. Group conversations, both in person and through social media, can crystallize that message. 194

Legal estrangement, emerging out of personal and vicarious experiences, serves as a lens through which many African Americans interpret past and future engagements with law enforcement officials. Videos of negative police interactions may elevate personal experiences to a cultural level by demonstrating to people who have had negative police interactions that their experiences are not unique. Media coverage that emphasizes particular aspects of police interactions, such as race, gender, or perceived criminality, provide a schema for interpreting one’s own experiences in ways that positive experiences may not fully overcome by contributing to conceptions of how police treat particular groups. 195 Media coverage may heighten legal estrangement by providing evidence that we are living in a moment of cultural and legal instability regarding race and the police, and it may increase culture’s power to drive perhaps undesirable behavior such as avoiding the police, refusing to call on them for help, or engaging in law-breaking activity. 196

Yet the mechanisms that give birth to vicarious marginalization are not limited to television and social media. Some youth in the Baltimore sample reported observing the police mistreating others, whether strangers, parents, and friends, and they factored those observations into their assessments of police untrustworthiness. Others talked about the experiences of parents, siblings, and friends that they did not personally witness, but that were nonetheless salient in developing their orientations toward police.

Eighteen-year-old Jamila 197 lives in the McCulloh Homes family public housing development 198 with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and her eight siblings. The space is crowded, and the neighborhood is dotted with liquor stores, payday lenders, and street memorials, institutional and symbolic indicators of concentrated poverty and heavy crime. 199 But Jamila is grateful to be there, more or less. Having spent significant periods of her childhood bouncing through a series of homes and homeless shelters as her mother cycled through abusive relationships, Jamila’s four years in the McCulloh Homes have been, in a way, a welcome reprieve.

The first time Jamila remembers interacting with the police, she was ten and her mother got into a physical fight with her boyfriend. The officers, who were both people “of noncolor” (a term Jamila prefers to “white”), spoke to Jamila and her sister using words they could understand. They walked the two young girls to the store for snacks, hoping to momentarily distract them from the violence at home and shield them from the sight of their mother’s contused face. She said it “was a good experience,” but she does not believe police officers today, about eight years later, could reproduce that positive interaction. “People in enforcement now, there [are] a lot of younger officers in the force today, than it was then. People really cared about their job then. Now, people just look at it for the money that they are going to make.” 200

When Jamila graduated from high school in 2015, she became the first person in generations of her family to do so. This triumph has inspired her younger brothers. “That’s very big for them—very, very big. And they look up to me now,” Jamila explained to us. One of them, like a younger Shawna, aspires to enroll in the police academy and join the ranks of police officers. Jamila appreciates this goal, as she thinks police have an important social role to play. “Police men and women, at the end of the day, we kind of need them to keep [the] city safe . . . . But it’s how you do it, is what really matters. Because you can’t just walk into a neighborhood and get scared.” Jamila herself has recently completed the first stage of an intensive and competitive college-readiness program and is preparing to start community college, intending to transfer into a local bachelor’s degree-granting college in two years. Her long-term goals include studying philosophy and becoming a lawyer. She believes that practicing law would be the best way to help people: “I love law too, because I like giving people second chances. Everyone’s not a bad person.”

Despite her positive early experience with police, her model citizenship, her brother’s goal of becoming a police officer, her own goal of joining the bar, and her embrace of the broad role that police can serve, Jamila is profoundly skeptical that the police—and government officials more generally—value people from her community. “We need real, real people that care about people . . . Any kind of state official, anything that has to do with dealing with people, we need better people.” Jamila’s assessment of police seems to stem from a mixture of community wisdom and the experiences of her friends and neighbors.

A few months ago, Jamila and her friend Rock were waiting outside of a middle school to walk Rock’s brother, a student at the school, home. Jamila and Rock were about fifteen minutes early. They were hanging out outside to pass the time, and a police officer came by and asked them to leave. Jamila immediately started to walk away, as she did not have any reason to be there. Rock, however, started running away. According to Jamila, running away from police is a standard practice for young men even when they are clean (i.e., not carrying anything illegal). 201 When the officer caught up with Rock, he pushed Rock to the ground, pulled out his baton, and started beating him with it. The officer may have searched Rock, but if so, Jamila did not mention it. The officer did not lock Rock up then, but he seems to have cited him for loitering or some other minor offense. As Rock lay on the ground, Jamila called his mother.

“The officer just beat him, walked off, and left him there in the parking lot,” Jamila bitterly recounted. Jamila fears that if she had not been there, Rock might have died.

Then what? Would it still have mattered then? Or does it not matter at all? And I feel like, they’re given too much power. Because they feel like, okay they’re officers. “I have a gun. I have a badge. You have to listen to me. You have to do this. You have to do that.” When really, you’re the same as . . . you’re the same person as me, whether you know right away. You’re the same person. We breathe: just like I breathe, you breathe. You bleed just like I bleed. We’re the same people.

Jamila’s anger is not born primarily of her own experiences; most of her personal experiences have been positive or neutral. Instead, she tells stories of the mistreatment of her friends and of African Americans more generally. 202 “We don’t have a good relationship, black people with police, because of what they’re known to [be] doing.” She does not specify who knows what police are doing. There is no active person or group passing these stories along. They are just “known.”

Jamila also distrusts the media, including both network news and social media. She believes that both of these sources are advancing a destructive racial trope about the nature of police-community relations in Baltimore. “[M]edia is the cause of all of this,” Jamila pontificated, at rapid speed. “[T]hey kept putting emphasis on white, white, white, white cop, white guy, white cop, white cop, white guy—they were putting emphasis on it.” Jamila thinks that the narrative about Freddie Gray promoted through broadcast and social media is responsible for the April 2015 unrest: “If the media didn’t broadcast it as big as they did,” she argued, “it wouldn’t have happened like this. Because people started reacting when they came on to the news, and it came across on that social media—on that timeline of Facebook and stuff like that.”

Sticking to her preference for class-based rather than race-based arguments, Jamila contends that the broadcast media promotes a racial narrative to make money.

I used to think that they just want people to [be] aware of what was going on. But then, how they started wording things: “Another white cop kills blacks, another unarmed black teen.” . . . I feel they got the outcome they wanted. I feel like, they wanted people to react and get mad. Because as views go up, they get paid more money.

Jamila rejects this narrative, arguing that instead of race, “it’s bigger than that. This is a nation[al] problem; it’s worldwide.” Although Jamila’s specific critique of the media’s racial analysis was at times hard to follow, her general argument was that the government is interested in maintaining brute authority in any way that it can. Thus, the media narrative surrounding Baltimore’s policing troubles distracts people with a partial explanation—race—instead of forcing them to confront the fuller explanation: maintenance of social and economic hegemony at all levels.

Of course, not all Baltimore youth shared Jamila’s particular take on the role of race or her skepticism of all media. Myron, 203 for example, was thrilled at the broadcast media’s coverage of the Freddie Gray incident. Using “news” like a verb, he related, “I’m glad they finally newsed our shit.” Myron is pleased that these incidents, which have been going on for years in his estimation, were deemed newsworthy. The broadcast media attention spurred a shift in the social media experience as well: “Finally, Facebook and Instagram went to something other than us killing each other or fighting each other. They finally went to something like helping us, broadcasting what they’re doing to us.” Johnson 204 had yet another take, disparaging broadcast media coverage in similar tones to Jamila, but viewing the use of video and social media as a way to offer an alternative narrative. “[I]f the media was here now, they [would] be saying some crazy things about a situation instead of the truth about it,” he contended. “That’s another reason why people need to actually [be] active into social media a little bit more . . . . [I]n order to find the truth, you need to have your phone out, tweet things, take videos about things.” While opinions of these media sources vary, young people commonly consume them and deploy them as filters to understand the experience of being policed in Baltimore.

A few days before our interview, Jamila saw an officer in her courtyard, surrounded by a crowd of children, blasting the popular song “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” 205 and dancing. Some of the children took out their phones to record. (Indeed, there have been several similar officer-dance videos from jurisdictions across the country over the past two years, often using the Whip/Nae Nae song.) 206 When the officer left, the children told him goodbye, a nicety between community kids and the police that Jamila had never seen before. Jamila appreciated the gesture. “When I seen that, I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I kind of, like, gave the officer a nod. Because that’s a good thing . . . . You usually don’t see that.” At the same time, she does not expect the encounter to make much of a change in the way she sees police, or in the way other adults from her community perceive police. “Once a man’s mind’s already made up, there’s no telling him different.”

Pathways of vicarious marginalization, such as stories from family members, witnessing friends’ interactions, and watching videos and media coverage of strangers’ experiences of police-related violence and injustice, are poorly considered in current theory and policy. The legitimacy approach tends to deemphasize the importance of interlocking social contexts, including peer influences. 207 The existence of these pathways is not surprising, though, when one considers what social scientists have long understood about the stickiness of negative events in the human memory, 208 the socialization function of family and friend networks, 209 the ways culture is created and transmitted, 210 and the social construction of knowledge. 211 Personal experience with the police is only one stick in the bundle of information that people use to form their perspectives on law enforcement. How they understand the policing experiences of others varies based in part on their relationship with the person who had the interaction and—especially when the vicarious experience comes through a viral police video—varies based on how well the experience at issue matches up with metanarratives about the police. Shared narratives about how the police treat African Americans and people who live in poor communities propel legal estrangement. To reduce legal estrangement, counternarratives that focus on respect and value for black and poor lives must emerge and take root.

C. Structural Exclusion

The third part of the theory of legal estrangement is structural exclusion. This component describes the ways in which policies that may appear facially race- and class-neutral distribute policing resources so that African Americans and residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods tend to receive lower-quality policing than whites and residents of other neighborhoods. 212 Laws and policies produce and normalize vastly different experiences by race and class. 213 The apparent neutrality of most modern laws and policies means that even those who are disadvantaged under them might not fully perceive them as discriminatory. 214 These policies serve as a form of legal closure , a means of hoarding legal resources for the socially and socioeconomically advantaged while locking marginalized groups out of the benefits of law enforcement. This idea draws from the theory of social closure. 215 The process of legal closure leaves some areas essentially lawless—harshly policed yet underprotected 216 —while others may be rigorously defended over and above the degree to which they are at risk.

The concept of legal closure acknowledges that there are both losers and winners in the current policing regime. Current scholarship and policymaking focuses on how to address problems with the losers without examining the current system’s beneficiaries. Part of the reason that the harshest and least effective police officers can be found in high-poverty communities is because department policies on pay and seniority, as well as state laws on officer wages and additional employment, send the most experienced and highest-paid police officers to the wealthiest areas. Residents of wealthier urban and suburban neighborhoods benefit from the current policing regime; this insight reframes the problem that police reform attempts to address as not only a problem of racism or poverty, but a problem of inequality in access to the machinery of the law. 217 The structural exclusion prong of legal estrangement theory also emphasizes that police violence is not primarily a problem of wayward officers or misunderstood suspects, but instead a problem embedded in the legal system itself.

One indicator that poor African Americans in particular have been excluded from police resources is that police repeatedly fail to respond, or to respond in a timely fashion, when they are called. 218 Structural exclusion often occurs in ways that community members do not recognize, but police nonresponse is an inequality that community members often notice, and it is usually evidence of local, state, and federal policy decisions. In response to police abandonment, marginalized people seeking protection or redress of grievances have generally turned to “self-help,” either by calling upon family members or friends (and thus increasing violence in the aggregate), 219 or by creating or enlisting the help of informal institutions.

For example, Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh’s historical and ethnographic account of life in Chicago’s now-defunct Robert Taylor Homes describes a series of alternative community law enforcement groups (“indigenous law enforcement”) that residents used to police themselves after the police abandoned the development as early as the 1960s. 220 In the early 1980s, however, as the drug trade grew and gangs evolved from largely familial enterprises to more impersonal, almost corporate entities, 221 those gangs ultimately took over the pseudo-law enforcement role from the community law enforcement groups. 222 At no point did police step in to reclaim meaningful authority within the neighborhood. 223 The incentive structure for police officers was to avoid neighborhoods like the Robert Taylor Homes, particularly in the era before federal policy incentivized police departments to prevent crime in high-crime neighborhoods. 224

Of course, policing has changed since the early days of the Robert Taylor Homes. Much of the early critique of police officers’ treatment of racially and socioeconomically marginalized neighborhoods (or what many scholars call “the ghetto”) stemmed from law enforcement’s neglect of those communities, 225 leading to some mid-twentieth century racial justice advocates to urge police to become more active in poor urban neighborhoods. 226 Yet several forces converged in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that shifted the problem from one of utter neglect to the current problem of overpolicing and underprotection. First, policing underwent a move toward professionalization, which brought about improvements such as the use of technology, reliance on evidence (rather than confessions given during investigations), and requirements that police undergo more extensive education and standardized training. 227 However, as part of the professionalization package, and because of shifts in technology and the sprawl of cities, departments shifted their tactics from having officers walk a “beat” (an area that they specifically focused on) to using cars and technology to respond to calls for service. 228 Second, partly in reaction to the massive increase in urban crime during the 1970s, “broken-windows policing” (also known as order-maintenance or quality-of-life policing) took root in the 1980s and 1990s. This type of policing moved in the opposite direction of the call-for-service model by urging officers to heavily and proactively enforce laws against minor criminal activity, particularly in distressed communities. The shift meant that people in racially and socioeconomically isolated communities first felt abandoned, then felt heavily monitored—but primarily monitored only for minor crimes that were not at the heart of their public safety and security concerns.

The War on Drugs altered policing as well. Although much of the critique of the War on Drugs has focused on its hotly debated role in the rise of mass incarceration,, 229 the War on Drugs altered the front end of the criminal justice system—policing—just as significantly. Beginning in the 1970s and increasingly throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the War on Drugs funded special narcotics-enforcement police units and gang units across the country, arming regular police departments with military-grade armor and weaponry, and authorizing virtually free reign over marginalized neighborhoods. 230 Because police often relied on bad information when making busts and conducting raids, whole communities felt under police suspicion, regardless of whether particular individuals had done anything to earn that suspicion. 231

The twin perils of harsh policing and neglectful policing indicate structural exclusion from public safety, an exclusion that corresponds with intersecting race, class, and geographic marginalization. Some scholarship on overpolicing and underprotection portrays the phenomenon as a gendered and generational issue, meaning that young people, especially young men, feel overpoliced while older, “decent” people in poor African American communities feel underprotected. 232 The reality is far more complex. Many young men, too, would ideally want the police to protect them and their communities. Patrick Carr, Laura Napolitano, and Jessica Keating reached this finding in their qualitative criminology study of an ethnically diverse (Latinx, white, and African American) sample of young men and women, ages twelve to twenty-three, in three high-crime, socioeconomically challenged Philadelphia neighborhoods. Although most of the youths, regardless of race or gender, had a negative disposition toward the police, most of them—including young African American men—also suggested greater presence of police and harsher enforcement of the law as ways to address crime in their communities. 233 One way to understand this result is as a kind of bounded creativity: because these youths were growing up in high-crime urban neighborhoods in the 1990s and 2000s, a time and place where the police were highly visible and when alternative community social control resources were relatively limited, perhaps they could not imagine a world where the government could use noncriminal justice means to deter crime. This view would counsel hesitancy before relying on youths’ words as true statements of their ideals. 234 Yet the authors settle on the explanation that, despite the youths’ negative experiences with the police, they cling to the mainstream cultural ideal that police should protect them and their communities. Along with protection, the youths desire procedurally just policing. 235 The critical point about structural exclusion is that, despite the youths’ cynicism about the police, they nonetheless believe that the police are failing to provide protective services to their communities.

This conflicted desire for police protection is observable in Lemuel’s story. Lemuel is a twenty-four-year-old African American young man who grew up in the Lexington Terrace housing project in West Baltimore. 236 Lemuel, unlike Shawna, Justin, and Jamila, has spent a large portion of his youth engaged in criminal activity. 237 Unlike his brothers, one of whom is incarcerated and one of whom was murdered seven years ago, Lemuel managed to avoid becoming an official member of any street gang or “clique.” (In his terms, he was a “thug,” not a “gangster.”) Mostly, he stole food, sports jerseys, cars, and other property with his brother and dealt small amounts of marijuana to earn a baseline income.

When I was robbing people, there was a reason why I was doing it. My stomach was literally growling, nothing to do. Either I die, starve, or I do something. I was too young for a job. I mean, I cut grass during the summer. I shoveled snow through the winter. But [what] do you do in between?

Lemuel’s family was so poor that his parents made deliberate choices to forego necessities for their male children. Lemuel mimicked his stepfather with an acerbic chuckle: “My father, he always said, ‘They boys. They don’t need no shoes. They don’t need no underwear. They don’t need socks.’” The first time he remembers feeling scared and realizing that his family was very poor, was when “the eviction people came, and we’re holding the door so they won’t come in.” Petty theft was Lemuel’s family’s livelihood. “What we going to do? Whatever you can do. So we made sure we ate.”

Not surprisingly, Lemuel had numerous run-ins with the police in his younger, delinquent years. He likened the police he encountered, the “knockers,” (plainclothes officers assigned to “flex squads” focused on drugs and violent crime) 238 to Denzel Washington’s character in the 2001 movie Training Day . 239 According to Lemuel, these officers—all African American 240 —often wore ski masks. “He don’t want you to know who he is because he’s about to do something that he ain’t supposed to do.” Lemuel says that the “knockers” would give him an ultimatum during every run-in. They could either take him to jail, or they could allow him to go home. When a boy took the “go home” option, “they sit you in the back seat with a knocker back there and they’ll beat your ribs, take all your money out your pocket, leave you in the ‘hood that you ain’t supposed to be in.”

One of Lemuel’s most formative experiences with a police officer took place at a high school located in the heart of gang territory. One day when he was about fifteen years old, Lemuel showed up to school drunk on Bacardi Gold rum. “At the time, I was doing a lot of drinking . . . . I was going through stuff,” he explained. He was also carrying drugs for his personal use and a “knuckle knife”—a set of brass knuckles with a knife attached—for protection. As is common at Baltimore’s public high schools, security was on high alert. 241 In addition to the usual metal detectors, officers were on hand to frisk the students. A female officer patted Lemuel down and found the drugs in his pocket. According to Lemuel, the officer grabbed his scrotum and squeezed. She allegedly told him, “You better not say nothing.” As he remembers it, she told him that, if he screamed, she would remove the drugs from his pocket (perhaps simply taking them, or turning them in so that he would get into legal trouble). Though tears welled in Lemuel’s eyes, he stayed silent, and the officer let him go. But he returned home swollen and in pain. 242

Despite those horrific recollections (“procedural injustice” seems too clinical a word for bodily assault), there have been times when Lemuel has wanted to call the police for help. When Lemuel was younger, someone from his neighborhood robbed him and took his sports jersey, an item that was relatively expensive given his financial background and thus had great significance to him. He wished that he could call the police to report the crime and get the jersey back, but instead he reluctantly fought the older boy who took it. “Got my ass whipped. Got my jersey back, though.” There have been other times when he has wanted to call the police as well, times when an old-fashioned schoolyard brawl would not be of much help. People have shot near him, and “things . . . was a little bit out of my control.” Yet he still did not call the police because “it’s never good.” Lemuel’s uncle is a police officer, but instead of making him feel closer to the police, he thinks the job reflects poorly on his uncle’s character. Lemuel told us, chuckling, “Even my uncle, my uncle’s an asshole. He don’t come to no family reunions or nothing.”

Lemuel does not think the problems of policing that he has experienced, and that gave rise to the Freddie Gray unrest, are attributable to race. In his view, the problems of police-community relations are problems of neighborhood income inequality. “Black, white, Hispanic, it doesn’t matter your race. It matters where you live. It’s almost—your income.” Because Lemuel has committed crimes in higher-income neighborhoods, he has seen firsthand that police respond quickly in those areas. He and a friend attempted to burglarize a home in a wealthier part of Baltimore County, and they assumed that because the house was in a semirural area, it would take the police a long time to arrive. They were wrong. Someone called the police, and officers arrived very quickly. “When you’re in another neighborhood, you get treated with more respect. I realized that when I went to try to do my first home invasion. The cop response was so quick . . . . It was so quick. I never seen the cops respond to this neighborhood so quickly.” Lemuel believes that slow police response is inevitably part of the experience of living in “the projects,” including trailer parks.

One distinction between the police in West Baltimore and the police where Lemuel attempted the burglary is jurisdictional. West Baltimore, located within Baltimore’s city limits, is under the jurisdiction of the Baltimore City Police Department. By contrast, outside the city limits in Baltimore County, the Baltimore County Police Department handles policing. Assuming Lemuel’s experience is representative, the alleged discrepancy in response times could come from the differences in policies and workloads between the city and the county police departments. The differences between these jurisdictions might relate to their relative emphases on responding to crime reactively versus implementing preventive or proactive approaches. It might be the case that in the county, the police department still places heavy emphasis on responding to calls for service, while in the city (particularly in high crime areas), there is greater emphasis on patrolling. These different approaches could explain city residents’ simultaneous sense that there is a heavy presence of police cars 243 and delayed response to calls for service. 244 More research is needed to compare police response times across and between jurisdictions, and to locate the department-level policies and practices that might explain any undue delay.

Lemuel’s earlier experiences of procedural injustice could also be attributable not only to individual bad officers, but to policies and department cultures that incentivize bad behavior. As noted above, Lemuel’s most vivid negative experiences were with the “knockers,” the plainclothes police officers who work in units that focus solely on violent crime and drug crime in distressed Baltimore neighborhoods. These units, which have been called “flex squads” in the past but are often renamed, are allowed broad discretion, including whether they wear uniforms, whether they drive marked cars, where they police (they are not limited to a post), and the hours they work. 245 They usually carry out drug raids as well. Although Baltimore’s flex squads came under fire in the mid-2000s due to deep corruption in the Southwest police district’s squad, including the rapes that Shawna fears, 246 the squads now exist with somewhat greater oversight. Yet some people—including former police officers—claim that street enforcement units are still given wide discretion that they often grievously misuse. 247

Arrest incentives, and the more general culture of arrest, 248 might also have contributed to experiences like Lemuel’s. Although he reports being arrested only once (and not through an encounter with a “knocker”), it is possible that police were more present in his neighborhood because they were looking for people to arrest. (Perhaps because Lemuel was so young, police were slower to arrest him.) While we do not have evidence of what those specific officers believed, insider accounts suggest that department policy encouraged greater police presence in predominantly poor and African American neighborhoods, even for officers who were not assigned to those areas. Former Baltimore police officer Michael Wood told reporters that, after getting a plum assignment to an upper-middle-class, predominantly white neighborhood, he would sometimes leave his post to go to a poor, predominantly black neighborhood to make arrests. He needed to meet his expected number of arrests, but even though there were people using drugs and committing other crimes in the neighborhood where he was assigned, he knew there would be “trouble” if he arrested the wrong person. So, even though it technically violated policy for Wood to patrol for arrests outside of his post, his supervisors signed off on his work. “They knew that judges and court officials lived in that neighborhood. If I locked up the judge’s 18-year-old son for drugs or whatever, things could get really bad for me,” Wood told reporters. 249 Several scholars have described the perils of arrest incentives, arguing that such policies have contributed to mass penal control through misdemeanor arrests and noncarceral forms of state supervision. 250 Lemuel’s story and the Baltimore context suggest that incentives to arrest might also simply bring more people into contact with aggressive policing. Even if those people are never arrested, and even if they do not become suspects of any particular crime, this contact might have negative effects on their perceptions of police, reminding them of their relative worthlessness in the eyes of the state. Consequently, arrest-incentivizing policies may serve to deepen legal estrangement.

On a broader scale, of course, structural exclusion through policing is layered atop deeper structural disadvantages that arise in the contexts of growing up poor and African American, and living in the city of Baltimore. Good policing is just one additional resource, or another form of capital, 251 from which the law writ large may exclude people like Shawna, Justin, Jamila, and Lemuel.

v. dismantling estrangement

How can police reform dismantle legal estrangement? There is little scholarship that tackles this question in even a cursory way. Research suggests that procedural justice can unsettle the psychological process that leads people to perceive the police as illegitimate. Evidence also indicates that the procedural justice solution can effectively increase perceptions of legitimacy across race and, to some extent, class. 252 Yet—other than the well-trodden but hazy path of “community policing” 253 —there has been little discussion of reforms that can disrupt the sociological process leading whole communities to see the police as a symbol of their status on the social periphery. Measures that emanate from legitimacy theory and the procedural justice approach, such as police training, are ultimately an impoverished response to estrangement. 254

One might reasonably view legal estrangement not as a problem of policing, but as a problem of concentrated poverty and racial inequality. Certainly, as is apparent in the vignettes offered in this Essay, concentrated poverty and systemic racial injustice are major structural problems that produce legal estrangement. Fully dismantling legal estrangement will be impossible without more fundamental shifts in economic distribution and eradication of racial discrimination: the problems of policing that have motivated Black Lives Matter are problems of America’s broken opportunity structure. 255 The root causes of estrangement, similar to the root causes of crime and mass incarceration, may seem inappropriate to address through the criminal justice system. 256

Admittedly, the structural factors believed to contribute most fundamentally to cynicism, such as concentrated poverty, segregation, and residential instability, 257 are not generally seen as the province of police practice and policy. Yet to demand that curing poverty and eliminating race discrimination are the only ways to meaningfully effect change in policing is to accept paralysis. The “root causes” mentality encourages scholars and policymakers to ignore ways that police practices and policy directly and actively contribute to legal estrangement and its concomitant racial and socioeconomic conditions. For instance, some scholars have argued that police practices directly contribute to persistent residential segregation. 258 Police contact can negatively influence the prison reentry process, making it difficult for returning citizens to maintain employment and familial relationships. 259 Multiple experiences with arrest of a parent can result in court dates for children that keep them out of school and siphon them into the criminal justice apparatus; this process interrupts their education and ultimately places them at risk for incarceration and its related perils. 260 Because there has been insufficient attention to legal estrangement in the regulation of policing, opportunities to link the structural factors in estrangement with concrete reforms to policing have been underexplored. The proposals here are not offered as a cure-all to legal estrangement, but are instead an opening salvo to encourage police reformers to dedicate energy toward new strategies and structures of police governance.

A. Using Federal Tools To Change Local Practices

Scholars often overlook many of the structural issues that confront policing outside the purview of federal law because the policing crisis is embedded in state and local laws and policies. Even though federal law and policy has brought some uniformity to local policing through spending initiatives since the 1930s, police administrative rules and practices still vary intensely among states, counties, and municipalities. 261 In addition, there is rich debate over the appropriate institutional actors that should regulate local police behavior. 262 Faced with disagreement over the depth of the solutions needed, issues of federalism, and potentially limited institutional capacities, one would be hard-pressed to find a legal silver bullet capable of resolving the legal and social problems of policing.

One tool that provides the federal government with leverage to force local departments to change or eliminate structurally exclusive policies is section 14141 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also known as the Clinton Crime Bill. 263 Section 14141 authorizes the U.S. Attorney General to sue a local police department for engaging in a pattern or practice of violating constitutional and legal rights. The Department of Justice (DOJ) may use the threat of litigation to reach an agreement with the agency to pursue specific reforms, or take the agency to court and mandate actions through a consent decree. Although section 14141 has many merits—for example, the law is credited with providing a path to successful long-term reform for police departments in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh 264 —many scholars have offered an array of potential improvements to the law. 265

One of the biggest shortcomings of section 14141 is that its use is politically cyclical. 266 During the second term of President George W. Bush, the DOJ did not enter into a single consent decree with a police agency, opting instead to enter into nonbinding agreements with wayward departments. 267 In contrast, the Obama Administration has investigated dozens of departments. 268 Even this figure is relatively small considering that there are more than 12,000 police departments across the United States; many scholars believe that the costly and invasive nature of the process limits its capacity to reach the full set of departments that may require oversight. 269 One suspects that a Trump DOJ will investigate very few, if any, police departments.

Indeed, perhaps the major drawback of relying on § 14141 is that it likely allows so much unlawful and procedurally unjust policing to go undetected. Baltimore provides an excellent example of this issue. On August 10, 2016, the DOJ released a 163-page report lambasting the Baltimore Police Department for its persistent violations of the rights of Baltimore’s African American population, emphasizing in particular the Department’s mistreatment of youth 270 (such as the participants in the Hearing Their Voices study). 271 The DOJ concluded that the Department’s discriminatory practices violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Safe Streets Act of 1968. 272 Yet just sixteen months earlier, in May 2015, the Final Report of the President’s Task Force on Twenty-First Century Policing described Baltimore’s efforts to build community legitimacy. The Report summarized testimony from then-Police Commissioner Anthony Batts touting the Department’s establishment of a new Professional Standards and Accountability Bureau “tasked with rooting out corruption, holding officers accountable, and implementing national best practices for polic[i]es and training.” 273 The DOJ Report, which denounces the Department for its failure to properly train officers, does not even mention this Bureau. In fact, the Report only briefly mentions the Baltimore Police Department’s other efforts to address its legacy of bias. 274 It took the death of Freddie Gray, and the corresponding public uproar, to push the DOJ to commence this investigation and issue the Report. While section 14141 provides a helpful backstop, it allows departments to maintain a veneer of community orientation until a crisis strikes. Major pushes for structural reform should not rely on litigation that is rarely initiated before tragedy occurs.

While recognizing the inherent insufficiency of incremental interventions as a full remedy for legal estrangement, in this Part, I provisionally discuss Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and four areas of police governance reform that could contribute to dismantling estrangement. These reforms have garnered much less attention in the most recent police reform debates than police training, community policing initiatives, or even structural reform litigation. Whereas most scholarship on police regulation tends to focus on constitutional criminal procedure, 275 these reforms are aimed at statutory and municipal law at the federal, state, and local levels. Unlike the legitimacy approach, legal estrangement theory directly suggests structural reform: the theory demands attention to group societal membership and the deep-seated laws, policies, and structures that have produced the policing crisis. Microlevel procedural justice reforms aimed at producing individual-level feelings of legitimacy are anemic responses to legal estrangement.

B. Paying the Police

The police wage system is a structural factor that functionally excludes many poor people and African Americans from policing resources, thereby contributing to legal estrangement. The wage structure under which police officers generally operate works inversely to the way it should: some of the busiest and most dangerous jobs in law enforcement often pay the least. Particularly in cities, towns, and counties that are financially strapped, finding the means to retain police-officer talent is a serious challenge. Moreover, officers are frequently aware of localized pay disparities. For example, a journalistic report on St. Louis County claimed that officers in some parts of the county were making “poverty wages,” as low as $10.50 per hour. 276 The DOJ Ferguson consent decree required that the city increase officer salaries as part of its recruitment plan. 277

Low officer wages introduce two major perversions to the system. First, when salaries are too low, the most skilled and experienced officers will (rationally) leave higher-crime areas to work in easier areas where they are paid more. Second, low wages mean that many officers feel pressure to pursue large amounts of overtime hours and off-duty work, also known as secondary employment or “moonlighting.” 278 Police officers typically receive a base hourly wage, but many earn a significant amount of their take-home pay through overtime. In Baltimore, for example, over one hundred officers in fiscal year 2013 earned more than $40,000 in overtime pay. In that year, the highest-paid employee of the Baltimore City Police Department earned $110,00 in overtime pay and $67,000 in base pay for a total of $177,000, more than the city’s mayor and more than the police commissioner. 279 In 2015, six of the ten highest-paid people in Baltimore city government were employees of the police department. 280 Only one of those employees, the police commissioner, had a top-ten base salary. The others received substantial amounts of money in what appears to be overtime pay. 281

The stress and burden of extended work hours can make even the most promising officers terrible at their job. 282 The President’s Task Force report devotes one of its six pillars to officer wellness and safety, with emphasis on mental health. 283 It stresses the riskiness and trauma of the job and blames officer judgment errors on fatigue. It even discusses shift length as a potential contributor to officer fatigue. 284 But the report does not directly draw a link between fatigue, exposure to risk and trauma, long shifts, and wage-related pressures and overwork, all factors that may affect economically depressed jurisdictions more than other jurisdictions. Wage disparity is a structural issue that occurs far upstream from the events that have catalyzed the police reform movement. Bringing greater transparency and equity to officer salaries will likely decrease procedural injustice and vicarious marginalization on the ground, which could, over time, reduce legal estrangement.

Even where officers are paid on the same scale within the same departments, they still may be earning less to police tougher neighborhoods. Collective bargaining means that departments are often bound to pay salary, assign shifts, assign beats, and give promotions or transfers on the basis of seniority. 285 And even where collective bargaining is not in place, decision making based on seniority is often embedded into police culture. Seniority rules mean that new patrol officers tend to get the least-desired assignments—graveyard shifts and tough neighborhoods—while receiving the lowest compensation. 286

Although problems of police wage inequality and job insecurity are tied partly to local governments’ financial insolvency, 287 federal intervention could help bring balance between urban and suburban wages. Since the establishment of the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services in 1994, federal funding has flowed to local departments to incentivize various reforms. 288 Federal funding, then, could partially close the gap between the wages that local taxes can fund and the wages needed to attract the most skilled officers to the highest-need areas. State legislation could help as well. In Indiana, for example, legislators have proposed requiring the state’s Office of Management and Budget to prepare an annual report comparing the salaries of state police with salaries in the three largest local police departments and to make recommendations about wage parity. 289 It is difficult to tell whether such legislation will be effective, but this bill represents one way that states could help reduce local wage disparity between officers.

Another practice that allocates policing resources to wealthier neighborhoods, to the detriment of poorer neighborhoods, is police departments’ practice of taking on secondary employment. 290 Under secondary employment arrangements, private entities such as sports teams or neighborhood associations can pay the police department extra money to provide additional police services. The DOJ has criticized such local government arrangements for “contribut[ing] to inequitable policing.” 291 For example, when the DOJ first investigated the New Orleans Police Department in 2011, some of its most significant criticism fell upon the Department’s Paid Detail program. 292 Paid Detail gave officers the opportunity to earn extra money by working overtime for private pay, and most of the places they worked were the areas lowest in crime:

The breadth and prevalence of the Detail system has essentially privatized officer overtime at NOPD, resulting in officers working Details in the areas of town with the least crime, while an insufficient number of officers are working in the areas of New Orleans with the greatest crime prevention needs. Those with means in New Orleans are essentially able to buy additional protection, while those without such means are unable to pay for the services and extra protection needed to make up for insufficient or ineffective policing . . . . While any community that wants extra security certainly has a right to pay for it, it raises troubling legal and ethical questions when that extra security might otherwise have been focused on parts of the City most in need of police assistance. 293

This language might have been a clarion call to municipal governments to prohibit—or at least to regulate more effectively—the use of sworn police officers as private security for overtime pay. However, perhaps because the investigation revealed such a massive number of issues, the Report’s critique of Paid Detail did not gain national traction. 294 In addition, the DOJ did not mention Paid Detail in its ultimate consent decree with the New Orleans Police Department. 295 Importantly, the Report’s critique of Paid Detail is not general: it does not state that officer “moonlighting” is per se corrupt. It limits its analysis to the particularities of New Orleans, and even suggests an acceptable alternative Paid Detail governance structure. Based on that suggestion, local governments might do well to heed DOJ’s call and centralize requests for private employment of off-duty officers so that they can better monitor the practice and use it to bring additional funds into their police departments. 296

Another option would be to bar sworn police officers from taking on this type of secondary employment altogether. Instead, local governments could expect private entities who want extra security to hire staff through private firms. Some Seattle neighborhoods have instituted this approach. 297 Yet there are reasons to hesitate to take this path: private police do not have the same powers, nor operate under the same constitutional constraints, that apply to sworn police officers. 298 Private security officers might be used only for neighborhood observation and suspect tracking, but they need to contact public police to conduct searches and arrests. In any event, finding a way to maintain a public/private distinction in policing would solve the ethical problem of allowing the training, equipment, and culture that the public provides to sworn police officers to directly reproduce neighborhood inequality.

Secondary employment is thus a mechanism through which poorer communities are structurally excluded from good policing. Officers may receive overtime pay for working as officers in wealthier areas, while they only earn paltry wages to keep distressed neighborhoods safe. This dynamic sends a stark message that protecting wealthier areas is more lucrative than protecting higher-poverty areas. Secondary employment policies like these might even suggest, at least symbolically, that African American and poor lives truly lack value.

C. Reorganizing the Police

There are more than twelve thousand police departments in the United States, nearly half of which employ fewer than ten police officers. 299 Even as philosophies of policing have shifted dramatically over the past century, governance structures of policing have largely remained intact. 300 Consolidation of very small police districts might be another way to ameliorate the structural exclusion from police resources that contributes to legal estrangement. Although consolidating districts would not constitute a total reorganization of departments, it might be a strong first step toward creating a structure more amenable to meaningful community engagement and checks on police power.

The proliferation of many small police departments means that some neighborhoods can essentially become individual fiefdoms for certain officers. The issue of unchecked power in extremely small rural or suburban police departments came to national attention for a very short time in late 2014, when a South Carolina prosecutor attempted twice to win the conviction of Richard Combs, the police chief and sole police officer in Eutawville, South Carolina—a town with a population of 315. Combs was charged with murder for shooting Bernard Bailey, a fifty-four-year-old unarmed African American man, in the parking lot of Eutawville’s town hall in May 2011. Bailey had intervened when Combs issued a traffic ticket to Bailey’s daughter, and the shooting allegedly occurred a few days later when Combs attempted to serve Bailey with a warrant for obstruction of justice. Some onlookers saw Combs as an example of an officer who, because he functioned as the sole traffic officer, regular patrol officer, and police chief, had unfettered power to use the machinery of criminal justice for vindictive purposes—a structure that seems almost destined to produce corrupt police action. 301 Yet after the briefest of moments, as Combs ultimately took a guilty plea for misconduct in office and as bigger-city shootings took over news cycles again, the issue of small police department governance returned to obscurity. 302

Small departments can also create various interjurisdictional inconsistencies ranging from the amount of training officers receive to the equipment available to keep themselves and civilians safe. For example, one of the arguments that Combs’s attorney made to explain his decision to shoot Bailey was that, because the town he policed is very small, they did not have less lethal equipment such as a “stun gun” (Taser) or pepper spray. This meant that the only means of force he had available was his gun. 303 Whether giving Combs a Taser or pepper spray would have saved Bailey’s life is a difficult question; however, it does seem likely that, in part because of the governance structure of his department, Combs did not have access to expensive Taser technology.

Moreover, the prevalence of very small departments in close proximity to each other increases the likelihood that an officer fired from one jurisdiction for serious reasons could find work as an officer in another. Poor communities are more likely to hire “gypsy cops,” officers with spotty work histories who have been fired elsewhere, because their resource constraints make it more difficult for them to discriminate between good and bad officers. 304 Again, the officers least likely to conduct their work in a procedurally just manner are siphoned toward poor communities.

Some have claimed, in line with strong federalism advocates and some basic tenets of public choice theory, that having more police agencies within close proximity increases competition, which in turn could improve their responsiveness to community needs and allow dissatisfied people to “vote with their feet” by relocating elsewhere. 305 Yet there is little evidence that these benefits emerge from the existence of very small police departments that lack meaningful external oversight, while there is some evidence that the current extreme fragmentation is detrimental to the overall quality of policing. 306

Historically, one argument against department consolidation was that administrative centralization could threaten officers’ ability to engage in community policing. 307 However, it may not be empirically true that fragmentation of police administration is correlated with, let alone a catalyst of, effective community-oriented policing. Indeed, some of the most celebrated efforts to link police and community have taken place in larger departments. 308

By contrast, the sheer volume of locally controlled police departments, all of which have slightly different policies and issues, creates a major barrier to systemic reform. The seemingly infinite variations on police policy means that scholars and policymakers may observe common problems across local contexts but find it difficult to sufficiently address those problems on a larger scale. Consolidation would help if only because it would decrease the number of departments and make it easier to gain a picture of their policies and practices.

Unlike many of the structural reforms proposed in this Part, department consolidation has gained some support from advocates for money saving in criminal justice. After the 2008 recession, municipal budgets shrank and many officers were furloughed or laid off. 309 Local executives are increasingly considering police consolidation as a potential cost-effective structural reform, and some departments have already consolidated as a way to cut redundancies. 310 Thus, consolidation could win the mutual support of fiscal conservatives and liberals, building a coalition reminiscent of the left-right nexus on cutting mass incarceration. 311 However, significant hurdles could impede such a reform. For one, members of the public who live in very small towns may interpret consolidation of small departments as a cut to their public safety and to local control of their police force. In addition, consolidation would mean that some people who have immense power would be required to yield it. These fundamental issues mean that securing support for department consolidation in local areas will pose a significant challenge.

D. Raising the Stakes of Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence

Understanding today’s policing crisis as a problem of legal estrangement clarifies and raises the stakes of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. When judges rule on the lawfulness of police conduct in a single case, they are ruling on a “program.” 312 That program is bigger than systematic Terry stops-and-frisks of young African American and Latino men. 313 The program is endemic to policing itself, including serving warrants 314 and responding (or not responding) to calls for assistance. Because of the longstanding social, cultural, and symbolic meaning of the police among African Americans and in racially and socioeconomically marginalized communities, policing cases—more than others—send messages to groups about social inclusion and, indeed, social citizenship. Legitimacy theory does not offer a consistent mode of response to this problem. 315

What messages are conveyed in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence? Justice Sotomayor’s impassioned dissent in Strieff showed her understanding that this case, even though it involved a white defendant, blessed police discretion to behave in ways that denigrate and alienate minority populations. To illustrate, we can return to the facts of Strieff . 316 In Strieff , a narcotics detective, Douglas Fackrell, conducted surveillance outside a home in southern Salt Lake City, Utah, for about a week. Fackrell had received an anonymous tip that people were selling and purchasing methamphetamine there. Fackrell saw several people enter and leave the home after short periods of time—behavior that, in his view, was consistent with drug dealing and purchasing. Edward Strieff was one of the people who visited the home. On one of these surveillance days, Strieff left the home in question and went to a nearby convenience store. Even though Fackrell only knew that Strieff had visited the home—information that did not amount to reasonable suspicion to justify a search—Fackrell followed Strieff to the convenience store, stopped him, and questioned him about what he was doing at the home in question. Fackrell also took Strieff’s identification card and shared his information with a police dispatcher. The dispatcher told Fackrell that Strieff had an open warrant for his arrest on a minor traffic violation. Fackrell then arrested Strieff, and in a search incident to arrest, found the evidence he was looking for: Strieff was holding a small baggie of meth and other drug paraphernalia. 317

Why is this case troubling? Fackrell violated the Fourth Amendment by stopping Strieff in the first place; even the prosecutor conceded that point. 318 Yet the Court ruled that because Fackrell learned that Strieff had an open warrant for arrest—even if just for a minor traffic violation—the search he conducted was sufficiently attenuated from the unconstitutional stop that the evidence Fackrell discovered was admissible. In a world where few people had open warrants, this decision might seem somewhat troubling, but not catastrophic. Yet in a scenario where a substantial number of people have open warrants, often for the most minor of infractions, often for noncriminal violations of probation and parole conditions, and often because of their poverty, 319 the Strieff decision authorizes tremendous power. Police officers are now free to arbitrarily (and even unconstitutionally) stop people, ask them for their identification, have a dispatcher search their record, find an arrest warrant for a long-unpaid parking ticket or a missed appointment with a probation officer, and use that ticket as a reason to conduct any physical search that they would like to conduct. If they find any contraband, that contraband could be used as evidence in court. While police officers need discretion in order to locate and deter crime, this ruling gives them a worrisome amount of license. When one views this ruling in context and imagines strategies like Fackrell’s playing out in racially and socioeconomically marginalized places like West Baltimore, one understands more clearly that the Court has endorsed the wholesale exclusion of poor African Americans (and often Latinx communities) from the protection of the law and from their rightful place in society.

In Whren v. United States , the Court ruled, inter alia, that challenges to police investigations based on race-based selective enforcement must proceed through Fourteenth Amendment equal protection analysis rather than Fourth Amendment analysis. 320 Given the very high bar for proving racial discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause post- Washington v. Davis , 321 Whren significantly curtails the degree to which Fourth Amendment jurisprudence on police investigation could be used to correct racial discrimination in the conduct of police investigations.

Thus, state courts might under some circumstances be better suited than federal courts to factor in the local context of racial discrimination and disparity reflective of legal estrangement. For example, in late 2016, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Warren that an African American man’s decision to flee from the police is not, on its own, sufficiently probative of reasonable suspicion. 322 The court partly based its reasoning on statistical evidence that African American men in Boston disproportionately experience stops based on racial profiling. 323 Black male Bostonians, the court cautioned, “might just as easily be motivated by the desire to avoid the recurring indignity of being racially profiled as by the desire to hide criminal activity.” 324 In other words, in an environment where the police have signaled strongly to African American men that their group is not a full part of society entitled to the presumption of innocence, the natural response to that communication is to avoid the police, regardless of any involvement in crime. This was a judicial acknowledgement of the potential effects of legal estrangement.

Judges who rule on the constitutionality of searches should keep in mind the stakes of giving too much leeway to the police, stakes that legal estrangement theory illuminates. Traditionally, we think of the potential harms of policing gone awry as violations of privacy and individual dignity, and on the opposite side, we weigh the police’s ability to respond to and reduce crime. 325 Yet as important as individual privacy is, the collective stakes are even higher. Moreover, some have argued that the text of the Fourth Amendment, emphasizing reasonableness, demands that courts consider distributional outcomes of searches and seizures by race, gender, and other group categories. 326 The question of reasonableness has grown obscure as Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has come to focus so heavily on warrants, consent, probable cause, and so forth, perhaps distracting courts from the fundamental reasonableness inquiry that should take into account distributional concerns between groups. 327 Getting Fourth Amendment rulings wrong by giving the police too much power risks both individual and collective membership in the American social order.

E. Democratizing the Police

Legal estrangement demands a deep, meaningful approach to democratizing police governance. Bringing about cohesion and solidarity between police and African American and poor communities will require a more aggressive infusion of deliberative participation in policing than most proposals demand. A legitimacy approach might not object to deep democratization—these processes would arguably make the police more effective in securing voluntary compliance and would arguably encourage the police to use procedurally just methods—but legitimacy would not require it.

Barry Friedman and Maria Ponomarenko have recently argued against police exceptionalism in policymaking. They propose that police policies, such as the use of SWAT teams and warrantless searches, require legislative authorization, administrative rulemaking with notice-and-comment, or some other democratic process similar to other areas of regulation. 328 While their argument is persuasive, the communities most affected by legal estrangement are often locked out of the democratic process more generally. For a panoply of reasons, ranging from the education gap, to felony disenfranchisement and its chilling effects on turnout in high-incarceration communities, to active efforts at voter suppression, to gerrymandering, to the capture of policymaking through high-stakes lobbying, African Americans—particularly if they live in high-poverty communities—have relatively little say in who their representatives are or in the legislation that their representatives ultimately pass. 329 The public in general participates sparingly in administrative rulemaking, and race- and class-distributed access gaps have long been seen in that area of lawmaking as well. 330 Shifting toward more democratic processes is important on the grounds of democracy and the rule of law, and it does provide an opening for meaningful change. However, it is unlikely on its own to unsettle legal estrangement in the communities that are most affected by it. 331 Combining these processes with other democracy-enhancing reforms might be necessary.

Transparency measures, including data collection and “hot ticket” reforms such as police officer body cameras, can also contribute to the overall democratization of policing in a way that could begin to root out legal estrangement. 332 Currently, the most widely distributed videos that focus on police generally show officers either engaging in forceful or other distasteful behavior, or performing acts such as dancing, playing basketball, or distributing ice cream. The former are unsettling because they emphasize police wrongdoing rather than police officers’ effective interactions with the public, which are likely more common; the latter are unsettling because they suggest such acts are core to today’s iteration of “community policing.” Data might alert scholars and activists to overlooked systemic problems, but they could also illuminate police agencies and officers that are doing their work properly. If one suspects that most police interactions go the way that they should, data and transparency can potentially be a boon to solidarity between officers and communities. Data can perhaps put what police actually do most of the time in clearer perspective.

When then-State Senator Obama led the Illinois Legislature in passing antiracial profiling legislation in 2003, 333 he emphasized that the purpose of the bill was to collect data on police activity. He convinced the Fraternal Order of Police that the data would give them an opportunity to show that they were doing valid police work, not engaging in racial discrimination. 334 This initiative represents only one example of a transparency measure that could serve both to root out estrangement and to provide a more informed understanding of police. Yet perhaps an even more effective approach would include ways to make policing more qualitatively transparent—for instance, making videos of regular police work more publicly available, opening access to police departments, and perhaps even finding ways to support more adversarial forms of transparency and accountability, such as organized cop watching. 335

Reconciliation is a third type of democratic reform that the legal estrangement perspective might suggest. Criminologist and activist David Kennedy, along with leaders of the DOJ-funded National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, have proposed that police departments undertake a “reconciliation” process between officers and historically distressed communities. 336 Although the specific mechanisms that would be officially instituted are unclear, the proposed process would involve “a method of facilitating frank engagements between minority communities, police, and other authorities that allow them to address historical tensions, grievances, and misconceptions, and reset relationships.” 337 The idea of reconciliation builds on Kennedy’s groundbreaking work as founder of Operation Ceasefire and the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC). Through these two organizations, Kennedy and others engaged in a deep strategy of violence prevention by working with local gangs and bringing those offenders together with key stakeholders, including the police. 338 The newly proposed reconciliation efforts represent an effort to scale up some of the insights gained from these local violence-reduction interventions.

The mechanics of this reconciliation proposal remain unclear. The proposal is distinct from prevailing democratic reform recommendations because it takes very seriously the historical roots of legal estrangement, accommodates the complexity of the dynamics between officers and communities, and in some ways meets the Habermasian ideal of a truly deliberative, consent-based approach to policing. Taking full account of historical distrust is essential to the success of cultural change, to avoid “merely replacing one modality of domination with another.” 339

However, governments usually use truth and reconciliation processes to address injustices that occurred over a cognizable, bounded time period and involved a fairly identifiable set of wrongdoers. 340 To deal with the problem of legal estrangement, a restorative reconciliation model would have to recognize the deeply systemic nature of the problem. Moreover, NNSC’s goal of reducing violence is not the same as rooting out legal estrangement. A key insight that drives the innovation in Operation Ceasefire and other programs is that most of the violence in a community is concentrated within relatively confined networks. 341 Thus, deeply targeting those networks in a deliberative, legitimacy-building way is a successful approach. Legal estrangement, in contrast, is more dispersed and broadly influential. However, the basic intuitions of reconciliation—intentionally bringing police and communities together to build trust on a group level, and actively reckoning with the collective memories of harsh policing—reflect the type of intensive, deeply democratic process that might produce long-lasting cultural change.

F. Shrinking & Refining the Footprint of the Police

Finally, the legal estrangement perspective raises fundamental questions about the role of police in society. Police—and more broadly, the criminal justice system—have become the primary vehicle through which the state responds to social deprivation. 342 At times, police can play a positive role in channeling resources to people who need them, particularly as a conduit into diversion and decarceration programs that may, for example, help people get into counseling and narcotics rehabilitation programs. 343 Yet as a matter of principle, routing rehabilitation and social services through the police could perversely widen the carceral net and reify the “culture of control.” 344 The expansion of policing control has added to police departments’ coffers over the past three decades, leading to the growth of many forces. 345 Yet even police officers complain that the system expects them to play an outsized role in poor people’s daily lives, performing functions that supplant work ideally done by the welfare state and social services. 346 This work—responding to mental health crisis, 347 truancy, 348 homelessness, 349 and more 350 —is done by civil servants who are authorized to carry guns and use lethal force. 351 It is done by civil servants who, through the mechanisms of self-selection, 352 institutional culture, 353 and perhaps more, may be more punitive or less empathetic than the average civil servant. 354

The legal estrangement perspective should encourage serious reflection on whether, and how much, armed officials should inhabit the role of social caretaker. Recently, scholars and policymakers have pushed for a cultural shift in policing, proposing that officers see themselves as “guardians” rather than “warriors.” 355 While this work is commendable, it demands greater discussion of the nature and scope of the guardianship that we should expect the police to provide. It might be that reforms that enable greater collaboration between police and social services could make the police more legitimate at an individual level—but it might also, in the aggregate, worsen disparities in criminal justice treatment by race and class. This aggregate effect would increase legal estrangement.

Ultimately, the legal estrangement perspective demands a more holistic discussion of institutional competence. A legitimacy analysis often examines institutions in a decontextualized way, assessing whether a particular institution (here, the police) has legitimacy or not. Legal estrangement encourages a more relational examination of institutions. The frailty of one bundle of institutions—here, the welfare state—might chip away at the legitimacy of the police, of other institutions, and perhaps the state itself. Shrinking the footprint of armed bureaucrats and creating a more robust system of civil supports might bring more legitimacy to these institutions and increase their capacity to produce social inclusion.

This Essay argues that legal estrangement—a theory that focuses on the symbolic and structural marginalization of African Americans and the poor from society—provides richer theoretical grounding for police reform. Legal estrangement theory incorporates procedural justice, a solution derived from legitimacy theory, as a first step toward understanding police distrust among African American and poor communities. Yet legal estrangement surpasses legitimacy theory by fully considering two larger levels at which distrust operates: vicarious marginalization and structural exclusion. Vicarious experiences range from the mistreatment of a friend, as Jamila experienced, or through learning about more distant negative treatment, as Shawna experienced when she learned about the officer rapes. Structural aspects of policing—the drug searches that happened at Lemuel’s school, the “knockers” that he encountered in his neighborhood, and the discretion to enforce questionable walking ordinances against kids like Justin—exclude whole groups of people from experiencing policing as a protective benefit and create a dividing line between the valued and the valueless.

Drawing on these theoretical insights, I have proposed a number of areas for reform that, taken together, should help create the deep and lasting cultural change that will be required to truly overcome legal estrangement. These reforms range widely, including more technocratic reforms (restructuring police wages and consolidating districts), judicial measures (rethinking Fourth Amendment levels of interpretation), community-centered measures (democratization, reconciliation, and transparency), and a fundamental revisitation of institutional roles (shrinking and refining the police footprint while linking it to a shoring up of critical social welfare institutions). These solutions offer a deeper path forward than the legitimacy perspective does, pushing beyond procedural justice. They do, of course, remain incomplete. The legal estrangement perspective demands taking account of historically rooted group marginalization and the collective consciousness of discrimination and mistreatment. This historical and collective perspective is central to the project of police reform. Accordingly, the perspective sensitizes police reformers to the idea that, while modifications within the institution of policing are critical and should move beyond individual line officers, their work will not be finished until it spurs change in the full array of institutions that perpetuate poverty, race-correlated disadvantage, and symbolic statelessness.

Volume 133’s Emerging Scholar of the Year: Robyn Powell

Announcing the eighth annual student essay competition, announcing the ylj academic summer grants program.

136 S. Ct. 2056, 2069-71 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).

See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961); see also Rachel A. Harmon, Promoting Civil Rights Through Proactive Policing Reform , 62 Stan. L. Rev . 1, 10 & n.25 (2009) (describing limitations of the exclusionary rule).

Strieff , 136 S. Ct. at 2071. For the content cited by Justice Sotomayor, see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow 124-26 (2010); James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time 19 (Modern Library 1995) (1962); Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me 82-91 (2015); W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk , in Writings 364-65 (Nathan Huggins ed., 1986) (1903) (describing double-consciousness); and Marie Gottschalk, Caught (2015). See also Tracey L. Meares & Tom R. Tyler, Justice Sotomayor and the Jurisprudence of Procedural Justice , 123 Yale L.J. F . 525 (2014) (explaining how Justice Sotomayor’s jurisprudence relates to social science research on legitimacy theory).

Strieff , 136 S. Ct. at 2069.

Id. ; cf. I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases 98-99 (Mark Tushnet ed., 2008) (describing the rhetorical devices used by Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California ); Lani Guinier, Foreword: Demosprudence Through Dissent , 122 Harv. L. Rev . 4 (2008) (arguing that oral dissents provide an avenue for democratic communication to a public audience).

President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 9-11 (2015) [hereinafter Task Force Report ].

See, e.g. , id. at 11. Importantly, the empirical research that led to the legitimacy findings treats legitimacy and trust as related but distinct topics. For example, Tyler and Huo use legitimacy as an umbrella variable that includes trust and confidence in police as one component of the broader concept. Tom R. Tyler & Yuen J. Huo, Trust in the Law 108-11 (2002); see also Tom R. Tyler & Jeffrey Fagan, Legitimacy and Cooperation: Why Do People Help the Police Fight Crime in Their Communities ? , 6 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 231, 270-71 (2008) (assessing police legitimacy using three factors, one of which is trust and confidence).

See infra Part I; see also Tyler & Huo, supra note 8, at 146-52 (presenting the results of a study showing racial differences in perceptions of procedural fairness); David S. Kirk & Andrew V. Papachristos,  Cultural Mechanisms and the Persistence of Neighborhood Violence , 116 Am. J. Soc . 1190, 1217 (2011); Robert J. Sampson & Dawn Jeglum Bartusch, Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences , 32 Law & Soc’y Rev . 777, 793 (1998); Jason Sunshine & Tom R. Tyler, The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing , 37 Law & Soc’y Rev . 513 (2003) (exploring the relationship between procedural fairness, police legitimacy, and public support of the police).

See, e.g. , Sunshine & Tyler, supra note 9, at 526 (“Compliance was also found to be influenced by ethnicity, income, and gender, with whites, the more well off, and female respondents more likely to comply with the law . .  . . ”); Tom R. Tyler, Policing in Black and White: Ethnic Group Differences in Trust and Confidence in the Police , 8 Police Q. 322, 333 (2005) (“White respondents reported the highest level of cooperation in fighting crime, African Americans the lowest . . . . [ I]nstitutional trust shaped cooperation among all groups . . . .”); Tom R. Tyler, Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law , 30 Crime & Just . 283, 294-95 (2003) [hereinafter Tyler, Procedural Justice ] (“[ M]inority group members are less willing to accept the decisions of legal authorities and less satisfied with those authorities with whom they deal . . . . [ M]inority group members are less likely to accept decisions because they feel unfairly treated.”).

E.g. , Sunshine & Tyler, supra note 9, at 537; Tyler, Procedural Justice , supra note 10, at 350.

Consider, for example, the case of Antronie Scott, shot and killed on February 4, 2016. When San Antonio police officer John Lee stopped Scott in order to execute an arrest warrant, “Scott spun around quickly and the officer feared for his life.” Jacob Beltran & Mark D. Wilson, Man Wanted on Two Felony Warrants, Shot Dead by Police, Was Unarmed , San Antonio Express-News (Feb. 5, 2016, 10:57 PM), http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Man-wanted-on-two -felony-warrants-shot-dead-by-6809709.php [http://perma.cc/962D-34M6].

Consider, for example, the case of Charles Kinsey, shot and injured on July 18, 2016. Kinsey, a behavioral therapist who was working with an autistic adult, was shot lying on his back, with his hands in the air. The facts surrounding the case are complex. Officer Jonathan Aledda, who shot Kinsey, later claimed that he was attempting to shoot the autistic Latino man with whom Kinsey was working; the man was holding a toy gun that the original caller had suggested might be a gun. However, several circumstances surrounding the incident weaken this potential explanation. Charles Rabin, Charles Kinsey Was Shot Less Than Six Minutes After Police Arrived , Miami Herald (Aug. 5, 2016, 5:22 PM), http:// ‌ http://www.miami ‌ herald ‌ .com/news/local/crime/article94009242.html [ http :// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /Z9K6-NBU7].

In general, it is important to note that police uses of force can be unreasonable, and thus punishable, even if the victims were disobeying the law or failing to comply with officer commands. The test of objective reasonableness in police excessive use of force cases depends on an assessment of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the use of force at issue, not simply whether the victim was breaking the law or disobeying the officer at the time of the forceful act. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 388, 396-97 (1989).

Consider, for example, the case of Eric Garner, who suffered a fatal heart attack on July 17, 2014 after police attempted to arrest him for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. See Al Baker, J. David Goodman & Benjamin Mueller, Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Eric Garner’s Death , N.Y. Times (June 13, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner -police-chokehold-staten-island.html [http://perma.cc/57S7-2FYX]; Stephen L. Carter, Law Puts Us All in Same Danger as Eric Garner , Bloomberg View (Dec. 4, 2014, 10:56 AM), http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-12-04/law-puts-us-all-in-same ‌‌ -dan ‌ ger ‌ -as -eric-garner [http://perma.cc/2X6Y-DJLB]; see also Douglas Husak, Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law 33-44 (2008) (analyzing the differences between core and peripheral criminal offenses); William J. Stuntz, Self-Defeating Crimes , 86 Va. L. Rev . 1871, 1894 (2000) (describing legislative incentives to criminalize specific behaviors at the urging of even a minority of the population). One of the perils of broken-windows policing (also known as order-maintenance or quality-of-life policing) is that its emphasis on enforcing petty laws imbues the police with increased power and focus on social and racial control, particularly in high-poverty, racially marginalized communities. See, e.g. , Robert J. Sampson, When Things Aren’t What They Seem: Context and Cognition in Appearance-Based Regulation , 125 Harv. L. Rev. F . 97, 103-06 (2012). That officers enforce these laws at all likely decreases their legitimacy. See Avani Mehta Sood, Cognitive Cleansing: Experimental Psychology and the Exclusionary Rule , 103 Geo. L.J . 1543, 1582 (2015) (suggesting, using experimental research, that unconstitutional police conduct had less effect on people’s assessments of police legitimacy when the police were intervening in serious crime compared to when they were intervening in more minor crime).

Criminal justice contact includes, but is not limited to, police stops, arrests, generalized interaction between police and communities in heavily policed neighborhoods, periods of incarceration, and periods of community supervision (including probation and parole). For a general discussion of criminal justice contact and surveillance, see, for example, Sarah Brayne, Surveillance and System Avoidance: Criminal Justice Contact and Institutional Attachment , 79 Am. Soc. Rev . 367, 370, 373, 375 (2014).

See, e.g. , Alexander, supra note 3, at 4 (“[ M]ass incarceration in the United States had . . . emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control.”); Katherine Beckett & Steve Herbert, Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America (2010); David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime & Social Order in Contemporary Society 75-92 (2001) (arguing that a variety of social, economic, political, and cultural changes arising in the late twentieth century led to changes in crime control, including shifts in policing strategy); Gottschalk , supra note 3, at 258; Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, & Punishment in America 17-26 (1995) (debunking claims that rising incarceration rates have reduced violent crime); Bruce Western, Punishment & Inequality in America 4, 43-51 (2007) (“[T]he prison boom was a political project that arose partly because of rising crime but also in response to an upheaval in American race relations in the 1960s and the collapse of urban labor markets for unskilled men in the 1970s.”); Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Managerial Justice and Mass Misdemeanors , 66 Stan. L. Rev . 611, 630, 653-70 (2014); Tracey L. Meares, Programming Errors: Understanding the Constitutionality of Stop-and-Frisk as a Program, Not an Incident , 82 U. Chi. L. Rev . 159, 162 (2015); Loïc Wacquant, Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh , 3 Punishment & Soc’y 95 (2001) (arguing that the combination of “hyperghetto” and the prison is the current stage of “peculiar institutions” designed to control African Americans, in the lineage of slavery and Jim Crow); see also Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish 138-39 (Alan Sheridan trans., 2d ed. 1995) (describing the process of “disciplinary coercion” of human bodies through societal institutions, which include the prison).

See Task Force Report, supra note 6, at 51-60; see also id. at 17, 20-21, 34, 46 (describing training initiatives under each of the six pillars: legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing and crime reduction, training and education, and officer wellness and safety). Note that the training described under Pillar Six (officer safety and wellness) is primarily safety training (e.g., training police officers to wear seat belts and bulletproof vests), not procedural justice training. The key point is that the Report leaves an overarching impression that solving the problems facing twenty-first-century police is a matter of training frontline officers, not restructuring and reimagining policing.

See, e.g. , Police Exec. Research Forum , U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Legitimacy and Procedural Justice: A New Element of Police Leadership 2 (2014), http:// ‌ www ‌ .police ‌ forum.org ‌ /assets ‌ /docs ‌ /Free_Online_Documents ‌ /Leadership ‌ /legitimacy ‌ %20and ‌ %20 ‌ p ‌ roce ‌ dural ‌ %20justice ‌ %20 -%20a%20new ‌ %20element%20of ‌ %20police%20leadership.pdf [http:/ ‌ / ‌ perma.cc/H85N -MXAJ] (“As today’s police executives strive to maintain the progress in reducing crime while serving as effective agents of change, many are taking on a new challenge: applying the concepts of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘procedural justice’ as they apply to policing.”); Local 12, Implementing “Procedural Justice” Nationwide , YouTube (Dec. 19, 2014) http:// ‌ www ‌ .youtube ‌ .com/watch?v=P1O08U8RwFo [http:// ‌ perma.cc/HF4R-9CFD]; Mark Sedevic, Procedural Justice & Police Legitimacy Training in Chicago: Reaping the Benefits of the Golden Rule , 911 M ag. , http://www.9-1-1magazine.com ‌ /Sedevic ‌ -Procedural-Justice-Train ‌ ing [http:// ‌ perma.cc/75L4-SDBG]; Ronal W. Serpas & Remi A. Braden, Reply to Community Policing Revisited: Implementing the Principles of Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy , Police Chief (Mar. 2016), http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/ideas-insights-reply-to-co ‌ m ‌ m ‌ unity -policing-revisited-implementing-the-principles-of-procedural-justice-and-police-legit ‌ i ‌ macy [http://perma.cc/9VYP-85T5] (“Integrating the principles of procedural justice and police legitimacy throughout policing is the answer to [community policing] problems. They form the basis for the core service delivery model that must be used in every citizen encounter to build the support and cooperation necessary to implement community policing more completely throughout the United States.” ( footnote omitted)).

See, e.g. , Daniela Gilbert, Stewart Wakeling & Vaughn Crandall, Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy: Using Training as a Foundation for Strengthening Community-Police Relationships 8-10 (2015) (describing the adoption of procedural justice training in three California cities—Oakland, Salinas, and Stockton); Wesley G. Skogan, Maarten Van Craen & Cari Hennessy, Training Police for Procedural Justice , 11 J. Experimental Criminology 319 (2015) (describing the Chicago training); Karim Shamsi-Basha, Birmingham Community Service Officer Heather Campbell Offers Plenty of Compassion, Courtesy , Birmingham Times (July 28, 2016), http://www.birming ‌ ham ‌ times ‌ .com ‌ /2016 ‌ /07 ‌ /bir ‌ ming ‌ ham-community-service-officer-heather-campbell-offers-plenty-of ‌ -com ‌ pass ‌ ion ‌ -cour ‌ tesy ‌ / [http:// ‌‌ perma.cc/Q8XQ-TXVR] (quoting Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper as saying, “We just went through 16 hours of procedural justice . . . . That talks about day-to-day interactions and learning how to be neutral and how to listen to people.”).

See, e.g. , United States v. City of Cleveland, No. 1:15CV1046, at 10-11 (N.D. Ohio May 25, 2016); Consent Decree at 73-74, United States v. City of Ferguson, No. 4:16-cv-000180-CDP (E.D. Mo. Mar. 17, 2016).

Sedevic, supra note 18 (“Procedural justice and police legitimacy [are] as basic as the old adage, ‘It is not what you say, but how you say it. It is not what you do, but how you are doing it.’ Procedural justice and legitimacy in law enforcement is not just a strategy, but a movement . .  . . It is about doing the right thing all of the time and treating others how you would want to be treated.”).

See, e.g. , Brandis Friedman, Chicago Police Department Ramps Up Training for ‘Police Legitimacy , ’ Chi. Tonight (Jan. 17, 2017), http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2017/01/17/chicago-po ‌ lice ‌ -department ‌ -ramps ‌ -training-police-legitimacy [http://perma.cc/RYA6-AJGT]; Kurt Rivera, Stockton Police Strive for More ‘Respectful’ Department , ABC10.com , http:// ‌ www ‌ .abc 10 ‌ .com/news/local/stockton/stockton-po ‌ lice ‌ -strive-for-more-respectful-department/3869 ‌ 1 ‌ 7 ‌ 3 ‌ 8 ‌ 8 [http://perma.cc/66JS-23H9] (describing Stockton’s adoption of a three-year strategic plan on procedural justice shortly before Trump’s inauguration).

See Donald J. Trump, 2016 Presidential Candidate Questionnaire , Int’l Ass’n Chiefs Police (Aug. 20, 2016), http://www.theiacp.org/Portals/0/documents ‌ /pdfs/TrumpResponse ‌ Final ‌ .pdf [http:// ‌ perma ‌ .cc ‌ /5YKJ-NJN5].

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter (Jan. 24, 2017, 9:25 PM), http:// ‌ twitter ‌ .com ‌‌ /real ‌ Donald ‌‌ Trump/status/824080766288228352 [http://perma.cc/RWE6-WWCQ].

See, e.g. , Eric T. Schneiderman, A Report on Arrests Arising from the New York City Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk Practices 4 (2013); John MacDonald, Jeffrey Fagan & Amanda Geller, The Effects of Local Police Surges on Crime and Arrests in New York City , 11 PLoS One (2016); see also Max Ehrenfreund, Donald Trump Claims New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy Reduced Crime. The Data Disagree , Wash. Post (Sept. 22, 2016), http:// ‌ www ‌ .wash ‌ ingtonpost.com ‌ /news/wonk ‌ /wp ‌ /2016 ‌ /09/22 ‌ /don ‌ ald-trump-claims-new-yorks-stop -and ‌ -frisk-policy-reduced-crime-the-data-disagree [http:// ‌ perma.cc/N7NY-KGXH].

See Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).

392 U.S. 1, 27 (1968) (describing the type of factual analysis an officer must conduct to justify suspicion for a stop-and-frisk).

Alexander Bolton, Trump Team Prepares Dramatic Cuts , Hill (Jan. 19, 2017), http:/ ‌ /thehill ‌ .com/policy ‌ /finance ‌ /314991-trump-team-prepares-dramatic-cuts [http://perma.cc/HK77 -FPGN].

See John J. Donohue III & Jens Ludwig, More COPS , Brookings Pol’y Brief 3 (Mar. 2007) (“COPS increased the total number of police officers on the street in the peak year of 2000 by 11,900 officers, equal to around 2 percent of the total police force in the country that year.”).

Presidential Executive Order on a Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety , White House (Feb. 9, 2017), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office ‌ /2017/02 ‌ /09 ‌ /pres ‌ iden ‌ tial ‌‌ -executive-order-task-force-crime-reduction-and-public [http:/ ‌ /perma.cc/K98A -6VDM].

Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers , White House (Feb. 9, 2017), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press -office ‌ /2017/02/09/presidential-executive-order-preventing-violence-against-federal-state [http:// ‌ perma.cc/QS39-X6SM].

See John Fritze, Jeff Sessions Voices Concern About Use of Consent Decrees for Police , Balt. Sun (Jan. 10, 2017), http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/blog/bal-jeff-sess ‌ ions ‌ -voices ‌ concern ‌ -a ‌ bout ‌ -use-of-consent-decrees-for-police-20170110-story.html [http:// ‌ perma.cc/2V9G-WP5J].

See Police Exec. Research Forum , Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned 4 (2013); see also infra notes 261-264 and accompanying text.

Shibani Mahtani, Community Policing Program Faces Uncertainty Under Donald Trump Administration , Wall St. J . (Nov. 30, 2016), http://www.wsj.com/articles/community-polic ing-program-faces-uncertainty-under-donald-trump-administration-1480518002 [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /KF6B-AAZ6].

See, e.g. , Samuel Walker, Why Police Reform Won’t Die Under Trump , Crime Rep . (Nov. 28, 2016), http://thecrimereport.org/2016/11/28/why-police-reform-wont-end-with-the-trump ‌ -admin ‌ istration [http://perma.cc/H9XM-DZM3].

See, e.g. , George L. Kelling & James Q. Wilson, Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety , Atlantic (Mar. 1982), http://www.theatlantic.com ‌ /magazine ‌ /archive ‌ /1982 ‌ /03 ‌ /brok ‌ en ‌ -windows/304465 [ http://perma.cc/E454-KWSW] .

Wesley G. Skogan & Susan M. Hartnett, Community Policing, Chicago Style 10 (1999) (“Interest in community policing has also been encouraged by the emergence of a cadre of well-educated and sophisticated administrators at the top of prominent police departments . .  . .  They have been impressed by two decades of research on policing, which has highlighted some of the limitations of the way in which it traditionally has been organized.”).

See, e.g. , Anthony A. Braga, Andrew V. Papachristos & David M. Hureau, The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis , 31 Just. Q. 633 (2014).

See, e.g. , Walter L. Perry et al. , Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations , Rand Corp. 3-6 (2013), http://www.ncjrs.gov ‌ /pdffiles1/nij ‌ /grants ‌ /243830 ‌ .pdf [ http://perma.cc/5LM5-C5JY] ( describing the origins of predictive policing, which partly derived from a growing interest in crime prediction among quantitative criminologists over the past forty years).

Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2069-71 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).

Sampson & Bartusch, supra note Error! Bookmark not defined. , at 778.

E.g. , Monica C. Bell, Situational Trust: How Disadvantaged Mothers Reconceive Legal Cynicism , 50 Law & Soc’y Rev. 314 (2016); Jacinta M. Gau, Procedural Justice, Police Legitimacy, and Legal Cynicism: A Test for Mediation Effects , 16 Police Prac. & Res. 402 (2015); David S. Kirk, Prisoner Reentry and the Reproduction of Legal Cynicism , 63 Soc. Probs . 222 (2016).

Kirk & Papachristos, supra note 9, at 1191.

E.g. , Tom R. Tyler & Justin Sevier, How Do the Courts Create Popular Legitimacy ?: The Role of Establishing the Truth, Punishing Justly, and/or Acting Through Just Procedures , 77 Alb. L. Rev. 1095, 1129-30 (2014) (arguing that signaling inclusion is a pathway for legal authorities to get people to comply and cooperate with the law); see also Tyler & Huo, supra note 8, at xiii. This difference arises not because legitimacy scholars disregard the intrinsic value of inclusion and cohesion, but because those ends are not their outcome (or independent variables) of interest. Notably, even when this scholarship does discuss inclusion, it does so more from an individualized identity-based framework than a collective one. See, e.g. , Tom R. Tyler & Allen E. Lind, A Relational Model of Authority in Groups , 25 Advances Experimental Soc. Pyschol. 115, 139, 142 (1992) (describing the “group-value model of procedural justice,” which theorizes the consequences of treatment by authority figures on people’s sense of their own status within a group, or within society, and their “feelings of self-worth”). Group-value theory provides an account of how procedural justice contributes to an individual’s sense of belongingness within a group. It does not give an account of groups’ sense of belongingness within society. Because group-sense (culture) cannot be understood merely as an aggregation of individual perceptions, these analyses are different in kind, not mere differences in scale.

See Tom R. Tyler et al., The Impact of Psychological Science on Policing in the United States: Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Effective Law Enforcement , 16 Psychol. Sci. Pub . Int. 75 (2015).

See Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology 75, 191, 220-21 (2015) (describing the pioneering scholarship of the “Du Bois-Atlanta school” of sociology).

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, Preface to Some Notes on Negro Crime: Particularly in Georgia , at v, v (W. E. Burghardt Du Bois ed., 1904) http://scua.library.umass.edu ‌ /digital ‌ / dubois ‌ /dubois ‌ 9 ‌ .pdf [http://perma.cc/2H78-DHBZ].

Id. at 40, 43-48.

Id. at 65. In earlier work, Du Bois had been somewhat hesitant to draw a link between objectively unfair criminal justice practices and African Americans’ perceptions of criminal injustice. See W.E.B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study 175 (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ed., 2007) (1899) (“It has been charged by some Negroes that color prejudice plays some part, but there is no tangible proof of this, save perhaps that there is apt to be a certain presumption of guilt when a Negro is accused, on the part of police, public and judge.”).

Du Bois, Some Notes on Negro Crime: Particularly in Georgia , supra note 47, at 65.

Nat’l Advisory Comm’n on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders , Nat’l Crim. Just. Ref. Serv . 19 (1968) [hereinafter Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders] http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1 ‌ /Digitization ‌ /8073 ‌ NCJRS.pdf [http://perma.cc/75NB-BTNG].

Id. at 157; see also Stephen J. Schulhofer, Tom R. Tyler & Aziz Z. Huq, American Policing at a Crossroads: Unsustainable Policies and the Procedural Justice Alternative , 101 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 335, 342-43 (2011) (explaining that in recent years, police officers’ “preference for toughness” was believed to be harmonious with order-maintenance policing models, thereby serving positive ends for urban communities).

See, e.g. , Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (2003); Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness 232-40 (2010).

E.g. , Alexandra Natapoff, Underenforcement , 75 Fordham L. Rev . 1715, 1718-19 (2006). It is interesting to note that the underlying logic for harshly present policing even then—well before the philosophical turn in policing toward “community policing” and broken-windows policing, and shortly before the earliest years of the War on Drugs—was that heavy presence and harshness were necessary to reduce crime. See Kelling & Wilson, supra note 36 (explaining the broken-windows theory of policing, also known as order-maintenance or quality-of-life policing). The frayed relationship between African Americans and law enforcement was deeply entrenched well before the War on Drugs. Mass incarceration increased in part due to the War, but the issue of racialized policing has much deeper roots. Cf. Western, supra note 16, at 58 (crediting, partially, the rise of mass incarceration to shifts in the punishment of narcotics crimes).

John Hagan & Celesta Albonetti, Race, Class, and the Perception of Criminal Injustice in America , 88 Am . J. Soc. 329, 343 (1982).

Tracey L. Meares, Charting Race and Class Differences in Attitudes Toward Drug Legalization and Law Enforcement: Lessons for Federal Criminal Law , 1 Buffalo Crim. L. Rev . 137, 140, 142, 144-45 (1997) (drawing on data from the 1987 General Social Survey); see also Richard R.W. Brooks, Fear and Fairness in the City: Criminal Enforcement and Perceptions of Fairness in Minority Communities , 73 S. Cal. L. Rev . 1219, 1228-29 (2000) (“[ W]hile blacks are more likely than the general population to view police brutality and harassment as a problem, they are also much more likely to perceive crime as a serious problem. Thus blacks suffer from a ‘dual frustration’—being fearful of both the police and criminals.” ( footnotes omitted)).

Lawrence D. Bobo & Victor Thompson, Unfair by Design: The War on Drugs, Race, and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System , 73 Soc. Res. 445, 456 (2006).

See, e.g. , Roland G. Fryer, Jr., An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force 35 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Research, Working Paper No. 22399, 2006), http:// ‌ www ‌ .nber ‌ .org/papers/w22399 [ http://perma.cc/37MZ-3FYV ] (finding that police in the cities studied were much more likely to use nonlethal force, such as pepper spray or batons, when dealing with blacks and Hispanics, but finding no evidence of racial disparity in their use of lethal force); Campaign Zero , http://www.joincampaignzero.org [http:/ ‌ /perma.cc ‌ /Q5XM -EUBN].

E.g. , Charles R. Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody & Donald Haider-Markel, Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship 135-36 (2014).

See, e.g. , Johnson supra , note 54; Muhammad supra , note 54, at 232-40.

Cf. Schulhofer, Tyler & Huq, supra note 53, at 341 (identifying an analogous failure of the academic community to articulate the meaning of police legitimacy).

This literature is very extensive and cannot be fully cited here, but some foundational works in the development of a sociological perspective on trust are critical to note. See, e.g. , James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory 91-116 (1990); S .N. Eisenstadt, Power, Trust and Meaning: Essays in Sociological Theory and Analysis 14-16, 311-14 (1995); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity 26-36 (1990); Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power (John Wiley & Sons 1979) (1973); Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money 178-79 (Tom Bottomore & David Frisby trans., 1978).

Tom R. Tyler, Trust in the Twenty-First Century , in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Trust: Towards Theoretical and Methodological Integration 203, 204 (Ellie Shockley et al. eds ., 2016).

Tyler & Huo , supra note 8, at xiv.

Id. at 108-09. But see Kirk & Papachristos, supra note 9, at 1207 & n.13 (focusing more narrowly on cynicism towards the legal system, as opposed to cynicism more broadly). Tyler and Huo’s conception and operationalization of cynicism about the law bears only a tenuous relationship to how sociologists conceive of and measure legal cynicism, and instead focuses on the degree to which people see themselves as “against the law” rather than more deeply alienated from it. See Tyler & Huo , supra note 8, at 104-05 (“Certainly, people with this orientation feel little responsibility or obligation to obey the law voluntarily.”).

Tyler & Huo , supra note 8, at 108-09. Although obligation to obey the law is only one component of legitimacy surveys, that component supersedes the others in part because of the conceptual definition of legitimacy. Tyler usually incorporates the idea of trust into the concepts of “motive-based trust,” or, alternatively, “normative alignment.” Motive-based trust is the degree to which people believe the police have positive, trustworthy motives. Id. at 59. Normative alignment is a slightly different concept, and focuses on the degree to which people believe the police share their values. Tom R. Tyler, Jonathan Jackson & Avital Mentovich, The Consequences of Being an Object of Suspicion: Potential Pitfalls of Proactive Police Contact , 12 J. Empirical Legal Stud . 602, 620 (2015). This literature has also, alternatively, conceived of legitimacy as a form of institutional trust in the government. Id . at 602, 620-21 (describing how the authors operationalized police normative alignment and trust in police motives in their survey).

For a targeted review of links among race, poverty, and trust, see Sandra Susan Smith, Race and Trust , 36 Ann. Rev. Soc. 453 (2010).

Tyler & Fagan, supra note 8, at 235.

See Tyler & Huo , supra note 8; see also Josh Bowers & Paul H. Robinson, Perceptions of Fairness and Justice: The Shared Aims and Occasional Conflicts of Legitimacy and Moral Credibility , 47 Wake Forest L. Rev . 211, 278 n.310 (2012) (pointing out that in Tyler’s earlier work, the moral credibility of the system had more weight than legitimacy of the system in determining people’s reported willingness to comply with the law); Michael D. Reisig, Jason Bratton & Marc G. Gertz, The Construct Validity and Refinement of Process-Based Policing Measures , 34 Crim. Just. & Behav. 1005, 1024 (2007) (confirming the link between procedural justice and legitimacy but also finding, inter alia, that trust in the police and perceived distributive fairness of outcomes were predictive of compliance and cooperation with law enforcement).

E.g. , Lorraine Mazerolle et al., Shaping Citizen Perceptions of Police Legitimacy: A Randomized Field Trial of Procedural Justice , 51 Criminology 33, 40-41 (2013).

See John Thibaut et al., Procedural Justice as Fairness , 26 Stan. L. Rev. 1271 (1974); John Thibaut & Laurens Walker, A Theory of Procedure , 66 Calif. L. Rev. 541 (1978).

See, e.g. , Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court (forthcoming) (chapter 1, manuscript at 3) (on file with author); Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Legitimacy and the Constitution , 118 Harv. L. Rev . 1787, 1795-1801 (2005) [hereinafter Fallon, Legitimacy and the Constitution ]; Alan Hyde, The Concept of Legitimation in the Sociology of Law , 1983 Wis. L. Rev . 379; see also Aditi Bagchi, Intention, Torture, and the Concept of State Crime , 114 Penn. St. L. Rev. 1, 23-25 (2009) (applying these concepts to illuminate a practical legal problem).

See Tyler & Fagan, supra note 8, at 239; cf. David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power 24 (2d ed. 2013) (describing the author’s “conviction that it is necessary for social science to be freed from the whole Weberian legacy if it is to make sense of the subject of legitimacy”).

See Beetham, supra note 74, at 24-25; Fallon, Legitimacy and the Constitution, supra note 73, at 1795.

Ideal types can be roughly understood as archetypes or categories. See Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences 90 (Edward A. Shils & Henry A. Finch eds. & trans., 1949); see also Kohler- Hausmann, supra note 16, at 623 & n.24.

1 Max Weber, Economy & Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology 215-16 (Guenther Roth & Claus Wittich eds ., Ephraim Fischoff et al. trans., 1978); see also Duncan Kennedy, The Disenchantment of Logically Formal Legal Rationality, or Max Weber’s Sociology in the Genealogy of the Contemporary Mode of Western Legal Thought , 55 Hastings L.J . 1031, 1037-44 (2004) (describing the “basic ideal typical categories Weber used in constructing his sociology of law”).

See Anthony T. Kronman, Max Weber 96-117 (1983). For Weber, legitimacy was a sociological concept about the nature of the populace’s belief in a given authority rather than a moral status, but one can perceive some slippage in Weber’s work on this point between the sociological and the normative. See generally Beetham , supra note 74, at 7-8 (comparing political philosophy and social scientific ideas of legitimacy); Fallon, Legitimacy and the Constitution , supra note 73, at 1795-1801 (comparing sociological legitimacy with moral legitimacy).

See Robert M. Cover, Violence and the Word , 95 Yale L.J . 1601, 1607-08 (1986) (explaining the connection between law as state power and violence).

As opposed to the institutional realm, which might focus on other authorities such as the church, the university, the corporation, and so forth.

Beetham , supra note 74, at 8-10 (describing the distinctions between moral and social scientific conceptions of legitimacy).

Id. at 20 (“[ L]egitimacy is . . . a set of distinct criteria, or multiple dimensions, operating at different levels, each of which provides moral grounds for compliance or cooperation on the part of those subordinate to a given power relation.”).

See Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy 222-37 (William Rehg trans., 1996). Of course, by this metric, little about policing in racially and socioeconomically isolated neighborhoods could be seen as legitimate given that police governance is rarely subjected to dialogue or even to public process. Barry Friedman & Maria Ponomarenko, Democratic Policing , 90 N.Y.U. L. Rev . 1827, 1835 (2015) (“[ P]olicing suffers from a failure of democratic accountability, of policy rationality, of transparency, and of oversight that would never be tolerated for any other agency of executive government.”); see also David Alan Sklansky, Democracy and the Police 13-58 (2008) (describing democratic pluralist approaches to police governance). Indeed, many police officials and unions, today and in the past, view the involvement of civilians in police governance as counterproductive to the work of crime response and deterrence. Thus, various measures have been taken to curtail their power. See generally Samuel Walker, Police Accountability: The Role of Citizen Oversight (2001) (describing attempts to introduce civilian oversight to various city police departments); David Alan Sklansky, Police and Democracy , 103 Mich. L. Rev . 1699 (2005) (describing setbacks for civilian review boards in several cities). In a recent debate over a set of extensive police reforms in Maryland, civilian membership on police accountability boards was reportedly the primary sticking point between the police union and reform advocates. Ovetta Wiggins, Sweeping Maryland Police Reform Measure Hits Stumbling Block , Wash. Post (Apr. 5, 2016), http:// ‌ www ‌ .washingtonpost.com /local/md-politics/sweeping-maryland -police-re ‌ form ‌ -measure-hits-stumbling-block/2016/04/05/e5a0b2dc-fada-11e5-886f -a037dba38301 ‌ _sto ‌ ry.html [http:/ ‌ /perma.cc/2A54-FQG6]. Ultimately, the reform act passed and went into effect with its original language mandating civilian involvement in police accountability removed, leaving it to individual jurisdictions to decide whether to include civilians in reviewing police misconduct complaints. Justin Fenton, Citizens to Gain Peek at Police Discipline, but Not Full View , Balt. Sun (Apr. 17, 2016), http://www.baltimoresun.com ‌ /news ‌ / maryland ‌ /crime/bs-md ‌ -police-accountability-bills-20160417-story.html [http://perma.cc/7LDG-DP9Q].

See 1 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks 137 (Joseph A. Buttigieg trans., Columbia Univ. Press 1992) (1948) .

See, e.g. , Tom R. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law 19-27 (1990) (orienting this application of legitimacy theoretically); Tyler & Huo , supra note 8, at 102 (explaining the importance of self-regulation and internalized obligation to defer to the law); Tom R. Tyler & Cheryl J. Wakslak, Profiling and Police Legitimacy: Procedural Justice, Attributions of Motive, and Acceptance of Police Authority , 42 Criminology 253, 254-55 (2004) (describing the public’s view of police legitimacy in the context of racial profiling).

See, e.g. , Task Force Report , supra note 6, at 1-2; Rich (Skip) Miller, The Importance of Procedural Justice , Community Policing Dispatch (Sept. 2013), http://cops.usdoj .gov ‌ /html ‌ /dispatch ‌ /09-2013/the_importance_of_procedural_justice.asp [http://perma.cc ‌ /M6S7 ‌ -96TH] (describing procedural justice implementation in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota police department and encouraging other departments to take a similar approach, explaining, “If the community views their officers as being legitimate they are more likely to comply with the law. They are also more likely to agree with police decisions and less likely to be confrontational or hostile toward us.”).

See, e.g. , Schulhofer, Tyler & Huq, supra note 53, at 374; Tom R. Tyler, Multiculturalism and the Willingness of Citizens To Defer to Law and to Legal Authorities , 25 Law & Soc. Inquiry 983, 999 (2000) (“Demographic characteristics such as ethnicity and gender do not affect the relative importance of procedural justice concerns in determining procedural preferences—everyone cares about procedural justice.”); Tom R. Tyler, What Is Procedural Justice ?: Criteria Used by Citizens To Assess the Fairness of Legal Procedures , 22 Law & Soc’y Rev . 103, 125 (1988).

See, e.g. , Tom R. Tyler, Policing in Black and White: Ethnic Group Differences in Trust and Confidence in the Police , 8 Police Q . 322 (2005).

See Josh Bowers & Paul H. Robinson, Perceptions of Fairness and Justice: The Shared Aims and Occasional Conflicts of Legitimacy and Moral Credibility , 47 Wake Forest L. Rev . 211, 220 (2012); Tracey L. Meares, Tom R. Tyler & Jacob Gardener, Lawful or Fair? How Cops and Laypeople Perceive Good Policing , 105 J. Crim. L. & Criminology (2016). But see Aziz H. Huq, Jonathan Jackson & Rick Trinkner, Legitimating Practices: Revisiting the Predicates of Police Legitimacy , 56 Brit. J. Criminology (2016) (delving deeper into specific police practices that are perceived to be fair or unfair).

Although the police legitimacy research has inspired a great deal of legal scholarship, the overwhelming majority of that scholarship has applied the concept to topics other than the regulation of regular police. Scholars have applied the theory to areas as diverse as juvenile justice, e.g. , Janet E. Ainsworth, Re-Imagining Childhood and Reconstructing the Legal Order: The Case for Abolishing the Juvenile Court , 69 N.C. L. Rev . 1083 (1991), civil dispute resolution, e.g. , Michael Abramowicz, On the Alienability of Legal Claims , 114 Yale L.J. 697 (2005); Donna Shestowsky, How Litigants Evaluate the Characteristics of Legal Procedures: A Multi-Court Empirical Study , 49 U.C. Davis L. Rev . 793 (2016); Lawrence B. Solum, Procedural Justice , 78 S . Cal. L. Rev. 181 (2004), other areas of criminal justice, e.g. , Russell M. Gold, Beyond the Judicial Fourth Amendment: The Prosecutor’s Role , 47 U.C. Davis L. Rev . 1591 (2014) (on prosecutors); Michael M. O’Hear, Plea Bargaining and Procedural Justice , 42 Ga. L. Rev. 407 (2008) (on plea bargaining); Elizabeth Ingriselli, Note, Mitigating Jurors’ Racial Biases: The Effects of Content and Timing of Jury Instructions , 124 Yale L.J. 1690 (2015) (on jury instructions), to national security, e.g. , Aziz Z. Huq, The Social Production of National Security , 98 Cornell L. Rev. 637, 693-96 (2013); Jenny S. Martinez, Process and Substance in the “War on Terror , ” 108 Colum. L. Rev . 1013 (2008), and to other legal contexts and areas of the law, e.g. , Bernadette Atuahene, The Importance of Conversation in Transitional Justice: A Study of Land Restitution in South Africa , 39 Law & Soc. Inquiry 902 (2014) (applying procedural justice to transitional justice); Ellen Berrey, Steve G. Hoffman & Laura Beth Nielsen, Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation , 46 Law & Soc’y Rev . 1 (2012) (on procedural justice in employment discrimination litigation); Jennifer K. Brooke & Tom R. Tyler, Diversity and Corporate Performance: A Review of the Psychological Literature , 89 N.C. L. Rev . 715 (2011) (on procedural justice in workplace diversity management); Margaret B. Kwoka, Leaking and Legitimacy , 48 U.C. Davis L. Rev . 1387 (2015) (arguing that governmental transparency laws would reduce the threat of mass information leaks); Alexandra D. Lahav, Portraits of Resistance: Lawyer Responses to Unjust Proceedings , 57 UCLA L. Rev . 725 (2010) (on lawyers’ interpretations of procedural justice); Justin Sevier, Popularizing Hearsay , 104 Geo. L.J . 643 (2016) (on the procedural justice rationale for the hearsay rule).

Schulhofer, Tyler & Huq, supra note 53.

Id. at 351.

Id. at 357-59. For more recent, extended discussions of departmental management as internal procedural justice, see Task Force Report, supra note 6, at 10, 14; and Rick Trinkner, Tom R. Tyler & Philip Atiba Goff, Justice from Within: The Relations Between a Procedurally Just Organizational Climate and Police Organizational Efficiency, Endorsement of Democratic Policing, and Officer Well-Being , 22 Psychol. Pub. Pol’y & L . 158 (2016). John Rappaport proposes second-order regulation of police through means other than the courts in part because of the argument against direct regulation of police through law in the police legitimacy literature. John Rappaport, Second-Order Regulation of Law Enforcement , 103 Calif. L. Rev. 205, 240-45 (2015).

Schulhofer, Tyler & Huq, supra note 53, at 364-74. This impulse should be eschewed not only because of civil libertarian concerns, but also because these tactics make people less likely to cooperate with police to aid in local counterterrorism efforts. See Amna Akbar, National Security’s Broken Windows , 62 UCLA L. Rev. 834, 890-905 (2015) (urging caution about police strategies to engage American Muslim communities in counterterrorism efforts).

Rachel A. Harmon, The Problem of Policing , 110 Mich. L. Rev . 761, 788-90 (2012) (characterizing the scholarship of Fagan, Harcourt, Meares, Tyler, and others as “non law”).

Tracey L. Meares, The Good Cop: Knowing the Difference Between Lawful or Effective Policing and Rightful Policing—and Why It Matters , 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1865, 1875-79 (2013) ; Tracey L. Meares & Peter Neyroud, Rightful Policing , New Persp. Policing (Feb. 2015), http:// ‌ http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/248411.pdf [http://perma.cc/4QMX-JW3C].

Meares & Neyroud, supra note 96, at 8-11.

See Tracey Meares, Broken Windows, Neighborhoods, and the Legitimacy of Law Enforcement or Why I Fell in and out of Love with Zimbardo , 52 J. Res. Crime & Delinq. 609, 611 (2015) [hereinafter Meares, Broken Windows ] (explaining Meares’s skepticism of broken-windows policing, which she had earlier embraced, and the benefits of the legitimacy model); see also Tracey L. Meares, The Legitimacy of Police Among Young African-American Men , 92 Marq. L. Rev. 651, 653 (2009) [hereinafter Meares, Legitimacy of Police ] (“The form of policing that has the potential to solve the ‘race issue’ emphasizes process rather than outcomes and moral engagement as opposed to notions of criminal deterrence.”).

Bernard E. Harcourt & Tracey L. Meares, Randomization and the Fourth Amendment , 78 U. Chi. L. Rev. 809 (2011); see also Bernard E. Harcourt, Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age 237-39 (2007) (making an ambitious case that randomizing law enforcement is the only way to free it from the bias endemic to predictive or “actuarial” modes of criminal investigation and enforcement).

See United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 560 (1976) (“[ I]ndividualized suspicion is usually a prerequisite to a constitutional search or seizure.”).

Meares, supra note 16, at 162; see also Report of Plaintiffs’ Expert Dr. Jeffrey Fagan at 18, Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (No. 44-5) (describing the racial geography of stop-and-frisk in New York); Jeffrey Fagan & Garth Davies, Street Stops and Broken Windows: Terry , Race, and Disorder in New York City , 28 Fordham Urb. L.J . 457, 461-64 (2000) (same); Jeffrey Fagan & Amanda Geller, Following the Script: Narratives of Suspicion in Terry Stops in Street Policing , 82 U. Chi. L. Rev. 51, 68 (2015) (showing that police officers use group-based rather than only individual-based justifications for suspicion). For a similar argument that is not based on police legitimacy theory, see Akhil Reed Amar, Fourth Amendment First Principles , 107 Harv. L. Rev. 757, 808 (1994) (“Even if racially disparate impact alone does not violate the Constitution, surely equal protection principles call for concern when blacks bear the brunt of a government search or seizure policy. Thus, in a variety of search and seizure contexts, we must honestly address racially imbalanced effects and ask ourselves whether they are truly reasonable.”). But see Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996) (concluding that selective law enforcement on the basis of race must be addressed using a Fourteenth Amendment equal protection analysis, not via the Fourth Amendment).

Aziz Z. Huq, The Consequences of Disparate Policing: Evaluating Stop-and-Frisk as a Modality of Urban Policing , 100 Minn. L. Rev . (forthcoming 2017), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3 ‌ /pap ‌ ers ‌ .cfm ?abstract _id=2845540 [http://perma.cc/4ZGT-Q45U].

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, supra note 51, at 19. Disparate approaches are fundamental to the organization of modern policing. Egon Bittner, The Functions of the Police in Modern Society 10 (1970) (“As is well known, the preferred targets of special police concern are some ethnic and racial minorities, the poor living in urban slums, and young people in general . .  . . [ T]his kind of reasoning was basic to the very creation of the police; for it was not assumed initially that the police would enforce laws in the broad sense, but that they would concentrate on the control of individual and collective tendencies towards transgression and disorder issuing from what were referred to as the ‘dangerous classes.’”).

William A. Westley, Violence and the Police , 59 Am. J. Soc . 34, 40 (1953).

Peter Moskos, Cop in the Hood 53 (2008) (describing Baltimore police officers’ critiques of particular “cultures” rather than races); cf. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States 87-90 (4th ed. 2014) (describing coded language that some whites use to describe negative interactions with blacks); Ian F. Haney López, Post-Racial Racism: Racial Stratification and Mass Incarceration in the Age of Obama , 98 Calif. L. Rev . 1023, 1063-64 (2010) (arguing that references to alleged cultures of criminality serve as a proxy for overt racist language in the era of “colorblindness”).

See, e.g. , Mariano Delle Donne, Procedural Justice: How a Simple Concept Can Help Cops Make a Big Impact , PoliceOne.com (May 6, 2016), http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues ‌ /articles ‌ /178689006-Procedural-justice-How-a-simple-concept-can-help-cops-make-a-big -impact [http://perma.cc/G57E-ZF33]; Sedevic, supra note 18.

See, e.g. , Tyler et al., supra note 45, at 77 (“A focus on building legitimacy via procedural justice is surely not the whole of effective policing, but it is an important component and one that offers the possibility of making improvements that are both affordable and manageable by the police.”).

See Wesley G. Skogan, Maarten Van Craen & Cari Hennessy, Training Police for Procedural Justice , 11 J. Experimental Criminology 319 (2015) (offering a positive evaluation of a Chicago police training program based largely on insights from legitimacy theory); see also Task Force Report , supra note 6, at 17, 20-21, 34, 46, 67.

See Tyler et al. , supra note 45, at 77.

See, e.g. , Epp, M aynard-Moody & Haider-Markel , supra note 60, at 4-5; Paul Butler, The System Is Working the Way It Is Supposed To: The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform , 104 Geo. L.J. 1419, 1468 (2016) (“The problem with reform that is focused on improving perceptions about the police is that it can cloak aggressive policing in enhanced legitimacy, and it has the potential to blunt the momentum for rising up against overcriminalization, wealth inequality, and white supremacy.”); Robert MacCoun, Voice, Control, and Belonging: The Double-Edged Sword of Procedural Fairness , 1 Ann. Rev. L. & Soc. Sci . 171, 189 (2005) (“In the procedural justice domain, the concern is that authorities can use the appearance of fair procedure (dignity, respect, voice) as an inexpensive way to coopt citizens and distract them from outcomes that by normative criteria might be considered substantively unfair or biased.”); William J. Stuntz, Local Policing After the Terror , 111 Yale L.J . 2137, 2174 (2002) (“If Tyler’s claims are even partly true, the police could simultaneously increase the number of Terry stops, decrease the injury those stops cause, and substantially reduce complaints of police discrimination—all without changing the way they select search targets.”). From a Gramscian perspective, procedural justice might be part of a politically hegemonic discourse that assures public consent to domination. See Gramsci, supra note 84, at 137.

See, e.g. , United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 203-04 (2002) (ruling that a search was voluntary in part because the officer spoke in a “polite, quiet voice”); Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 531 (1983) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (arguing that a search was voluntary in part because “[ t]here were neither threats nor any show of force,” “[t]he detectives did not touch [defendant] and made no demands,” and “the detectives were quite polite”); United States v. Hughes, 640 F.3d 428, 437 (1st Cir. 2011) (“The troopers were polite and never hectored the defendant or raised their voices. Details such as these are entitled to some weight in determining whether a particular interrogation was custodial.”); Lopera v. Town of Coventry, 640 F.3d 388, 407-08 (1st Cir. 2011) (Thompson, J., dissenting) (“[ T]he fact that the officers were polite, particularly given all else that was occurring at the highly charged scene, does not establish that [the defendant] was not coerced . . . . [ S]ubtle and polite coercion is just as objectionable as more obvious browbeating.”); United States v. Kim, 27 F.3d 947, 965-66 (3d Cir. 1994) (“Although the tone of the officer’s voice is relevant to the extent that a forceful tone of voice may make a reasonable person think that they must comply with the officer’s requests . . . the lack of such a forceful tone does not entirely deprive blunt and direct questions of their coercive force.”); United States v. Munoz, 987 F. Supp. 2d 438, 447 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (“The police officers’ polite treatment does not outweigh the coercive effect of a false promise that a warrant would issue, particularly when coupled with the threat of arrest.”).

See Jeremy Bentham, The Book of Fallacies 350 (Philip Schofield ed., 2015) (1824) (“A sham security is a great deal worse than none: a consciousness of insecurity keeps suspicion and vigilance alive: a sham security, according to the extent to which it is accepted as real, relaxes suspicion or destroys it.”).

See supra text accompanying notes 76-78.

Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society 102 (W.D. Halls trans., 2014) (1893).

Id. at 88-91; cf. Foucault, supra note 16, at 138 (describing the project of modern criminal justice as bodily discipline).

Durkheim , supra note 114, at 90.

Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure 216 (1957).

See Bernard E. Harcourt, Reflecting on the Subject: A Critique of the Social Influence Conception of Deterrence, the Broken Windows Theory, and Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style , 97 Mich. L. Rev . 291, 347-68 (1998) (critiquing the use of Durkheim to support order-maintenance policing among law-and-social-norms scholars and proposing a Foucauldian bodily control perspective).

Sampson & Bartusch, supra note 9, at 777.

Id. at 778.

See Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology 246-58 (George Simpson ed., John A. Spaulding & George Simpson trans., Free Press 1951) (1897). Merton refined this conception of anomie. He saw anomie arising from “strain,” the increasing growth of society’s goals and the inability of society to provide to everyone the means necessary to achieve those goals. Merton, supra note 117, at 211. This definition fits well with the problem of racialized and class-located anomie and disobedience of the law that concerns many scholars and lawmakers today.

Liminality is a state of being in-between, not fully inside a particular institution or cultural milieu, but not fully detached from it. See Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual 93-94 (1967) ; Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage 11 (Monika B. Vizedom & Gabrielle L. Caffee trans., Univ. of Chi. Press 1960). It is worth nothing that Van Gennep was a sharp critic of Durkheim, though the critique focused more on Durkheim’s use of data and not on basic concepts like anomie. See Bjørn Thomassen, Emile Durkheim Between Gabriel Tarde and Arnold van Gennep: Founding Moments of Sociology and Anthropology , 24 Soc. Anthropology 231, 238-40 (2012). For examples of scholarship applying the concept of liminality in studies of marginal groups in the United States, see Khiara M. Bridges, An Anthropological Meditation on Ex Parte Anonymous - A Judicial Bypass Procedure for an Adolescent’s Abortion , 94 Calif. L. Rev . 215, 223-24 & n.39 (2006); Jennifer Chacón, Producing Liminal Legality , 92 Denv. U. L. Rev . 709, 713-18 (2015); Cecilia Menjívar, Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants’ Lives in the United States , 111 Am . J. Soc. 999, 1007 (2006); and Priscilla Ocen, ( E)Racing Childhood: Examining the Racialized Construction of Childhood and Innocence in the Treatment of Sexually Exploited Minors , 62 UCLA L. Rev . 1586, 1596-1600 (2015).

Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street 34 (1999).

See Robert K. Merton, Social Structure and Anomie , 3 Am. Soc. Rev . 672, 672 (1938) (arguing that anomie is not only the product of wayward human impulses with an insufficient amount of legal constraint, but that law and the social structure itself can “exert a definite pressure” on people, producing anomie and deviant behavior).

However, an increasing body of research on legal legitimacy focuses specifically on communities that are generally understood to be high in legal cynicism. Compare Sampson & Bartusch, supra note 9, at 780-81 (discussing research on black and inner-city populations), with Victor M. Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (2011) (discussing the interactions between law enforcement institutions and young black and Latino men in Oakland).

See Robert J. Sampson, Great American City 365-67 (2012); Kirk & Papachristos, supra note 9; see also Jacinta M. Gau, Procedural Justice, Police Legitimacy, and Legal Cynicism: A Test for Mediation Effects , 16 Police Prac. & Res. 402 (2015) (analyzing links between legitimacy and cynicism) ; Neil Gross, A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms , 74 Am. Soc. Rev. 358, 373-74 (2009) (examining the role of social mechanisms in cultural analysis); Alex R. Piquero et al., Developmental Trajectories of Legal Socialization Among Serious Adolescent Offenders , 96 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 267, 270-72 (2005) (discussing legal socialization and legitimation of the law among adolescent offenders).

Eminent political scientist Michael Dawson has offered the most widely known articulation of this idea. See, e.g. , Michael Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics 57 (1994).

See Sampson & Bartusch, supra note 9, at 784 (“One can be highly intolerant of crime, but live in a disadvantaged context bereft of legal sanctions and perceived justice.”).

See, e.g. , Bell, supra note 42, at 316 (describing “‘mothers’ narratives of occasional police reliance, despite their overarching distrust”) ; Forrest Stuart, Becoming “Copwise”: Policing, Culture, and the Collateral Consequences of Street-Level Criminalization , 50 Law & Soc’y Rev . 279, 292-93 (2016) (describing Skid Row residents’ strategies for understanding unpredictable police actions by learning to “see like a cop”).

See Brooks, supra note 57, at 1224 & n.20; Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Near Certainty of Anti-Police Violence , Atlantic (July 12, 2016), http://www.theatlantic.com ‌ /politics ‌ /archive ‌ /2016 ‌ /07 ‌ /the ‌ -near-certainty-of-anti-police-violence/490541 [ http://perma.cc/QZ87-XBY3 ] (“In the black community, it’s the force they deploy, and not any higher American ideal, that gives police their power . .  . . [ I]f the law represents nothing but the greatest force, then it really is indistinguishable from any other street gang.”); Kay Levine & Virginia Mellema, Strategizing the Street: How Law Matters in the Lives of Women in the Street-Level Drug Economy , 26 Law & Soc. Inquiry 169, 184 (2001); see also David K. Shipler, Living Under Suspicion , N.Y. Times (Feb. 7, 1997), http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/07/opinion/living-under-suspicion.html [http://perma.cc/9GWC-RLJR] (explaining contrasting reactions by race on the outcome of the O.J. Simpson trial).

One could argue that some of the de-emphasized aspects of Tyler and collaborators’ legitimacy theory, the ideas of motive-based trust or “normative alignment” (“a sense that police officers’ sense of right and wrong mirrors that of the communities they work in”), account for these concerns about protection and threat. Jonathan Jackson & Jacinta M. Gau, Carving Up Concepts? Differentiating Between Trust and Legitimacy in Public Attitudes Towards Legal Authority , in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Trust 49, 57 (Ellie Shockley et al. eds ., 2016). Yet even if space can be found in legitimacy theory for these concerns, they are not central to the theory in the way they are to legal estrangement theory.

See Bell, supra note 42, at 326-29.

I do not claim that these theories are free of overlap, in certain respects. Yet that they are related to each other does not mean they are equivalent. For example, the primary analytical focus of legitimacy theory is individual compliance with the law, while the primary analytical focus of legal estrangement theory is a collective, cultural relationship with the law. Yet legitimacy theorists attempt to deal with the problem of collectivity by aggregating individual views (an approach that is antithetical to the way many sociologists think about culture). In contrast, legal estrangement recognizes that culture exists both within and outside individuals, and that in order to understand macro-level reality, one must have some vision of micro-level reality. Steven Lukes, Introduction to Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method xvi (Steven Lukes ed., 2013, W. D. Halls trans., 1982) (2d ed. 1901) (“Every, macro-theory presupposes . . . a micro-theory to back up its explanations.”). For this reason, procedural injustice on an interactional level is important to the development of a collective culture of legal cynicism. Yet simply because procedural injustice contributes to legal estrangement does not mean that procedural justice alone can dismantle legal estrangement, because culture is both individual and superindividual.

One way in which the current scholarship on distrust in the law falls short is that it presents a limited view of what some scholars refer to as legal socialization —the developmental process through which people gain their perceptions of the law and law enforcement over time. Some scholars have probed legal socialization as a central concept; others omit that specific term but catalogue various pathways toward divergent perspectives on the police and law enforcement. See, e.g. , Jeffrey Fagan & Tom R. Tyler, Legal Socialization of Children and Adolescents , 18 Soc. Just. Res . 217, 221 (2005); June Louin Tapp & Felice J. Levine, Legal Socialization: Strategies for an Ethical Legality , 27 Stan. L. Rev . 1 (1974); Rick Trinkner & Ellen S. Cohn, Putting the “Social” Back in Legal Socialization: Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Cynicism in Legal and Nonlegal Authorities , 38 Law & Hum. Behav. 602 (2014); see also Rios, supra note 126 at xiv, 158-59 (2011) (describing the legal socialization process of young men of color as “hypercriminalization”).

Hearing Their Voices: Understanding the Freddie Gray Uprising is an in-depth interview study of sixty-four young people, aged fifteen to twenty-four, who live within the city of Baltimore, Maryland. The study, funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, seeks to develop an in-depth understanding of how youth in the city perceive the death of Freddie Gray and its aftermath and to capture their recollections and perceptions of police and the criminal justice system. The study, which the author of this Essay designed and managed, used multiple recruitment strategies including random sampling in a neighborhood near the heart of the unrest, ethnographic sampling from spending time in key neighborhood venues, and sampling using participatory action research, a method in which people from the study population (here, youth who live in Baltimore) acted as co-researchers with the professional researchers. The purpose of using these strategies was to purposively construct a heterogeneous yet analytically meaningful sample of Baltimore youth and to gain a richer empathetic understanding of their experiences. See, e.g. , Jacques M. Chevalier & Daniel J. Buckles, Participatory Action Research: Theory and Methods for Engaged Inquiry 1-6 (2013); see also 1 Weber, supra note 77, at 5 (“Empathic or appreciative accuracy is attained when, through sympathetic participation, we can adequately grasp the emotional context in which the action took place.”). This Essay draws upon selected cases within the interview sample to clarify key processes derived from theory. These cases are not intended to be representative of all respondents, but are instead used to illustrate theoretical points, drawing inspiration from case study logic and the qualitative research method of portraiture. See Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot & Jessica Hoffmann Davis, The Art and Science of Portraiture (1997); Mario Luis Small, “How Many Cases Do I Need? ”: On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Field-Based Research , 10 Ethnography 5, 24-27 (2009).

All names of respondents are pseudonyms.

I have described complexity and contextual contingency of police trust and reliance in other work. See generally Bell , supra note 42 .

All quotations attributed to Shawna were recorded during an interview conducted by the author and Janice Bonsu on July 1, 2015.

Cf. Solomon M. Hsiang, Marshall Burke & Edward Miguel, Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict , 341 Sci. 1212, 1235 (2013) (finding that warmer temperatures increase conflict).

See, e.g. , Alisa Ames et al., 2011 Neighborhood Health Profile: Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park , Balt. City Health Dep’t 10-11 (Dec. 2011), http://health.baltimorecity.gov ‌ /sites ‌ /default ‌ /files/47%20Sandtown.pdf [http://perma.cc/3E6E-TZXT] (documenting low life expectancy and high mortality in certain Baltimore neighborhoods).

Cf. Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266, 276 (2000) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (explaining that “the ability of the police to trace the identity of anonymous telephone informants” is important for determining whether an anonymous tip is sufficiently reliable to justify a Terry stop).

See, e.g. , Sarah Larimer, Disgraced Ex-Cop Daniel Holtzclaw Sentenced to 263 Years for On-Duty Rapes, Sexual Assaults , Wash . Post (Jan. 22, 2016), http://www.washingtonpost.com/news ‌ /post-nation ‌ /wp/2016/01/21/disgraced-ex-officer-daniel-holtzclaw-to-be-sentenced-after -sex ‌ -crimes-conviction [http://perma.cc/5JXK-EUM9].

In an Alford plea, defendants maintain their innocence but concede that the prosecution has enough evidence that a judge or jury would likely find them guilty. See North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 37-38 (1970).

Melissa Harris, Officer Accused in Sex Case Is To Resign: Prison Term Suspended in Case Involving Girl, 16 , Balt. Sun (Jan. 11, 2008), http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-01-11/news ‌ /0 ‌ 8 ‌ 0 ‌ 1110107_1_welch-missing-evidence-baltimore-county [http://perma.cc/79CN-KBEP].

Julie Bykowicz, Items Missing in Rape Case ; Defense Seeks To Exclude DNA in Trial for Officer Accused of Assault , Balt. Sun (July 17, 2007), http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2007 -07-17 ‌ /news ‌ /0707170088_1_welch-evidence-control-baltimore-police-department [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /5NGD-ZSDY].

Harris, supra note 146.

E.g. , Julie Bykowicz, Jones’ Rape Case Ends: City ‘Flex’ Officer Won’t Face Trial Other Issues Pending , Balt. Sun (Apr. 3, 2007), http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2007-04-03/news ‌ /070 ‌ 4 ‌ 03 ‌ 0038_1_jones-police-officer-flex [http://perma.cc/U7UF-JTS4] (describing charges against former Baltimore police officer Jemini Jones); Gadi Dechter, Former City Officer Charged with Rape , Balt. Sun (Aug. 3, 2008), http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-08 -03/news/0808020193_1_welch-baltimore-police-misconduct-in-office [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /4GBJ ‌ -9A6A] (describing accusations against former Baltimore police officer Rohan Mays).

The third floor of Mondawmin is essentially a social services center, a transition that began in the late 1960s after white flight from the neighborhood and the loss of the mall’s anchor store, Sears. Among the mall’s tenants are a city-run one-stop career center, an outpatient mental health clinic, a healthcare clinic, and a branch of Baltimore City Department of Social Services that helps adults avoid crises like eviction, electricity shutoff, and mental collapses. See Directory , Mondawmin Mall , http://www.mondawmin.com/en/directory/map.html [http:// ‌ perma.cc/CXH2-W2NS].

For scholarship describing the increasing prevalence of private police in American society, see Elizabeth E. Joh, The Paradox of Private Policing , 95 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 49 (2004); and David Alan Sklansky, Private Police and Democracy , 43 Am. Crim. L. Rev . 89 (2006). For people who frequently encounter public and private police, the officers may well blend into one miasma of police control, regardless of their governance structure. This indistinguishableness could mean that the bad acts of poorly trained, less regulated private security officers contribute to negative perceptions of city police, and further research should test this hypothesis.

See, e.g. , I. Bennett Capers, Policing, Race, and Place , 44 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev . 43, 68-69 (2009) (noting the stigmatic harm of minor police maltreatment); Fryer, supra note 59, at 3, 8 (describing the study’s data, which ranks the use of hands—such as slapping or grabbing—as a “lower level use[ ] of force”). This limited conception of use of force also plagues governmental agencies tasked with investigating police misconduct. For example, in October 2016, police officers in Edina, Minnesota (a suburb of Minneapolis) arrested Larnie Thomas, an African American man, for “disorderly conduct and failure to obey a traffic signal.” Christine Hauser, Black Man Is Arrested While Walking, and Minnesota City Starts a ‘Conversation , ’ N.Y. Times (Oct. 19, 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/us ‌ /minne ‌ sota ‌ -video-walking.html [http://perma.cc/2WFM-EUHE]. The officer initially on the scene, Tim Olson, confronted Thomas and grabbed him by his shoulder for walking on the white line near the shoulder of the road even though the sidewalk was closed for construction. Id. The city concluded that Olson “had followed proper procedures” when he arrested Thomas. Id. The State of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a bureau of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, chose not to investigate the arrest because it did not result in “a death or serious injury.” Id. The Bureau’s decision did not acknowledge the social meaning of the incident—perhaps the deeper injury.

See Manny Fernandez, Freddie Gray’s Injury and the Police ‘Rough Ride , ’ N.Y. Times (Apr. 30, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/freddie-grays-injury-and-the-police-rough ‌ -ride ‌ .html [http://perma.cc/ZH8V-P79A] (describing the practice of “rough rides” and “nickel rides,” during which police subject often-unsecured passengers detained in the back of police vans to intentionally rough rides to cause displeasure or injury).

There has been much debate over the best term to use when describing the property damage that occurred in Baltimore in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death. While most news outlets called the events “riots,” others preferred “uprising” or “unrest.” See, e.g. , Katy Waldman, Is Baltimore Beset by Protests, Riots, or an Uprising ? , Slate (Apr. 29, 2015, 5:01 PM), http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/04/29 ‌ /protest_versus_riot ‌ _versus ‌ _up ‌ rising ‌ _the_language_of_the_baltimore_freddie.html [http://perma.cc/X7DU -JNHV]. I do not take a position on the most accurate term but use “riot” here because it was the preferred language of study participants.

Six officers involved in Freddie Gray’s final arrest were charged with an array of crimes in May 2015, a move that made the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, a polarizing national figure. Between May and July 2016, three officers were acquitted. On July 27, 2016, after the judge declared a mistrial in a fourth officer’s case, Mosby dropped charges against the three officers who had not already been acquitted. Sarah Almukhtar et al., Freddie Gray Case Ends with No Convictions of Any Police Officers , N.Y. Times (July 27, 2016), http:// ‌ www ‌ .ny ‌ times ‌ .com/interactive/2015/04/30/us/what-happened-freddie -gray ‌ -arr ‌ est ‌ ed ‌ -by-balt ‌ i ‌ more ‌ -police-department-map-timeline.html [http://perma.cc/9E3Y -L294]; Justin Fenton, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby Assails Police, Pledges To Pursue Reforms , Balt. Sun (July 27, 2016, 10:41 PM) http://www.baltimoresun.com/news ‌ / maryland ‌ /fred ‌ die ‌ -gray/bs-md-ci-mosby-dropped-charges-20160727-story.html [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /6KQW -MVLB]. While others, including Baltimore’s mayor and former police commissioner, criticized Mosby for continuing to argue that systemic failures plague the Baltimore Police Department when she announced dropping the remaining Freddie Gray charges, the DOJ’s August 2016 report supported Mosby’s assertions. See Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department , U.S. Dep’t Just. 4 (Aug. 10, 2016) [hereinafter DOJ Baltimore Report ], http://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download [http://perma.cc ‌ /6RNF ‌ -GFXM].

Ben Feuerherd & Bob Fredericks, Obama Calls Baltimore Rioters “Criminals and Thugs , ” N.Y. Post (Apr. 28, 2015, 3:36 PM), http://nypost.com/2015/04/28/obama-calls-baltimore-riot ‌ ers ‌ -criminals-and-thugs [http://perma.cc/ZU5G-8WWB].

Erin Cox & Michael Dresser, Gov. Larry Hogan Promises More than 1,000 Additional Troops, Vows To Prevent Rioting , Balt. Sun (Apr. 28, 2015, 1:52 PM), http:// www ‌ .baltimore ‌ sun ‌ .com/news/maryland/politics/blog/bal-hogan-in-baltimore-vows-to-bring-rioting-under -control-20150428-story.html [http://perma.cc/A7L4-JEZU].

Mark Reutter & Fern Shen, State of Emergency Declared for Baltimore , Balt. Brew (Apr. 27, 2015, 11:17 PM), http://www.baltimorebrew.com/2015/04/27/state-of-emergency-declared -for ‌ -baltimore [http://perma.cc/VQH5-QUWM].

Elizabeth Chuck, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Under Fire for ‘Space’ To Destroy Comment , NBC News (Apr. 28, 2015, 1:59 PM), http://www.nbcnews.com /storyline ‌ / baltimore ‌ -unrest/mayor-stephanie-rawlings-blake-under-fire-giving-space -destroy-baltimore-n349656 [http://perma.cc/3992-98MK].

See Editorial, The Problem with ‘Thugs , ’ Balt. Sun (Apr. 29, 2015, 3:52 PM), http:// ‌ www ‌ .balt ‌ imoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-thugs-freddie-gray-20150429-story.html [http://perma.cc/C9WF-VRJS].

David Jackson, Obama Stands by the Term ‘Thugs,’ White House Says , USA Today (Apr. 29, 2015, 2:59 PM), http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2015/04/29/obama-white-house -baltimore-stephanie-rawlings-blake/26585143 [http://perma.cc/YN3M-HH57].

For background information on the Charleston mass killing, see, for example, Matt Ford & Adam Chandler, ‘Hate Crime’: A Mass Killing at a Historic Church , Atlantic (June 19, 2015), http:// ‌ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/shooting-emanuel-ame -charleston/396209 [http://perma.cc/6CTW-E3Z5]. The shooter, Dylann Roof, was eventually sentenced to death. See Alan Blinder & Kevin Sack, Dylann Roof Is Sentenced to Death in Charleston Church Massacre , N.Y. Times (Jan. 10, 2017), http://www.nytimes.com ‌ /2017 ‌ /01 ‌ /10 ‌ /us/dylann-roof-trial-charleston.html [http://perma.cc/ZXA4-8X86].

See, e.g. , Todd Sumlin, Charleston Shooting Suspect’s Burger King Meal Gets National Attention , Charlotte Observer (June 24, 2015, 8:51 AM), http://www.charlotteobserver.com ‌ /news ‌ /local ‌ /article25394389.html [http://perma.cc/L7H7-ZB8R]. Withholding food from an arrestee during interrogation can indicate coercion under a totality of the circumstances analysis, thereby invalidating any evidence that police obtain. See Greenwald v. Wisconsin, 390 U.S. 519, 521 (1968); Clewis v. Texas, 386 U.S. 707, 712 (1967); Reck v. Pate, 367 U.S. 433, 441-42 (1961). While some onlookers interpreted this provision of a Burger King meal as a special treat or an indicator of the greater respect they had for Roof’s (white) life, it is worth noting that by providing Roof with a meal, officers also ensured that any evidence obtained from Roof would be admissible in court.

But see Tom R. Tyler & Jonathan Jackson, Popular Legitimacy and the Exercise of Legal Authority: Motivating Compliance, Cooperation, and Engagement , 20 Psychol. Pub. Pol’y & L . 78, 89 (2014) (finding, using survey data, that although African Americans view the police as less legitimate than whites do, they do not see the law as less legitimate than whites do). This finding may stem from a belief that the police do not actually represent the law, that they are just another group or gang. See supra note 131 and accompanying text.

See Kirk & Papachristos, supra note 9, at 1191.

For an overview of a wide variety of literature on the connection between procedural justice and legitimacy, see Tyler et al. , supra note 45, at 86.

Tyler, Procedural Justice , supra note 10, at 350.

All quotations attributed to Justin were recorded during an interview conducted by Janice Bonsu and Trinard Sharpe on July 23, 2015.

It is not surprising that Justin projects his police encounters into views on the government and the powerful more generally. Police officers are the quintessential “street-level bureaucrats,” the faces of abstract systems, whose interactions with citizens are believed to shape their larger view of the government. See Giddens, supra note 63, at 79-88 ; Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy 3 (30th Anniversary ed. 2010).

This respondent’s preference to walk in the street, avoiding proximity to trees out of concern for his safety, is reminiscent of a similar preference among some Chicago high school students that has been documented journalistically. See Harper High School, Part I Transcript , This Am. Life (Feb. 15, 2013), http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives ‌ /episode ‌ /487 ‌ /transcript [http://perma.cc/3HUN-GWG8] (quoting a student who explained that “we never like to walk past trees and stuff” in order to avoid gangs). One might expect a similar logic to operate among teens in inner-city Baltimore.

Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-506 (LexisNexis 2016) requires pedestrians to walk on sidewalks when possible, and on the left shoulder or far left side of a roadway when a sidewalk is unavailable. Failure to comply with this transportation provision is a misdemeanor. Whitt v. Dynan, 315 A.2d 122, 126 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1974). The DOJ, in its investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 14141, noted that Ferguson police routinely ticketed and fined African Americans for violating a city ordinance that regulates the “Manner of Walking in Roadway,” an offense similar to the one Justin and his friends were committing. Ninety-five percent of the people cited for manner-of-walking violations in Ferguson between 2012 and 2014 were African American. Civil Rights Div. , Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department , U.S. Dep’t Just. 62 (Mar. 4, 2015), http://www ‌ .just ‌ ice ‌ .gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04 ‌ /ferguson_police ‌ _depar ‌ tment ‌ _report.pdf [http://perma.cc/FF7V-XCCL]. The Justice Department’s Baltimore report roundly criticizes the Baltimore Police Department for criminalizing African Americans’ presence in public spaces, especially streets and sidewalks. See DOJ Baltimore Report , supra note 156, at 6-7. However, it does not mention section 21-506 of the state transportation code as a potential pretext for some walking stops.

See Russell K. Robinson, Perceptual Segregation , 108 Colum. L. Rev . 1093, 1145 (2008) (“[ T]he net psychological impact of making an attribution to discrimination is negative.”).

Justin identified the exercise of power more generally as an aspect of procedurally unjust policing. Research from social psychology suggests that officers who use a disproportionately large amount of force against African American men might be trying to assert their manhood even more than their authority. See L. Song Richardson & Phillip Atiba Goff, Interrogating Racial Violence , 12 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 115, 128-42 (2014); see also Devon W. Carbado & Patrick Rock, What Exposes African Americans to Police Violence ? , 51 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev . 159, 175-85 (2016) (summarizing the different types of social and psychological threats police officers might feel, which increase the likelihood of officer violence).

See Rios , supra note 126, at xiv-xv.

Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-506.

See Rod K. Brunson & Ronald Weitzer, Negotiating Unwelcome Police Encounters: The Intergenerational Transmission of Conduct Norms , 40 J. Contemp. Ethnography 425, 429 (2011); cf. Tyler & Huo , supra note 8, at 133 (finding that recent personal experience explained thirty percent of the variance in people’s assessments of the legitimacy of law and legal authority); Tyler & Fagan, supra note 8, at 255 (excluding respondents who had zero personal experiences with the police from their analysis); Tyler & Sevier, supra note 44, at 1127 (explaining that only nine percent of their interview sample had recent personal experience with the courts).

See Tyler & Huo , supra note 8, at 29 (“As psychologists, our primary concern is with people’s attitudes, judgments, and feelings, and with the role of these subjective elements in shaping behavior.”); see also Lars Udehn, The Changing Face of Methodological Individualism , 28 Ann. Rev. Soc. 479, 487-88 (2002) (locating “psychologism” in debates over methodological individualism in early American sociology).

See Tyler, supra note 85, at 94 (confirming through survey data that personal experience with the police affects people’s assessments of its legitimacy) ; Tyler & Huo, supra note 8, at 131-38 (showing that personal experiences influence “societal orientations” but without mentioning vicarious experiences).

See, e.g. , Ronald Weitzer & Steven A. Tuch, Race and Policing in America 183-84 (2006) (describing “negativity bias”); Kirk & Papachristos, supra note 9, at 1201 (“Direct experiences with harassing police may influence an individual’s cynicism, but this cynicism becomes cultural through social interaction. In this sense, individuals’ own experiential-based perception of the law becomes solidified through a collective process whereby residents develop a shared meaning of the behavior of the law and the viability of the law to ensure their safety.”).

See Naomi F. Sugie, Chilling Effects: Diminished Political Participation Among Partners of Formerly Incarcerated Men , 62 Soc. Probs . 550 (2015).

Megan Comfort, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison 65-98 (2008).

E.g. , Ande Nesmith & Ebony Ruhland, Children of Incarcerated Parents: Challenges and Resiliency, in Their Own Words , 30 Child. & Youth Servs. Rev . 1119 (2008). See generally Nell Bernstein, All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated (2005) (offering a journalistic account of the experiences and perspectives of children of incarcerated parents).

Christopher Muller & Daniel Schrage, Mass Imprisonment and Trust in the Law , 651 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci . 139, 150 (2014).

There are a few examples in sociological literature. See, e.g. , Rios , supra note 126, at 151-52 ; Nikki Jones, “The Regular Routine”: Proactive Policing and Adolescent Development Among Young, Poor Black Men , 143 New Directions for Child & Adolescent Dev . 33 (2014). Emerging legal scholarship is beginning to recognize this process and explore potential solutions to it. See, e.g. , Huq, supra note 102.

See J.M. Balkin, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology 67-73 (1998) (describing memes and processes of cultural transmission); Jeffrey K. Olick & Joyce Robbins, Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices , 24 Ann. Rev. Soc. 105 (1998).

E.g. , Robert S. Chang, Closing Essay: Developing a Collective Memory To Imagine a Better Future , 49 UCLA L. Rev . 1601 (2002) (arguing that the collective memory of Asian Americans can be deployed to improve constitutional law); Meir Dan-Cohen, Skirmishes on the Temporal Boundaries of States , 72 Law & Contemp. Probs . 95 (2009) (describing how collective memory can inform state conflicts); Katherine M. Franke, The Uses of History in Struggles for Racial Justice: Colonizing the Past and Managing Memory , 47 UCLA L. Rev . 1673 (2000) (articulating challenges for the use of collective memory in the pursuit of racial justice); Mark J. Osiel, Ever Again: Legal Remembrance of Administrative Massacre , 144 U. Pa. L. Rev . 463 (1995) (identifying six problems with states using criminal prosecutions to solidify collective memory of state-sponsored mass-murder); Norman W. Spaulding, Constitution As Countermonument: Federalism, Reconstruction, and the Problem of Collective Memory , 103 Colum. L. Rev . 1992 (2003) (arguing for the relevance of the collective memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction to contemporary federalism jurisprudence).

See, e.g. , Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory 54-83 (Lewis A. Coser ed. & trans., Univ. of Chi. Press 1992) (1952) (describing the collective memory of the family); Michel Anteby & Virág Molnár, Collective Memory Meets Organizational Identity: Remembering To Forget in a Firm’s Rhetorical History , 55 Acad. Mgmt. J . 515 (2012) (analyzing ways of sustaining a firm’s collective identity); Lauren A. Rivera, Managing “Spoiled” National Identity: War, Tourism, and Memory in Croatia , 73 Am. Soc. Rev . 613, 631 (2008) (discussing limitations on collective memory in response to societies’ “difficult pasts”).

See generally Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (2004) (drawing upon case studies of September 11, American slavery, and the Holocaust to explore group-level traumatic memories).

Reuben A. Buford May, Race Talk and Local Collective Memory Among African American Men in a Neighborhood Tavern , 23 Qualitative Soc . 201, 202 (2000). This form of collective memory might be particularly salient among African Americans. Id. Although the empirical evidence is mixed, some scholars have argued that African Americans are more likely to believe in “common” or “linked” fate, i.e., the idea that their individual success and experience of justice is connected to the success and just treatment of African Americans as a group. See Dawson , supra note 128, at 76; Paula D. McClain et al., Group Membership, Group Identity, and Group Consciousness: Measures of Racial Identity in American Politics ? , 12 Ann. Rev. Pol. Sci . 471, 477-79 (2009). But see Claudine Gay, Jennifer Hochschild & Ariel White, Americans’ Belief in Linked Fate: Does the Measure Capture the Concept ? , 1 J. Race Ethnicity & Pol . 117, 139-40 (2016) (suggesting that either linked fate is no longer as unique to African Americans as once suggested or that the usual instrument used to measure linked fate is insufficient).

To understand the origins and positions of the Black Lives Matter and corresponding police-reform movements, see, for example, Black Lives Matter , http://blacklivesmatter.com [http://perma.cc/QSS4-VXYP]; and Campaign Zero , supra note 59. See also Jocelyn Simonson, Copwatching , 104 Calif. L. Rev . 391 (2016) (conceptualizing organized videotaping of police interactions as an adversarial form of police accountability).

See Jenna Wortham, Racism’s Psychological Toll , N.Y. Times Mag . (June 24, 2015), http:// ‌ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/magazine/racisms-psychological-toll.html [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /M8FW-GT4V].

See Weitzer & Tuch, supra note 180, at 183-84 (finding that mass media coverage of police deviance alters citizens’ perceptions of the police and noting that media influence on citizens’ perceptions of the police has received little scholarly attention).

See Balkin, supra note 186, at 43 (explaining that the “building blocks” of culture are transmitted “either face to face or through media of communication like writing, television, or the Internet”); Buford May, supra note 190, at 202.

Cf. Tyler & Wakslak, supra note 85, at 261-62 (finding an association between the belief that racial profiling is more prevalent and the tendency to interpret personal interactions with the police as examples of profiling).

See Swidler, supra note 135, at 278-80 (explaining that culture is more likely to drive human behavior during periods of social transformation when prescribed social rituals are less clear); cf. Durkheim, supra note 122, at 246-59 (describing anomie as a problem of cultural instability); Mark Anthony Hoffman & Peter S. Bearman, Bringing Anomie Back in: Exceptional Events and Excess Suicide , 2 Soc. Sci. 186, 187, 190-92 (2015) (same).

All quotations attributed to Jamila were recorded during an interview conducted by the author and Janice Bonsu on June 17, 2015.

The McCulloh Homes, erected in the mid-1930s, was one of Baltimore’s first public housing developments intended to house solely African American residents. The Housing Authority’s intent was to erect “a splendid barrier against the encroachment of colored” residents into the nearby predominantly white Bolton Hill neighborhood. See Plaintiffs’ Statement of Material Facts Submitted in Support of Their Pre-Trial Memorandum at 37-41, Thompson v. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., 348 F. Supp. 2d 398 (N.D. Md. 2005) (No. CIV. A. MJG-95-309), http://www.aclumd.org/uploaded_files/0000/0169/statementoffacts.pdf [ http:// ‌ perma.cc/8U8Y-2VGJ] .

See, e.g. , Matthew Desmond, Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty , 118 Am . J. Soc . 88, 107 (2012); Steven M. Graves, Landscapes of Predation, Landscapes of Neglect: A Location Analysis of Payday Lenders and Banks , 55 Prof. Geographer 303, 311 (2003); Rhonda Jones-Webb et al., Alcohol and Malt Liquor Availability and Promotion and Homicide in Inner Cities , 43 Substance Use & Misuse 159, 160 (2008).

It is not clear whether there has been an actual shift in the average age of Baltimore police officers in the eight years since Jamila was ten. However, some police leaders claim that police officers have become, on average, younger and newer to the force and thus have a more “millennial” approach to policing. Zoe Mentel, Racial Reconciliation, Truth-Telling, and Police Legitimacy , U.S. Dep’t Just. 10-11 (2012), http://nnscommunities.org/uploads/Racial-Re ‌ con ‌ ciliation_Truth-Telling_and-Legitimacy.pdf [http://perma.cc/XEL2-A3ES].

Jamila’s insight here is reminiscent of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s in 2016. See infra text accompanying notes 322-324.

To some degree, this way of thinking could be attributable to the human brain’s tendency to recall negative information longer and more vividly than positive information. See, e.g. , Roy F. Baumeister et al., Bad Is Stronger than Good , 5 Rev. Gen. Psychol . 323, 323-24 (2001).

All quotations attributed to Myron were recorded during an interview conducted by Kaitlin Edin-Nelson and Geena St. Andrew on August 4, 2015.

All quotations attributed to Johnson were recorded during an interview conducted by Geena St. Andrew and Juliana Wittman on August 4, 2015.

Silentó , Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) , YouTube ( June 15, 2015), http://www.youtube.com ‌ / watch ‌ ?v =vjW8wmF5VWc [ http://perma.cc/QV7D-MS4Q] .

See, e.g. , Katie Mettler, Tampa Police Officers ‘Whip’ and ‘Nae Nae’ with Sulphur Springs Youth on Halloween , Tampa Bay Times: Bay Buzz (Nov. 2, 2015, 11:14 AM), http://www ‌ .tam pa ‌ bay.com/blogs/baybuzz/tampa-police-officers-whip-and-nae-nae-with-sulphur-springs -youth ‌ -on/2252272 [http://perma.cc/EE58-MQ6Y]; Perry Stein, A D.C. Cop Tried To Break up a Group of Teens. It Ended in This Impressive Dance-Off , Wash. Post (Oct. 28, 2015), http:// ‌ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/10/28/a-d-c-cop-tried-to -break ‌ -up-a-group-of-teens-it-ended-in-this-impressive-dance-off [http://perma.cc/7NVV -58G5]; Lyndsay Winkley, Watch Officer Whip, Whip, Then Watch Him Nae Nae , San Diego Union-Trib. (Oct. 7, 2015), http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-police -officer-whip ‌ -nae-nae-facebook-video-2015oct07-htmlstory.html [http://perma.cc/S847 -GDQ8].

For example, Jeff Fagan and Tom Tyler find that most contextual variables, including having deviant peers, are not associated with adolescents’ assessments of legal legitimacy. Fagan & Tyler, supra note 136, at 231-33. However, the survey and analytical method used by Fagan and Tyler provides a quite limited way of understanding how networks produce perceptions of the law and law enforcement officials.

Baumeister et al., supra note 202, at 323.

See, e.g. , Brunson & Weitzer, supra note 177, at 426.

E.g. , Balkin , supra note 186, at 67-73 (on memes); Halbwachs, supra note 188, at 54-83 (on family).

E.g. , Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966).

Some scholars understand unequal distribution of policing quality as a Rawlsian distributive justice problem. See Nirej S. Sekhon, Redistributive Policing , 101 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1171 (2012).

Cf. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation , 62 Am . Soc. Rev. 465, 475 (1997) (arguing that one advantage of a structural framework for studying race issues is that “[ r]acial phenomena are regarded as a ‘normal’ outcome of the racial structure of a society”).

See, e.g ., Bonilla-Silva, supra note 105, at 170-72 (arguing that colorblind ideology indirectly affects many African Americans’ explanations of social problems and policy perspectives even as they tend to perceive discrimination more readily than whites do); Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City 179-82 & 179 n.2 (2016) (explaining that many poor people do not organize against inequality because, in line with the dominant cultural perspective on the causes of poverty, “[n]o one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves”); Russell K. Robinson, Perceptual Segregation , 108 Colum. L. Rev. 1093, 1142-46 (2008) (citing a large body of social psychology research to explain that social “outsiders,” such as women and racial/ethnic minorities, “tend to avoid attributing adverse treatment to discrimination unless such attributions are very difficult to avoid”).

See 1 Weber, supra note 77, at 43-46, 339-48; 2 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology 926-55 (Guenther Roth & Claus Wittich eds ., Ephraim Fischoff et al. trans., Univ. of Cal. Press 1978) (1922); Frank Parkin, Strategies of Social Closure in Class Formation , in The Social Analysis of Class Structure 1 (Frank Parkin ed., 1974).

Several scholars and commentators have noted the paradox of overpolicing and underprotection in racially and socioeconomically marginalized communities. E.g. , Jill Leovy, Ghettoside 9 (2015) (“[ O]ur criminal justice system . . . is at once oppressive and inadequate.”); Haney López, supra note 105, at 1054; Natapoff, supra note 55, at 1718-19.

See Loïc Wacquant, A Janus-Faced Institution of Ethnoracial Closure: A Sociological Specification of the Ghetto , in The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies 1, 2 (Ray Hutchison & Bruce D. Haynes eds ., 2012) (describing racially and socioeconomically marginalized neighborhoods as the product of a relational “power asymmetry”).

See, e.g. , Anderson, supra note 124, at 34; Philippe Bourgois , In Search of Respect 109-13 (2d ed. 2003); Alice Goffman, On the Run 2 (2014); Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime, and the Law 29-75 (1997); Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor 280 (2006) (“Though life on the street was changing in many worrying ways, one thing remained consistent. For nearly a century, black Chicagoans had never been able to rely on law enforcement, be it for gang- or nongang-related problems.”).

See, e.g. , Donald Black, Crime as Social Control , 48 Am . Soc. Rev. 34, 36 (1983) (describing homicide as private capital punishment); Kirk & Papachristos, supra note 9, at 1203-04; Daryl J. Levinson, Collective Sanctions , 56 Stan. L. Rev. 345, 386 (2003).

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto 77-83 (2000).

See Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh & Steven Levitt, “Are We a Family or a Business?” History and Disjuncture in the Urban American Street Gang , 29 Theory & Soc’y 427 (2000) (describing the metamorphosis of Chicago street gangs from primarily social groups that committed petty crimes to primarily criminal financial enterprises).

Venkatesh , supra note 218, at 177-87 (describing the relationship between one Chicago street and the neighborhood it controlled).

Id. at 125-47.

The era of proactive policing is relatively young, really beginning with the advent of broken-windows policing in the early 1980s. See Kelling & Wilson, supra note 36; see also Meares, Broken Windows , supra note 98 (discussing the effectiveness of broken-windows policing).

See, e.g. , Kennedy, supra note 218 , at 29-75; Alice Goffman, On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto , 74 Am. Soc. Rev . 339, 340-41 (2009).

Michael Javen Fortner, Black Silent Majority 7-9 (2015).

See, e.g. , President’s Comm’n on Law Enf’t & Admin. of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society 25-26, 106 (1967); Tracey L. Meares & Bernard E. Harcourt, Foreword: Transparent Adjudication and Social Science Research in Constitutional Criminal Procedure , 90 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 733, 773 (2000).

E.g. , Garland , supra note 16, at 114-15 ; Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Police Organization in the Twentieth Century , 15 Crime & Just . 51, 58 (1992).

See Alexander , supra note 3, at 188-89; Fortner , supra note 226, at 258-60; James Forman, Jr., Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow , 87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 21, 35-36 (2012).

Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop 157 (2013) ; Peter B. Kraska & Victor E. Kappeler, Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units , 44 Soc. Probs . 1, 6-9 (1997).

See Fagan & Geller, supra note 101, at 79-81 (arguing that, between 1998 and 2011, New York City police officers began forming suspicion based on neighborhood characteristics rather than making individualized assessments based on suspects’ behavior); Meares, supra note 16, at 162 (arguing that Terry concerned a stop based on suspicion of an individual, as opposed to stops based on generalized suspicion, as part of a “program” to regulate young African American and Latino men).

E.g. , Anderson , supra note 124, at 47; Goffman, supra note 218, at 175.

Patrick J. Carr, Laura Napolitano & Jessica Keating, We Never Call the Cops and Here Is Why: A Qualitative Examination of Legal Cynicism in Three Philadelphia Neighborhoods , 45 Criminology 445, 461-63 (2007).

See also Carol Steiker, More Wrong than Rights , in Tracey L. Meares & Dan M. Kahan, Urgent Times: Policing and Rights in Inner-City Communities 49, 51 (1999) (analogizing the conditions of inner-city residents who supported order-maintenance policing in the 1990s to a swimmer drowning in the sea: “In dire straits, and with limited options, [inner-city residents] will grasp at any rope, no matter how steep the price.”). Pierre Bourdieu encapsulated this idea in his concept of habitus , the idea that while individuals have agency in thought and action, thoughts and actions are nonetheless deeply embedded in social structure. People’s perceptions and opinions both represent and reproduce existing social conditions. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste 170-72 (Richard Nice trans., Harvard Univ. Press 1984) (1979).

Carr, Napolitano & Keating, supra note 233, at 467-69.

All quotations attributed to Lemuel were recorded during an interview conducted by Geena St. Andrew and Janice Bonsu on July 2, 2015.

Indeed, most youth, even in disadvantaged urban communities, are generally law-abiding. See James Forman, Jr., Community Policing & Youth as Assets , 95 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1, 26-28 (2004).

See Gus G. Sentementes & Julie Bykowicz, Questions Raised for Years About City “Flex Squad , ” Balt. Sun (Jan. 15, 2006), http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2006-01-15/news/0601150112 ‌ _1 ‌ _squad-flex-mengel [http://perma.cc/HUH5-PD66].

See sources cited supra note 227.

Lemuel is convinced that African American officers in Baltimore are more abusive than white officers. “Black cops are the worst ones,” he declared. His observation mirrors that of The Wire creator and author David Simon and former Baltimore police officer Edward Burns: “[ T]oday , it’s a new generation of young black officers that is proving itself violently aggressive. A white patrolman in West Baltimore has to at least take into account the racial imagery . .  . . Not so his black counterparts, for whom brutality complaints can be shrugged off—not only because the victim was a corner-dwelling fiend, but because the racial aspect is neutralized.” David A. Simon & Edward Burns, The Corner 165 (1997); see also Robert A. Brown & James Frank, Race and Officer Decision Making: Examining Differences in Arrest Outcomes Between Black and White Officers , 23 Just. Q . 96, 120 (2006) (finding that, although white officers decide to arrest more frequently than black officers do, black officer-black suspect encounters were more likely to lead to arrest than any other officer-suspect combination); Rod K. Brunson & Jacinta M. Gau, Officer Race Versus Macro-Level Context: A Test of Competing Hypotheses About Black Citizens’ Experiences with and Perceptions of Black Police Officers , 61 Crime & Delinq. 213, 233-34 (2015) (arguing that urban African Americans’ perceptions of the police are not significantly different based on the racial composition of the force); Ivan Y. Sun & Brian K. Payne, Racial Differences in Resolving Conflicts: A Comparison Between Black and White Police Officers , 50 Crime & Delinq. 516, 534-36 (2004) (finding that black officers are more likely to use coercive techniques than white officers). But see Joshua C. Cochran & Patricia Y. Warren, Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Differences in Perceptions of the Police: The Salience of Officer Race Within the Context of Racial Profiling , 28 J. Contemp. Crim. Just . 206, 219, 221 (2012) (finding that black citizens were more likely to view an officer as behaving legitimately if the officer was black and arguing that greater minority representation on police forces might improve perceptions of policing among African Americans); David Eitle, Lisa Stolzenberg & Stewart J. D’Alessio, Police Organizational Factors, the Racial Composition of the Police, and the Probability of Arrest , 22 Just. Q. 30, 54 (2005) (associating greater minority representation on police forces with increased use of community policing practices). Baltimore’s population is 63% African American; its police force is 44% African American. Jeremy Ashkenas & Haeyoun Park, The Race Gap in America’s Police Departments , N.Y. Times (Apr. 8, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/03/us/the-race -gap ‌ -in-americas-police-departments.html [http://perma.cc/MKH9-D8RE]. These observations highlight a potential shortcoming of reform efforts aimed at diversifying police departments. While officer diversity is surely a positive goal, diversification without department-wide cultural change is unlikely to meaningfully improve the experience of police presence in poor and African American communities. See David Alan Sklansky, Not Your Father’s Police Department: Making Sense of the New Demographics of Law Enforcement , 96 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1209, 1242 (2006) (calling the increased diversity of some urban police forces an “incomplete revolution”).

Security concerns at Baltimore high schools led the city to establish a separate school policing unit, the Baltimore City School Police Force, in 1967. The statute that authorizes the School Police Force specifies that its officers may only carry their service weapons onto campuses when school is out of session. Md. Code Ann., Educ . § 4-318(d)(3) (Lexis 2016). In 2015, the Baltimore school system’s CEO and Baltimore school police led a massive legislative and public advocacy campaign to remove this prohibition. See H.B. 101, 2015 Leg. Reg. Sess. (Md. 2015); Erica L. Green, School Police Plead To Resurrect Weapons Bill , Balt. Sun (Mar. 16, 2015, 10:49 PM), http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore -city/bs-md-ci-school-weapons-20150316-story.html [http://perma.cc/82Z7-K445]. The city held several listening sessions at high schools and public libraries in the summer after the bill failed, one of which I attended while conducting field research (July 17, 2015, Forest Park High School). The overwhelming majority of meeting participants–mostly parents of Baltimore high school students or community activists who seemed to have friendly preexisting relationships with the school police–spoke in favor of permitting Baltimore school police officers to carry guns in school buildings. For now, the law is unchanged.

In March 2016, after a cellphone video surfaced that showed a Baltimore school officer aggressively slapping and kicking a teen boy, the training and recruitment of Baltimore school police officers garnered new attention from school officials. Tim Prudente, Baltimore Schools CEO Will Review Officer Training, Selection After Slapping Incident , Balt. Sun (Mar. 8, 2016, 1:30 PM), http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-com ‌ m ‌ un ‌ ity ‌ -meeting-reach-20160307-story.html [ http://perma.cc/U7TX-QQ7H ]. Lemuel’s alleged assault occurred years before videotaping emerged as a response to harsh police tactics.

For example, one young man who resides primarily in Northwest Baltimore’s Park Heights neighborhood said that there are so many cars on every corner in that neighborhood that he constantly feels that he is being watched: “I’ll go up to Park Heights and every corner I go to I’m going to see a police car. I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing . .  . . I’m not even saying a cop is watching, but when you see a police car, eventually that’s somebody saying you’re being watched, for real. That’s how I feel. And I guess that’s how people see it when they see a cop car. It’s like they’re being watched.” This quote was recorded during an interview conducted by Kaitlin Edin-Nelson and Janice Bonsu on June 24, 2015.

One young woman discussing the same neighborhood said that it takes the police about twenty-five minutes to arrive when someone calls about a murder, accident, or other major event despite their common presence:

Geena: I heard you say earlier that a situation has to be “serious” before you call the police. What kind of situation would that be?

Respondent: Like murder or a robbery, accident, somebody being injured. Not just a little dispute or fuss. Somebody that has [an] injury or someone in trouble.

Geena: How long would the police take to respond and get there?

Respondent: I don’t know. I think like twenty-five minutes . . . unless they’re in the area and they just got called over.

Monica: Do you see the police around a lot? Like you said, “Unless they’re in the area”—are they in the areas where you are that much?

Respondent: Yeah, they do, because I live right up the street from the police station, so they just be around.

This conversation was recorded during an interview conducted by Geena St. Andrew and the author on July 22, 2015.

Bykowicz, supra note 150; Sentementes & Bykowicz, supra note 238.

See supra notes 145 - 150 and accompanying text.

See Radley Balko, An Interview with the Baltimore Cop Who’s Revealing All the Horrible Things He Saw on the Job , Wash. Post (June 25, 2015), http:// ‌ www ‌ .washing ‌ ton ‌ post ‌ .com ‌ /news ‌ /the ‌ -watch ‌ /wp/2015/06/25/an-interview-with-the-baltimore-cop-whos-revealing-all-the-horr ‌ i ‌ ble ‌ -things-he-saw-on-the-job [http://perma.cc/87G8-QH6L] (describing street enforcement unit bad behavior during raids, such as urinating or defecating on the belongings of suspects and their housemates).

See Rachel Harmon, Why Arrest ? , 115 Mich. L. Rev. 307, 308 (2016) (calling arrest the “paradigmatic police activity”); Wayne A. Logan, After the Cheering Stopped: Decriminalization and Legalism’s Limits , 24 Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol ’ y 319, 331-35 (2014). See generally Elina Treyger, Collateral Incentives To Arrest , 63 Kan. L. Rev . 557 (2015) (critiquing indirect incentives to arrest and resultant systemic distortions).

Ema O’Connor, A Former Baltimore Police Officer Exposed His Department’s Corruption , BuzzFeed News (June 30, 2015, 12:57 PM) http://www.buzzfeed.com ‌ /emaoconnor ‌ /baltimore ‌ -police-officer-tweets-up [http://perma.cc/6W2G-BMWU].

See, e.g. , Eisha Jain, Arrests as Regulation , 67 Stan. L. Rev . 809, 819 (2015); Kohler-Hausmann, supra note 16; Alexandra Natapoff, Misdemeanor Decriminalization , 68 Vand. L. Rev . 1055, 1057-58 (2015).

See Pierre Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital , in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education 241 (John Richardson ed., 1986).

See e.g. , Tyler & Fagan, supra note 8; Sunshine & Tyler, supra note 9.

See e.g. , Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing 46-47 (2009) (explaining that the “community policing” label has been applied to systems that use directly opposing strategies, including broken-windows policing and stop-and-frisk, and thus avoiding the term); George L. Kelling & Catherine M. Coles, Fixing Broken Windows 158 (1997) (noting that “community policing has come to mean all things to all people” and declaring that the changes in New York City’s policing strategies during the Giuliani era “are congruent with the basic elements of community policing”); Seth W. Stoughton, Principled Policing: Warrior Cops and Guardian Officers , 51 Wake Forest L. Rev . 611, 628 (2016) (arguing that “[t]he absence of a functional definition of community policing” led to inevitable implementation challenges and department resistance).

The distinction between legitimacy and legal estrangement is analogous to the distinction between ideological and structural understandings of racism. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains, “Most analysts regard racism as a matter of individuals subscribing to an irrational view, thus the cure is educating them to realize that racism is wrong . .  . . The alternative theorization offered here implies that because the phenomenon has structural consequences for the races, the only way to ‘cure’ society of racism is by eliminating its systemic roots.” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, supra note 213, at 476. Along similar lines, legal estrangement demands a structural response, while legitimacy theory ultimately implies that an education-based approach, focused on changing the behavior of a few bad actors, is sufficient to cure the problem of policing.

See, e.g. , A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice , Movement for Black Lives 3-4 (July 2016), http://policy.m4bl.org/wp-content ‌ /uploads ‌ /2016 ‌ /07 ‌ /20160726-m4bl-Vision-Booklet-V3.pdf [ http://perma.cc/488M-NWUF ]; Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity , Ferguson Commission, 15-17 (Oct. 14, 2015), http://3680or2khmk3bzkp33juiea1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content ‌ /up ‌ loads ‌‌ /2015 ‌‌ /09 ‌ /101415_FergusonCommissionReport.pdf [http://perma.cc/R32G-76LX] (framing the problem that gave rise to the death of Michael Brown as a problem of police-citizen relations, municipal court and local governance, child well-being and education, lack of economic opportunity, and racial inequity); cf. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Myth of Police Reform , Atlantic (Apr. 15, 2015), http://www.theatlantic.com ‌ /politics/archive/2015 ‌ /04/the -myth-of-police-reform/390057 [http://perma.cc/8XJN-P9J6] (“A reform that begins with the officer on the beat is not reform at all.”).

See Gottschalk , supra note 3, at 258-59 (critiquing the paralysis that results from the “root causes” perspective in advocacy against mass incarceration).

Sampson & Bartusch, supra note 9, at 778.

Capers, supra note 153, at 60-77.

See Devah Pager, Marked 16 (2007).

See, e.g. , Rios , supra note 126, at 36; Becky Pettit & Bruce Western, Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration , 69 Am. Soc. Rev . 151, 151 (2004) (characterizing incarceration as a “new stage in the life course” of young black men who have not completed high school).

See Rachel A. Harmon, Federal Programs and the Real Costs of Policing , 90 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 870, 876-77, 879-84 (2015).

See, e.g. , Andrew Manuel Crespo, Systemic Facts: Toward Institutional Awareness in Criminal Courts , 129 Harv. L. Rev . 2049, 2057-65 (2016) (critiquing the “administrativist turn” in scholarship on police regulation and arguing for a robust role for local criminal courts); Joanna C. Schwartz, Who Can Police the Police ? , 2016 U. Chi. Legal F. 437, 437 (introducing a framework for thinking about which actors are best suited to pursue police reform).

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, § 210401(a), 108 Stat. 1796, 2071 (codified at 42 U.S.C. § 14141).

See, e.g. , Stephen Rushin, Structural Reform Litigation in American Police Departments , 99 Minn. L. Rev . 1343, 1359-63 (2015).

E.g. , Myriam E. Gilles, Reinventing Structural Reform Litigation: Deputizing Private Citizens in the Enforcement of Civil Rights , 100 Colum. L. Rev. 1384, 1417-18 (2000) (arguing that the statute should permit the DOJ to deputize private citizens to bring pattern or practice suits against police departments if the government has declined to do so); Harmon, supra note 2, at 4 (proposing more aggressive DOJ pursuit of section 14141 lawsuits and a safe harbor from lawsuit for police departments that voluntarily reform); Stephen Rushin, Using Data To Reduce Police Violence , 57 B.C. L. Rev . 117, 154-66 (2016) (arguing that data availability on civilian deaths caused by law enforcement could increase the effectiveness of section 14141); Kami Chavis Simmons, The Politics of Policing: Ensuring Stakeholder Collaboration in the Federal Reform of Local Law Enforcement Agencies , 98 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 489, 494 (2008) (arguing that the DOJ should use a different deliberation model in reform efforts it instigates pursuant to section 14141).

See Harmon, supra note 2, at 3-4 ; Stephen Rushin, Federal Enforcement of Police Reform , 82 Fordham L. Rev . 3189, 3232-33 (2014).

See Police Exec. Research Forum, Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned 4 (2013); Simmons, supra note 265, at 493 (“[ G]overnment officials have expressly articulated a preference for avoiding litigation and negotiating with municipalities to ensure compliance with the suggested reforms.”).

Conduct of Law Enforcement Agencies , U.S. Dep’t Just. (June 2, 2016), http:// www ‌ .justice ‌ .gov ‌ /crt/conduct-law-enforcement-agencies [http://perma.cc/LBR2-V6ZR].

See Brian A. Reaves , Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices , U.S. Dep’t Just. 1 (May 2015), http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd13ppp.pdf [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /4NHA-ZFGZ]. While there is no direct evidence to suggest that the Obama Administration is underproducing section 14141 investigations, other scholars have written about the inherent barriers to initiating section 14141 actions even if a given administration is more willing to use that tool. See, e.g. , Rachel Harmon, Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies and Policing Reform , 32 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 33, 44 (2012) (“Assuming even a small minority of [police departments] is engaged in a pattern or practice of constitutional violations, the Department of Justice cannot achieve national reform by suing every department with a pattern of widespread constitutional violations.”); Harmon, supra note 2, at 21-22; Sunita Patel, Toward Democratic Police Reform: A Vision for “Community Engagement” Provisions in DOJ Consent Decrees , 51 Wake Forest L. Rev. 793, 812-14 (2016).

DOJ Baltimore Report, supra note 156, at 85-87.

See supra note 137 and accompanying text.

DOJ Baltimore Report , supra note 156, at 72-73; see also 42 U.S.C § 2000d to d-7 (2012) (barring race, color, and national origin discrimination in federally assisted programs, which includes the Baltimore Police Department because of the funding it receives from the federal Community Oriented Policing Services agency); Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. § 3789d (2012) (providing the federal government a tool to force local policy departments to eliminate structurally exclusive policies); 28 C.F.R. § 42.203 (2010) (barring programs that receive federal funding from the Justice System Improvement Act or Juvenile Justice Act from using practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or gender unless necessary).

Task Force Report , supra note 6, at 12.

DOJ Baltimore Report , supra note 156, at 72.

See, e.g. , Harmon, supra note 95, at 802 ; Seth W. Stoughton, The Incidental Regulation of Policing , 98 Minn. L. Rev. 2179, 2182 (2014) ; see also Orin S. Kerr, The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution , 102 Mich. L. Rev . 801, 855 (2004) (explaining that wiretapping tends to be regulated by statute more than by Fourth Amendment jurisprudence); Erin Murphy, The Politics of Privacy in the Criminal Justice System: Information Disclosure, the Fourth Amendment, and Statutory Law Enforcement Exemptions , 111 Mich. L. Rev . 485, 535-37 (2013) (comparing courts and political processes in their ability to protect privacy).

Seth Freed Wessler, Police Pay Gap: Many of America’s Finest Struggle on Poverty Wages , NBC News (Oct. 26, 2014), http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/police-pay-gap -many ‌ -americas-finest-struggle-poverty-wages-n232701 [http://perma.cc/33V8-62PE].

United States v. City of Ferguson, No. 4:16-cv-000180, at 65 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 17, 2016) (consent decree).

Seth W. Stoughton, Moonlighting: The Private Employment of Off-Duty Officers , 2017 U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming).

Joce Sterman, ABC2 Investigators Find Highest Paid City Employees Are Everyday Police Officers , ABC2News (Oct. 3, 2013, 9:01 PM), http://www.abc2news.com/news/local-news ‌ /in ves ‌ ti ‌ ga ‌ tions ‌ /abc2-investigators-find-highest-paid-city-employees-are-everyday-police -officers [http:// ‌ perma.cc/V2RS-P96D].

Sean Welsh, Top Baltimore City Salaries for 2015 , Balt. Sun (July 30, 2015, 6:19 PM), http:// ‌ www ‌ .baltimoresun.com /news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-10-highest-balt ‌ i ‌ mo ‌ re ‌ -city-sal ‌ ar ‌ ies ‌ -for-2015-20150730-story.html [http://perma.cc/S878-UGC5].

According to the city salary database, gross salary includes overtime, furloughs, and adjustments, and it does not include any compensation for “comp time” or leave time. It thus seems highly likely that the lieutenant’s pay is largely attributable to overtime. See Baltimore City Employee Salaries FY2015 , Open Balt . , http://data.baltimorecity.gov/ City-Govern ‌ ment ‌ /Balt ‌ imore-City-Employee-Salaries-FY2015/nsfe-bg53 [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /6RZC ‌‌ -28MD]. Note that the city did pay out more than expected in FY 2015 overtime in part because of the Freddie Gray response and subsequent spike in crime. Kevin Rector, Baltimore Police Shifting Officers To Rein in Overtime Costs Amid Historic Year , Balt. Sun (Apr. 8, 2016, 9:04 PM), http:// ‌ http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-police -overtime-20160408 ‌ -stor ‌ y.html [http://perma.cc/5AGC-P9JK].

See Task Force Report, supra note 6, at 65.

Id. at 61-68.

See Michael E. Walleman, Seniority Rights , 77 Police Chief 32 (2010).

See Michelle Wilde Anderson, The New Minimal Cities , 123 Yale L.J. 1118, 1120-21 (2014).

Jihong “Solomon” Zhao, Matthew C. Scheider & Quint Thuman, Funding Community Policing To Reduce Crime: Have COPS Grants Made a Difference ? , 2 Criminology & Pub. Pol’y 7, 9 (2002).

H.R. 1384, 119th Gen. Assemb ., 2d Reg. Sess. (Ind. 2016).

For instance, the Dallas Police Department receives payment from neighborhood associations in exchange for special patrolling and related services. The number of hours and array of services varies based on the amount of money the association raises. See Naomi Martin, As More Dallas Neighborhoods Pay for Extra Patrols, Some Question Fairness , Dall. Morning News (Oct. 25, 2015), http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20151025 -as-more ‌ -dallas-neighborhoods-pay-for-extra-patrols-some-question-fairness.ece [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /FA9G-E2ED].

Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the New Orleans Police Department , U.S. Dep’t Just. 73 (Mar. 16, 2011) [hereinafter DOJ New Orleans Report ], http://nolaipm.gov/main ‌ /up ‌ loads ‌ /File/All/doj_report_110317.pdf [ http://perma.cc/9SXB-5JWB ].

Id. at 69-75.

Some have expressed concerns about these arrangements. For example, the Auditor of the City of San Jose, California issued a report in 2012 stating that “urgent reform and a cultural change” are needed in the off-duty employment program and expressed a concern about “inequities,” though the specific concern was that there would be inequities among officers rather than unequal effects on the community. Office of the City Auditor, Police Department Secondary Employment: Urgent Reform and a Cultural Change Needed To Gain Control of Off-Duty Police Work 13 (2012); see also Steve Toprani, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, Outside and Unmanaged Employment: A Report Detailing Existing Policies and Recommending Reforms (2014) (describing various police departments’ approaches to the governance of secondary employment).

United States v. City of New Orleans, No. 12-1924 (E.D. La. Jan. 11, 2013) (consent decree).

DOJ New Orleans Report, supra note 291, at 74-75. Although the New Orleans system has been restructured, critics claim that it remains burdened with favoritism and inequality. David Hammer & John Simerman, Despite Reforms, NOPD Officers Still Keep Details for Themselves , WWL-TV (Feb. 10, 2015, 10:49 PM), http://legacy.wwltv.com ‌ /story ‌ /news ‌ /local/investigations/david-hammer/2015/02/10/despite-reforms-nopd-officers-still-keep ‌ -details-for-themselves/23212303 [http://perma.cc/4Z92-EU9K].

See, e.g. , Jessica Lee, Seattle Neighborhoods Hire Private Security Amid “Blatant Lawlessness , ” Seattle Times (Jan. 23, 2016, 8:44 PM), http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news ‌ /citizen ‌ -anti-crime-movement-afoot-in-seattles-neighborhoods [http://perma.cc/8ADP-HDBS].

Joh, supra note 152, at 49.

Reaves, supra note 269, at 1.

Garland , supra note 16, at 169 (“[ T]he stated purposes of police have changed, sometimes quite dramatically, and new tactics increasingly define how they deploy their resources. But studies of police budgets and working practices suggest that the daily practices of most police forces have not changed so drastically as this would suggest. And, moreover, these new priorities and tactics have not, as yet, led to any basic reorganization of the police as a public agency.”).

Alan Blinder, Rural Justice Focus of Ex-Police Chief’s Murder Trial , N.Y. Times (Jan. 7, 2015), http:// ‌ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/us/richard-combs-bernard-bailey-shooting -case.html [http://perma.cc/GP2C-4HK8].

See John Monk, Ex-Eutawville Chief Pleads Guilty to Lesser Charge, Will Serve No Time for Killing Black Motorist , State (Sept. 1, 2015), http://www.thestate.com/news ‌ /local/crime ‌ /article ‌ 33213873.html [http://perma.cc/HK6R-R4JV].

Prosecutor: Death of Man Shot by Police Chief Was “Senseless , ” CBS News (Jan. 8, 2015, 3:41 PM), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/richard-combs-case-prosecutor-death-of-man -shot-by ‌‌ -police ‌ -chief-was-senseless [http://perma.cc/H3LY-A6H5].

See, e.g. , Timothy Williams, Cast-Out Police Officers Are Often Hired in Other Cities , N.Y. Times (Sept. 10, 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/us/whereabouts-of-cast-out -police-officers-other-cities-often-hire-them.html [ http://perma.cc/A39R-Q9ZG ] (describing departments’ failure to screen previously fired officers as a factor contributing to incidents of police misconduct). It is also worth noting that there is no national database of police officers who have been fired or lost their certification, in part because of police union opposition. Id.

E.g. , Dagney Faulk & D. Eric Schansberg , The Effects of City-County Consolidation: A Review of the Recent Academic Literature , Ind. Pol’y Rev. Found. 4 (Nov. 16, 2005), http:// ‌ www ‌ .in ‌ .gov/legislative/interim/committee/2005/committees/prelim/MCCC02.pdf [http:// ‌ perma.cc ‌ /2YPU-ZWLC]. But see Douglas Laycock, Voting with Your Feet Is No Substitute for Constitutional Rights , 32 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 29, 31 (2009).

See, e.g. , Overcoming the Challenges and Creating a Regional Approach to Policing in St. Louis City and County , Police Executive Res. F. 40-42 (Apr. 30, 2015), http:// ‌ www ‌ .police ‌ forum ‌ .org ‌ /assets/stlouis.pdf [http://perma.cc/V3LA-M8UW].

See Mark Ernst, What Impact Will Consolidation of Police Services by Small and Medium Size Police Agencies Have on Community Oriented Policing by the Year 2003 ? , Cal. Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training 2 (July 1994), http://www.ncjrs.gov ‌ /pdffiles1 ‌ /Digit ‌ ization ‌ /151687NCJRS.pdf [http://perma.cc/FA7W-CBMU] (“On the face of it, the concepts of community oriented policing and consolidation of police services appear to be diametrically opposed.”); Stephen D. Mastrofski & James J. Willis, Police Organization Continuity and Change: Into the Twenty-First Century , 39 Crime & Just . 55, 62 (2010).

For example, Cincinnati, Ohio, provides one of the most celebrated stories of police restructuring done well. See, e.g. , Alana Semuels, How To Fix a Broken Police Department , Atlantic (May 28, 2015), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/cincinnati-police-re ‌ form ‌ /393 ‌ 797 [ http://perma.cc/M22E-KNZR ] . The Cincinnati Police Department employs roughly 1,000 sworn officers. About Police: Cincinnati Police Department , City Cincinnati , http:// ‌ http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/about-police [http://perma.cc/4GYX-WYTW]. As noted above, one of the pitfalls of “community policing” is its nonspecificity. See supra note 253 and accompanying text. Yet the problem-oriented community policing model employed in Cincinnati seems to offer a potential positive way forward.

See Jeremy M. Wilson, Alexander Weiss & Clifford Grammich , Pathways to Consolidation: Taking Stock of Transitions to Alternative Models of Police Service , Off. Community Oriented Policing Services 3 (2015), http://policeconsolidation.msu.edu ‌ /sites/default ‌ /files ‌ / Path ‌ ways ‌ ToConsolidationAlternativeModels.pdf [http://perma.cc/833U-2PVH].

On the conservative argument for reducing criminal justice spending, including through cutting incarceration, see Statement of Principles , Right on Crime, http://rightoncrime.com ‌ /state ‌ ment ‌ -of-principles [http://perma.cc/C6M4-Xp3X] (“Conservatives are known for being tough on crime, but we must also be tough on criminal justice spending. That means demanding more cost-effective approaches that enhance public safety. A clear example is our reliance on prisons . .  . . ”).

Meares, supra note 16, at 179.

Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) ( finding the New York City Police Department liable for a pattern and practice of racial profiling and unconstitutional Terry stops).

E.g. , Wesley Lowery, Korryn Gaines , Cradling Child and Shotgun, Is Fatally Shot by Police , Wash. Post (Aug. 2, 2016), http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp /2016 ‌ /08 ‌‌ /02 ‌ /korryn-gaines-is-the-ninth-black-woman-shot-and-killed-by-police-this-year [http:// ‌ perma.cc/7JMQ-U78W]. While some media focused on Gaines’s actions as a catalyst for the police response and her death, activists have claimed—more in line with a legal estrangement perspective—that the officers’ decision to fire on Gaines when she was holding her five-year-old son was symbolic of their devaluation of African American lives. From a legitimacy perspective, the fact that Gaines was carrying a shotgun, which she allegedly fired, could be relevant—officers can explain, in a seemingly neutral way, why they made the decision to fire. From an estrangement perspective, regardless of whether the officers’ decision was objectively reasonable, it was subjectively unreasonable and reproductive of the social exclusion of African Americans.

One exception to this characterization is some of Tracey Meares’s scholarship. In particular, in a lecture on the legitimacy of police among young African American men, Meares argues that legitimacy-based policing can build trust between this population and the police. Meares, Legitimacy of Police , supra note 98, at 666. Yet Meares notes that a core assumption of legitimacy theory—that noncompliance with the law and law enforcement is attributable to a lack of belief in the legitimacy of the law or law enforcement—may not be fully supported in research, including her own. Id. The faultiness of this assumption, particularly as applied to young African American men, calls into question whether it is correct to assume that legitimacy-based policing will address this group’s perception of police marginalization.

Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056 (2016).

Id. at 2059-60.

Id. at 2060.

See, e.g. , Kaaryn Gustafson, The Criminalization of Poverty , 99 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 643, 667-68 (2009).

517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996).

426 U.S. 229 (1976); see also Paul Butler, The System Is Working the Way It Is Supposed To: The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform , 104 Geo. L.J. 1419, 1453 (2016) (explaining the difficulty of challenging a pattern of discriminatory arrests under the Equal Protection Clause).

Commonwealth v. Warren, No. 11596, slip op. at 15-17 (Mass. Sept. 20, 2016); see also Commonwealth v. Mercado, 663 N.E.2d 243, 246 (Mass. 1996) (concluding that “evasive behavior” is insufficient to support reasonable individualized suspicion).

Warren , slip op. at 15-19.

E.g. , Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 767-69 (1966). But see Daniel J. Meltzer, Deterring Constitutional Violations by Law Enforcement Officials: Plaintiffs and Defendants as Private Attorneys General , 88 Colum. L. Rev . 247, 249-50 (1988) (suggesting that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is aimed at regulating bureaucratic actors as well as protecting individual rights).

Akhil Reed Amar, The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles 37-39 (1997).

Friedman & Ponomarenko, supra note 83, at 1834-36.

See, e.g. , Amy E. Lerman & Vesla M. Weaver, Arresting Citizenship 142 (2014) (describing the asymmetric power orientation toward government that arises from being subjected to the carceral state); Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba & Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy 185, 312-46 (2012) (discussing education and organized political action); Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, and the First Amendment Right of Association , 91 Calif. L. Rev. 1209, 1260-62 (2003).

E.g. , Charles A. Reich, The Law of the Planned Society , 75 Yale L.J. 1227, 1259-60 (1966); Miriam Seifter, Second-Order Participation in Administrative Law , 63 UCLA L. Rev . 1300, 1333-52 (2016) (describing reliance on questionably representative interest groups to ensure participation in administrative rulemaking).

Offering a more optimistic account, Friedman and Ponomarenko point to national civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP and ACLU, along with more regional and local groups, like churches, as giving voice to the disenfranchised communities. Friedman & Ponomarenko, supra note 83, at 1789-80. However, given what political sociology reveals about the processes through which community groups often come to represent community interests, it might not be safe to assume that large national organizations or community nonprofits are a reliable channel for ensuring sufficient democratic voice in policing to root out legal estrangement. See, e.g. , Jeremy R. Levine, The Privatization of Political Representation: Community-Based Organizations as Nonelected Neighborhood Representatives , 81 Am. Soc. Rev. 1251, 1268-72 (2016) (arguing that, although community-based organizations help channel resources to under-resourced neighborhoods, those resources may come at the cost of democratic accountability).

See Erik Luna, Transparent Policing , 85 Iowa L. Rev . 1107, 1121-31 (2000) (describing the democratic bases for increasing availability of governmental information about policing).

See Ill. Public Act 093-0209 (2003).

See Edward McClelland, Barack Obama and Racial Profiling , NBC Chi. (July 18, 2013), http:// ‌ http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Barack-Obama-and-Racial-Pro ‌ fil ‌ ing ‌ -215986531.html [http://perma.cc/QPP3-XL22].

On organized copwatching, see generally Simonson , supra note 191 .

Zoe Mentel, Racial Reconciliation, Truth-Telling, and Police Legitimacy , U.S. Dep’t Just. 19 -21 (2012), http://nnscommunities.org/uploads/Racial-Reconciliation_Truth-Telling_and -Legit ‌ imacy.pdf [http://perma.cc/TP5G-U4SJ]; Reconciliation , Nat’l Initiative for Building Community Tr. & Just ., http://trustandjustice.org/resources ‌ /intervention ‌ /re ‌ con ‌ ciliation [http://perma.cc/NJ3B-TKUS].

Reconciliation , supra note 336.

See David M. Kennedy, Don’t Shoot 83 (2011).

Mustafa Emirbayer & Victoria Johnson, Bourdieu and Organizational Analysis , 37 Theory & Soc’y 1, 32 (2008).

See Jonathan Allen, Balancing Justice and Social Unity: Political Theory and the Idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission , 49 U. Toronto L.J . 315, 319 (1999) (“Truth commissions are thought to play the symbolic role of making a decisive break with the official sponsorship of human rights violations that characterized the past.”); see also Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence 62 (1998) (characterizing the truth commission as a possibility for healing and justice “ after periods of terror and violations of human rights” (emphasis added)).

Andrew V. Papachristos, David M. Hureau & Anthony A. Braga, The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence , 78 Am . Soc. Rev . 417, 438 (2013).

See, e.g. , Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity , at xx-xxii (2009); Coates, supra note 255 (“Vexing social problems—homelessness, drug use, the inability to support one’s children, mental illness—are presently solved by sending in men and women who specialize in inspiring fear and ensuring compliance.”); Kohler-Hausmann, supra note 16, at 691-92; Bruce Western, The Rehabilitation Paradox , New Yorker (May 9, 2016), http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-re ‌ hab ‌ il ‌ itation-paradox [ http://perma.cc/PT4M-E27B ].

See, e.g. , Bell, supra note 42, at 332-34; Mary Fan, Street Diversion and Decarceration , 50 Am. Crim. L. Rev . 165, 167-68 (2013); Sarah E. Waldeck, Cops, Community Policing, and the Social Norms Approach to Crime Control: Should One Make Us More Comfortable with the Others ? , 34 Ga. L. Rev. 1253 , 1299-1301 (2000).

See Garland , supra note 16; see also Jessica Eaglin, The Drug Court Paradigm , 53 Am. Crim. L. Rev . 595, 635 (2016) (“[ D]rug courts may have incentivized police and prosecutors to expand the number of individuals processed within the system for drug offenses due to the well-meaning belief that the justice system would offer better treatment.”); Allegra McLeod, Decarceration Courts: Possibilities and Perils of a Shifting Criminal Law , 100 Geo. L.J. 1587, 1619-20 (2012) ; Natapoff, supra note 250, at 1059.

George Gascón & Todd Foglesong, Making Policing More Affordable: Managing Costs and Measuring Value in Policing , Nat’l Inst. Just. (Dec. 2010) , http://www.ncjrs.gov ‌ /pdffiles1 ‌ /nij ‌ /231096.pdf [ http://perma.cc/9NTG-K986 ].

See, e.g. , Brady Dennis, Mark Berman & Elahe Izadi, Dallas Police Chief Says ‘We’re Asking Cops To Do Too Much in this Country , ’ Wash. Post (July 11, 2016), http:// www ‌ .wash ‌ ingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/grief-and-anger-continue-after-dallas-a ‌ ttacks-and-police-shootings-as-debate-rages-over-policing [ http://perma.cc/X72P-7EFG ]. This is not a new issue. See, e.g. , Albert J. Reiss, Jr., The Police and the Public 63 (1972); Egon Bittner, Florence Nightingale in Pursuit of Willie Sutton: A Theory of the Police , in The Potential for Reform of Criminal Justice 17 (Herbert Jacob ed., 1974).

See Camille A. Nelson, Racializing Disability, Disabling Race: Policing Race and Mental Status , 15 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 1, 4-5 (2010) (introducing three modalities of police interaction with the mentally ill).

See Sarah Swan, Home Rules , 64 Duke L.J . 823, 867 (2015).

See Beckett & Herbert , supra note 16, at 12-14.

See Wayne A. Logan , An Exception Swallows a Rule: Police Authority To Search Incident to Arrest , 19 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev . 381, 403 (2001).

See Max Weber , Politics as a Vocation , in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills eds. & trans., 1946) (“[A] state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”).

Richard H. McAdams, Dhammika Dharmapala & Nuno Garoupa, The Law of Police , 82 U. Chi. L. Rev. 135, 142-47 (2015).

See generally Barbara E. Armacost, Organizational Culture & Police Misconduct , 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev . 45 (2004) (arguing that the powerful culture of police departments sets conditions that produce violent misconduct).

See Canice Prendergrast, The Motivation and Bias of Bureaucrats , 97 Am. Econ. Rev . 180, 192 (2007); see also Richard H. McAdams, Dhammika Dharmapala & Nuno Garoupa, Punitive Police? Agency Costs, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Procedure (Coase-Sandor Inst. for Law & Econ ., Working Paper No. 644, 2015), http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu ‌ /law ‌ _and ‌ _econ ‌ omics/642 [ http://perma.cc/N2C8-GGFH ].

See Task Force Report , supra note 6, at 1 (“Law enforcement culture should embrace a guardian—rather than a warrior—mindset to build trust and legitimacy both within agencies and with the public.”); Sue Rahr & Stephen K. Rice, From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police Culture to Democratic Ideals , Nat’l Inst. Just. (Apr. 2015), http:// ‌ www ‌ .ncjrs.gov /pdffiles1/nij/248654.pdf [ http://perma.cc/355P-JDJD ]; Stoughton, supra note 253, at 612-14.

87 Police Brutality Topics and Essay Examples

🏆 best police brutality topics for essays, 📌 most interesting police brutality essay topics, 👍 good research topics about police brutality, ❓ research questions about police brutality.

• Police Deviance For the sake of this paper, the scope of this paper will only examine the code of conduct in reference to the relationship between the police force and the society.
• Police Brutality: Internal and External Stakeholders To begin with, internal stakeholders such as police officers and judges have been observed to enforce the law discriminatively. Policymakers can be encouraged to propose and support powerful laws that have the potential to deal […]
• Police Brutality: Dissoi Logoi Argumentation Under the influence of societal views, the majority of the representatives of the general public tend to perceive police officers as a safeguarding force that gathers individuals who perform their duties to ensure that the […]
• Excessive Force by the Police On the other hand, the media reported on the severity of misconduct by police officers and cited the Blue code of silence as the key setback against the fight against police torture.
• Police Misconduct: What Can Be Done? Police officers are the individuals charged with the task of maintaining law and order and ensuring the security of the population.
• Police Brutality in the USA This paper aims to discuss the types of police brutality, the particularities of psychological harm inflicted by the police, and its consequences for the population affected by these forms of violence.
• Police Brutality: Graham vs. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 In this essay, a summary of the Graham and Connor case and the decision of the court will be introduced. In case this suggestion is correct, Connor appears as a police officer who failed to […]
• Police Brutality: Causes and Solutions If the criminal is armed and firing at the police, the use of force is acceptable. However, when the actions of the police are disproportionate to the committed crimes, the necessity of such measures is […]
• Impact of Police Brutality on the Society in the United States The issue of racism is one that has led to police brutality that has been witnessed in the American society for a long time.
• Excessive Force and Deviance, Police Brutality The events highlighting racial injustice could positively influence our society, maintaining an appropriate level of awareness regarding the issues encountered by African-Americans and prompting a change in police behaviors.
• History of Police Brutality: The Murder of George Floyd Police officers strive to maintain order and ensure adherence to the laws of the state. The standards observed the right to democracy and addressed the need for representation.
• Body-Worn Cameras Against Police Brutality in New York There is often a legal foundation to such a privileged position; the laws control the oppressed class and mitigate threats to the power of the ruling class.
• Police Brutality: Social Issue This paper explores the issue of police brutality and seeks to shed light on the perceptions of the public, especially the black minority.
• Police Brutality as a Law Enforcement Challenge The problem has persisted due to the ineffectiveness of different leaders. The number of unexplainable shootings, severe beatings, and mistreatments continues to be reported in the country.
• Social Psychology: Police Brutality The first group of solutions to the problem of police brutality includes technical measures, such as the use of body cameras and dashboard cameras. Finally, another potential solution to police brutality is the diversification of […]
• Technology Influences on Police Brutality Modern platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to inform and educate more people about the nature of police brutality.
• Public Administration Issue: Police Brutality The trend is ongoing and is not expected to end any time soon because of the social structure and the culture that does not value the contributions of minorities and people of color.
• Police in Law Enforcement Misconduct This creates a rift between the community and the police leading to further misconduct in the process of enforcing the law.
• The Incidents Involving Police Brutality
• The Infringement of Natural Human Rights Because of Police Brutality in the United States
• Police Brutality and Its Effects on the United States
• The Flaws of Police Officers and the Issue of Police Brutality on an Individual
• The Suffering and Fight of African-Americans Against Police Brutality
• The Image Serving as a Reminder of Police Brutality
• The Negative Effects of Police Brutality
• The Changing Patterns of Racism and Police Brutality in the United States
• Police Brutality and the Death of Freddie Gray
• The Issue of Police Brutality and Injustice in the Story of Kalief Browder
• The Relation Between Police Brutality and Race in the United States of America
• Police Brutality and Racism Against African Americans
• The High Prevalence of Police Brutality Towards African America
• The US Government Faces Different Challenges with Police Brutality
• The Truth About Police Brutality Against Minorities
• The Importance of Body Cameras for Solving the Problem of Police Brutality
• Protesting Protest Against Police Brutality
• The Solutions to the Issue of Police Brutality in the United States
• Racism: Police Brutality and Racial Profiling
• Prejudice, Police Brutality, Racism: The Three Things We Are Trying to Get Rid Off
• Problems Caused by Police Brutality
• Police Misconduct and Police Brutality
• The Issue of Police Brutality Against People of Color in the United States
• The Issue of Police Brutality Against the Colored People in the United States
• The Effects of Violence on Police Brutality
• The Deaths Caused by Hurricane Katrina and Police Brutality in America
• Social Media Activism, Centered on Police Brutality
• The Effects of Police Brutality on the Relationship
• The Long Problem of Police Brutality in the United States
• The Police Brutality Against Minorities
• Race, Police Brutality, Crime, Education and Poverty
• The Issue of Police Brutality in the United States and the Solutions to Curb Police Misconduct
• The Influence of the Media and Social Class in Police Brutality
• The Dangers of Racial Profiling and Police Brutality
• The Effects of Police Brutality on Minority Communities
• The Effects of Police Brutality and Racism English
• The Drug Trade as the Cause of Police Brutality in Brazil
• Police Brutality and Their Power Caught on Video by Bystanders
• How to Deal with the Problem of Police Brutality in the United States?
• What is the Relations Police Brutality and Its Contributors?
• How Repressive Laws and Police Brutality Against Mexican Americans Stigmatized the Race as a Whole?
• How Race and Ethnicity Affects Police Brutality Term?
• Police Brutality Ends Here?
• What Does the Media Cover up the Police Brutality?
• How Does Police Brutality on Children Affect How Society?
• Does Police Brutality Distort the Way People View Law Enforcement?
• How Can We Help Prevent Police Brutality?
• How to Stop Police Brutality Against Minority’s?
• Has Been Police Brutality Alive for Too Many Years?
• Has Police Brutality Increased Throughout the United?
• What Is Wrong with Police?
• How Police Corruption Remains a Tainted Reminder of Police Brutality in the US?
• Does Police Brutality Affect the Mental Health of Black Youth?
• Why Isn’t Outrage over Police Brutality Enough?
• Are the Police Taking Advantage of People by Using Police Brutality?
• Has Been Police Brutality Around for Decades?
• Should There Be Direct Laws Against Police Brutality?
• Can You Trust the Law?
• What Is the Police Brutality Effect on African American Males?
• When the Police Duty to Protect Fails Police Brutality?
• Religious Profiling and Police Brutality: How They Affect Operations?
• What Are the Effects of Police Brutality?
• Police Brutality: What’s Really Going on?
• What is the New York City Police Brutality?
• How Does the Body Camera Increase Police Brutality?
• The Causes of Police Brutality in America: Is It Due to Police Behavior?
• When Excessive Force Becomes Police Brutality Sociology?
• What is the Link Between Police Brutality and the Law Enforcement Officers?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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122 Police Brutality Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Police brutality is a serious issue that has been a topic of discussion and debate for many years. It refers to the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials against civilians, resulting in injury or death. This issue has sparked outrage and protests across the country, as people demand justice and accountability for those responsible.

If you are tasked with writing an essay on police brutality, it is important to choose a topic that is both relevant and engaging. To help you get started, here are 122 police brutality essay topic ideas and examples to consider:

• The history of police brutality in the United States
• The impact of police brutality on communities of color
• The role of race in police brutality cases
• The militarization of police forces
• The use of body cameras to prevent police brutality
• The role of social media in exposing police brutality
• The psychological effects of police brutality on victims
• The legal implications of police brutality cases
• The role of police unions in protecting officers accused of brutality
• The impact of police brutality on trust in law enforcement
• The use of excessive force in policing protests
• The role of systemic racism in police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on mental health
• The role of implicit bias in police interactions
• The impact of police brutality on community-police relations
• The role of technology in documenting police brutality incidents
• The impact of police brutality on victims' families
• The role of police training in preventing brutality
• The impact of police brutality on trust in the criminal justice system
• The use of force continuum in policing
• The impact of police brutality on police officers' mental health
• The role of political rhetoric in shaping attitudes towards police brutality
• The impact of police unions on accountability for police brutality
• The use of civil rights laws to address police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the public perception of law enforcement
• The role of community policing in preventing police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on minority communities
• The role of federal oversight in addressing police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the legitimacy of law enforcement
• The role of the media in shaping public perceptions of police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the mental health of officers
• The role of police culture in perpetuating brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the criminal justice system
• The role of civilian oversight boards in addressing police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the use of force policies
• The role of community activism in addressing police brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the trust between police and communities
• The role of police accountability in preventing brutality
• The impact of police brutality on the relationship between law enforcement and the public
• The role of police leadership in addressing brutality
• The impact of police brutality on officer training
• The role of legal reforms in addressing police brutality
• The role of community engagement in preventing police brutality
• The role of police unions in addressing brutality

These essay topics cover a wide range of issues related to police brutality, allowing you to explore different aspects of this complex and important topic. Whether you are writing a research paper, a persuasive essay, or a personal reflection on police brutality, these topic ideas can help you get started and develop a compelling argument or analysis. Remember to choose a topic that interests you and aligns with your goals for the essay, whether that be raising awareness, advocating for policy changes, or exploring the impact of police brutality on society.

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A better path forward for criminal justice: Police reform

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Rashawn ray and rashawn ray senior fellow - governance studies @sociologistray clark neily clark neily senior vice president - cato institute @conlawwarrior.

• 20 min read

Below is the first chapter from “A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice,” a report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. You can access other chapters from the report here .

Recent incidents centering on the deaths of unarmed Black Americans including George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, William Green, and countless others have continued to apply pressure for wide sweeping police reform. To some, these incidents are the result of a few “bad apples.” 1

To others, they are examples of a system imbued with institutional and cultural failures that expose civilians and police officers to harm. Our article aims to combine perspectives from across the political spectrum on sensible police reform. We focus on short-, medium-, and long-term solutions for reducing officer-involved shootings, racial disparities in use of force, mental health issues among officers, and problematic officers who rotten the tree of law enforcement.

Level Setting

Violent crime has significantly decreased since the early 1990s. However, the number of mass shootings have increased and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security report being worried about domestic terrorism, even within law enforcement. Nonetheless, despite recent increases that some scholars associate with COVID-19 spillovers related to high unemployment and underemployment, violent crime is still much lower than it was three decades ago.

Some scholars attribute crime reductions to increased police presence, while others highlight increases in overall levels of education and employment. In the policy space, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 are often noted. We believe there is some validity to all of these perspectives. For example, SWAT deployment has increased roughly 1,400 percent since 1980. Coinciding with the 1986 Drug Bill, SWAT is often deployed for drug raids and no-knock warrants. 2 The death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, is most recently highlighted as an example that demonstrates some of the problems with these tactics. 3

The 1994 Crime Bill ushered the COPS program and an increase in prisons around the country. 4 This legislation also coincided with stop-and-frisk policies and a rise in stand-your-ground laws that disproportionately disadvantaged Black Americans and led to overpolicing. It is an indisputable fact that Black people are more likely to have force used on them. In fact, Black people relative to white people are significantly less likely to be armed or be attacking at the time they are killed by police. This is a historical pattern, including during the 1960s when civil rights leaders were being beaten and killed. However, officer-involved killings, overall, have increased significantly over the past two decades. 5 And, we also know that if drugs were the only culprit, there would be drastically different outcomes for whites. Research shows that while Blacks and whites have similar rates of using drugs, and often times distributing drugs, there are huge disparities in who is arrested, incarcerated, and convicted for drug crimes. However, it is also an indisputable fact that predominately Black communities have higher levels of violent crime. Though some try to attribute higher crime in predominately Black neighborhoods to biology or culture, most scholars agree that inequitable resources related to housing, education, and employment contribute to these statistics. 6   7 8 Research documents that after controlling for segregation and disadvantage, predominately Black and white neighborhoods differ little in violent crime rates. 9

These are complex patterns, and Democrats and Republicans often differ on how America reached these outcomes and what we do about them. As a result, bipartisan police reform has largely stalled. Now, we know that in March 2021 the House of Representatives once again passed The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. States and localities are also presenting and passing a slew of police reforms, such as in Maryland where the state legislature passed the Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021. We are not here to debate the merits of these legislations, though we support much of the components, nor are we here to simply highlight low-hanging fruit such as banning no-knock warrants, creating national databases, or requiring body-worn cameras. People across the political aisle largely agree on these reforms. Instead, we aim to provide policy recommendations on larger-scale reforms, which scholars and practitioners across the political aisle agree needs to occur, in order to transform law enforcement in America and take us well into the twenty-first century. Our main themes include accountability, training, and culture.

Accordingly, our recommendations include:

Short-Term Reforms

Reform Qualified Immunity

• Create National Standards for Training and De-escalation

Medium-Term Reforms

Restructure Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct

Address officer wellness.

Long-Term Reforms

Restructure Regulations for Fraternal Order of Police Contracts

Change police culture to protect civilians and police, short-term reforms.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that courts invented to make it more difficult to sue police and other government officials who have been plausibly alleged to have violated somebody’s rights. 10 11 We believe this doctrine needs to be removed. 12 13 States also have a role to play here. The Law Enforcement Bill of Rights further doubles down on a lack of accountable for bad apples.

We are not out on a limb here. A recent YouGov and Cato poll found that over 60 percent of Americans support eliminating qualified immunity. 14 Over 80 percent of Americans oppose erasing historical records of officer misconduct. In this regard, most citizens have no interest making it more difficult to sue police officers, but police seem to have a very strong interest in maintaining the policy. However, not only do everyday citizens want it gone, but think tanks including The Brookings Institution and The Cato Institute have asserted the same. It is a highly problematic policy.

Though police chiefs might not say it publicly or directly, we have evidence that a significant number of them are quite frustrated by their inability to get rid of the bad apples, run their departments in ways that align with best practices they learn at Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers and National Association of Chiefs of Police, and discipline and terminate officers who deserve to be held accountable and jeopardize not only the public perception of their own department but drag down the social standing of the entire law enforcement profession. As noted above, The Law Enforcement Bill of Rights at the state level needs to be addressed. It further doubles down on qualified immunity and removes accountability for law enforcement.

National Standards for Training and De-escalation

In 2016, Daniel Shaver was fatally shot and killed by officer Philip Brailsford. Brailsford was charged but found not guilty. At the time of the killing, Shaver was unarmed as he lay dead in a hotel hallway. Police experts critiqued Brailsford’s tactics to de-escalate the situation. As he entered the scene, he had both hands on his M4 rifle and eliminated all other tools or de-escalation tactics. Brailsford was fired, tried for murder, and then rehired. He ultimately retired due to PTSD. Highlighting the roles of militarization, mental health, qualified immunity, and other policy-related topics, this incident shows why there is a need for national standards for training and de-escalation. Many officers would have approached this situation differently, suggesting there are a myriad of tactics and strategies being taught.

Nationally, officers receive about 50 hours of firearm training during the police academy. They receive less than 10 hours of de-escalation training. So, when they show up at a scene and pull their weapon, whether it be on teenagers walking down the street after playing a basketball game or someone in a hotel or even a car (like in the killing of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb), poor decisions and bad outcomes should not be surprising.

Police officers regardless of whether they live in Kentucky or Arizona need to have similar training. Among the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, there is wide variation in the amount of training that officers have to complete as well as what type of training they complete. With the amount of travel that Americans engage in domestically, law enforcement has not kept up to speed with ensuring that officers receive the same training. Consequently, police officers may be put in positions to make bad decisions because of a lack of the implementation of federal standards. Funding can be provided to have federally certified trainers who work with localities within states, counties, and cities.

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

From 2015–2019, the 20 largest U.S. municipalities spent over $2 billion in civilian payouts for police misconduct. Rather than the police department budget, these funds mostly come from general funds. 15 So, not only is the officer absolved from civil or financial culpability, but the police department often faces little financial liability. Instead, the financial burden falls onto the municipality; thus, taxpayers. This money could be going toward education, work, and infrastructure.

Not only are the financial settlement often expensive, like the $20 million awarded to William Green’s family in Prince George’s County, Maryland, but the associated legal fees and deteriorated community trust are costly. In a place like Chicago, over the past 20 years, it has spent about $700 million on civilian payouts for police misconduct. New York City spent about $300 million in the span of a few years.

We assert that civilian payouts for police misconduct must be restructured. Indemnification will be eliminated, making the officer responsible, and requiring them to purchase professional liability insurance the exact same way that other occupations such as doctors and lawyers do. This would give insurance companies a strong incentive to identify the problem officers early, to raise their rates just the way that insurance companies raise the rates on a bad driver or a doctor who engages in malpractice. In this regard, the cost of the insurance policy would increase the more misconduct an officer engaged in. Eventually, the worst officers would become uninsurable, and therefore unemployable. This would help to increase accountability. Instead of police chiefs having difficulties removing bad officers through pushback from the Fraternal Order of Police Union, bad officers would simply be unemployable by virtue of the fact that they cannot secure professional liability insurance.

Bottom line, police almost never suffer any financial consequences for their own misconduct.

Shifting civilian payouts away from tax money and to police department insurance policies would instantly change the accountability structure.

Shifting civilian payouts away from tax money and to police department insurance policies would instantly change the accountability structure. Police are almost always indemnified for that misconduct when there is a payout. And, what that means is simply that their department or the city, which is to say us, the taxpayers, end up paying those damages claims. That is absolutely the wrong way to do it.

Most proposals for restructuring civilian payouts for police misconduct have included some form of liability insurance for police departments and/or individual officers. This means shifting the burden from taxpayer dollars to police department insurance policies. If a departmental policy, the municipality should pay for that policy, but the money should come from the police department budget. Police department budget increases should take settlement costs into account and now simply allow for increased budgets to cover premium increases. This is a similar approach to healthcare providers working in a hospital. If individual officers have liability insurance, they fall right in line with other occupations that have professional liability insurance.

Congress could approve a pilot program for municipalities to explore the potential impacts of police department insurance policies versus individual officer liability insurance, and even some areas that use both policies simultaneously. Regardless, it is clear that the structure of civilian payouts for police misconduct needs to change. We believe not only will the change provide more funding for education, work, and infrastructure, but it will increase accountability and give police chiefs and municipalities the ability to rid departments of bad apples that dampen an equitable and transparent cultural environment.

Mental Health Counseling

In this broader discussion of policing, missing is not only the voices of law enforcement themselves, but also what is happening in their own minds and in their own bodies. Recent research has highlighted that about 80 percent of officers suffer from chronic stress. They suffer from depression, anxiety. They have relationship problems, and they get angered easily. One out of six report being suicidal. Another one out of six report substance abuse problems. Most sobering, 90 percent of them never seek help. 16  We propose that officers should have mandatory mental health counseling on a quarterly basis. Normalizing mental health counseling will reduce the stigma associated with it.

It is also important for law enforcement to take a serious look into the role of far-right extremism on officer attitudes and behaviors. There is ample evidence from The Department of Homeland Security showing the pervasive ways that far-right extremists target law enforcement. 17 Academic research examining social dominance ideation among police officers may be a key way to root out extremism during background checks and psychological evaluations. Social dominance can be assessed through survey items and decision-making simulations, such as the virtual reality simulations conducted at the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland.

Community Policing

Community police is defined in a multitude of ways. One simple way we think about community policing is whether officers experience the community in everyday life, often when they are not on duty. Do they live in the community, send their children to local schools, exercise at the neighborhood gym, and shop at the main grocery store? Often times, police officers engage in this type of community policing in predominately white and affluent neighborhoods but less in predominately Black or Latino neighborhoods, even when they have higher household income levels. Police officers also live farther away from the areas where they work. While this may be a choice for some, others simply cannot afford to live there, particularly in major cities and more expensive areas of the country. Many police officers are also working massive amounts of over time to make ends meet, provide for their families, and send children to college.

Altogether, community policing requires a set of incentives. We propose increasing the required level of education, which can justify wage increases. This can help to reduce the likelihood of police officers working a lot of hours and making poor decisions because of lack of sleep or stress. We also propose requiring that officers live within or near the municipalities where they work. Living locally can increase police-community relations and improve trust. Officers should receive rent subsidies or down payment assistance to enhance this process.

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Unions are important. However, the Fraternity Order of Police Union has become so deeply embedded in law enforcement that it obstructs the ability for equitable and transparent policing, even when interacting with police chiefs. Police union contracts need to be evaluated to ensure they do not obstruct the ability for officers who engage in misconduct to be held accountable. Making changes to the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights at the state helps with this, but the Congress should provide more regulations to help local municipalities with this process.

Police have to be of the people and for the people. Often times, police officers talk about themselves as if they are detached from the community. Officers often view themselves as warriors at war with the people in the communities they serve. Police officers embody an “us versus them” perspective, rather than viewing themselves to be part of the community. 18

It must be a change to police culture regarding how police officers view themselves and view others. Part of changing culture deals with transforming how productivity and awards are allocated. Police officers overwhelmingly need to make forfeitures in the form of arrests, citations, and tickets to demonstrate leadership and productivity. Police officers rarely get credit for the everyday, mundane things they do to make their communities safe and protect and serve. We believe there must be a fundamental reconceptualization of both the mission of police and the culture in which that mission is carried out. Policing can be about respecting individuals and not using force. It is an ethical approach to policing that requires incentives positive outcomes rather than deficits that rewards citations and force.

T here must be a fundamental reconceptualization of both the mission of police and the culture in which that mission is carried out.

Recommendations for Future Research

First, research needs to examine how community policing and officer wellness programs can simultaneously improve outcomes for the community and law enforcement. The either/or model simply does not work any longer. Instead, research should determine what is best for local communities and improves the health and well-being of law enforcement. Second, future research on policing needs to examine the role that protests against police brutality, particularly related to Black Lives Matter protests, are having on reform at the local, state, and federal levels. It is important for policymakers to readily understand the demands of their constituents and ways to create peace and civility.

Finally, research needs to fully examine legislation to reallocate and shift funding away from and within police department budgets. 19  By taking a market-driven, evidence-based approach to police funding, the same methodology can be used that will lead to different results depending on the municipality. Police department budgets should be fiscally responsible and shift funding to focusing on solving violent crime, while simultaneously reducing use of force on low-income and racial/ethnic minority communities. It is a tall order, but federal funding could be allocated to examine all of these important research endeavors. It is a must if the United States is to stay as a world leader in this space. It is clear our country is falling short at this time.

We have aimed to take a deep dive into large policy changes needed for police reform that centers around accountability, finances, culture, and communities. Though there is much discussion about reallocating police funding, we believe there should be an evidence-based, market-driven approach. While some areas may need to reallocate funding, others may need to shift funding within the department, or even take both approaches. Again, with roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies, there is wide variation in funds provided for policing and how those funds are spent. This is why it is imperative that standards be set at the federal level to help municipalities grapple with this important issue and the others we highlight in this report.

RECOMMENDED READING

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness . The New Press.

Brooks, Rosa. 2021. Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City : Penguin.

Horace, Matthew. 2019. The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement . Hatchette Books.

Ray, Rashawn. “ How Should We Enhance Police Accountability in the United States? ” The Brookings Institution, August 25, 2020.

• Ray, Rashawn. “Bad Apples come from Rotten Trees in Policing.” The Brookings Institution. May 30, 2020. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/05/30/bad-apples-come-from-rotten-trees-in-policing/
• Neily, Clark. “Get a Warrant.” Cato Institute. October 27, 2020. Available at: https://www.cato.org/blog/get-warrant
• Brown, Melissa and Rashawn Ray. “Breonna Taylor, Police Brutality, and the Importance of #SayHerName.” The Brookings Institution. September 25, 2020. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/09/25/breonna-taylor-police-brutality-and-the-importance-of-sayhername/
• Galston, William and Rashawn Ray. “Did the 1994 Crime Bill Cause Mass Incarceration?” The Brookings Institution. August 28, 2020. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/08/28/did-the-1994-crime-bill-cause-mass-incarceration/
• Edwards, Frank, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito. “Risk of Being Killed by Police Use of Force in the United States by Age, Race-Ethnicity, and Sex.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 2019. 116(34):16793 LP – 16798.
• Peterson, Ruth D. and Lauren J. Krivo.  Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide , 2010. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Friedson, Michael and Patrick Sharkey. “Violence and Neighborhood Disadvantage after the Crime Decline,”  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2015. 660:1, 341–58.
• Jeffrey D. Morenoff and Robert J. Sampson. 1997. “Violent Crime and The Spatial Dynamics of Neighborhood Transition: Chicago, 1970–1990,”  Social Forces  76:1, 31–64.
• Peterson, Ruth D. and Lauren J. Krivo. 2010.  Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide , New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Sobel, Nathaniel. “What Is Qualified Immunity, and What Does It Have to Do With Police Reform?” Lawfare. June 6, 2020. Available at: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-qualified-immunity-and-what-does-it-have-do-police-reform
• Schweikert, Jay. “Qualified Immunity: A Legal, Practical, and Moral Failure.” Cato Institute. September 14, 2020. Available at: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-legal-practical-moral-failure
• Neily, Clark. “To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity. Cato Institute. May 31, 2020. Available at: https://www.cato.org/commentary/make-police-accountable-end-qualified-immunity
• Ray, Rashawn. “How to Fix the Financial Gymnastics of Police Misconduct Settlements.” Lawfare. April 1, 2021. Available at: https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-fix-financial-gymnastics-police-misconduct-settlements
• Ekins, Emily. “Poll: 63% of Americans Favor Eliminating Qualified Immunity for Police.” Cato Institute. July 16, 2020. Available at: https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-63-americans-favor-eliminating-qualified-immunity-police#introduction
• Ray, Rashawn. “Restructuring Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct.” Sociological Forum, 2020. 35(3): 806–812.
• Ray, Rashawn. “What does the shooting of Leonard Shand tell us about the mental health of civilians and police?” The Brookings Institution. October 16, 2019. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2019/10/16/what-does-the-shooting-of-leonard-shand-tell-us-about-the-mental-health-of-civilians-and-police/
• Allen, John et al. “Preventing Targeted Violence Against Faith-Based Communities.” Homeland Security Advisory Council, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. December 17, 2019. Available at: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/preventing_targeted_violence_against_faith-based_communities_subcommittee_0.pdf >.
• Ray, Rashawn, Clark Neily, and Arthur Rizer. “What Would Meaningful Police Reform Look Like?” Video, Project Sphere, Cato Institute, 2020. Available at: https://www.projectsphere.org/episode/what-would-meaningful-police-reform-look-like/
• Ray, Rashawn. “What does ‘Defund the Police’ Mean and does it have Merit?” The Brookings Institution, June 19, 2020. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/19/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-and-does-it-have-merit/

Governance Studies

Hanna Love, Manann Donoghoe

September 21, 2023

Brookings Institution, Washington DC

12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT

Rashawn Ray

March 16, 2023

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Protesters take a knee in front of New York City police officers during a solidarity rally for George Floyd, June 4, 2020.

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Solving racial disparities in policing

Colleen Walsh

Harvard Staff Writer

Experts say approach must be comprehensive as roots are embedded in culture

“ Unequal ” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. The first part explores the experience of people of color with the criminal justice legal system in America.

It seems there’s no end to them. They are the recent videos and reports of Black and brown people beaten or killed by law enforcement officers, and they have fueled a national outcry over the disproportionate use of excessive, and often lethal, force against people of color, and galvanized demands for police reform.

This is not the first time in recent decades that high-profile police violence — from the 1991 beating of Rodney King to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 — ignited calls for change. But this time appears different. The police killings of Breonna Taylor in March, George Floyd in May, and a string of others triggered historic, widespread marches and rallies across the nation, from small towns to major cities, drawing protesters of unprecedented diversity in race, gender, and age.

According to historians and other scholars, the problem is embedded in the story of the nation and its culture. Rooted in slavery, racial disparities in policing and police violence, they say, are sustained by systemic exclusion and discrimination, and fueled by implicit and explicit bias. Any solution clearly will require myriad new approaches to law enforcement, courts, and community involvement, and comprehensive social change driven from the bottom up and the top down.

While police reform has become a major focus, the current moment of national reckoning has widened the lens on systemic racism for many Americans. The range of issues, though less familiar to some, is well known to scholars and activists. Across Harvard, for instance, faculty members have long explored the ways inequality permeates every aspect of American life. Their research and scholarship sits at the heart of a new Gazette series starting today aimed at finding ways forward in the areas of democracy; wealth and opportunity; environment and health; and education. It begins with this first on policing.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad traces the history of policing in America to “slave patrols” in the antebellum South, in which white citizens were expected to help supervise the movements of enslaved Black people.

Photo by Martha Stewart

The history of racialized policing

Like many scholars, Khalil Gibran Muhammad , professor of history, race, and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School , traces the history of policing in America to “slave patrols” in the antebellum South, in which white citizens were expected to help supervise the movements of enslaved Black people. This legacy, he believes, can still be seen in policing today. “The surveillance, the deputization essentially of all white men to be police officers or, in this case, slave patrollers, and then to dispense corporal punishment on the scene are all baked in from the very beginning,” he  told NPR  last year.

Slave patrols, and the slave codes they enforced, ended after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th amendment, which formally ended slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” But Muhammad notes that former Confederate states quickly used that exception to justify new restrictions. Known as the Black codes, the various rules limited the kinds of jobs African Americans could hold, their rights to buy and own property, and even their movements.

“The genius of the former Confederate states was to say, ‘Oh, well, if all we need to do is make them criminals and they can be put back in slavery, well, then that’s what we’ll do.’ And that’s exactly what the Black codes set out to do. The Black codes, for all intents and purposes, criminalized every form of African American freedom and mobility, political power, economic power, except the one thing it didn’t criminalize was the right to work for a white man on a white man’s terms.” In particular, he said the Ku Klux Klan “took about the business of terrorizing, policing, surveilling, and controlling Black people. … The Klan totally dominates the machinery of justice in the South.”

When, during what became known as the Great Migration, millions of African Americans fled the still largely agrarian South for opportunities in the thriving manufacturing centers of the North, they discovered that metropolitan police departments tended to enforce the law along racial and ethnic lines, with newcomers overseen by those who came before. “There was an early emphasis on people whose status was just a tiny notch better than the folks whom they were focused on policing,” Muhammad said. “And so the Anglo-Saxons are policing the Irish or the Germans are policing the Irish. The Irish are policing the Poles.” And then arrived a wave of Black Southerners looking for a better life.

In his groundbreaking work, “ The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America ,” Muhammad argues that an essential turning point came in the early 1900s amid efforts to professionalize police forces across the nation, in part by using crime statistics to guide law enforcement efforts. For the first time, Americans with European roots were grouped into one broad category, white, and set apart from the other category, Black.

Citing Muhammad’s research, Harvard historian Jill Lepore  has summarized the consequences this way : “Police patrolled Black neighborhoods and arrested Black people disproportionately; prosecutors indicted Black people disproportionately; juries found Black people guilty disproportionately; judges gave Black people disproportionately long sentences; and, then, after all this, social scientists, observing the number of Black people in jail, decided that, as a matter of biology, Black people were disproportionately inclined to criminality.”

“History shows that crime data was never objective in any meaningful sense,” Muhammad wrote. Instead, crime statistics were “weaponized” to justify racial profiling, police brutality, and ever more policing of Black people.

This phenomenon, he believes, has continued well into this century and is exemplified by William J. Bratton, one of the most famous police leaders in recent America history. Known as “America’s Top Cop,” Bratton led police departments in his native Boston, Los Angeles, and twice in New York, finally retiring in 2016.

Bratton rejected notions that crime was a result of social and economic forces, such as poverty, unemployment, police practices, and racism. Instead, he said in a 2017 speech, “It is about behavior.” Through most of his career, he was a proponent of statistically-based “predictive” policing — essentially placing forces in areas where crime numbers were highest, focused on the groups found there.

Bratton argued that the technology eliminated the problem of prejudice in policing, without ever questioning potential bias in the data or algorithms themselves — a significant issue given the fact that Black Americans are arrested and convicted of crimes at disproportionately higher rates than whites. This approach has led to widely discredited practices such as racial profiling and “stop-and-frisk.” And, Muhammad notes, “There is no research consensus on whether or how much violence dropped in cities due to policing.”

Gathering numbers

In 2015 The Washington Post began tracking every fatal shooting by an on-duty officer, using news stories, social media posts, and police reports in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. According to the newspaper, Black Americans are killed by police at twice the rate of white Americans, and Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Such efforts have proved useful for researchers such as economist Rajiv Sethi .

A Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard  Radcliffe Institute , Sethi is investigating the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers, a difficult task given that data from such encounters is largely unavailable from police departments. Instead, Sethi and his team of researchers have turned to information collected by websites and news organizations including The Washington Post and The Guardian, merged with data from other sources such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Rajiv Sethi is investigating the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers,

Courtesy photo

They have found that exposure to deadly force is highest in the Mountain West and Pacific regions relative to the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, and that racial disparities in relation to deadly force are even greater than the national numbers imply. “In the country as a whole, you’re about two to three times more likely to face deadly force if you’re Black than if you are white” said Sethi. “But if you look at individual cities separately, disparities in exposure are much higher.”

Examining the characteristics associated with police departments that experience high numbers of lethal encounters is one way to better understand and address racial disparities in policing and the use of violence, Sethi said, but it’s a massive undertaking given the decentralized nature of policing in America. There are roughly 18,000 police departments in the country, and more than 3,000 sheriff’s offices, each with its own approaches to training and selection.

“They behave in very different ways, and what we’re finding in our current research is that they are very different in the degree to which they use deadly force,” said Sethi. To make real change, “You really need to focus on the agency level where organizational culture lies, where selection and training protocols have an effect, and where leadership can make a difference.”

Sethi pointed to the example of Camden, N.J., which disbanded and replaced its police force in 2013, initially in response to a budget crisis, but eventually resulting in an effort to fundamentally change the way the police engaged with the community. While there have been improvements, including greater witness cooperation, lower crime, and fewer abuse complaints, the Camden case doesn’t fit any particular narrative, said Sethi, noting that the number of officers actually increased as part of the reform. While the city is still faced with its share of problems, Sethi called its efforts to rethink policing “important models from which we can learn.”

Fighting vs. preventing crime

For many analysts, the real problem with policing in America is the fact that there is simply too much of it. “We’ve seen since the mid-1970s a dramatic increase in expenditures that are associated with expanding the criminal legal system, including personnel and the tasks we ask police to do,” said Sandra Susan Smith , Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice at HKS, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. “And at the same time we see dramatic declines in resources devoted to social welfare programs.”

“You can have all the armored personnel carriers you want in Ferguson, but public safety is more likely to come from redressing environmental pollution, poor education, and unfair work,” said Brandon Terry, assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies.

Kris Snibble/Harvard file photo

Smith’s comment highlights a key argument embraced by many activists and experts calling for dramatic police reform: diverting resources from the police to better support community services including health care, housing, and education, and stronger economic and job opportunities. They argue that broader support for such measures will decrease the need for policing, and in turn reduce violent confrontations, particularly in over-policed, economically disadvantaged communities, and communities of color.

For Brandon Terry , that tension took the form of an ice container during his Baltimore high school chemistry final. The frozen cubes were placed in the middle of the classroom to help keep the students cool as a heat wave sent temperatures soaring. “That was their solution to the building’s lack of air conditioning,” said Terry, a Harvard assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies. “Just grab an ice cube.”

Terry’s story is the kind many researchers cite to show the negative impact of underinvesting in children who will make up the future population, and instead devoting resources toward policing tactics that embrace armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and spy planes. Terry’s is also the kind of tale promoted by activists eager to defund the police, a movement begun in the late 1960s that has again gained momentum as the death toll from violent encounters mounts. A scholar of Martin Luther King Jr., Terry said the Civil Rights leader’s views on the Vietnam War are echoed in the calls of activists today who are pressing to redistribute police resources.

“King thought that the idea of spending many orders of magnitude more for an unjust war than we did for the abolition of poverty and the abolition of ghettoization was a moral travesty, and it reflected a kind of sickness at the core of our society,” said Terry. “And part of what the defund model is based upon is a similar moral criticism, that these budgets reflect priorities that we have, and our priorities are broken.”

Terry also thinks the policing debate needs to be expanded to embrace a fuller understanding of what it means for people to feel truly safe in their communities. He highlights the work of sociologist Chris Muller and Harvard’s Robert Sampson, who have studied racial disparities in exposures to lead and the connections between a child’s early exposure to the toxic metal and antisocial behavior. Various studies have shown that lead exposure in children can contribute to cognitive impairment and behavioral problems, including heightened aggression.

“You can have all the armored personnel carriers you want in Ferguson,” said Terry, “but public safety is more likely to come from redressing environmental pollution, poor education, and unfair work.”

Policing and criminal justice system

Alexandra Natapoff , Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, sees policing as inexorably linked to the country’s criminal justice system and its long ties to racism.

“Policing does not stand alone or apart from how we charge people with crimes, or how we convict them, or how we treat them once they’ve been convicted,” she said. “That entire bundle of official practices is a central part of how we govern, and in particular, how we have historically governed Black people and other people of color, and economically and socially disadvantaged populations.”

Unpacking such a complicated issue requires voices from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, and fields of expertise who can shine light on the problem and possible solutions, said Natapoff, who co-founded a new lecture series with HLS Professor Andrew Crespo titled “ Policing in America .”

In recent weeks the pair have hosted Zoom discussions on topics ranging from qualified immunity to the Black Lives Matter movement to police unions to the broad contours of the American penal system. The series reflects the important work being done around the country, said Natapoff, and offers people the chance to further “engage in dialogue over these over these rich, complicated, controversial issues around race and policing, and governance and democracy.”

Courts and mass incarceration

Much of Natapoff’s recent work emphasizes the hidden dangers of the nation’s misdemeanor system. In her book “ Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal ,” Natapoff shows how the practice of stopping, arresting, and charging people with low-level offenses often sends them down a devastating path.

“This is how most people encounter the criminal apparatus, and it’s the first step of mass incarceration, the initial net that sweeps people of color disproportionately into the criminal system,” said Natapoff. “It is also the locus that overexposes Black people to police violence. The implications of this enormous net of police and prosecutorial authority around minor conduct is central to understanding many of the worst dysfunctions of our criminal system.”

One consequence is that Black and brown people are incarcerated at much higher rates than white people. America has approximately 2.3 million people in federal, state, and local prisons and jails, according to a 2020 report from the nonprofit the Prison Policy Initiative. According to a 2018 report from the Sentencing Project, Black men are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are 3.1 times as likely.

Reducing mass incarceration requires shrinking the misdemeanor net “along all of its axes” said Natapoff, who supports a range of reforms including training police officers to both confront and arrest people less for low-level offenses, and the policies of forward-thinking prosecutors willing to “charge fewer of those offenses when police do make arrests.”

She praises the efforts of Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins in Massachusetts and George Gascón, the district attorney in Los Angeles County, Calif., who have pledged to stop prosecuting a range of misdemeanor crimes such as resisting arrest, loitering, trespassing, and drug possession. “If cities and towns across the country committed to that kind of reform, that would be a profoundly meaningful change,” said Natapoff, “and it would be a big step toward shrinking our entire criminal apparatus.”

Retired U.S. Judge Nancy Gertner cites the need to reform federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that all too often they have been proven to be biased and to result in packing the nation’s jails and prisons.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

Sentencing reform

Another contributing factor in mass incarceration is sentencing disparities.

A recent Harvard Law School study found that, as is true nationally, people of color are “drastically overrepresented in Massachusetts state prisons.” But the report also noted that Black and Latinx people were less likely to have their cases resolved through pretrial probation ­— a way to dismiss charges if the accused meet certain conditions — and receive much longer sentences than their white counterparts.

Retired U.S. Judge Nancy Gertner also notes the need to reform federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that all too often they have been proven to be biased and to result in packing the nation’s jails and prisons. She points to the way the 1994 Crime Bill (legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware) ushered in much harsher drug penalties for crack than for powder cocaine. This tied the hands of judges issuing sentences and disproportionately punished people of color in the process. “The disparity in the treatment of crack and cocaine really was backed up by anecdote and stereotype, not by data,” said Gertner, a lecturer at HLS. “There was no data suggesting that crack was infinitely more dangerous than cocaine. It was the young Black predator narrative.”

The First Step Act, a bipartisan prison reform bill aimed at reducing racial disparities in drug sentencing and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, is just what its name implies, said Gertner.

“It reduces sentences to the merely inhumane rather than the grotesque. We still throw people in jail more than anybody else. We still resort to imprisonment, rather than thinking of other alternatives. We still resort to punishment rather than other models. None of that has really changed. I don’t deny the significance of somebody getting out of prison a year or two early, but no one should think that that’s reform.”

 Not just bad apples

Reform has long been a goal for federal leaders. Many heralded Obama-era changes aimed at eliminating racial disparities in policing and outlined in the report by The President’s Task Force on 21st Century policing. But HKS’s Smith saw them as largely symbolic. “It’s a nod to reform. But most of the reforms that are implemented in this country tend to be reforms that nibble around the edges and don’t really make much of a difference.”

Efforts such as diversifying police forces and implicit bias training do little to change behaviors and reduce violent conduct against people of color, said Smith, who cites studies suggesting a majority of Americans hold negative biases against Black and brown people, and that unconscious prejudices and stereotypes are difficult to erase.

“Experiments show that you can, in the context of a day, get people to think about race differently, and maybe even behave differently. But if you follow up, say, a week, or two weeks later, those effects are gone. We don’t know how to produce effects that are long-lasting. We invest huge amounts to implement such police reforms, but most often there’s no empirical evidence to support their efficacy.”

Even the early studies around the effectiveness of body cameras suggest the devices do little to change “officers’ patterns of behavior,” said Smith, though she cautions that researchers are still in the early stages of collecting and analyzing the data.

And though police body cameras have caught officers in unjust violence, much of the general public views the problem as anomalous.

“Despite what many people in low-income communities of color think about police officers, the broader society has a lot of respect for police and thinks if you just get rid of the bad apples, everything will be fine,” Smith added. “The problem, of course, is this is not just an issue of bad apples.”

Efforts such as diversifying police forces and implicit bias training do little to change behaviors and reduce violent conduct against people of color, said Sandra Susan Smith, a professor of criminal justice Harvard Kennedy School.

Community-based ways forward

Still Smith sees reason for hope and possible ways forward involving a range of community-based approaches. As part of the effort to explore meaningful change, Smith, along with Christopher Winship , Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and a member of the senior faculty at HKS, have organized “ Reimagining Community Safety: A Program in Criminal Justice Speaker Series ” to better understand the perspectives of practitioners, policymakers, community leaders, activists, and academics engaged in public safety reform.

Some community-based safety models have yielded important results. Smith singles out the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets program (known as CAHOOTS ) in Eugene, Ore., which supplements police with a community-based public safety program. When callers dial 911 they are often diverted to teams of workers trained in crisis resolution, mental health, and emergency medicine, who are better equipped to handle non-life-threatening situations. The numbers support her case. In 2017 the program received 25,000 calls, only 250 of which required police assistance. Training similar teams of specialists who don’t carry weapons to handle all traffic stops could go a long way toward ending violent police encounters, she said.

“Imagine you have those kinds of services in play,” said Smith, paired with community-based anti-violence program such as Cure Violence , which aims to stop violence in targeted neighborhoods by using approaches health experts take to control disease, such as identifying and treating individuals and changing social norms. Together, she said, these programs “could make a huge difference.”

At Harvard Law School, students have been  studying how an alternate 911-response team  might function in Boston. “We were trying to move from thinking about a 911-response system as an opportunity to intervene in an acute moment, to thinking about what it would look like to have a system that is trying to help reweave some of the threads of community, a system that is more focused on healing than just on stopping harm” said HLS Professor Rachel Viscomi, who directs the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program and oversaw the research.

The forthcoming report, compiled by two students in the HLS clinic, Billy Roberts and Anna Vande Velde, will offer officials a range of ideas for how to think about community safety that builds on existing efforts in Boston and other cities, said Viscomi.

But Smith, like others, knows community-based interventions are only part of the solution. She applauds the Justice Department’s investigation into the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting of Brown. The 102-page report shed light on the department’s discriminatory policing practices, including the ways police disproportionately targeted Black residents for tickets and fines to help balance the city’s budget. To fix such entrenched problems, state governments need to rethink their spending priorities and tax systems so they can provide cities and towns the financial support they need to remain debt-free, said Smith.

Rethinking the 911-response system to being one that is “more focused on healing than just on stopping harm” is part of the student-led research under the direction of Law School Professor Rachel Viscomi, who heads up the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program.

Jon Chase/Harvard file photo

“Part of the solution has to be a discussion about how government is funded and how a city like Ferguson got to a place where government had so few resources that they resorted to extortion of their residents, in particular residents of color, in order to make ends meet,” she said. “We’ve learned since that Ferguson is hardly the only municipality that has struggled with funding issues and sought to address them through the oppression and repression of their politically, socially, and economically marginalized Black and Latino residents.”

Police contracts, she said, also need to be reexamined. The daughter of a “union man,” Smith said she firmly supports officers’ rights to union representation to secure fair wages, health care, and safe working conditions. But the power unions hold to structure police contracts in ways that protect officers from being disciplined for “illegal and unethical behavior” needs to be challenged, she said.

“I think it’s incredibly important for individuals to be held accountable and for those institutions in which they are embedded to hold them to account. But we routinely find that union contracts buffer individual officers from having to be accountable. We see this at the level of the Supreme Court as well, whose rulings around qualified immunity have protected law enforcement from civil suits. That needs to change.”

Other Harvard experts agree. In an opinion piece in The Boston Globe last June, Tomiko Brown-Nagin , dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at HLS, pointed out the Court’s “expansive interpretation of qualified immunity” and called for reform that would “promote accountability.”

“This nation is devoted to freedom, to combating racial discrimination, and to making government accountable to the people,” wrote Brown-Nagin. “Legislators today, like those who passed landmark Civil Rights legislation more than 50 years ago, must take a stand for equal justice under law. Shielding police misconduct offends our fundamental values and cannot be tolerated.”

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Popular request:

Police brutality essay: topic ideas and tips.

July 2, 2020

A police brutality essay is a write-up about the excessive use of force against civilians by the law enforcers. Every year, many people report the use of excessive force by police officers in different parts of the world. When police offers use excessive force, they can do it physically, mentally, emotionally, or verbally. This write-up should highlight this problem and tell the audience something about it.

It can also be described as police use of force essay. When composing this write-up, you must start by conducting extensive research. This research should entail reviewing and reading more sources to gather the necessary information. That’s the only way you can formulate a strong argument and support it with facts.

Overview of a Police Brutality Essay

An essay on police officer brutality can describe situations where an officer abused people illegally or without a reason. But, before you start composing this write-up, it’s crucial to understand your objective or goal. Discuss your topic and if necessary, encourage the audience to protest against incidences of excessive use of force by police officers to stop their abusive behaviors. Also, remember to support your argument with statistics, reliable online sources, and news reports.

You can be persuasive, argumentative, or write a general essay on role of police in society. But, regardless of the perspective you take, make sure that your write-up has a good structure. Again, this should depend on the requirements specified by the professor or teacher. This is very important because it will enable you to complete the assignment according to the provided instructions.

A Simple Outline for Police Brutality Essay

A police brutality essay outline should comprise three major parts. These are:

• Introduction – This is where you write briefly about the topic. Your introduction should help the audience understand why you’re writing the essay. It’s, however, important to note that you can write a police brutality introduction essay. This is where you just introduce the issue without delving deeper into details.
• The main part – This is where you discuss the findings of your research with the readers. Whether you’re writing a police brutality argumentative essay or a persuasive essay on police brutality, you must have supporting evidence. This section of the write-up can be divided into several paragraphs. Each paragraph can have a single argument.
• Conclusion – This is where you remind the readers of your main ideas and finish the write-up logically.

Regardless of the perspective that you take, it’s important to come up with an outline before you start writing. This will enable you to avoid leaving out important information when you start writing.

Interesting Police Essay Topics

There are many topics that you can consider when writing about the police force. Here are some of the most interesting topics to consider.

• In which crimes and areas are police violence cases rampant?
• How does society consider police cruelty?
• Can special programs and training in police departments help in reducing police violence?
• Why has racism in the police force increased lately?
• Are more black people abused by police offers than whites?
• Are more men abused by police officers than women?
• Are racist police officers the major problem in the police force?
• How can police violence be reduced in the United States of America?
• How are civilians affected by police brutality?
• How rampant is police racism in modern society?

Each of these topics requires extensive research before the writing process starts. It’s crucial to understand the topic or subject and gather sufficient evidence to come up with a masterpiece.

How to Write an Essay on Police Brutality

Whether you opt to write a police discretion essay or an essay on police brutality racial cases, you should follow an outline. This will enable you to ensure a logical organization and presentation of all the necessary information in your write-up. Here’s how you should write your essay and the information to include in the introduction, main body, and conclusion sections.

How to Start Your Essay

Regardless of the topic that you opt to write about, start by researching extensively. Your educator will be impressed by your work if it has sufficient facts or evidence to support your argument. Here are the steps to follow to come up with a successful introduction:

• Select a topic carefully and think about the points or ideas that you will highlight in your essay.
• Craft a thesis statement and include it towards the end of your introduction. This should be the main idea of the essay.
• Think about the stance that you will take in your police brutality essay argumentative write-up. Ideally, you should choose one side of the argument. This is the side that you should support with strong evidence and convince readers to accept your opinion.
• Start the essay with something that catches the attention of your readers. This can be a quote, a question, or statistics.
• Make your introduction brief but ensure that it features all essential elements.

How to Write the Main Part of the Essay

The main part of the essay is where you discuss your main ideas. Here’s how you should write this part.

• Organize your argumentative essay police brutality write-up according to the format specified by the educator.
• Support your discussion with evidence. And, don’t forget to include opposite perspectives while addressing your ideas and convincing the readers to take your viewpoint.
• Include a separate paragraph for each argument. However, make sure that the paragraphs are connected to ensure a smooth transition.

How to Write the Conclusion

The conclusion of this essay should summarize the stated facts shortly while rephrasing the thesis statement. Here’s a simple guide for concluding this essay:

• Keep your conclusion well-logical and concise
• Don’t introduce new information in the conclusion
• Restate the thesis while making recommendations on how the problem can be avoided.

Whether you write police brutality or racial profiling by police essay, follow these guidelines to enhance the organization and presentation of information in your write-up.

Why Write About Police Brutality?

Police brutality or police corruption essay highlights the evils within the police force. These evils are a major social problem that is reported by the media constantly. It involves mistreatments of civilians by the law enforcers that are supposed to protect them. Writing this essay enables community members to:

• Reveal real facts of violations, injuries, and abuses by police officers
• Check reasons for violations of human rights and cruelty by the policing forces
• Depict the full picture of brutality cases
• Distinguish the roles and responsibilities of police officers and civilians
• Provide resolutions and recommendations

In most cases, police brutality affects minority members of society. These may lack the courage to talk about it publicly. Writing an essay on brutality and violence by the police can make you the voice of such people.

Your educator may ask you to write something like, should police carry guns essay. Nevertheless, your write-up should reveal the complete picture of violence and brutality that is meted on civilians by law enforcers. It should bring the criminal cases of illegal behaviors by law enforcers to light. Such an essay can be used to expose the activities of rogue police officers and in turn, have them prosecuted for their wrong-doing. This can prevent such misconduct by police officers in the future. Contact our professional writers if you want to complete a perfect essay.

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Controversial Topic: Police Brutality

Police brutality refers to the use of excessive or unnecessary force by law enforcement officers, but may also refer to excessive force used by corrections officers and prison officials. This debate topic centers on disagreement over the extent of force that law enforcement should be entitled to use while engaging suspects, perpetrators, prisoners, and other members of the general public. Those who believe that police brutality is a problem would argue that the current system of law enforcement gives officers too much discretion and impunity in using violent methods of engagement while those who don’t believe police brutality is a problem would argue that the dangerous nature of law enforcement requires that officers have far-reaching discretion in carrying out their duty, including the use of potentially violent confrontational tactics. Because this controversial topic is constantly in the news, police brutality is also a popular subject for a persuasive essay.

According to the National Institute of Justice , “while police officers are empowered to use force, they should use the minimal amount of force needed to ‘control an incident, effect an arrest, or protect themselves or others from harm or death.’” There is much debate about what may be characterized as “the minimal amount of force needed.”

The controversial topic surrounding police brutality is framed by two polarized positions:

• Traditionally conservative voters, right-leaning public office holders, and law enforcement agencies themselves often hold the view that law enforcement officers should have sweeping discretion to enforce the law, including the right to employ a wide range of physical and psychological tactics which may be perceived as violent but also necessary in the performance of duty. Typically, supporters of this view hold that the law should protect officers against punitive consequences for violent actions taken in the name of law enforcement; whereas
• Traditionally progressive voters, left-leaning public office holders, civil liberties groups, and activists (which often include the family members of victims of police violence) often hold the view that police officers enjoy too much discretion in deploying violent tactics, and that a variety of issues including outdated training, poorly defined parameters, racial biases, and absence of accountability either within law enforcement agencies or at the judicial level have rendered police brutality a threat to public health and safety. Those who identify with this viewpoint often hold that police reform and reform of the legal system are required to address the issue of brutality.

A wide range of perspectives exist between these two viewpoints, though like many other issues with relevance to modern political discourse, this controversial topic tends to be highly polarized across party lines. Still, the debate over police brutality can be nuanced, with some observers taking a moderate position which expresses both support for the work of law enforcement and which holds that police reform could lead to safer engagement for officers, suspects, and members of the public.

However, this issue is further complicated by the issue of race and policing. In response to evidence demonstrating that racial biases play a role in police engagement and tactics, critics of law enforcement would argue that police brutality carries distinct racial implications as well.

The racial dimensions make this a particularly combustible issue in American public life. Numerous incidents of police brutality in which the victim is Black, and in which officers have faced limited or nonexistent consequences, have inflamed racial tensions in the United States, often spilling over into widespread condemnation and demonstration among critics while further entrenching the views of those who support an empowered police force.

A Brief History of The Issue

The United States of the 18th and 19th centuries evolved along two divided paths, with the South emerging as an agrarian society dependent upon the African slave trade and the North developing into a production economy characterized by increasingly dense cities with growing immigrant populations. These two distinct identities contributed to two separate origin stories for policing in the North and South. Therefore, a discussion on police brutality must necessarily address these two separate and parallel histories, particularly before the Civil Rights Era.

Early Policing in the South

The history of policing in America is inextricable from the Black American history. This is especially so in the American South, where policing first evolved directly out of efforts aimed at keeping Africans enslaved and, in the ensuing generations, was often the first line of defense in the preservation of existing racial hierarchies.

Slave Patrols (1700s to 1865)

Early policing in the Southern United States grew out of efforts to control slave populations. Groups of vigilantes volunteered to join slave patrols , who were given wide latitude in policing the lives of slaves. The first such slave patrol was formed in 1704 in South Carolina and all slave-holding states soon followed suit by producing their own slave patrol squadrons.

These squadrons carried out such duties as recapturing fugitive slaves, putting down slave rebellions, intervening in meetings between slaves, and generally engaging in tactics of strategic violence and brutality aimed at dissuading rebellion. In essence, these slave patrols would be among the first state-funded, organized law enforcement groups. Actions which would be considered brutality by current standards were considered lawful in the antebellum South.

As the United States progressed toward the Civil War, these slave patrols played a prominent role in defending the institution of slavery, especially in its efforts at preventing fugitive slaves from reaching free states. In the era immediately after the Civil War, white militias and Ku Klux Klan chapters formed from the ashes of these slave patrols. And as the Southern States began to establish official police forces, there was considerable membership overlap with these militias and KKK chapters.

The Jim Crow Era (1877-1964)

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the abolition of slavery meant the end of the slave patrols. And in the brief period known as the Reconstruction Era, the activities of white militias and Klansmen were greatly diminished by the presence of Union forces. However, the end of Reconstruction brought with it a sweeping series of Black Codes-state and local laws aimed at deeply restricting the lives of freed slaves in the South. As the defunct slave patrols morphed into formal police forces, their primary function became the enforcement of these Codes.

This initiated the “Jim Crow Era,” defined by laws segregating Black southerners into separate schools, neighborhoods, hospitals, churches, and public spaces. This period was also marked by countless acts of violence against black individuals, families and communities, especially in the form of lynchings. Police forces played an important part in preserving the practice of lynching either by allowing this mob violence to occur without repercussion or by participating in the act themselves. According to one source, “at least one-half of the lynchings are carried out with police officers participating, and that in nine-tenths of the others the officers either condone or wink at the mob action”

For nearly a century, between the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s and the emergence of the Civil Rights movement, police brutality was a state-sanctioned and legally permissible measure of engagement against Southern Blacks for an extremely broad range of offenses including agitation for civil liberties, violation of segregation policies, perceived social or sexual offenses, especially against white women, and a range of other possible triggers too varied and extensive to name. Any of these offenses could have resulted in police engagement or mob lynching, and in either case, the perpetrators of this lynching would rarely face legal consequences.

These conditions played a significant part in defining Southern policing and in shaping their predisposition toward tactics that either employed or permitted brutality. Likewise, these conditions would foment the eventual confrontations between police officers and activists that would define the Civil Rights Era.

Early Policing in the North

While policing in the South evolved out of the same functions that were used to control the slave population, a separate type of police force emerged in America’s growing urban centers. Major cities saw their populations growing as a combination of immigrants and freed slaves flocked to increasingly densely populated areas, especially along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts. Policing emerged out of the perceived need to maintain social order in these population centers.

The First City Police Departments (1838-1880)

Dr. Gary Potter of Eastern Kentucky University’s (EKU) Police Studies program notes that the earliest incarnation of policing in American cities came in the form of the night watch. “Volunteer” forces-more often than not those who were conscripted to service as punishment for some public misdeed-were charged with the duty of keeping watch for “impending danger.”

Potter notes that these forces were notoriously ineffective, as night watchmen were often prone to drinking and sleeping on the job. The first of such night watches was created in Boston in 1636. Cities like New York and Philadelphia followed suit. In most cases, watchmen answered to a constable who was paid fees for serving arrest warrants. In 1833, Philadelphia became the first city to also adopt a “day watch.”

In 1838, Boston became the first city to transform its watch force into a formal police department, one with codified rules, accountability to a central government authority, and salary from public funding. Over the next four decades, nearly every major city in America would create a formal police department.

According to Potter, these first urban police groups operated “under the control of local politicians” and that they “were notoriously corrupt and flagrantly brutal.” Local politicians, explains Potter, frequently had connections to both local businesses and organized crime. These same politicians generally also appointed chiefs of police, which meant that police forces were beholden to certain mercantile interests.

Moreover, as cities swelled with the arrival of immigrant groups from Ireland, Italy and all over Eastern Europe, the relationship between policing and immigrant populations proved especially volatile. Police forces of the mid-19th century viewed these groups as “dangerous,” and therefore were often quick to employ violent tactics in engaging these populations.

Whereas policing in the South revolved largely around social control of slave populations, the emphasis in America’s northern and midwestern cities was on controlling immigrant populations.

Union Busting and Strike Breaking (Late 1800s-early 1900s)

By the start of the 20th Century, America’s cities were booming with new arrivals, growing commerce, and massive industrialization. Working conditions, especially for Black and immigrant populations, were harsh and oppressive. From this environment emerged the labor movement. Immigrant groups played an important role in this movement, participating widely in some of the earliest and most influential labor demonstrations, strikes and campaigns.

This would bring labor demonstrators into direct confrontation with police forces in big cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. Large factories, industrial operations, railroad construction and other labor settings saw widespread worker revolts in the first decades of the 20th Century. Wealthy factory owners would rely heavily on law enforcement to confront these demonstrators. Police use of force was commonplace during these confrontations.

Such is to say that “the police broke up strikes through two primary methods: extreme violence and making “public order” arrests at a mass scale. Some state governments authorized privatized police forces to repress strikes, such as the Coal and Iron Police in Pennsylvania. Private detective agencies, such as Pinkerton, often supervised these efforts. Violent confrontations came out of this system, such as the Latimer Massacre (1897), in which 19 unarmed miners were killed, and the Coal Strike of 1902, which involved a pitched battle for five months.”

In fact, so intense was the violence surrounding the labor movement during the early 20th century that state governments would establish a new tier of policing just to contend with striking workers . It was thus that “state governments decided that it would be easier to police labor with public forces, leading to the establishment of state police forces (such as the Pennsylvania State Police, formed in 1905).”

For a deeper look at the violence and confrontation surrounding the labor movement, check out our comprehensive look at the Labor Controversy .

Prohibition and Organized Crime (1920s)

The passage of the Volstead Act in 1919 made the sale of alcohol illegal. This began the Prohibition Era, in which policing became particularly dedicated to the crackdown on bootleg liquor sales and the raiding of suspected speakeasies.

Prohibition contributed to widespread growth in both of these illegal activities. As a consequence, organized crime increased substantially around these activities. Many speakeasies relied on bribes to law enforcement officers in order to remain in operation. Moreover, as the influence of organized crime grew in the major cities, many crime syndicates included police officers on their payrolls.

Officers “on the take” would often be dispatched to enforce the will of organized crime leaders using violent and confrontational tactics. Police officers frequently “helped perform duties, such as harassment and intimidation of rivals. By the time of the Hoover administration (1929-1933), the issue had risen to national concern and a National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement (popularly known as the Wickersham Commission) was formed to look into the situation. The resulting “Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement” (1931) concluded that ‘[t]he third degree-that is, the use of physical brutality, or other forms of cruelty, to obtain involuntary confessions or admissions-is widespread.’”

Professionalization of Police (1930s-1950s)

The findings from The Wickersham Commission produced the first era of meaningful police reform, one aimed at diminishing the susceptibility of law enforcement to corruption. The result was to create a formal separation between police forces and political institutions. Modernization of policing led to a more bureaucratic set of institutions defined by new practices in recruitment, training, and adherence to a chain of command. By the 1950s, police forces even began to form their own labor unions and engage in collective bargaining.

While these reforms did help to strip undue political influence and external corruption from the process of policing, as well as reduce the entanglement between organized crime and law enforcement, it also had the effect of creating a more insular and opaque set of institutions. Police agencies became increasingly separate and distinct from American public life , a condition which created a sense of alienation between police forces and their communities. This would set the stage for an era marked by protest and near-constant confrontation between members of the public and law enforcement.

The Protest Era (1960s-1970s)

The 1960s saw the convergence of numerous protest movements with occasionally intertwining aims. In the South, the Civil Rights movement took aim at the institution of Jim Crow. Major demonstrations targeted segregation at lunch counters, on public buses, and in other public spaces. Civil Rights leaders also took aim at police brutality, with leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking vocally and explicitly about the role played by police brutality in maintaining segregation.

Just as the Civil Rights movement took aim at law enforcement, so too did law enforcement heighten its aggression in attempting to suppress this movement. Using fire-hoses, police dogs, and batons to put down Civil Rights demonstrations, police employed notably brutal tactics during both the 1963-1964 campaign in Birmingham and in the face of 1965′s landmark march from Selma to Montgomery.

The violence displayed by police against peaceful demonstrators was broadcast before a national audience, and created a widespread sense of outrage. This outrage spilled over into streets around the United States, most notably the “Harlem riot of 1964, 1964 Philadelphia race riot, Watts riots (1965), Division Street riots (1966), and 1967 Detroit riot. In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, in order to challenge police brutality against African-Americans from disproportionately white police departments. The conflict between the Black Panther Party and various police departments often resulted in violence with the deaths of 34 members of the Black Panther Party and 15 police officers.”

The Civil Rights movement also encompassed the struggles of other groups such as the American Indian Movement and various Women’s Rights groups. Likewise, as the war in Vietnam escalated, the anti-war movement coalesced into near-constant public demonstrations and protests.

Just as with the push for Black Civil Rights, these intersecting protest movements brought members of the public into regular and often violent clashes with police officers. This was a period marked by widespread use of aggressive tactics such as the deployment of tear-gas and the use of batons aimed at crowd suppression. The result of this era was a growing tension between police officers and large cross-sections of the public-especially minority populations and youth movements.

These forces came to a head at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The year had already been marked by violence and tragedy, from the continued escalation of war in Southeast Asia to the devastating assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. in close succession. Protests, demonstrations and chaos rippled through the cities and streets of the United States.

With the approach of the convention, and the anticipation of massive Civil Rights and anti-war demonstrations, Chicago mayor Richard Daley vowed that his police force would not tolerate disorder. However, violent confrontations between protestors and police ensued. In the aftermath, the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence appointed a local businessman (and future Illinois Governor) named Daniel Walker to produce a report on the violence at the DNC.

The controversial Walker Report found that “[O]n the part of the police there was enough wild club swinging, enough cries of hatred, enough gratuitous beating to make the conclusion inescapable that individual policemen, and lots of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrest. To read dispassionately the hundreds of statements describing at firsthand the events of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of the presence of what can only be called a police riot.”

The Walker Report claimed that the DNC was demonstrative of the brutal tactics employed by police in confronting the various and sometimes interwoven strands of the protest movement.

For a deeper dive into the history of confrontation between police officers and demonstrators, check out our look at the Extremism Controversy .

The War On Drugs

With the smoke still clearing from the DNC riots, Richard Nixon was elected president and brought with him a message of law and order. In 1971, he followed through on this promise with the initiation of the War on Drugs . Ostensibly, the aim of this policy was to take on drug traffickers and users with more confrontational tactics. But it was also used as a measure of disrupting both Civil Rights and anti-war activities. As such, the policy aggressively targeted Black communities and youth activists.

The primary vessel for carrying out the domestic aims of this War was law enforcement. In both the immediate aftermath of its inception and in long-term consequences of its implementation, the War on Drugs created ever-higher rates of engagement between police officers and Black communities and saw a dramatic increase in incarceration, especially from within such communities.

According to a study from the National Institutes of Health, the War on Drugs also gave officers far wider latitude in the types of tactics employed. The study finds that “erosions to the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution (which protects against unreasonable search and seizure) and the Posse Comitatus Act (which prohibits the Armed Forces from performing law enforcement functions) helped set the groundwork for two vital War on Drugs policing strategies: stop and frisk and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams; and describes how stop and frisk and SWAT teams create conditions conducive to police brutality, particularly brutality that targets Black communities.”

Rodney King (1991-1992)

The War on Drugs became an ingrained part of American life for the next several decades, and in doing so, produced a trend of heightened tension and daily violence between police officers and urban Black communities. Police raids, high rates of incarceration, gang activity, and racially-motivated division led to regular incidents of violence between officers and community members. Tension and violence were an everyday reality in big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

In 1991, Los Angeles became a significant flashpoint in the ongoing conflict between policing and Black communities when a bystander video-taped the brutal police beating of a motorist named Rodney King. In the video, King can be seen lying on the side of a highway while four uniformed members of the Los Angeles Police Department kicked, stomped, and beat him with their batons.

On April 29th, 1992 the officers were acquitted on charges of assault and battery. The verdict provoked nationwide outrage, even drawing criticism from Republican President George Bush. The next six days saw Los Angeles engulfed in protest, rioting, and flames. These events brought to great public attention the realities of police brutality and the continued racial biases which played a role in this brutality.

Top Ten Historical Influencers in the Police Brutality Debate

Using our own backstage Ranking Analytics tools, we’ve compiled a list of the most influential figures concerning the issue of police brutality in the U.S. between 1900 and 2020. Our rankings produced a fascinating list of influencers. While two of the influencers included here are among the most prominent victims of police violence, the remaining influencers are all celebrities who have been outspoken on the issue. Of those, all but one are rappers who have used their platform to expose police violence to wide audiences, demonstrating the important role played by artists from Black communities in the discourse around the controversy.

Top Ten Most Influential Books About Police Brutality

Using our own backstage Ranking Analytics tools, we’ve compiled a list of the most influential books on the topic of “police violence” in the U.S. between 1900 and 2020. The result is a list of largely non-fiction political examinations on the dynamics of power and policing in the context of Western democracy. The collection of books here address such matters as the push for civil liberties, the impact of racial dynamics in America, and the role played by policing in the preservation of existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.

The Current Controversy

The current climate in policing is both rooted in a long and deep history of tension with communities of color and in the more recent developments which emerged after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. During the subsequent War on Terror, federal law enforcement underwent a dramatic reorganization while local agencies were given broad powers in surveillance and engagement. In some cases, the line between urban policing and paramilitary activity became blurred.

According to a 2006 report from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the tactics and protections introduced by the War on Terror, “created a generalized climate of impunity for law enforcement officers, and contributed to the erosion of what few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement agencies. As a result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and undeterred across the country.”

Increasingly, though, incidences of police violence have instigated vocal response from broad cross-sections of the American public. This is best captured by the growing visibility and impact of the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter refers to a decentralized movement based on political and social action aimed at ending police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black Americans. The movement began as a Twitter hashtag-#blacklivesmatter-as a reaction to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Marvin as he walked unarmed through his neighborhood. Since that time, Black Lives Matter has become the most visible and influential force in confronting instances of police violence against Black citizens and pushing for law enforcement and justice reforms to reduce racially discriminatory policing.

Its role took on added consequence in May of 2020 when video surfaced of a Minneapolis police officer named Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of an unarmed Black man named George Floyd for nearly 9 minutes as bystanders pleaded with the officer to stop. George Floyd’s consequent death sparked months of protest and violent confrontation with police officers throughout the United States. Chauvin was ultimately found guilty of 2nd Degree Murder, which to some, marked a turning point in accountability for police officers.

However, use of force remains a central aspect of policing. Therefore, evidence of racial bias denotes that use of force is far likelier to be experienced by people of color. According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, police violence is a leading cause of death for young Black men . According to the Academy, “Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups. Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police. Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men.”

Today, there are vocal calls for police reform among Civil Rights groups, activists and progressive politicians-while a number of pro-law enforcement and conservative groups-galvanized behind the slogan that “blue lives matter”-believe that the current level of force utilized by police is necessary given the dangers faced in the line of duty.

A Quick Overview of Our Method

Our goal in presenting subjects that generate controversy is to provide you with a sense of some of the figures both past and present who have driven debate, produced widely-recognized works of research, literature or art, proliferated their ideas widely, or who are identified directly and publicly with some aspect of this debate. By identifying the researchers, activists, journalists, educators, academics, and other individuals connected with this debate-and by taking a closer look at their work and contributions-we can get a clear but nuanced look at the subject matter. Rather than framing the issue as one side versus the other, we bring various dimensions of the issue into discussion with one another. This will likely include dimensions of the debate that resonate with you, some dimensions that you find repulsive, and some dimensions that might simply reveal a perspective you hadn’t previously considered.

We considered influencers connected to a number of key terms including “police brutality,” “police violence” and “police corruption.” On the other side of the controversy, we initiated our search for influencers with key terms such as “police reform” and “Black Lives Matter,” in reference to the movement that has been on the front lines of the call for such reform.

Our InfluenceRanking engine gives us the power to scan the academic and public landscape surrounding the police brutality issue using key terminology to identify consequential influencers. As with any topic that generates public debate and disagreement, this is a subject of great depth and breadth. We do not claim to probe either the bottom of this depth or the borders of this breadth. Instead, we offer you one way to enter into this debate, to identify key players, and through their contributions to the debate, to develop a fuller understanding of the issue and perhaps even a better sense of where you stand.

For a closer look at how our InfluenceRankings work, check out our methodology .

Otherwise get started with a look at the key words we used to explore this subject:

Police Brutality

Police reform, police violence.

• Black Lives Matter

Excessive Force/Use of Force

Police corruption.

The primary keyword refers to the use of violent policing tactics in engagement with suspects, prisoners, activists or other members of the public. Some tactics which are seen as brutal and unlawful today may have been sanctioned by state or federal authorities at other points in history. There also remains much debate today on what qualifies as brutality versus what should be seen as the appropriate use of force in the line of duty. Influencers invoked by this term include both victims of police brutality and activists who have protested police brutality.

Influencers

• George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man killed during an arrest after a store clerk alleged he had passed a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis. A white police officer named Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for a period initially reported to be 8 minutes and 46 seconds. After his death, protests against police brutality, especially toward black people, quickly spread across the United States and internationally.
• Michael Jerome Stewart was an African-American man who received recognition after his death following an arrest by New York City Transit Police for writing graffiti in soft tip marker/or using aerosol can on a New York City Subway wall at the First Avenue station. His treatment while in police custody and the ensuing trials of the arresting officers sparked debate concerning police brutality and the responsibilities of arresting officials in handling suspects. This was a widely publicized episode in New York City’s history of police brutality cases.
• Rosalio Muñoz is a Chicano activist who is most recognized for his anti-war and anti-police brutality organizing with the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. On August 29, 1970, Muñoz and fellow Chicano activist Ramses Noriega organized a peaceful march in East Los Angeles, California in which over 30,000 Mexican Americans were in attendance to protest the war in Vietnam. The event became a site of police brutality after sheriffs attacked and tear gassed the crowd, leading to the deaths of three people, including Muñoz’s friend and Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar.
• Rodney Glen King was an American man who was a victim of police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department. On March 3, 1991, King was beaten by LAPD officers after a high-speed chase during his arrest for drunk driving on I-210. A civilian, George Holliday , filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage clearly showed an unarmed King on the ground being beaten after initially evading arrest. The incident was covered by news media around the world and caused a public furor.
• Tasha Williamson is an American activist, community leader and political candidate. Williamson has spent her career advocating for families affected by gun, gang, and police violence, and for protesting police brutality towards people of color in the San Diego area. In January of 2019, Williamson announced her candidacy for the 2020 San Diego mayoral election.

“Police reform” is a catch-all term for a variety of policy changes advocated for by activists against police brutality. Reform has a long history in the discourse over optimal policing, especially as police forces have grappled with allegations of corruption and bias. Calls for reform typically demand greater accountability, better training, and greater limitations on police powers. Influencers include both law enforcement leaders and public servants who have called for or implemented reform within law enforcement agencies.

• August “Gus” Vollmer was the first police chief of Berkeley, California and a leading figure in the development of the field of criminal justice in the United States in the early 20th century. He has been described as “the father of modern policing.” Vollmer played an influential role in introducing early 20th century police reforms, which increasingly militarized police departments in the United States. A veteran of the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and the Philippine-American War, Vollmer introduced reforms that reflected his experiences in the U.S. military.
• Thomas Coxon Acton Sr. was an American public servant, politician, reformer, police commissioner of the New York City Police Department and the first appointed president of its Board of Police Commissioners. He and Commissioner John G. Bergen took control of the police force during the New York Draft Riots with Action directing police and military forces against rioters in Manhattan. He served on the Board of Police Commissioners from 1860 to 1863 and as President of the Board of Police Commissioners from 1863 to 1869.
• Colonel Arthur Hale Woods was an American educator, journalist, military and law enforcement officer. One of the most prominent police reformers during the early 20th century, he served as deputy New York City Police Commissioner from 1907 to 1909 and later became New York City Police Commissioner in 1914. During his time with the New York City Police Department, he was largely responsible for initiating the application of criminology and sociology in modern policing.

“Police violence” refers generally to the use of force in law enforcement. This term may refer to violence which is lawful and considered a necessary extension of policing, or it may refer to acts which may be deemed as brutality. Influencers include researchers who have studied the extent and impact of police violence, as well as those who have spoken out against police violence.

• Andrea J. Ritchie is a writer, lawyer, and activist for women of color, especially LGBTQ women of color, who have been victims of police violence. Ritchie co-authored the report “SayHerName: Police Violence against Black Women and Women of Color” with Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum. In 2017, Ritchie published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color .
• Samuel Sinyangwe is an American policy analyst and racial justice activist. Sinyangwe is a member of the Movement for Black Lives and a co-founder of We the Protestors, a group of digital tools that include Mapping Police Violence, a database of police killings in the United States, and Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence. Sinyangwe is a co-host of the Pod Save the People podcast, where he discusses the week’s news with a panel of other activists.
• Albert John Reiss, Jr. was an American sociologist and criminologist. He served as the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology at Yale University from 1970 until his retirement in 1993. He is recognized for his contributions to social control theory, as well as for his research on police violence. He has been credited with coining the term “proactive” while researching violent incidents between police and private citizens as a research director for Lyndon B. Johnson’s President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. This research led Reiss to conclude that there was a greater risk of violence in proactive police encounters than in reactive ones, prompting innovation in policing practices in many American police departments.

“Black Lives Matter” refers to a decentralized movement based on political and social action aimed at ending police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black Americans. Black Lives Matter is the most visible and influential exponent of the protest movement aimed at confronting racial bias in policing and ending police violence targeting Black citizens.

• Janaya Khan is a social activist from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto as well as an international ambassador for the Black Lives Matter Network.
• Marissa Johnson is an activist who attained notoriety when she interrupted U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at an August 2015 rally in Seattle. Johnson is a founder of a Seattle-based justice group called Outside Agitators 206, which was disbanded when she became a cofounder of the Seattle chapter of Black Lives Matter.
• Demico Boothe is an African-American bestselling author of several books on the plight of African American men in the American prison system. Boothe’s book, Why Are There So Many Black Men in Prison? , which is on the Black Lives Matter recommended reading list, addresses the issue of racism in the Crack versus Cocaine Laws and was published in 2007.

While “use of force” is a recognized and largely protected aspect of policing, the law also holds that officers should attempt to use the least amount of force necessary in conducting their responsibilities. The phrase “excessive force” is any use of force which is said to go beyond the necessary amount of required force. Influencers in this area include victims of excessive violence and academics who have studied the implications of excessive force in policing.

• On August 5, 2016, Jamarion Rashad Robinson, a 26-year-old African American man who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was shot 59 times and killed in a police raid in East Point, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The shooting occurred when at least 14 officers of a Southeast Regional Fugitive Taskforce from at least seven different agencies, led by U.S. Marshals, forcibly entered the apartment of Robinson’s girlfriend to serve a warrant for his arrest. The officers were heavily armed, including submachine guns. The warrant was being served on behalf of the Gwinnett County police and the Atlanta Police Department, and authorities said they had sought his arrest after he fired a gun at police or pointed a gun at police during a previous encounter. The case was highlighted as an example of alleged excessive force by law enforcement officers, systemic racism in law enforcement, a lack of knowledge in police who interact with people who have a mental illness, a lack of transparency and accountability surrounding the actions of police officers, and a lack of use of body cameras by police and U.S. Marshals when serving arrest warrants.
• James J. Fyfe was an American criminologist, a leading authority on the police use of force and police accountability, and a police administrator.
• Erica Garner-Snipes was an American activist who advocated for police reform, particularly in the use of force during arrests. Garner became involved in activism following the 2014 death of her father, Eric Garner, after a New York City police officer placed him in a lethal chokehold during an arrest.
• Michael N. Schmitt is an American international law scholar specializing in international humanitarian law, use of force issues, and the international law applicable to cyberspace. He is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Reading, the Francis Lieber Distinguished Scholar at the Lieber Institute of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Texas, Charles H. Stockton Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the United States Naval War College’s Stockton Center for International Law, and Senior Fellow at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. Schmitt serves as General Editor of Oxford University Press’ Lieber Studies series, and he is Editor Emeritus of International Law Studies , a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Police corruption” is a catch-all for organized unlawful activity by law enforcement including systemic brutality and either the cover-up of such activities or the protection of officers who commit such actions. Police corruption also refers more broadly to the connection-both historically and presently-between law enforcement and organized crime. Influencers include both reformers and perpetrators of corruption from within law enforcement groups.

• Clemence Brooks Horrall was Los Angeles Police Department Chief of Police from June 16, 1941, when he succeeded Arthur C. Hohmann to serve as the 41st Chief of the L.A.P.D., to June 28, 1949, when he resigned under pressure during a grand jury investigation of police corruption. Clemence Brooks Horrall was born in Washington, Indiana and graduated from Washington State University. Horrall had become chief when Hohmann, under pressure from Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron, voluntarily took a demotion to deputy chief after he had become ensnared in a police corruption trial that had embarrassed the mayor.
• Francesco Vincent Serpico is a former New York City Police Department Detective. He is known for whistleblowing on police corruption in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an act that prompted Mayor John V. Lindsay to appoint the landmark Knapp Commission to investigate the NYPD. Much of Serpico’s fame came after the release of the 1973 film Serpico; it was based on the book of the same name by Peter Maas and starred Al Pacino in the title role, for which Pacino received an Oscar nomination.
• James Edward McLynas is an American police reform activist and candidate for sheriff of Pinellas County, Florida. A victim of police abuse in Pinellas, McLynas is a vocal critic of incumbent sheriff Bob Gualtieri and has worked to expose police corruption, namely among the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office under Gualtieri’s tenure. McLynas ran against Gualtieri, a Republican, in 2016 as an Independent and earned over 100,000 votes despite limited campaigning and media coverage. McLynas sought the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020, but lost the primary to Eliseo Santana. McLynas has pledged to run again in 2024 and continues to be involved in activism.
• David Anthony Mack is a former Los Angeles Police Department officer involved in the Rampart Division’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit. He was one of the central figures in the LAPD Rampart police corruption scandal. Mack was arrested in December 1997 for robbery of $722,000 from a South Central Los Angeles branch of the Bank of America. He was sentenced to fourteen years and three months in federal prison. Mack has never revealed the whereabouts of the money.

Influential Organizations Involved in the Police Brutality Controversy

If you would like to study this topic in more depth, check out these key organizations...

Police Reform Groups

• Community United for Police Reform
• Campaign Zero

Pro-Police Organizations

• Blue Lives Matter
• National Association of Police Organizations
• The National Police Association

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Police Argumentative Essays Samples For Students

111 samples of this type

Over the course of studying in college, you will definitely have to craft a bunch of Argumentative Essays on Police. Lucky you if linking words together and transforming them into relevant text comes easy to you; if it's not the case, you can save the day by finding an already written Police Argumentative Essay example and using it as a model to follow.

This is when you will certainly find WowEssays' free samples catalog extremely helpful as it includes numerous professionally written works on most various Police Argumentative Essays topics. Ideally, you should be able to find a piece that meets your requirements and use it as a template to compose your own Argumentative Essay. Alternatively, our competent essay writers can deliver you a unique Police Argumentative Essay model written from scratch according to your personal instructions.

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Current Events Argumentative Essays Example

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This paper will target several different audiences. To begin with, the assignment will provide important information about nature, working and possible privacy implications to the public. This will be important in dispelling fears of the known, and increasing understanding of the need and risks of increased deployment of cameras. In addition, the cameras will seek to serve the proportion of the population that come in conduct with surveillance cameras on a daily basis in the shopping malls, public parks and streets, and most crucially those that have, or are considering purchasing surveillance cameras for their own purposes.

In Protection Of Self-Defense Argumentative Essay Examples

In various debates, individual's position about a certain issue depends on personal experience with the subject of debate or most likely lack of one. In this context, debate concerning bearing arms will be discussed. The aim of this essay is to explain why the right of bearing arms is essential for human rights support and why this right should be protected. The main arguments used are supported by the article of Wheeler Samuel.

Key words: bearing arms, violence, human rights, self-defense, government.

In Protection of Self-Defense

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Law enforcement is a major concern in all the nations of the world, as people seek to maintain law and order in the society. It is, however, worth noting that the legal systems in the different countries vary depending on the law as well as the constitution of the land. No matter the differences, justice is the ultimate goal of these systems. This essay analyses the case of US in comparison to England.

Comparative Criminal Justice US and England

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“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a famous open letter written by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. After he was arrested for participating a nonviolent protest in Birmingham, Alabama as part of the Civil Rights Movement, he wrote this letter to address several concerns he had about the concepts of racial segregation and the ideas of racism present in America at the time, particularly the South. It was published in various newspapers and magazines thereafter, and in his book Why We Can’t Wait.

The Police Practice Of Using Social Media: A Top-Quality Argumentative Essay For Your Inspiration

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The issue of marijuana legalization is one that has weighed on the minds of legislators and marijuana supporters ever since its prohibition. There are many heated arguments on one side of the other, and the issue is extremely controversial. Some say that it is an immoral drug that leads people to a life of crime; others say that marijuana can be medically beneficial to you, and that its prohibition brings about greater crime. In this essay, the legalization of marijuana will be supported, as marijuana does not conclusively cause any harmful effects, and it can severely diminish law enforcement expenses.

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Police Essay Writing Strategy

Understanding effective writing strategies is critically relevant to success at your police test as well as your ability to communicate verbally to others. This section takes a look at the ideal strategies for you to adopt in this regard.

Understanding how to effectively write an essay is more relevant than it may first appear. First and foremost, any aspiring police officer will, at some point, be required to furnish a report of a particular incident. You’ll need to have sufficient communication skills in order to complete this task while being competent at conveying this data to relevant parties. This is why effective communication skills are a core part of the policing curriculum. Having an effective essay writing strategy greatly assists you in this endeavor as you’ll have a structured format to follow for whatever topic is presented to you. This is particularly true as you’re required to pass a police written test where essay writing is central to whether you’ll succeed or not.

Organising Your Ideas

This guide for the police written test begins by analyzing the need for effective organization of your ideas. In the first instance, try not to feel intimidated by the idea of putting pen to paper. After all, your writing work is simply a reflection of what ideas and concepts are in your mind. When you’re writing, always keep this in mind — if it doesn’t sound natural in real life then it won’t sound natural on paper! In other words, try to write the way you’d ordinarily speak and this way you’re guaranteed to benefit from better flows of words and ideas. The essay topic itself could be anything, so while you cannot prepare for every conceivable question you can certainly prepare for every conceivable answer. The first step in this regard is to organize all the ideas that concern a particular question and jot them down on paper.

First, take a look at how the question is oriented: does it say ‘Describe’, ‘Analyse’, ‘List’ etc.? How the question is asked will ultimately determine how you’re going to formulate an answer. Evidently, a list will require a different type of answer than an analysis. Furthermore, if you’re asked to analyse a subject, the last thing you’d want to do is provide a list! Thus, read the question multiple times to ensure you know how to frame your answer. With this in mind, you’ll now have to think about all the relevant ideas that answer that particular question — focus on specific ideas that you can support with evidence. Ideas that cannot be backed up by argument or evidence will not mark well on exam day. Examiners marking the police written exam are looking to see whether you can make these important distinctions.

Each paragraph you write will be populated by just one idea. There is no room for waffle — all your paragraphs will thus contain a central idea that links back to the question asked. This is the purpose of organizing your ideas. Let’s take the contrary essay writing strategy that doesn’t organize ideas at all. This means, as you’ve probably guessed, that the essay will be random and disorganized, liable to stray off into irrelevance while avoiding the question in the hope its content is somehow correct. You cannot take this risk — instead, put pen to paper when you think of these ideas. Never look at this activity as a waste of time as once you have these ideas, all that’s required is the formulation of these ideas into words and paragraphs – a process that will increase your chances of passing your police test.

Structuring Your Essay

Now that you’ve organised all necessary ideas to answer the question, you need to think about how to structure these ideas. Your police test has been designed to see if students have the ability to correctly structure their argument. This is actually much simpler than it sounds and this preparation can begin in the weeks and months leading up to the police written exam. The most efficient way to structure your essay is to break it down into three distinct components:

We’re going to take a look at each of these components in detail and what factors you should consider when utilizing the ideas hitherto organised. Your police written exam will ask for an essay type answer, hence it’s essential that you take adopt all of the strategies outlined both above and below.

Introduction

The introduction of your essay will set down the tone and plan for the rest of the piece. You do not need to include specific points regarding your ideas but you will need to reference what your aims are and what you’re going to do. In other words, you’re required to write an overview of the main topic, what ideas you’re going to discuss, and how this will answer the question at hand. Think of an essay introduction in the same way as meeting somebody for the first time. When you meet them, you don’t start immediately talking about a detailed topic; instead, you begin by greeting them and introducing yourself. In the same way, your essay needs to introduce the topic to the reader so they know exactly where you’re coming from and what they can expect. As a budding law enforcement officer, you’ll need to effectively communicate your ideas and this, too, requires a clear introduction. Passing your police written exam means understanding the structure of your answers just as much as the content of those answers.

That said; there are many effective ways of boosting the quality of an introduction. The best introduction will grab the reader’s attention ensuring they’re enthusiastic to read on till the end. This can be achieved through the use of interesting facts, statistics, anecdotes or reports. Enhancing your introduction in this way is likely to impress examiners as it shows you’ve put effort into grabbing their attention – by adding this nuanced flair to your police test answer, it’s more likely to engage the examiner. Besides, whatever method you decide upon, always ensure relevance to the question and back this up with evidence where required. Take a look at the introduction below to give you some idea of what’s expected of you. The question asks to discuss the impact of uncontrolled immigration on society:

You should note the following about this police test essay introduction:

You can, of course, tweak this approach to suit your needs, but the overall message should be clear. This police test introduction should flow smoothly into the body of the essay — that part of the essay that incorporates your central ideas and arguments to provide evidence for your claims made in the introduction. Your police written exam depends on the ability to write a strong and informed introduction; one that states the message without derailing into irrelevance.

As stated before, the main body needs to be the evident part of your essay. Every major idea that you developed at the organisation phase needs to be fleshed out with its own paragraph during this stage. It’s important, at this stage, to understand exactly what we mean by a paragraph. Try to keep your paragraphs approximately the same length — about 6-8 sentences or 8-10 sentences depending on the length of your exam; the longer the exam then the longer your paragraphs can be. However, don’t make them too long, 10 lines being a convenient limit in this regard. Think of each of these paragraphs as a standalone piece that link together with the introduction to form a smooth flow of ideas. Your police test will require you to have a substantially argued body of the essay, that part of the essay that accrues the most marks. Therefore, you need to spend most of your time on this body, with the ultimate aim of logically arguing your point, each point being backed up by evidence and not idle opinion.

A paragraph in the main body is different to that of the introduction. Your paragraph needs to first state the idea that you’re going to defend. The rest of the paragraph should be spent discussing, providing evidence, or clarifying this idea. Every word you write in that single paragraph must justify its place on the page as well as being wholly relevant to the question at hand. Always ask yourself whether the sentence you’re about to write positively contributes to answering the question, or are you straying from the question, or waffling? The last sentence or two in a given paragraph should be spent clarifying your evidence and introducing how you’re going to approach the next idea in your following paragraph. Evidence, of course, remains a strong theme in policing and therefore it should come as self-evident that it should play a crucial role in answering questions during your police written exam.

The following is an example of a main body paragraph that follows on from the introduction outlined earlier:

You should note the following about this example of a main body paragraph:

You could have 4-6 paragraphs of this length, again depending on the length and type of exam, all formulated in exactly the same pattern. The only difference is the argument and evidence you adduce to support every idea you put on paper. When you’ve finished every main body paragraph, you can now approach developing your conclusion to the essay topic. The bulk of your police test question has now been answered, with the conclusion acting to draw all the major evident strings together to determine the final answer to the essay question.

This police study guide has, thus far, emphasized the need for a solid introduction and an evident body. However, the conclusion plays an equally pertinent role in the overall structure of your police test essay. The conclusion, just like every other paragraph, should be approximately the same in length and tone. However, the focus here should be on drawing together all the strings of evidence you’ve produced to reach your conclusions thus far. The conclusion, therefore, should refer back to the introduction, referencing the original aims of the essay and how you delivered on these aims. Just like the introduction, there should be no original ideas, but rather it should act as a summary of the ideas you produced in the main body paragraphs. Indeed, your entire essay should be focused on approaching your conclusion, in other words, delivering all the aims to arrive at a successful conclusion of the police test question at hand.

The following is an example of a conclusion based on the earlier question about immigration:

You should take note of the following with respect to writing a conclusion:

This police test strategy is sure to reap dividends on examination day as you’re now equipped to follow a structured and logical approach in delivering your answer. Recall that every word must justify its place on the page in answering two important questions:

You must avoid falling for the trap of talking about things you’re proficient at just because you’re proficient at it — the question will not change and so while you might be making great points, you’ll end up answering the wrong question and getting penalized accordingly. You must stay disciplined in your approach and structure; sticking to it through the entirety of your police test question. Your police written test result is sure to improve should you follow these steps without aberration – enhancing your prospects of becoming a law enforcement officer.

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Manhattan DA investigating after officer fired gun inside Columbia University - as it happened

Incident, which did not result in injuries, under review, while in California students and faculty condemn police crackdown at UCLA. This blog is now closed.

• More than 2,000 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested across US campuses
• US students: share your experience of the campus protests
• 6d ago Today's recap
• 6d ago US students: share your experience of the pro-Palestinian campus protests
• 6d ago This day so far
• 6d ago Columbia students say government to investigate anti-Palestinian discrimination
• 6d ago LA mayor condemns 'vandalism and violence' at UCLA
• 6d ago US campus arrests pass 2,000 – report
• 6d ago Interim summary
• 6d ago Pulitzer prize board recognizes work of US student journalists covering protests
• 6d ago Columbia's association of university professors call for no-confidence vote against Columbia president Minouche Shafik
• 6d ago Biden says 'no' to calling in National Guard for pro-Palestine college protests
• 6d ago Biden says 'violent protests are not protected. Peaceful protest is'
• 6d ago Joe Biden expected to speak on pro-Palestine campus protests
• 6d ago UCLA encampment cleared and more than 100 people detained
• 6d ago More protests near now-raided UCLA encampment
• 6d ago Video shows police pushing back demonstrators linking arms
• 6d ago California police move in to dismantle pro-Palestinian protest camp at UCLA
• 6d ago Police reinforcements arrive at UCLA, reports the BBC
• 6d ago UCLA Gaza protesters in tense standoff with police – video
• 6d ago Summary
• 7d ago Over 1,000 protesters present on campus at UCLA
• 7d ago Hundreds of police in riot gear are gathered on UCLA campus
• 7d ago US police expand efforts to dismantle student protests across the country
• 7d ago UCLA protesters told to disperse or face arrest
• 7d ago University police reportedly tell UCLA protesters to disperse
• 7d ago Donald Trump praises police response to New York campus protests and condemns demonstrators
• 7d ago Police reportedly poised to dismantle UCLA protests
• 7d ago UCLA police say campus leadership "owns the results of their decisions"
• 7d ago Police arrest 17 on University of Texas in Dallas campus
• 7d ago Fordham University requested police assistance
• 7d ago Arrests at New York's Fordham Univeristy
• 7d ago ‘It was terrifying’: UCLA students describe violent attack on Gaza protest encampment
• 7d ago University of Texas in Dallas reportedly requested assistance from police
• 7d ago Officers make arrests at pro-Palestinian protests in Dallas and New York

LA mayor condemns 'vandalism and violence' at UCLA

Karen Bass , the Los Angeles mayor, condemned “harassment, vandalism and violence” at UCLA’s campus in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

In her statement, Bass did not elaborate on which incidents of violence she was referring to. Student-led protesters on Wednesday were attacked by counter-demonstrators, leaving at least one student with severe injuries.

Here’s the full statement from Bass:

Every student deserves to be safe and live peacefully on their campus. Harassment, vandalism and violence have no place at UCLA or anywhere in our city. My office will continue to coordinate closely with local and state law enforcement, area universities and community leaders to keep campuses safe and peaceful.

Today's recap

At least 2,000 people have arrested for participating in pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses. Student protesters, faculty and others have sustained severe injury as police raided several encampment protests across the US overnight.

Here’s a summary of the developments today, from Guardian US staff across the country:

At least 200 people were arrested at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Thursday , the Associated Press reported. The latest figure brings the nationwide total of arrests to more than 2,000 at dozens of college campuses since police cleared an encampment at Columbia University on 30 April.

The Pulitzer prize board publicly recognized the work of student journalists across the US who are covering pro-Palestin ian protests on their campuses. The board praised the work of student journalists at Columbia University, where the Pulitzer prizes are located, for documenting the events on campus as New York police raided student-led encampments on 30 April.

An officer fired a gun inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, and the incident is under review by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. The news was first reported by the outlet The City . No one was injured, according to Doug Cohen, a spokesperson with Bragg’s office, who told the AP that no students had been in the immediate vicinity.

Joe Biden condemned violent protests, including vandalism, trespassing and forcing classes to be cancelled, during remarks from the White House . “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are we a lawless country,” he said.

At the conclusion of his speech, Biden said he did not think the National Guard should intervene in the protests , while responding to questions from journalists. Biden added that the campus unrest had not made him reconsider any policies in the Middle East.

The Gaza solidarity protest encampment at Rutgers University is being peacefully disassembled by students after meeting with university administration and coming to a resolution. Students at Northwestern and Brown have also been able to reach deals with their school administrations. In Canada, University of Toronto officials reversed a previous 10pm deadline for protesters to disperse, and said an encampment could stay if it remained peaceful.

The largest union of academic workers will hold a strike-authorization vote as early as next week in response to how universities have cracked down on students’ Gaza protests. The union represents more than 48,000 graduate student workers throughout the University of California system. Meanwhile, the Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) called for a vote of no confidence against Columbia president Minouche Shafik.

Faculty at Pomona College have voted to divest from Israel, weeks after protest ers at the liberal arts campus were arrested. The faculty at the school in Claremont, California, have demanded divestment from “weapons manufacturers and companies complicit in human rights violations committed by the Israeli government”.

The Travis county attorney general’s office said there was no evidence to back claims by the University of Texas at Austin that people among the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campus had “guns, buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel-enforced wood planks, mallets and chains”. The attorney general said that the high numbers of misdemeanor arrests of protesters were unsustainable.

In Canada, University of Toronto announces it will allow protest encampment to stay

Reversing a previous 10 pm deadline for pro-Palestine demonstrators to disperse, University of Toronto officials said that a protest encampment could remain as long as it stayed peaceful, the Toronto Star reported.

University of Toronto says encampment protesters calling for it to ‘divest’ from Israel can stay for now https://t.co/Em6Bvu0COB — Toronto Star (@TorontoStar) May 3, 2024

How big are today’s US campus protests compared to those in the 1960s?

Robert Cohen, a New York University historian, told the AP that the scale of today’s pro-Palestinian student protests don’t yet match the anti-war protests of the Vietnam War era.

“I would say that this is the biggest in the United States in the 21st century,” said Cohen. “But you could say: ‘Well, that’s like being the tallest building in Wichita, Kansas.’”

Another contrast is how quickly university administrators are cracking down:

Another difference that has struck observers is the quick crackdown by campus authorities. In 1968, students occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall for nearly a week before authorities moved in. The bust – when it finally came – saw more than 700 arrested. “It’s funny because Columbia is very proud of ... Columbia students’ history of activism,” said Ilana Gut, a senior at the university’s sister school, Barnard College. “So their attitudes toward the modern-day activists, at least in the eyes of protestors, is very ironic – that they’re so proud of their past protestors, but so violently repressive of their modern-day ones.”

The Los Angeles Police Department made no arrests after a night of violence at UCLA. But the group chats are on it.

On Tuesday night, a pro-Palestinian student encampment at UCLA was brutally attacked by what the university’s chancellor called “a mob of instigators”. Many of the attackers covered their faces: some were dressed in black, with white masks.

The attacks on the protest camp went on for an estimated four hours before law enforcement finally intervened, a delay that sparked wide condemnation, including from California’s governor. And LAPD, which eventually was asked to come to campus to respond to the violence, later announced that they had made zero arrests.

In the absence of any immediate legal action from law enforcement, the LA Times reports , “online sleuths” from around the world have been sharing and scrutinizing video footage from the UCLA attacks, in an attempt to identify the perpetrators and hold them accountable.

Who attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at @UCLA ? Online sleuths are working to find out. https://t.co/DTszH1YYAo @brittny_mejia @jvgarrison @MattHjourno — Teresa Watanabe (@TeresaWatanabe) May 3, 2024

“This is where we’re at now,” Brian Levin, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, told the LA Times. “People feel for their own protection that they have to bring their own goggles [to protests to protect from teargas], and they also have to find their own assailants.”

AP: Police detain man who briefly accelerated toward pro-Palestin ian demonstrators

This is Lois Beckett, continuing our live news coverage from Los Angeles. The AP has an update from Portland State University in Oregon:

Police said Thursday they detained the driver of a white Toyota Camry who briefly accelerated toward a crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Portland State University in Oregon, then ran off spraying what appeared to be pepper spray toward protesters who confronted him. The man was taken to a hospital on a police mental health hold, the Portland Police Bureau said in a written statement late Thursday afternoon. They did not release his name. People screamed as the vehicle accelerated from a stop toward the crowd on Thursday afternoon, but the driver braked before it reached anyone. Demonstrators approached the car and began striking it, and the driver exited and sprinted off while aiming the spray toward those trying to catch him. Police said they found the driver later and took him into custody.

After New York City mayor, Eric Adams , repeatedly claimed that “outside agitators” were responsible for escalations that prompted an overwhelming law enforcement crackdown, the NYPD issued numbers indicating that a third of those arrested at Columbia were not students.

On Thursday, the NYPD issued a press release that said among those arrested at Columbia, “approximately 29% of individuals were not affiliated” with the school, while 60% of people arrested at the CCNY protests were not affiliated with the school. It was not immediately clear how the police were defining “affiliation”, and the release did not break down arrest figures in further detail.

“What we have seen, and what has been made clear by the evidence emerging after this week’s arrests, is that professional, external actors are involved in these protests and demonstrations,” the NYPD commissioner, Edward Caban, said in the release. “These individuals are not university students, they are not affiliated with either the institutions or campuses in question, and they are working to escalate the situation.”

The Guardian requested confirmation of receipt of arrest lists from both Columbia University and the City College of New York (CCNY), and asked if the institutions planned to divulge details breaking down the numbers of arrests. Neither immediately responded.

After Joe Biden said on Thursday that the campus demonstrations had not influenced his views on Middle East policies and and characterized campus demonstrators as violent, the College Democrats emphasized the power of the youth vote.

“College Democrats’ votes are not to be taken for granted by the Democratic Party. We reserve the right to criticize our party when it fails to listen to us,” the group posted on X.

It’s no surprise that young people are losing hope in the democratic process when neither party aims to listen to us. Make no mistake— @TheDemocrats cannot win this November without the youth vote. — Sohali Vaddula (@SohaliV) May 3, 2024

In an op-ed for the Guardian, Grey Battle, a student at Yale University , wrote about the protests on campus, and the experience of seeing her friends arrested:

Friends who attended last weekend’s formal changed out of long dresses and into masks, sunglasses, hoodies and other dox-preventive wear. Friends from first-year orientation groups led counterprotests with ‘Fact Check ’ signs and matching T-shirts. The Yale gospel choir performed, dance troupes offered workshops, and professors hosted teach-ins. These professors are in full supply: I go to a school that offers classes called Contesting Injustice, Political Protests and The Liberation Movement. Yale is a member of the greater systems, machines and institutions which perpetuate oppression, yet teaches us to knock them down. I am lying on the floor of my dorm room. I’ve retreated to my corner of campus. It is 80 sq ft of popcorn walls and pine wood furniture. I turn the fan on, a muffle of white noise. Echoes of ‘Free Gaza, free Palestine, within our lifetime, ’ ‘I ain’t gonna study war no more ’ and ‘We are the children ’ run together. I am lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling when the first tears well. I am crying because during protests at the November Harvard-Yale football game, every university in Palestine had been bombed. By today’s protest in April, no universities in Palestine remain. I am crying because with every hour that passes, 42 bombs are dropped on Gaza. Yale will not disclose how many of those bombs I funded with my tuition dollars.

Student protests are happening on college campuses across the US, but also across the world. Here are a few snapshots of protests around the globe.

Outside France ’s renowned Sorbonne university, gendarmes and police officers evacuated an encampment. There were also clashes at Sciences Po between protesters and police. The Sciences Po Palestine Committee posted a map showing student-led protests on campuses across the country.

In Mexico City , about 50 students created an encampment at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “The student movement in the United States has given us a lot of hope,” Luna Martínez, a human rights lawyer who studied at the university, told the AP.

In the UK , protests took place on at least six university campuses on Wednesday, including Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds and Newcastle. The University of York, meanwhile, announced in a statement that it “no longer holds investments in companies that primarily make or sell weapons and defence-related products or services”, following pressure from students.

In Canada , students at the University of Toronto set up at a common. “We will not be leaving until we achieve divestment, disclosure and an academic boycott of complicit Israeli universities,” UofT Occupy for Palestine wrote on X.

An officer fired a gun inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, and the incident is under review by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.

The news was first reported by the outlet The City .

No one was injured, according to Doug Cohen, a spokesperson with Bragg’s office, who told the AP that no students had been in the immediate vicinity. Rumors that a firearm had been discharged spread after a student’s video, posted on X, showed a police officer texting about an incident.

Faculty at Pomona College have voted to divest from Israel, weeks after protest ers at the liberal arts campus were arrested.

The faculty at the school in Claremont, California, have demanded divestment from “weapons manufacturers and companies complicit in human rights violations committed by the Israeli government”, according to a statement from the Pomona Divest from Apartheid group. The group has demanded divestment from Barclays, Chevron and a number of other companies.

The Pomona faculty follow University of Michigan faculty and faculty unions at four Canadian universities, according to a statement from the group.

Despite the recent unrest on campus, UCLA chancellor Gene Block said in a call to alumni Thursday that graduation ceremonies would continue as planned, and that the school also plans to finish out this academic quarter in person on campus as normal. He added that he expects the campus may see “some disruptions”.

“We hope that people will be respectful that people are there for a very special event,” he said. “It’s not a political event.”

Block praised law enforcement for clearing the encampment “without serious injuries”, though a number of social media reports claimed protesters were in fact injured by violent police arrests.

When asked how alumni can support current enrollees at UCLA amid the unrest, Block suggest they educate students about their “decision” to protest.

“People make decisions, and your decision to make a risk of being arrested is still a decision – one that can have an impact on your life,” he said. “So sometimes it is about perspective on how to avoid putting yourself in a position that can impact your future.”

A number of faculty at UCLA, including from the history and English departments, have called for Block to resign due to his response to the incidents. Block did not address those demands on the call. The town hall ended without any questions from participants on the call.

• US campus protests
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• Israel-Gaza war

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Mobilization in Russia for Feb. 8-9, 2024 CIT Volunteer Summary

Protests in bashkortostan.

In Bashkortostan [Russia's constituent republic], a working group has been established to protect the rights of the individuals detained during recent protests . The group was formed as a result of a directive issued by Governor Radiy Khabirov. It is composed of lawyers, human right defenders and community leaders. They will meet with relatives of the detained and provide protest participants legal assistance free of charge . It is worth noting that authorities have charged at least 55 protest participants with criminal offenses, while Bashkortostan courts have considered 152 misdemeanor cases. For his part, Khabirov spoke negatively about the protesters and refused to honor the memory of Rifat Dautov, who died in police custody.

On the night of Feb. 9, law enforcement officers took in for questioning the son of ecoactivist Ildar Yumagulov , who had emigrated after the beginning of the protests. Yumagulov does not know which case his son was questioned about, its procedural status, or whether he has been released since.

Authorities and Relatives of Mobilized Soldiers

Police in Moscow have begun issuing warnings to journalists who covered Saturday's protests by the wives of mobilized soldiers . According to the Sota media outlet, several such incidents have been reported . The warnings, issued on Feb. 9, mention administrative and criminal liability for participation in unauthorized rallies . According  to the Ostorozhno, Novosti [Beware the News] Telegram channel, law enforcement officers are also delivering warnings to participants of the Saturday action from the Put Domoy [Way Home] movement. Plainclothes police officers visit women who were previously photographed at flower-laying events , including those unaffiliated with the movement who attended the event independently.

Meanwhile, activists from the Put Domoy movement are calling on all concerned citizens to gather across the country for a flower-laying event on Feb. 10 , marking the movement’s tenth action . The previous similar event in Moscow ended with the detention of journalists, who were all released by evening, with administrative proceedings initiated against two detainees.

Army Recruitment and Military Service Advertising

Following a massive brawl at the Wildberries warehouse in the city of Elektrostal, Moscow region, police not only detained those most actively involved but also sent 15 men to the military commissariat [enlistment office] . These men, having acquired Russian citizenship, had not yet registered for military service .

Mobilized Soldiers, Volunteer Fighters and Contract Soldiers

The list of mobilized soldiers killed in the war has been updated to include Aleksandr Klimkin from the Rostov region and Dmitry Ikhineev from Buryatia [Russia's constituent republic]. An obituary by the Tunkinsky National Park, where Ikhineev was employed, reveals his body has been in a destroyed tank near Vuhledar for over a year.

According to the Astra Telegram channel, servicemen from 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade have barricaded themselves in a building , refusing commanders’ orders despite threats of execution by firing squad . The soldiers claim they are being treated as "cannon fodder," sent to storm the village of Novomykhailivka without support and with no means to evacuate the wounded . Survivors are reportedly sent back into battle unarmed, except for knives. Furthermore, the soldiers say that their commanders have put "barrier troops" behind them. Such tactics reportedly resulted in the loss of 6 tanks, 3 MT-LB multi-purpose armored vehicles, and up to 200 casualties in capturing one position. The military personnel are planning to push for a change in leadership.

Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents

In 2023, Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs reported 410 registered acts of terror, marking the highest figure since 2004. This sharp increase, compared to 127 incidents in 2022 and 41 in 2021, can be attributed to the classification of anti-war protests as acts of terror by Russian authorities . Additionally, actions by Ukrainian military personnel are sometimes categorized similarly, further contributing to the uptick in reported incidents.

The Second Eastern District Military Court sentenced Russian citizen Vitaly Alekseyev to 12 years in prison for his involvement with the "Freedom of Russia Legion." According to the prosecution, Alekseyev shared information about employees of the Siberian Electronic Customs and the location of defense industry production facilities in Krasnoyarsk with the "Legion" via a Telegram chat. Additionally, he allegedly planned to throw flammable liquid at the local branch of the United Russia party in Krasnoyarsk. Alekseyev was apprehended on Sept. 11 after leaflets from the "Legion" appeared in Krasnoyarsk, purportedly distributed by him.

Meduza, an international Russian-language online media outlet, released an analysis of all currently known information regarding the case of Andrey Vasyurenko from Karelia, Russia’s constituent republic, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to terrorist activities and preparation for incitement to treason.

Children and Educational System

In the town of Pervouralsk, Sverdlovsk region, a paramilitary sports game called Zarnichka [Summer Lightning] was organized for children from kindergartens , during which the children competed in speed crawling through the snow with toy guns and participated in a quiz dedicated to Defender of the Fatherland Day. Meanwhile, in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region–Yugra [Russia’s federal subject], plans are underway to teach disabled children march drills, hand-to-hand combat, and weapon handling .

At School No. 6 in Yuzhnouralsk, Chelyabinsk region, a meeting was held with war veteran Dmitry Yepishkin, during which he spoke to students “about the necessity of serving in the army, about fulfilling one’s duty to one’s people.” The veteran arrived at the school wearing a patch containing strong language . In the Voronezh region, for the second year in a row, students in grades 8–11 are shown propaganda films and participate in class hours with war veterans from Ukraine as part of the project “I am the heir of heroes and I am against Nazism.” They are also compelled to write letters to the frontline.

Colonel Igor Murog, the rector of Ryazan State University, took students on a tour to a contract military service recruitment center , where they were informed about “support measures and assistance for participants in the special military operation.” Previously, students demanded the resignation of the rector due to the introduction of “army ways” at the university and the dismissal of faculty members.

Students in the Leningrad region are receiving handouts on how to write letters to soldiers fighting in Ukraine, in honor of Feb. 23 [Defender of the Fatherland Day]. The guide suggests expressing gratitude to the soldiers for their courageous effort and includes sample letters for reference.

Students from the Arctic State Institute of Culture and Arts in Russia’s constituent republic of Sakha (Yakutia), held a concert in the territories impacted by the Special Military Operation.

Miscellaneous

A monument is set to be unveiled in the village of Yelan in the Volgograd region, commemorating the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. The monument, crafted by a local resident who returned from the war, is made up of the letters Z, V, and O intertwined together with an icon at its center . The names of all local residents who lost their lives in the war will be inscribed on the monument "after the conclusion of the Special Military Operation.”

After returning from the war, 41-year-old Dmitry Kiryukhin managed to lead a "lesson of courage" at a school, and shortly afterward, he brutally assaulted his neighbors . He was detained several days later, only after the incident made its way into the media. The Cherta Telegram channel reported on this war veteran terrorizing an entire town in the Saratov region.

The Lyudi Baikala [People of Baikal] independent media outlet analyzed 115 administrative cases pertaining to "discrediting the Armed Forces" and published an article detailing how people are being prosecuted for their anti-war stance in the Irkutsk region and Buryatia .

Journalists from the "Bereg" [Shore] association interviewed the mother of 16-year-old Kevin Lik, who was sentenced to four years in a penal colony on charges of treason .

The Vyorstka media outlet reported that the problem of HIV infection has intensified in Russia amid the war with Ukraine . The Russian Ministry of Health has been unable to purchase HIV therapy drugs due to a lack of bids from suppliers. Activists suspect that the probable cause is the low starting price offered by the Ministry. According to a statement by the Ministry of Health, the existing supply of HIV medications in Russia will suffice for only three months .

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Man shot after argument in elk grove, according to police.

Officials said the shooting happened in the area of Calvine and Vineyard roads around 3:15 p.m.

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One person was taken to an area hospital after an argument led up to a shooting in Elk Grove on Sunday, according to the police department.

The police department said the victim got into an argument with the suspect and they both got into separate vehicles when the suspect fired at the victim as he drove away.

Officials said the victim drove himself to a local hospital and is being treated for a gunshot injury that is not life-threatening.

The police department said parts of Calvine Road between Bradshaw and Vineyard will be closed during the investigation.

This is a developing story. Stay with KCRA 3 for the latest.

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Pair arrested in connection with hours-long Schenectady standoff

by Jana DeCamilla

Wendell K. Boone, 39, of Schenectady, and Catoria A. Pittman, 35, were arrested in connection to the Crane St. standoff.

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, officers from the Schenectady Police Department responded to the 900 block of Crane Street for the report of a physical altercation between a male and female.

During the altercation, it was alleged that "a gun was displayed and possibly fired, and a shovel was used as a weapon," as well as a baby present during the incident.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Police standoff in Schenectady lasts almost 9 hours

Officers began to search for the suspects upon arrival and located Pittman at 2:30 p.m., she was transported to police headquarters while the search for Boone continued. It was reported that the male suspect had entered a neighboring apartment through a window while fleeing from police. Officers from the Schenectady Police Department, the department’s Special Operations Squad, Drone Unit, as well as the New York State Police, the Schenectady County Street Crimes Task Force, the Schenectady County Sheriff’s Office, and the Niskayuna Police Department continued to search the area, including several buildings, throughout the day and into the evening.

After almost 9 hours, at 9:41 p.m., members of the Special Operations Squad located the Boone laying in an area between buildings. He was arrested without further incident and a loaded Ruger handgun was recovered, according to police.

The suspects are known to one another, and it was alleged that their two-year-old child was present during the initial altercation. Schenectady County CPS is assisting, and the child is safe at this time.

Boone was charged with:

Burglary in the First Degree- a Class B Felony

Criminal Use of a Firearm in the First Degree- a Class B Felony

Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree- a Class C Felony

Reckless Endangerment in the First Degree- a Class D Felony

Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Fourth Degree- a Class E Felony

Menacing in the Second Degree- a Class A Misdemeanor

Endangering the Welfare of a Child- a Class A Misdemeanor

Criminal Mischief in the Fourth Degree- a Class A Misdemeanor

Pittman was charged with:

Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree- a Class D Felony

Acting Houston Chief of Police Larry Satterwhite; who is he?

HOUSTON - With the announcement of the retirement of Houston Police Chief Troy Finner by Houston Mayor John Whitmire, Larry Satterwhite, who was the Executive Assistant Chief of the Houston Police Department, is now the Acting Chief of Police effective at 10:31 p.m. Tuesday. 

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner announces he's retiring, Satterwhite named Acting Chief

Before being named Acting Chief of Police by Whitmire, Satterwhite oversaw field operations, who was responsible for leading, organizing, directing, coordinating, developing, and implementing management strategies that promote efficient and effective solutions to critical service, crime, disorder, and traffic mobility issues. 

FOX 26 Houston is now on the FOX LOCAL app available through Apple TV, Amazon FireTV, Roku, Google Android TV, and Vizio!

The position also required serving as chair to various internal committees that address organizational issues, as well as addressing community concerns expressed by citizens. 

Connecticut News | CT man shot during argument; police looking for…

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Attorney Shot Dead at McDonald's by Customer Upset Over Order: Police

A Houston lawyer was tragically shot and killed outside a McDonald's on Saturday while attempting to defuse a heated argument between a disgruntled customer and the restaurant staff.

Jeffrey Limmer, 46, had tried to intervene and calm a disgruntled man who was upset over his order and demanded a refund from an employee at the McDonald's on West Interstate Highway 10 service road, according to KTRK-TV .

Young, professional who was an asset to society shot & killed after trying to defend #McDonalds employees from a crazed customer. When heroes step forward they are either gunned down or arrested. This is all by plan. #Hero #JeffreyLimmer #shooting #NWO https://t.co/SnA5b6tEwv

— Sweet Life (@PixieBebeX) May 8, 2024

Officers were called to the scene around 6 p.m.

Limmer's attempts to deescalate the situation fell on deaf ears as things intensified , and he and the disgruntled customer continued to argue.

The confrontation escalated further when it moved to the parking lot, where Limmer reportedly pushed the customer to the ground, according to police.

The customer then allegedly retrieved a firearm from his vehicle and fatally shot Limmer before escaping in a blue Ford pickup truck.

Limmer was pronounced dead at the scene, the New York Post reported.

As of now, no arrests have been made in connection with his shooting and authorities are still searching for the shooter.

"Knowing Jeff, he's the one who always says, 'Calm down. It's not that big of a deal,' and divert the situation," his sister, Jennifer Thomas, told KTRK.

"He's always wanted to fight for the little guy and do the right thing ."

SOMETIMES IT IS BEST NOT TO GET INVOLVED IN A DISPUTE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. IT IS NOT WORTH THE POSSIBILITY OF LOSING YOUR LIFE. THAT BEING SAID RIP JEFFREY LIMMER. https://t.co/aM2K7L0drf

— CasperOtto (@BRRRCO) May 8, 2024

Limmer was reportedly a familiar face at the McDonald's near his home and had deep roots in the community, having been a quarterback for Memorial High School's football team and an outfielder on the baseball team.

He graduated from the University of Texas and South Texas College of Law and worked at a local law firm.

Thomas said her parents were at her daughter's graduation when they received the devastating news.

In the end, Thomas said she and Limmer's family are proud he stood up for what he believed was the right thing to do.

"A good Samaritan who is trying to do the right thing and not letting those employees at McDonalds go through that," Thomas said.

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CGWI Director's Statement on May 4th, 2024

The University has failed. Across this country, the university has failed in its most fundamental stated purpose—fostering student learning and expression. We vocally oppose the University leadership’s decision to call the police, full stop. We implore the University to drop all charges against members of our community who have “No Trespass” orders, especially students whose presence on Grounds makes this University possible. We remain dismayed at further decisions made by University leadership:

• the fact that our University leaders, President Ryan and Provost Baucom, among others, decided to deploy university, local, and state police after witnessing that similar tactics were not effective at other Universities around the country;
• that these officials remained alarmingly absent in what was reported as a “control center;” 
• the fact that within the safety of this protected zone, these leaders eschewed their responsibility to members of their community, colleagues, and students, alike, failing to respond to pleas from faculty and students facing imminent violence at the hands of the police.

During the afternoon of May 4, 2024 as students in my Introduction to African American & African Studies took their final examination, emergency alerts blasted through the class intercom system, clearly indicating that all was not well at the Rotunda. Though unsure of what exactly was happening at the Rotunda, the students persevered and finished their final exams, although clearly agitated by the situation. As we soon discovered, some students did not make it to the final, as they were being tested in chillingly different ways. As one student explained to me later:  

• “Today, I stood beside my peers and demanded that our university divest from Israel and stop supporting and endorsing genocide. As 35,000 Palestinians have died, and there are students here that are courageously standing up against the oppressive actions of this university I had to get involved as their freedom and livelihood was being threatened. As I was protesting, I missed your final. It was not necessarily my goal to skip the final, but I am not apologetic for my actions as state police were attempting to violently silence us. Your class has taught me a multitude. I have learned so much about the power of my voice and the impact it can have. From the children in Soweto (many of whom were murdered by South African police on June 16, 1976, when they protested against the apartheid regime), to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, to the Black Panthers (during the Civil Rights & Black Power eras), and so many more young people who used their voice to make a change, I knew that today I had to be on the right side of history and not in a lecture hall writing an essay.”

This student’s activism continues the longer history of Black Studies at the University of Virginia, and is reminiscent of February 18, 1969, when 1,000 students gathered at the Rotunda to demand an end to the University’s “racist atmosphere,” including the successful establishment of a Black Studies program by 1970. Many of my students referenced this history in their final exams. And other students bore witness to that history of UVA student activism by making their own history fifty-five years later. 

We love our students. Students make the University. This is not a grandiose claim. We are all here because of a fundamental commitment to the future as exemplified, epitomized, and embodied through those we teach and alongside whom we learn. Yet, the students are not symbolic, nor are they passive vessels to be filled with the lessons of our instruction.

As educators, we are primed to capitalize on all teachable moments. And, yet in times like these, the knee jerk reaction to "teach" must be met with a concomitant impulse to listen and to truly learn.

The student teacher relationship represents a microcosm of larger structural dynamics. We teach our students to be critical thinkers, think globally and act locally, wrestle with the grandest ideas and attend to the most granular details. We, as teachers within a university, are likewise instructed to pursue the cutting edge of academic research to advance the values of democracy as the loftiest aspirations of what the University can be in the abstract and in practice. We apply these values in all aspects of the profession, most especially undergraduate education. For the sake of argument, we are the University's students, too. The University administration ensures that students and faculty can advance knowledge production at the highest level by cultivating a supportive environment and investing heavily in the potential for students to achieve transformation, individually and collectively.

As many recent statements on the events of May 4, 2024, assert, there is a fundamental tension between the stated objectives to pursue knowledge, equity, and inclusion, and the show of police force that took place on that day. We cannot hold the position that the University innovates and transforms the world through the power of knowledge and curtail the application of that knowledge in the world. We cannot silence our students at the very moment when they are urging us to listen. We cannot insist that our students be global citizens and ask them to ignore the plight of their fellow citizens of the world. We cannot treat our students as symbolic, hypothetical, and abstract. Therefore, slipping into the teachable tone, we return to the refrain: we love our students. We are all students.

• We love our students who remind us of the long tradition of activism, particularly student activism, that launched the field of Black Studies at UVA and other institutions of higher learning across the United States. Who remind us specifically of the student organizers who insisted that UVA should be a place where Black Studies can thrive.
• We love our students who keep us accountable to our deeply held values.
• We love our students who protest and express their freedom of speech rights, who act on the courage of their convictions amid militarized police in riot gear, armed with guns and tear gas.
• We love our students who remain steadfast, compassionate, and optimistic even though they sustained the trauma of the events on May 4th. Some of whom carry the additional weight of the trauma of gun violence that killed three of our students close to 18-months ago.
• We love our students who call us to interrogate the marked contrast to the treatment of community members on May 4, 2024, to the lack of police presence when Neo-Nazi’s stormed UVA Grounds on August 11, 2017.
• We love our students who quote our favorite authors back to us and who use the knowledge gained in the African American & African Studies department to make a case for why they might not come to graduation.
• We love our students who have been through so much. Always.
• We love our students’ numbers 1, 15, 41 and to infinity.
• We love our students at the PhD level who, at a year-end event, instead of deferring to the professional autopilot of enumerating their many accomplishments, invited us to join those assembled on the lawn. An invitation to normalize protest as inherently peaceful, without the qualification “peaceful protest” in that they simply made the invitation to spend some time among the group gathered on the Lawn, to bring food, to answer emails, co-work, read a book, and be in the space with others in order to carve out an opportunity to recognize that we cannot proceed with “business as usual,” while so many innocent people in the global community are suffering unnecessary and preventable violence. 
• We love our students who include our colleagues because we're all students – we love our fellow-student-colleagues who have written, who have felt, who have been too scared to write, who have resigned, who have been too scared to resign, who cancelled class, who gave extensions and grace.
• We love our fellow-student-colleagues who win the most prestigious awards, while standing alongside undergraduates, who publish field-defining monographs, while contributing to statements in solidarity, who continue to enrich our intellectual community, through their acts of speech in protest, public fora, academic environs, and beyond.
• We love our students who are leaving in May. We love our students who are staying.

It is with this perspective that we call to mind the refrain: we are all students.

If the true spirit of the University is the academical village, is lifetime learning, is the great and good, is democracy in action, then we ask the administration, how do we reconcile the treatment of students that was witnessed on May 4? What would it look like to treat students as students, as people with whom you live and work alongside, not as symbolic, or abstract entities, but people, embodied, flesh and bone, in your and our community?

As a teacher, one's goal is not trying to change the student's perspective, but instead to channel their natural curiosity, their goodwill, optimism of spirit, and boundless energy toward topics about which they are passionate. At times, students may not express themselves in ways that everyone approves. But they have the inalienable first amendment right to free speech. The University as a social structure provides an opportunity for the experiment in American democracy, which is why so many are proud to have our university so directly tied to Jeffersonian ideals. And yet, there is no reconciling the fact that the University administration deployed police on their own students. The University administration criminalized its own students, faculty, and staff, issuing "No Trespassing" orders to those who have lived, worked, and learned here for years.

At present, there are students detained for putting their learning into action. At present, there are students who are at risk of failing classes, being penalized, or earning lower grades from having to persevere during this unimaginably stressful situation during Final Exam period. There are many students whose experiences over their time at UVA has been tarnished irreparably. There are immediate and tangible consequences to actual students due to the administration's actions. There are also longer-term intangible consequences to such a decision.

As the eminent historian and Black Studies scholar Robin D.G. Kelley reminds us, “unlike other ‘mainstream’ academic disciplines, Black Studies was born out of struggle for freedom and a genuine quest to understand the world to change it.” We honor our students who know well that the mere imparting of information is not education, to paraphrase our namesake Carter G. Woodson, and that deep learning comes from acting on the courage of your convictions. We demand that the University that aspires to be “great and good” follow their example.

We condemn the decision of the University administration, and we stand in solidarity with our students who continue to teach us every day, through word and deed. We implore the University to drop all charges against members of our community who have “No Trespass” orders, especially students whose presence on Grounds makes this University possible. We love our students. Students make the University possible. We are all here because of a fundamental commitment to the future that our students are imagining and building in real time.

-Robert Trent Vinson

Chair, Department of African American & African Studies

Director, Carter G. Woodson Institute of African American & African Studies

434-924-3109 [email protected]

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Police Brutality — Police Brutality: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Police Brutality: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

• Categories: Police Brutality Racial Profiling

About this sample

Words: 504 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 504 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Definition and forms of police brutality, causes of police brutality, consequences of police brutality, solutions to address police brutality.

• Amnesty International. (2021). Police Brutality and Accountability. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/policing/police-brutality-and-accountability/
• Blumenfeld, W. J. (2016). Travesties of police community relations: Police brutality, misconduct, and corruption. Routledge.
• Reiss, A. J., & Bordua, D. J. (1967). 'Dirty work' in police services. Social Problems, 14(4), 386-397.
• Smith, B. W., & Holmes, M. D. (2003). Community Policing: Clarifying Police Roles: British Policing in a Changing Society. Taylor & Francis.

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Man Is Charged After Hitting Protester With His Car Near Columbia

Two pro-Palestinian demonstrators whom the driver, Reuven Kahane, was arguing with were also arrested and charged.

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By Hurubie Meko

A man who got into an argument with pro-Palestinian demonstrators before hitting one with his car on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on Tuesday has been charged with assault, according to the police.

The man, Reuven Kahane, 57, was arguing with two demonstrators around 9 a.m. when he struck a 55-year-old woman with his vehicle, the police said. In reaction, the demonstrators hit Mr. Kahane’s car.

Mr. Kahane was charged with second-degree assault. The demonstrator who was hit, Maryellen Novak, was treated at Weill Cornell Medical Center for minor injuries. She was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and unlawful assembly. The other demonstrator involved, John Rozendaal, 63, was also arrested and charged with criminal mischief.

Mr. Kahane was arraigned Wednesday morning and released without bail. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Ms. Novak and Mr. Rozendaal, according to a statement.

Lawyers for Mr. Kahane, Sara Shulevitz and Mindy Meyer, said that “more facts will come to light” in the course of the case.

“We’re confident that our client will be exonerated of all charges,” they said.

The protesters were part of a group of about 25 people demonstrating outside of 755 Park Avenue, the police said, and the group was walking away when Mr. Kahane got into “a verbal dispute” with two of them.

A student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, disputed the police’s account, saying in a statement that Mr. Kahane drove up to the protesters in his car and asked for a flier before “grabbing the protester’s arm.”

As they were leaving, the group said, he “circled the block to drive into our peaceful demonstration” and struck a person whom they identified as one of the group’s de-escalation team members.

The episode is the second time in a week that members of their group have been assaulted and the fourth hospitalization, the statement said.

In a phone call on Wednesday, Mr. Rozendaal said that he was also at the demonstration as a de-escalator at the request of the student group. He had attended other demonstrations as a protester, but on Tuesday his sole role was “keeping people safe,” he said.

Mr. Rozendaal, a musician who lives in Manhattan, declined to give an account of what exactly led to the confrontation with Mr. Kahane or the aftermath. But he said that over the course of their demonstration in front of a Columbia University trustee’s home, they were approached by people who were “ really, really angry.”

“It was a challenge during those two hours to have compassion for everybody on the scene because anger comes from fear and it doesn’t come from nowhere,” he said. “But it also felt like it was making people unsafe.”

As the group was leaving the area, he said, the confrontation with Mr. Kahane occurred.

Mr. Rozendaal, who was not struck, said he was released from central booking — where people arrested are taken to be processed — around 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday and was told that the Manhattan district attorney’s office had “declined to prosecute” his case.

“The story is what’s happening to the people in Gaza and United States complicity and Columbia University’s complicity,” he said. “And the other piece of the story is the courage of Columbia University students in refusing to be complicit. And I was there to support that.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York region. More about Hurubie Meko

Our Coverage of the U.S. Campus Protests

News and Analysis

UChicago : Police officers removed the pro-Palestinian encampment  at the University of Chicago, a move that was sure to be closely watched because the school has long considered itself a model for free expression on campus .

Rhode Island School of Design:  Pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves inside the main administrative building  at the private art and design school in Providence, R.I.

M.I.T.:  Tensions escalated on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as pro-Palestinian protesters resisted a deadline to clear an encampment .

Outside Agitators:  Officials in New York City have blamed “external actors” for escalating demonstrations at Columbia, but student protesters reject the claim .

Clashes at U.C.L.A.: A New York Times examination of more than 100 videos from clashes at the University of California, Los Angeles, shows how counterprotesters provoked the violence .

Reactions Abroad:  The world is watching what is happening on American campuses with shock, pride, relish and alarm. Here is a selection of views from outside the United States .

A Spotlight on Student Journalists:  Columbia’s radio station and other student-led news outlets have provided some of the most detailed coverage  of the turmoil engulfing campuses.