page_title: Police brutality in the United States
hierarchical_section_title: Police brutality in the United States
caption_attribution_description: Bloody Sunday - Alabama police attack Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers, 1965.
context_page_description: Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force by personnel affiliated with law enforcement duties when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by corrections personnel in municipal, state, and federal penal facilities, including military prisons.
  The term police brutality is usually applied in the context of causing physical harm to a person. It may also involve psychological harm through the use of intimidation tactics beyond the scope of officially sanctioned police procedure. From the 18th-20th centuries, those who engaged in police brutality may have acted with the implicit approval of the local legal system, such as during the Civil Rights Movement era. In the contemporary era, individuals who engage in police brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they may be rogue officers. In either case, they may perpetrate their actions under color of law and, more often than not, engage in a subsequent cover-up of their unlawful activity.
  In the 2000s, the federal government attempted tracking the number of people killed in interactions with US police, but the program was defunded.
context_section_description: Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force by personnel affiliated with law enforcement duties when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by corrections personnel in municipal, state, and federal penal facilities, including military prisons.
  The term police brutality is usually applied in the context of causing physical harm to a person. It may also involve psychological harm through the use of intimidation tactics beyond the scope of officially sanctioned police procedure. From the 18th-20th centuries, those who engaged in police brutality may have acted with the implicit approval of the local legal system, such as during the Civil Rights Movement era. In the contemporary era, individuals who engage in police brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they may be rogue officers. In either case, they may perpetrate their actions under color of law and, more often than not, engage in a subsequent cover-up of their unlawful activity.
  In the 2000s, the federal government attempted tracking the number of people killed in interactions with US police, but the program was defunded. In 2006, a law was passed to require reporting of homicides at the hands of the police, but many police departments do not follow such rules. Some journalists and activists have provided estimates, limited to the data available to them. In 2019, 1,004 people were shot and killed by police according to the Washington Post, whereas the Mapping Police Violence project counted 1,098 killed.
  Since the 20th century, there have been many public, private, and community efforts to combat police corruption and brutality. These efforts have identified various core issues that contribute to police brutality, including the insular culture of police departments (including the Blue wall of silence), the aggressive defense of police officers and resistance to change in police unions, the broad legal protections granted to police officers (such as qualified immunity), the historic racism of police departments, the militarization of the police, the adoption of tactics that escalate tension (such as zero tolerance policing and stop-and-frisk), the inadequacies of police training and/or police academies, and the psychology of possessing absolute power. The US legal doctrine of qualified immunity has been widely criticized as "[having] become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights," as summarized in a 2020 Reuters report.
  Regarding solutions, activists and advocates have taken different approaches. Those who advocate for police reform offer specific suggestions to combat police brutality, such as body cameras, civilian review boards, improved police training, demilitarization of police forces, and legislation aimed at reducing brutality (such as the Justice in Policing Act of 2020). Those who advocate to defund the police call for the full or partial diversion of funds allocated to police departments, which would be redirected toward community and social services. Those who advocate to dismantle the police call for police departments to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. Those who advocate to abolish police departments call for police departments to be disbanded entirely and to be replaced by other community and social services.
caption: March 7, 1965: Alabama police attack the Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers on "Bloody Sunday"
exif: {"Image Software": "Google"}