I've commented before on the epistemological chasm between the police report and the actual event. In that case, the police represent that the subject in question behaved "in a threatening manner." However, this characterization is remarkably incongruent with the surveillance video (the man was quite literally just standing there). This is an example of what philosopher Miranda Fricker calls 'epistemic injustice.' The knower, subject and witnesses, is wronged by the police officers who provide a false, even ill-conceived, testimonial evidence to the legal system which proceeds on those grounds as the basis of the event. In other words, the presumption of epistemic justice towards police officers, by prosecutors and judges, is an epistemic injustice towards witnesses and the subject.
This kind of injustice turns on the issue of trust in, and loyalty amongst, police officers, which provides the foundation for the deliberation of "justice" in court systems. The people who are "served" and "protected" by the police are subject to a particular culture of the police, by which I mean the social relationships between and amongst police officers as well as relationships that comprise the vertical hierarchy of this institution; the mechanisms of police culture. Moreover, citizens are subjected to a tacit premise, within the legal system, that presumes the 'honesty' and 'moral integrity' of officers (as if judges and prosecutors have never come across a crooked lying cop). The beginning of a case then proceeds on the basis that the officer reported the incident in a "accurate" and true fashion. As I noted above, and as many of us will have seen by now, this is not always the case. It would be delusional to think that cops don't lie and misrepresent an event. With video surveillance this epistemic gap in representation and reproduction of knowledge is apparent. The presumed character of police is subject to question and additional issues are raised about epistemic weight and the abuse of power.
We would like to think that the existence of video evidence would persuade the justice system to weed out police officers who abuse their positions of authority. But alas, the recent Eric Garner case, the Tamir Rice case, and countless others, where the use of excessive force is caught on camera and an unarmed person is severely injured or killed, has suggested otherwise and justifiably enraged many.
The concern with police today (and I can only speak for the U.S. context) is, at least, two-fold. The first is the issue that has been highly publicized, which is race (I understand that 'race' is a problematic concept and that there are issues with delineating who is 'white' and who is 'black' and constructing the notion of 'race'. Moreover, the discussion on race in the U.S. is not limited to black and white but covers a diverse range of persons, although persons who are marginalized by the black-white discourse are fallen to the periphery and subject to the predominant discourse, which forces us to pick one side or the other or refrain from the discussion altogether in apathetic indifference. For the sake of this post, because the predominant language is painted in terms of black and white, I'll oblige this dichotomy and talk in these terms).The second issue, which is related to the first but not limited to the topic, has to do with the abuse of power and the structural leniency police have in perpetuating epistemic injustice within a broader structure of systemic injustice that shields such abuse. This is an issue between police and citizen.
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With regard to the first, police brutality and prejudice has been a perennial concern that has colored the relationship between black and white. The issue has never really disappeared. The demonization of black people has been documented since the 18th century. In relatively recent decades, police brutality and racial bigotry has been a major concern during the civil rights movement and spawned two reactionary approaches to the issue: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and we have James Baldwin and others in the discussion as well. Much more recently, persons of the black community have been navigating various mediums to convey the message of police brutality. One of the more notable methods was through comedy - a light way of conveying a very grave concern to a sensitive predominantly white public. Richard Pryor talked about it in 1977 and Dave Chappelle made fun of police brutality and the differential treatment of black and white people by police in 2000. So the issue has been talked about for more than 50 years (hip hop is another). Police brutality and injustice is not a new thing. Moreover, the suspicion that is attached with the recent movements about Mike Brown and Eric Garner is also a perennial sentiment that predates Trayvonn Martin and Rodney King: the broader, long-term, question is will these movements translate into effective change rather than spawning a greater draconian force of "austerity"?
In the wake of the recent uproar, another perennial sentiment tends to rear its head: the issue is not police brutality but black on black crime. One of the more vocal people in the public sphere is ex-Mayor of New York, Rudy Guliani. He argues that if black on black crime was not such an issue, the police wouldn't be there and they wouldn't have to use so much force and end up killing black people. This argument tends to surface whenever a similar case gains publicity and pushed into the public eye. In response, I've decided to look at the national statistics for homicide rates primarily because detailed descriptions of individual cases have failed to be pursuasive to a general audience. So:
according to the FBI, in 2009:
Black people killed 2,604 out of a total of 2,867 black homicides.
Black on black homicide is at 90.8% of the total murders of black persons.
White people killed 2,963 out of 3,518 total white homicides.
White on white homicide is at 84.2% of the total murders of white persons.
The difference is 6% and arguably insignificant. In 2009, the percentage of white people killing white people is similar to the percentage of black people killing black people.
If we look at the FBI statistics in 2011:
Black-on-black homicide was 2,447 out of a total 2,695 black murders; 90.7%
White-on-white homicide was 2,630 out of 3,172 white murders; 82.9%
Again, the disparity between the two is about 7%. The percentage of black on black murders has remained the same while white on white murder has decreased marginally.
The 2009 and the 2011 rates of murder are similar. In other words, for every black person killed by a black person a white person is killed by a white person. The rate of murder is similar between black and white persons. Moreover, the number of homicides do not necessarily translate into one killer for one murder. So we can't really talk about the percentage of black killers in proportion to their population size or the number of white killers in relation to the white population size. We're missing a statistic to make a claim about the percentage of killers in the black community versus the white community. At best, the statistics would suggest that a bigger percentage of black people die of homicide than white people. This does not entail that black people are more violent than white people nor does it entail that black on black crime is a greater issue than white on white crime. People are being killed at the same rate.
Let's take another statistic (same FBI source above) and consider the rate at which a black person kills a non-black person and the rate at which a white person kills a non-white person, we see the following:
In 2009
white people have killed 286 non-whites out of 3113 non-white homicides = 9.2%
black people have killed 502 non-blacks out of 3764 non-black homicides = 13.3%
In 2011
white people have killed 274 non-whites out of 2959 non-white homicides = 9.3%
black people have killed 511 non-blacks out of 3436 non-black homicides = 14.9%
Again, the differences are marginal and the rate at which they kill persons outside of their color is similar.
What is, perhaps, just as interesting is the statistic on violence against women (or rather killing women):
In 2009
White people have killed 1,168 women out of 1,928 total female homicides: 60.6%
Black people have killed 662 out of that total: 34.3%
In 2011
White people killed 1,034 out of 1,743 female homicides: 59.3%
Black people killed 642, which is 36.8%
The issue of black-on-black crime, while it is a concern for the black community and they have been active in addressing this issue and if we go according to the FBI's Bureau of Justice Statistics, the documented cases of black on black crime has decreased 20% over the past 20 years between 1991 (7,361) to 2011 (2,447), it does not hold the magnitude of severity by which political pundits want to swing the story. White on white crime is just as significant as black on black crime and the rate at which they kill is similar.
The argument that black people are more violent than white people is statistically false while it is certainly the case that white people kill more women than their black counterparts; an issue that has hardly received any press.
While these statistics address the topic of black on black homicide and white on white homicide, it does not address the issue of racial bias among the police. To this end, a ProPublica report states that black people are 21 more times likely than white people to be killed by police. The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice corroborates this statistic and further adds that Native Americans are the most likely to be killed by police:
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
The statistical evidence strongly suggests that there is a racial bias for police killing black, Latino, and Native American persons. According to the chart, Native Americans have the highest likelihood of being killed by a police officer; something that hardly gets any press as well. Further evidence with regard to the prison-industrial complex can be found in the book by Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio.
Moreover, there has been another meme circulating the internet: #Crimingwhilewhite which illustrates some of the bias that white persons have in their encounters with the police. In response: #Alivewhileblack. This bias, unfortunately, is not limited to police encounters, as it has been noted in disciplinary practices in schools (black girls vs. white girls) and made evident in housing practices as well: in LA with Donald Stirling as well as in Boston. In this regard, it is not just the police that is complicit in a structural bias against persons of color but the issue is evident in judges and pervades other systems as well. In other words, the subject of epistemic and structural injustice has much to do with the implicit biases we form (vid here) - something that begins from an early age, which I discuss here in its parallels with religion.
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The structural issues within the justice system pertains to the way police are shielded by judicial systems and their actions justified in a court of law. Several agencies have noted why it is impossible to indict a cop: here and here.
And while the legal precedent for the justification of using force and even justifying the killing of an unarmed person is troubling, one of the more pressing issues is the culture of loyalty that pervades police forces. It would be extremely rare for a police officer to turn his or her partner in when an unarmed person is killed. This is noted here by a police officer who states:
"Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas.
We could start to change that by mandating that a special prosecutor be appointed to try excessive force cases. And we need more independent oversight, with teeth. I have little confidence in internal investigations.
The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” I agree, and we have a lot of work to do."
His proposal is for "independent oversight". Others have suggested placing a camera on all police officers:
"In February 2012, the city of Rialto had 70 police officers take part in a controlled study in which they were required to wear a tiny camera that filmed their interactions with the public. The results were incredible: In the first year of the cameras' introduction, complaints against Rialto police officers fell by 88%, while use of force by officers fell by almost 60%. The cameras cost as little as a tenth the price of a standard-issue firearm."
"When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better," Rialto police Chief William A. Farrar told the New York Times. "And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better."
Both of these suggestions concern the matter of how do we "police the police." An independent organization that reviews the police? Or cameras attached to police? The question that underlies both of these suggestions is the question of police culture and the double-edged sword of loyalty. Would implementing such actions cut through the habit of insulating and shielding malpractice? Perhaps, the question is then also forwarded to the culture of prosecutors and judges. What underlies the tendency to protect police officers in cases of police brutality that ends with a dead minority? What are the kinds of cooperation, rapports, and discussions that fill in the cracks between the attorney general's office and local police departments?
The systemic issues regarding the law, police, and the people (and the politics of representation) is a long-standing concern that engages various epistemic issues and the pathways of information. In one sense there is an epistemic gap between the police and their communities: to what extent do the police know the communities they are policing? In another sense, the issue lies in the textures of epistemic injustice that deals with the information that is passed on by people around us and our sources of information - television, internet, etc. To put it briefly, the cautionary tale is the invasion of political propaganda into the news we receive (i.e. spin doctors). And of course, there is the issue with the way we perpetuate our own biases through the interpretation of our experiences. Testimonial evidence and eye-witness statements have been infamous for being misleading and incorrect which have led to unjust incarcerations.
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Systemic and epistemic injustice is a pervasive and perennial concern (that concerns more than just the police). On one hand, this post illustrated how there is certainly a racial concern behind police brutality as well as a systemic structural concern that involves the relationship between police and citizen with respect to an authorization of authority of police over citizen and the presumption of trust in those police to conduct their duties with integrity. As institutions have increasingly become detached from local communities, the trust in those institutions have also - seemingly - grown distant. In other words, the trust in the police was lost when the police no longer appropriately reflected and understood their communities. The disconnect and distrust is multiplied when illegitimate behaviour is insulated by a culture of loyalty, preservation, and clean appearance to higher forms of governance on the vertical structure of society. Not only is there an epistmic gap between the representation of an event when the police shoot and kill an unarmed person but there is also an epistmic gap between on-the-ground police and their higher offices, which parallels the gap between on-the-ground police and the communities they police.
There are many factors that contribute to the perpetuation of epistemic injustice that pervades legal and judicial practices, which only go to promote financial and personal loss of the misrepresented and victimized persons. What appears to be happening across the U.S. is a collision of a culture clouded by certain ideals and the exposed in police practice (finally). This is a dissonance arising from a discrepancy between "collective values" and witnessing the contradictory experience. It is a movement motivated by a collective dissonance of sort.
While the injustices are certainly not new, we are witnessing another side of the underlying structures that comprise the "structuring structures" of society. In many ways, I am inclined to agree with Carol Anderson's argument that 'Ferguson isn't about black rage against cops. It's white rage against progress' in the midst of a pervading issue that has gaining momentum to reduce dissonance - I suppose the question at this juncture will be what will be sufficient to temporarily reduce this discontent? Will it be flat out ignored in the anticipation that protestors will eventually get exhausted? Will it be an ad hoc band aid on a gaping flesh wound? Or will the knife finally be pulled out and the wound sewn together?
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