{"id":10747,"date":"2017-11-27T23:30:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T04:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=10747"},"modified":"2017-12-01T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T05:13:08","slug":"a-historical-perspective-on-police-oppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/a-historical-perspective-on-police-oppression\/","title":{"rendered":"A Historical Perspective on Police Oppression"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has long been observed that police departments can function to reinforce racial and class inequality.[1]<\/a> Regardless of whether their creators intended that organized police departments have this effect, this has sometimes been the result through selective enforcement of laws and brutal interrogation tactics.[2]<\/a> Examples abound from the 18th and 19th centuries. \u00a0Police conduct during prohibition particularly exemplifies the effects of police on poor communities and racial minorities.\u00a0 During this era, police viewed their aggressive tactics as necessary to counter the United States\u2019 \u201coverly protective\u201d criminal procedure laws.[3]<\/a> Ironically, criminal law reformers were sympathetic to this viewpoint and sought to modify the laws of criminal procedure accordingly\u2014one of the earliest reports on police misconduct recommended that congress consider a new code of criminal procedure with fewer loopholes that are favorable to defendants.[4]<\/a> \u00a0The legal and judicial rules which they put in place to cabin oppressive police conduct actually served instead to rationalize it.<\/p>\n

Some of the earliest examples of the police were established with the express purpose of targeting racial minorities. Slave patrols in colonial and revolutionary Virginia could search land owned by other white males for any escaped slaves without a warrant.[5]<\/a> Upon catching an escaped slave, the patrol could administer a punitive beating of the slave. In an early form of qualified immunity, slave patrollers were immune from prosecution for any harm done slaves in the course of recapturing them.[6]<\/a> Slaveholder themselves would frequently join patrols to ensure that their escaped \u201cproperty\u201d did not suffer excessive damage, rendering them unable to work in the fields the next day.[7]<\/a> But patrols did not limit their activity to recapturing escaped slaves. They often raided religious gatherings which slaves who were not on the run also attended, on the theory that such meetings \u201cundermined the authority of masters in the neighborhood.\u201d[8]<\/a> In this way, slave patrols were not focused on the narrow goal of recapture. They targeted numerous facets of the enslaved community.<\/p>\n

Nor were slave patrols a specialized example of force in American history. Sociologist Phillip Reichel convincingly argues that slave patrols were a precursor to modern police, and refutes the hypothesis that urbanization is a prerequisite for formal police. These slave patrols moreover foreshadowed the racial dynamics of modern policing: slave patrols were \u201ca means by which Southern whites could protect themselves and their property.\u201d[9]<\/a> They arose only in geographic areas where slaves outnumbered the white population, and \u201cincreased formality and organization\u201d of the patrols were likely a reaction to slave revolts.[10]<\/a> Therefore, slave patrols were about more than just recapturing slaves\u2014they sought to prevent slaves from escaping or revolting in the first place. Reichel links this preventative role with a key function of modern police.[11]<\/a> In slave patrols, we therefore see a clear precursor to modern police formed with a goal of racial control.<\/p>\n

Selective enforcement of prohibition laws further supports the hypothesis that police functioned as agents of class and racial control. Police enforced prohibition laws extremely unevenly.[12]<\/a> Poor people and racial minorities were subject to strict, brutal, and sometimes deadly enforcement\u2014but the wealthy usually got off with no more than a slap on the wrist, if they suffered any consequences at all[13]<\/a>. When police in Portland raided a corporate manager\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve party to confiscate his alcohol, public outcry was so great that officials released him and dropped all charges.[14]<\/a> Compare this to the deadly tactics that prohibition agents deployed in poor and rural communities or against racial minorities, which sometimes involved shooting first and asking questions later.[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

While prohibition was a laughing matter to the upper-middle class, \u201c[M]exicans, poor European immigrants, African-Americans, poor whites in the South, and the unlucky experienced the full brunt of prohibition enforcement\u2019s deadly reality.\u201d[16]<\/a> Working-class people recognized these enforcement disparities. In an unsigned letter to the \u201cBooze Dept,\u201d one working-class man expressed his desire to see \u201cthe Rich Man\u2019s Club raided for a change.\u201d[17]<\/a> Even local officials \u201cdenounced the Federal prohibition enactment as a measure against the poor man while permitting the rich man to get all the liquor he wanted.\u201d[18]<\/a><\/p>\n

Some scholars viewed prohibition as an \u201caberration of American justice.\u201d[19]<\/a> Parks contrasts prohibition with other types of vice laws, like drug laws, which are apparently still viewed as \u201csupporting democracy and justice for all.\u201d[20]<\/a> But by whom? Certainly not the thousands of poor people imprisoned for possessing small quantities of marijuana, or those serving sentences for possession of crack that are eighteen times as long as the sentence for an equal amount of cocaine.[21]<\/a> The parallels between modern and historical policing do not stop there. In Southern California during prohibition, the vast majority of Mexican-Americans arrested for selling alcohol had only sold four pints or less.[22]<\/a> The statistics are similar for poor women who brewed liquor at home.[23]<\/a> When it came to \u201csocially marginal targets,\u201d prohibition agents typically arrested those with small amounts of alcohol.[24]<\/a> In some jurisdictions today, most drug dealing and possession arrests are for small amounts of cocaine, marijuana, or heroin.[25]<\/a><\/p>\n

Far from a modern problem, the United Sates\u2019 history of policing, particularly leading up to the Civil War and during prohibition, provided a blueprint for selective enforcement of laws against poor and minority communities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> See<\/em>, e.g<\/em>., Sidney Harring, \u201cPolicing in a Class Society,\u201d 551.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> See generally<\/em>, Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol 92 (2015), \u201cSelective Enforcement,\u201d Marilynn Johnson, Street Justice 124 (2004), \u201cProhibition, the War on Crime, and the Fight against the Third Degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Wickersham Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement 8 (1931).<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Sally Hadden, Colonial and Revolutionary Era Slave Patrols of Virginia 70 (1999).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 76.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 80.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Phillip Reichel, \u201cThe Misplaced Emphasis on Urbanization in Police Development\u201d 8 (1992).<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 7.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 8.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> See<\/em> Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol 71 (2015), \u201cSelective Enforcement,\u201d Marilynn Johnson,<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 68.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 89.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 71.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Julian Comte, \u201cLet the Federal Men Raid,\u201d 172.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Id.<\/em> (Citation Omitted).<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Evelyn Park, \u201cFrom Constabulary to Police Society,\u201d 87.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> See<\/em> Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (reducing disparity from 100:1 to 18:1)<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol 92 (2015), \u201cSelective Enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 96.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[25]<\/a> See<\/em> Human Rights Watch, The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States<\/em>, https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/report\/2016\/10\/12\/every-25-seconds\/human-toll-criminalizing-drug-use-united-states<\/a> (noting that in 2015, \u201cmore than 78 percent of people sentenced to incarceration for felony drug possession in Texas possessed under a gram\u201d).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has long been observed that police departments can function to reinforce racial and class inequality.[1] Regardless of whether their 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