Zachary Duncan

Dr. Fitzgerald & Jonathan Walker

LBST 2211-Q01
11.17.16
Is Police Brutality More Prominent in More Poverty-Struck Areas?
Before one can answer the question of, Is police brutality more prominent in more
poverty-struck areas?, they first must know what exactly Police Brutality is. USLegal (2015)
defines it as, Police brutality is a civil rights violation that occurs when a police officer acts
with excessive force by using an amount of force with regards to a civilian that is more than
necessary, [where] Excessive Force is not subject to a precise definition. Police brutality is a
huge topic of discussion, especially in the United States, where most of the population is on
one side or the other, in other words, no middle ground. There are some incidents when a
select few citizens in a community or population believe that there was a presence of police
brutality, when in reality the exertion of force was necessary in the prevention of escalation
of the situation to a worse state than what was presented. This issue carries a huge amount of
significance because when you turn on the news these days, there is a very likely chance that
you will hear something about police brutality, more specifically it will be a case where a
white police officer shot an unarmed black man and this is because the media has made it a
priority in what people actually pay attention to. Personally, I have yet to see any cases of
police brutality in the four and a half years I have interned with five various police
departments.

In an interview that Zainab Salbi, who is an author, womens rights activist,

humanitarian, social entrepreneur, and media commentator, did with Kennedy Odede, the
author of the book, Find Me Unafriad, Mr. Odede (2016) stated that [They] may not be able
to fight the police [known for their brutality in the slums of Kenya] ..., which implies that
police brutality is very prominent in poverty-struck areas, but how can we know if it is more
than that of a less poverty-struck area, lets say the United States. Well you would think that
it would be as simple as searching up some statistics of police brutality cases in the United
States versus those in Kenya and whichever is larger has a more predominance of police
brutality in their area. WRONG! Because of there being so many cases of police brutality in
Kenya and lack of reporting parties of these cases, there are little to no stats on the internet
about the number of cases involving excessive force of a police officer. So, you assume that
since there are so many cases that they cannot keep track of them that Kenya obviously has
more cases of excessive force than the United States, but you know what they say about
assuming.
Therefore, we must go onto the sociological hypotheses that have been set out by Mr.
Brad W. Smith and Mr. Malcolm D. Holmes (2014). They came up with three structural
hypotheses regarding excessive force: (1)Minority Threat Hypothesis, (2)Place Hypothesis, and
(3)Community Accountability Hypothesis. The first one states that the greater the proportion
of minority residents in a city, the greater the use of coercive crime control mechanisms.
There are some police officers who view excessive force use as a norm and a key to dealing
with citizens who are viewed as a threat. The second one argues that spatially segregated
minority populations are the primary targets of coercive control. If there is a large
population of minorities in a community, there is still not sufficient evidence to explain the

contrasting employment of excessive force. The last hypothesis maintains that

organizational characteristics of police departments promote the use of excessive force
against minorities. Where the first two hypotheses saw the excessive force of police officers
as a result of societal inequality, the Community Accountability Hypothesis, sees it as a result of
what is in a way taught through the different law enforcement agencies.
Two ethical frameworks that can be applied to this inquiry question are Kants Duty
Ethics and Rule Utilitarianism. Rule Utilitarianism is the ethical framework where you can
use your experiences and careful reasoning to decipher whether a situation was just or not. I
will use Kants Duty Ethics to decide whether police brutality is ethical or not. For it to be a
moral rule it must: (1)Be logically consistent, (2)Be Universalizablemore specifically it
must not violate the categorical imperative (cannot be followed by all human beings), and
(3)Not Violate the Practical Imperativeno human being should be used for the better of
another. If we go through the requirements for it to be a moral rule, police brutality is not
ethical because even though it may stop an issue from escalation it violates the rights of a
human being, in coherence it also violates the third requirement. With all the research I have
done I still have not found a definite answer to my question, only assumptions and I do not
think that it can be answered fully, only partially.

REFERENCES
Anon. n.d. Police Brutality Law &Amp; Legal Definition. Police Brutality Law & Legal
Definition. Retrieved November 29, 2016 (http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/policebrutality).
Salib, Zainab. 2016. How Justifiable Rage Can Be Turned into a Force for Change. Women
In The World. Retrieved November 19, 2016
(http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/06/01/how-justifiable-ragecan-be-turned-into-a-force-for-change/).
Smith, Brad W. and Malcolm D. Holmes. 2014. Police Use of Excessive Force in Minority
Communities. Social Problems 61(1):122.