Police brutality is one of several forms of police misconduct which involves undue violence by police members.
Widespread police brutality exists in many countries and territories, even those that prosecute it. Although illegal, it can be performed under the color of law.
The term “police brutality” was in use in the American press as early as 1872, when the Chicago Tribune reported on the beating of a civilian under arrest at the Harrison Street Police Station.
The origin of ‘modern’ policing based on the authority of the nation state is commonly traced back to developments in seventeenth and 18th century France, with modern police departments being established in most nations by the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cases of police brutality appear to have been frequent then, with “the routine bludgeoning of citizens by patrolmen armed with nightsticks or blackjacks”. Large-scale incidents of brutality were associated with labor strikes, such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Pullman Strike of 1894, the Lawrence textile strike of 1912, the Ludlow massacre of 1914, the Steel strike of 1919, and the Hanapepe massacre of 1924.
Portions of the populations may perceive the police to be oppressors. In addition, there is a perception that victims of police brutality often belonging to relatively powerless groups, such as minorities, the disabled, the young, and the poor.When used in print or as the battle cry in a black power rally, police brutality can by implication cover a number of practices, from calling a citizen by his or her first name to a death by a policeman’s bullet. What the average citizen thinks of when he hears the term, however, is something midway between these two occurrences, something more akin to what the police profession knows as “alley court”—the wanton vicious beating of a person in custody, usually while handcuffed, and usually taking place somewhere between the scene of the arrest and the station house.
In March 1991, members of the Los Angeles Police Department harshly beat an African American suspect, Rodney King, while a white civilian videotaped the incident, leading to extensive media coverage and criminal charges against several of the officers involved. In April 1992, hours after the four police officers involved were acquitted at trial, the Los Angeles riots of 1992 commenced, causing 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damage to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses. After facing federal trial, two of the four officers were convicted and received 32-month prison sentences. The case was widely seen as a key factor in the reform of the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 2003 and 2009 at least 4,813 people died in the process of being arrested by local police. Of the deaths classified as law enforcement homicides, 2,876 deaths occurred of which 1,643 or 57.1% of the people who died were “people of color”.
In Vienna there tends to be an association made between Vienna’s drug problem and the city’s African migrants. This has led to the existence of negative cultural stereotypes which have then led to the racial profiling of African migrants, due to the negative associations with their ethnicity.There have been a number of highly publicised incidents in Austria where police have either tortured, publicly humiliated, or violently beaten people – in some cases to the point of death. The most notorious of these incidents occurred in the late 1990s, however recent reports in 2015 show that police are still treating civilians in this way.
24 April 1996: Mr Jevremovic, a Serbian Romani man, tried to pay a friend’s parking fine and was harassed by police for it. He escaped, and later a large group of police came into his home without a warrant, and violently beat him and his wife before taking them both into custody. They were fined without reason.
May 1996: Marcus Omofuma, an Illegal Nigerian immigrant, was being deported from Vienna when the officers taped him to his chair ‘like a mummy’ and stuck tape over his mouth. He suffocated whilst in police custody.
November 1998: Dr C, a black Austrian citizen, was stopped by police after reversing his car into a one-way street and was asked “Why are you driving the wrong way, Ni**er? He was beaten unconscious and handcuffed. Police continued beating him after he regained consciousness. After he was arrested, he spent 11 days in hospital recovering.
28 July 2015: A 27-year-old man, suspected of being a pickpocket, was handcuffed and violently thrown to the ground whilst under police custody. Police said that the man had been injured whilst ‘pressing his head against the wall. Video evidence showed him being passive and compliant prior to the altercation.
1 January 2015: A middle-aged woman beaten and taken into custody after refusing a breathalyser test while walking home at night. She suffered a fractured coccyx and severe bruising to her head and knees. She filed a complaint and only after she found CCTV footage was the case reexamined by the prosecutor.
There has been a notable lack of commitment to addressing the violation of civilians’ rights in Austria, with Amnesty International reporting that in 1998/1999 very few people who committed a violation of human rights were brought to justice. This was worsened by the fact that many people who made a complaint against police were brought up on counter-charges such as resisting arrest, defamation and assault.In 2014–2015, there were 250 accusations of police misconduct made against officers in Vienna, and not a single person was charged – however 1,329 people were charged with ‘civil disorder’ in a similar time period. The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture’s 2014 report included a number of complaints of police using excessive force with detainees and also psychiatric patients. The culture of excusing police officers for their misconduct has continued well into the present day, and any complaints of mistreatment are often met with inadequate investigations and judicial proceedings.
Austria has legislation in place which makes hate speech against anyone’s race, religion, nationality or ethnicity illegal. Laws like this, which discourage discrimination, are able to help with altering public perceptions of different ethnic and cultural groups and subsequently reducing the number of racially motivated incidents of police brutality. Along with these efforts, Austria has a number of NGOs who are trying to implement programs which encourage positive cross-cultural relations, and more targeted programs such as racial sensitivity training for police. The Austrian police are also trying to find their own ways to prevent police brutality and to make the prosecution of police misconduct a smoother process.Starting in January 2016, Austrian police forces will be trialling the use of body cameras, which will be used to film their interactions with civilians. The hope is that this will make the prosecution of any officers who are excessively violent or forceful a lot easier as there will be solid evidence, and also that it will deter officers from behaving violently in the first place, as they will know they are being monitored. It is unsure how long the trial will last, however as of July 2016 it is still ongoing.
Incidents of police brutality seem to still be occurring at a consistent rate, however it is yet to be seen whether the trial of body cameras will make a difference to the number of incidents occurring or to the number of police who are prosecuted for misconduct. Additionally, there needs to be more work done by the government to break down negative social stereotypes that can lead to prejudice, racial profiling and the kind of aggressive hatred which is the driving force behind many instances of police brutality – the involvement of NGOs is valuable however the Austrian government needs to take a strong stance against abuse of power by police in order for real change to happen. One way to do this, as suggested by Amnesty International Austria, would be to disband the Bereitschaftspolizei, Vienna’s riot police, as these officers have frequently been involved with human rights violations and situations of police brutality. Amnesty also suggest that Austria should adopt a National Action Plan against Racism – something which they have previously refused to do.