Police Misconduct in Brooklyn

The legitimate use of force distinguishes law enforcement from other branches of government (Kobler, 1975). Police officers are granted qualified immunity for using reasonable force regardless of the injury that results as long as they were acting in good faith (Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 1987). Recently however, questions regarding “good faith” abound as the names Ferguson, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Walter Scott and Freddie Gray were added to a cohort that includes Rodney King, Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo. While the cohort is populated by names that many Americans have never heard, what determines inclusion is an allegation of police misconduct and the civil liability that results from such misconduct.

By its very nature, policing in general is a complex and unique occupation (Macdonald, Manz, Alpert, & Dunham, 2003). In the U.S. the characteristics of public accountability, openness to evaluation and responsiveness to citizen demands (Bayley, 1998) contribute to the inimitable nature of policing in that police officers, in interpreting and applying static and dynamic rules, are legally permitted to act in ways, such as using deadly force, that would be criminal if committed by a civilian (Macdonald et al., 2003). Specifically, while the use of excessive force violates the Fourth Amendment (Graham v. Connor, 1989) excessiveness is determined not only by the totality of the circumstances facing the police officer (Flournoy v. City of Chicago, 2016) but must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable police officer on the scene rather than a 20/20 vision of hindsight (Graham v. Connor, 1989). Thus, arguably excessiveness is profession-specific in that any force even deadly force is reasonable and legal if given the circumstances present a reasonable police officer (not a reasonable person) would have used the same degree of force. Furthermore, by working in isolation from public observation, police officers are provided with ample opportunities to misuse their authority (Dunningham & Norris, 1998; Escholz & Vaughn, 2001; Moran, 2005) in what some have argued is an occupation conducive to misconduct (Hunter, 1999; Ivkovic, 2004).

Despite the recent rash of social media videos of seemingly outrageous police misconduct, as mentioned earlier, police misconduct is difficult to document. One source of data is the individual police officer or police official. However, not only is it difficult to get information from individual officers or police officials (Collins, 1998) but because of the homogenous nature of police culture, findings from research at the individual level may be mixed, ambiguous and lack variability (Grant & Grant, 1996; McManus, 1969). Though somewhat more reliable than research at the individual level (Kane & White, 2009) research at the organizational level may nonetheless reflect an organizational subculture of policies formed by administrators but executed by individual police officers. For example, some police organizations may have a “siege mentality” of “them versus us” that permits and even encourages violent misconduct by individual police officers to maintain order on the streets (Fyfe & Skolnick, 1993). In such cases research at the organizational level may also be limited by its lack of variability but more importantly may suffer from external validity, in that administrative officials and supervisors in different police organizations may differ in determining what constitutes police misconduct in their particular organization.

The fundamental issue that this chapter’s findings and statistical analysis addresses is whether and to what extent police misconduct in Brooklyn during the years 2006–2010 impacted the City’s civil liability.

Using allegations of police misconduct that resulted in a settlement or jury award as a measure of police misconduct, the study provided evidence of the increasing incidences as well as costs of police misconduct in Brooklyn, New York. To address these increases, it is necessary to have a general understanding of what underlies them.

It is well accepted that the control of police misconduct, like crime itself, is directly related to the performance of the government and to the safety and perceived well-being of citizens in a democratic society (Franklin, 1999). Nevertheless, the picture of policing that emerges thus far is one of the increases in incidences and costs of misconduct because of the use of excessive force, collusion by some officers coupled with failures in transparency, and accountability by agencies charged with police oversight. Current efforts to curb police misconduct can be classified based on whether they are regulatory, legislative, and judicial (Swanson, Territo, & Taylor, 2001).

There should be little if any doubt that perhaps the single most significant function of a police department is the recruitment, selection, and hiring of individuals to become members of its organization; the starting point of which is the organizational decision on the qualities required for the job. More than six decades ago Chicago veteran police officer Thomas M. Frost (1955) in his master thesis argued

that the best police officers come from families with little formal education and, during adolescence, were exposed to the ways of the community gangs and the so-called “respectable” hoodlums. As a result of this “education” such officers are in a much better position to anticipate gang moves, understand hoodlum mores, and establish confidences among the hoodlum element than are their more educated brothers.” Furthermore “except for certain specialized positions in the police departments, a college degree is not necessary” because the person so qualified may be frustrated with routine police work but just as important accepting applicants with “only a fifth or sixth grade education may be inviting disaster.