Police Brutality: An Anthology Book

For many Americans, the brutalizations of Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, and Abner Louima by police officers were shocking, out-of-the-ordinary events. For urban blacks and other minorities, however, they represent the extremes of daily life in an unspoken war with an "occupying army: the police." The 12 essays in this provocative anthology aim to push through the "public haze, thick and oppressive that surrounds the issue" of police brutality, to make clear the pervasiveness of the problem and how, ultimately, it affects us all. The contributors--prominent academics, activists, writers, and a retired black police officer--trace the roots of police presence in African American communities from slavery to the present and demonstrate how the racialization of crime has justified and perpetuated police brutality. The authors offer compelling analyses of the racial, class, and gender components of minority relations with the police and their implications for society as a whole. In a series of searching questions, Katheryn K. Russell asks, "What does it mean when a society ritually sacrifices the constitutional and civil rights of its racial minorities?" Richard Austin shows how the image of the black male has been criminalized and assesses the toll stereotyping has taken on black men's psyches. Patricia J. Williams even looks at the Columbine high school shootings in light of racial profiling versus the "innocent profiling" of white males despite their showing violent tendencies. This collection is not a diatribe, however. Most of the contributors offer up legitimate solutions, from a dismantling of the police department to demands for social and economic equality. Ultimately, what stands out is the authors' stories. Each of them has suffered some personal humiliation at the hands of police, and many list others who have been killed or maimed by police, but who barely made the news. Blacks and other minorities will nod their heads in recognition while the rest of America discovers a parallel universe where the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty doesn't exist. Police Brutality is an important work on an issue that can no longer be ignored. --Lesley Reed Read More