http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/17/1322354/-Study-from-1953-sheds-light-on-Michael-Brown-Killing?detail=email
I came across a 61 year old study of police brutality that is still relevant today. The study, “Violence and the Police,” was part of a PhD dissertation by William A. Westley and published in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Jul., 1953), pp. 34-41. This paper focuses on how police come to legitimize their illegal use of violence on the citizens they are to protect.
While Westley does not identify the city, he describes it as “a municipal police department in an industrial city of approximately one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.”
One important factor is that recognition and promotions come from making lots of arrests, not from maintaining the peace. In Westley’s words, “Patrolmen feel that little credit is forthcoming from a clean beat (a crimeless beat), while a number of good arrests really stands our on the record. To a great extent this is actually the case, since a good arrest results in good newspaper publicity, and the policemen who made many “good pinches’” has prestige among his colleagues.”
There are strong pressures to solve “big crimes.” As one patrolman told Westley, “If it is a big case and there is a lot of pressure on you and they tell you you can’t go home until the case is finished, than naturally you are going to lose your patients.”
And when abuse helps solve a crime, police adopt an “ends justify the means” mentality. Another officer explained to Westley, “There is a case I remember of four Negroes who held up a filling station. We got a description of them and picked them up. Then we took them down to the station and really worked them over.
I guess that everybody that came into the station that night had a hand in it, and they were in pretty bad shape. Do you think that sounds cruel? Well, you know what we got out of it? We broke a case in ------. There was a mob of twenty guys, burglars and stick-up men, and eighteen of them are in the pen now. Sometimes you have to get rough with them, see. The way I figure it is, if you can get a clue that a man is a pro and if he won’t cooperate, tell you what you want to know, it is justified to rough him up a little, up to a point. You know how it is. You feel that the end justifies the means.”
There is also a feeling that the courts often let the guilty go free or off with a lenient sentence. As one rookie policeman told Westley, “One of the older men advised me that if the courts didn’t punish a man we should.”
people in my age group 65 remember police quotas they had to give so many tickets, make so many arrest such things as that and like the right wing preys on the poor so did the police quotas were based on their statistics of crime in a certain area generally Black middle class or poor. don't know much about today because being disabled I'm not subject to vehicle and walking stops while Black and "I am not a criminal", sorry about that.
I keep forgetting to include this Black police can be as treacherous if not more aggressive then White cops we always felt it was a power surge and a "I'm with you" not wanting to show favor to their own. that's possibly why we see possibly the same dynamic with Pres. and the Black plight afraid half the country will accuse him of favoring Blacks, but when they do it it's never favoring whites this is the mindset they have created over the centuries here in America with their domination and control over what we were taught and not taught.
I also remember those who would say "they can't do that", some saw the error in that assumption others experienced it. when you have those with guns and sticks and the power to detain and arrest and kick the cowboy crap out of you, you have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness on a weak fence that wobbles and a hurricane is coming, good luck
