Kivel goes on to detail the ways these nine tactics are used to excuse (or deny) institutionalized racism. Each of these tactics also has its police analogy, both as applied to individual cases and in regard to the general issue of police brutality.60
Here are a few examples:
(1) Denial.
“The professionalism and restraint … was nothing short of outstanding.”61
“America does not have a human-rights problem.”62
(2) Minimization.
Injuries were “of a minor nature.”63
“Police use force infrequently.”64
(3) Blame.
“This guy isn’t Mr. Innocent Citizen, either. Not by a long shot.”65
“They died because they were criminals.”66
(4) Redefinition.
It was “mutual combat.”67
“Resisting arrest.”68
“The use of force is necessary to protect yourself.”69
(5) Unintentionality.
“[O]fficers have no choice but to use deadly force against an assailant who is deliberately trying to kill them.…”70
(6) It’s over now.
“We’re making changes.”71
“We will change our training; we will do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.”72
(7) It’s only a few men.
“A small proportion of officers are disproportionately involved in use-of-force incidents.”73
“Even if we determine that the officers were out of line … it is an aberration.”74
(8) Counterattack.
“The only thing they understand is physical force and pain.”75
“People make complaints to get out of trouble.”76
(9) Competing victimization.
The police are “in constant danger.”77
“[L]iberals are prejudiced against police, much as many white police are biased against Negroes.”78
The police are “the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in America.”79
Another commonly invoked rationale for justifying police violence is:
(10) The Hero Defense.
“These guys are heroes.”80
“The police routinely do what the rest of us don’t: They risk their lives to keep the peace. For that selfless bravery, they deserve glory, laud and honor.”81
“[W]ithout the police … anarchy would be rife in this country, and the civilization now existing on this hemisphere would perish.”82
“[T]hey alone stand guard at the upstairs door of Hell.”83
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it should convey something of the tone that these excuses can take. Many of these approaches overlap, and often several are used in conjunction. For example, LAPD sergeant Stacey Koon offers this explanation for the beating of Rodney King:
From our view, and based on what he had already done, Rodney King was trying to assault an officer, maybe grab a gun. And when he was not moving, he seemed to be looking for an opportunity to hurt somebody, his eyes darting this way and that.…
So we’d had to use force to make him respond to our commands, to make him lie still so we could neutralize this guy’s threat to other people and himself.
The force we used was well within the guidelines of the Los Angeles Police Department; I’d made sure of that. And, I was proud of the professionalism [the officers had] shown in subduing a really monster guy, a felony evader seen committing numerous traffic violations.84
In three paragraphs, Koon employs minimization, blame, redefinition, unintentionality, counterattacks, competing victimization, and the Hero Defense. As is usual, his little story stresses the possible danger of the situation, and elsewhere Koon emphasizes the generalizable sense of danger that officers experience: “[W]e’d all thought that maybe we were getting lured into something. It’s happened before. How many times have you read about a cop getting killed after stopping somebody for a speeding violation?”85
The Dangers of the Job
The danger of the job is a constant theme in the defense of police violence. It is implicit (or sometimes explicit) in about half of the excuses listed above. By pointing to the dangers of the job, the excuse-makers don’t only defend police actions in particular circumstances (which might actually have been dangerous), but as often as not take the opportunity to mount a general defense of the police. This is a clever bit of sophistry, as cynical as a Memorial Day speech during wartime. It’s one thing to make a banner of the bloody uniform when discussing a case where the cops actually were in danger, but quite another to do so when they might have been in danger, or only thought that they were.
The fact that policing is risky, by this view, seems to justify in advance whatever measures the police feel necessary to employ. This point lies at the center of the Hero Defense. Its genius is that it is so hard to answer. Few people are indifferent to the death of a police officer, especially when they feel (though only in some vague, patriotic kind of way) that it occurred because the officer was selflessly working—as former Philadelphia city solicitor Sheldon Albert put it—“so that you and I and our families and our children can walk on the streets.”86 The flaw of the Hero Defense, however, is both simple and (if you’ll pardon the term) fatal: policing is not so dangerous as we are led to believe.
A total of 105 patrol officers died on the job in 2012. Less half of those (51) died as the result of violence, and another 48 died in traffic accidents.87 Between 1961 and 2012, 3,847 cops were murdered and 2,946 died in accidents—averaging about 75 murders and 58 fatal accidents in a typical year.88
Naturally it is not to be lost sight of that these numbers represent human lives, not widgets or sacks of potatoes. But let’s also remember that there were 4,383 fatal work injuries in 2012. As dangerous professions go, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, policing is not even in the top ten. In terms of total fatalities, more truck drivers are killed than any other kind of worker (741 in 2012). A better measure of occupational risk, however, is the rate of work-related deaths per 100,000 workers. In 2012, for example, it was 17.4 for truck drivers.89 At 15.0 deaths per 100,000, policing is slightly less dangerous than being a maintenance worker (15.7) and slightly more dangerous than supervising the gardener (14.7).90 The highest rate of fatalities is among loggers at 127.8 per 100,000, just ahead of fishers at 117.0. The rate for all occupations, taken together, is 3.2 per 100,000 workers.91
Where are the headlines, the memorials, the honor guards, and the sorrowful renderings of Taps for these workers? Where are the mayoral speeches, the newspaper editorials, the sober reflections that these brave men and women died, and that others risk their lives daily, so that we might continue to enjoy the benefits of modern society?
Policing, it seems, is the only profession that both exaggerates and advertises its dangers. It has done so at a high cost, and to great advantage, though (as is so often the case) the costs are not borne by the same people who reap the benefits.92 The overblown image of police heroism, and the “obsession” with officer safety (Rodney Stark’s term), do not only serve to justify police violence after the fact; by providing such justification, they legitimize violence, and thus make it more likely.93
Institutionalized Brutality
Given the pervasive nature of police violence, it is astonishing that the public discourse so frequently focuses on the behavior of individual officers. Commonly