Police brutality

“ Brutality and insolence of policemen have increased greatly, and the Police Commissioners seldom, if ever, convict officers for these offenses. Humble citizens of all races to-day are in more danger from policemen's clubs than they are from the assaults of criminals. ”

“ The daily newspapers for many months have been filled with the record of dreadful crimes, of violence and passion. Most of them have been done by soldiers or ex-soldiers. The attack on the police station at Epsom, the destruction of the town hall at Luton, revealed a brutality of passion, a murderous instinct, which have been manifested again and again in other riots and street rows and solitary crimes. Those last are the worst because they are not inspired by a sense of injustice, however false, or any mob passion, but by homicidal mania and secret lust. ”

“ The brutality of the police in dealing with the strikers has aroused them to a state of rebellious opposition to all such methods of maintaining order. The crimes of the police during this trouble are almost beyond human imagination. They have dragged young girls from their beds at midnight. They have clubbed the strikers at every opportunity. They have dragged little children from their mothers' arms and with their clubs they have struck women who are in a state of pregnancy. They have placed people under arrest for no reason whatsoever. ”

“ This process of focusing attention began on the next page with the chapter heading, in large type: 'UNLAWFUL POLICE VIOLENCE.' There followed the crucial description of the foundations on which the ensuing reports were based:
'In the text of this chapter the Commission briefly describes the alleged facts in 11 typical cases of police brutality. They are presented in the belief that they contribute to an understanding of the problem. The allegations of misconduct are supported in several cases by criminal convictions or findings by impartial agencies ”

“ Supplemented by a quick fist and directed by a quicker temper, the French police agent is no mean antagonist in a general row. In brutality and impulsive cruelty [235] he is but the flesh and blood of those with whom he has mostly to deal.
The battle now raged with increasing violence, the combatants being slowly driven down upon the approaching manifestants from the Quartier Latin, Montmartre, and La Villette. ”

“ Complaints are pouring in every day that the police behave with great brutality, handcuffing all prisoners irrespective of their status and position, making them walk long distances in the burning sun in spite of bodily infirmities, keeping them overcrowded in the police lock-ups and not even giving them the ordinary facilities for performing their ablutions and very often sending them out for necessary purposes in pairs with their hands manacled. ”

“ The use of physical brutality and violence is not, unfortunately, relegated to the past or to any part of the country. Only recently in Kings County, New York, the police brutally beat, kicked and placed lighted cigarette butts on the back of a potential witness under interrogation for the purpose of securing a statement incriminating a third party. ”

“ But it can give no idea of the awful depth of brutality to which even an educated European can descend when engaged in a business which keeps him mainly employed in superintending massacres perpetrated by armed savages on mobs of nearly helpless men and women, away from any control or witness, and free to obey the dictates of the worst passions of human nature. The white police, consisting, of course, of good bushmen, should be employed in country where the blacks and whites are, or are likely to be, in conflict. ”

“ The Administration, in its desperation, ordered the police to lawlessness. On August 16th, fifty policemen led the mob in attacking the women. Hands were bruised and arms twisted lit’ police officers and plainclothes men. Two civilians who tried to rescue the women from the attacks of the police were arrested. The police fell upon these young women with more brutality even than the mobs they had before encouraged. Twenty-five lettered banners and 123 Party flags were destroyed by mobs and police on this afternoon. ”

“ Remember that they are obliged to carry out their task without arms, without any brutality. A bandit injured in a hand-to-hand struggle assumes very quickly the character of an interesting victim, and there are always to be found sensational newspapers that will exploit his woes under flaming head-lines: 'Another Police Outrage!' 'A Brutal Police Agent!' etc. ”

“ In many instances such interference has been carried out with a degree of brutality which would be incredible if it were not vouched for by reliable witnesses. Bloody riots frequently have accompanied such interference, and large numbers of persons have been arrested for acts of which they were innocent or which were committed under the extreme provocation of brutal treatment by police or private citizens. ”

“ When the police, in force, in answer to a riot-call, reached the spot a quarter of an hour later and dispersed the mob, it looked as if the sea had swept over the scene. The car was overturned and stripped to a mere broken shell; and on the ground a hundred paces away, with only a shred of bloody clothing still about it, lay the battered and mutilated trunk of what had been a man trying to make bread for his children, while a wild cry of hate and joy at the deed raged about the street. ”

“ If a negro man, woman, or child fell into their hands, none were more brutal than the unsexed hags of the mob.
If on this, and other occasions, they had remained in their homes they would not have suffered, nor would the men have been so ferocious in their violence. They were the first to yield to panic, however, and now their shrieks were the loudest and their efforts to escape out of the deadly range of the guns the most frantic. In a few moments the avenue was cleared, and the military marched away, leaving the dead and wounded rioters where they had fallen, as the police had done before. ”

“ At last, when there was here nothing more to accomplish, the mob, swollen to a frightful size, including myriads of wretched, drunken women, and the half-grown, vagabond boys of the pavements, rushed through the intervening streets, stopping cars and insulting peaceable citizens on their way, to an armory where were manufactured and stored carbines and guns for the government. In anticipation of the attack, this, earlier in the day, had been fortified by a police squad capable of coping with an ordinary crowd of ruffians, but as chaff before fire in the presence of these murderous thousands. ”

“ Men and women were frantically rushing at each other like starving wild beasts; the armed butchers of the law shooting down all who failed to assist them; truncheons of police breaking every available skull; troopers' horses trampling down anyone, and lances and swords spilling blood like a bursted reservoir; buildings were flaming and consuming their inmates; while in all directions explosives were flying, hurling master and slave together to destruction. ”

“ Now we have more to do to keep crime dropping for four more years. We have to finish putting 100,000 police on the street, target violent gangs, ban bullets whose only purpose is to pierce the bullet-proof vests of police officers. ”

“ The rioters soon became appalled at their punishment. Like a dark blue wave, with bloody clubs forming a crimson crest, that unfaltering rank of men steadily advanced and ingulfed them. All within reach went down. Those of the police who were wounded still fought on, or, if disabled, the ranks closed up, and there was no cessation in the fatal hail of blows. The rioters in front would have given way, had not the thousands in their rear pressed them forward to their fate. ”

“ While thus, on one side, went the agent, with his cumbrous accompaniments of law-officers and parchments, police constables and bailiffs, to effect a distress or an ejectment; the midnight party with arms patrolled the country, firing the haggards and the farmhouses, setting all law at defiance, and asserting in their own bloody vengeance the supremacy of massacre. ”

“ America's law enforcement officers face extraordinary risks-breaking up a drug ring, apprehending a fugitive, responding to an incident of domestic violence, even making a traffic stop. Since the first recorded police death in this country in 1794, more than 13,500 law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty. On average, more than 62,000 officers are assaulted and some 20,000 are injured each year. ”

“ They ran with the crowds in pursuit of their prey; they took defenseless men who ran to them for protection and threw them to the rioters, and in many cases they beat and clubbed men and women more brutally than the mob did. They were absolutely unrestrained by their superior officers. It was the night sticks of the police that sent a stream of bleeding colored men to the hospital, and that made the station house in West 37th Street look like a field hospital in the midst of battle. ”

“ Suppose, now, that all these brass bands of unemployed ex-soldiers that blow so mournfully at all the street corners were suddenly to play nothing but a series of senseless and devilish discords—why, the first policeman would move them on, and the second would put them under arrest, and the passers-by would try to lynch them on their way to the police station. ”

“ None of us will forget the horrors of those bloody days and bloody nights lit up by the glare of fires, those sobbing women, those little children's bodies torn to pieces and left lying in the street. But for all that not one of us thinks that the police and the mob are the real origin of the evil. ”

“ I boarded a car at the West Shore ferry at the foot of West 42nd Street and transferred to an 8th Avenue car at 34th Street, and had proceeded as far as 40th Street, when the car was assailed by a mob shouting, "There's another nigger! Kill him! lynch him!" I stood up and was ready to defend myself, when a passenger on the car asked me to sit down, saying that if the mob got on the car he would help me defend myself. I sat down as requested, and happening to look over my shoulder I saw three police officers in uniform running after the car. ”

“ Through the scrambling mob a file of wounded tottered, escorted by police; women were forced back and pushed out into the street, only to be again menaced by galloping military ambulances arriving, accompanied by hussars. The confusion grew into a tumult; men struggled and elbowed for a passage to the platforms, women sobbed and cried ”

“ Some of them cried out, 'It is better to die than to live under such savages,' and many urged that they should attack the police office with their naked hands, capture the Chief of Police, strip him and beat him to death. ”

“ These manifestations are met with a ruthless military or mobile police jack-boot, with arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, and many examples of what has been described by world leaders as "judicial murder." ”

“ They can only say that the work of massacre was pursued with a cowardly ferocity unsurpassed in the annals of crime. Escaping negroes were mercilessly pursued, shot, stabbed, and beaten to death by the mob and police. Wounded men on the ground begging for mercy were savagely despatched by mob, police, firemen, and, incredible as it may seem, in two instances by women; but, in two or three most honorable and exceptionable cases, white men and members of the Convention were protected by members of the police, both against the mob, and against other policemen. ”

“ An officer with a heavy reddish mustache rushed across the street at him and said, "You black bastard, what are you doing here?" and at the same instant struck him over the head with his club, felling the Negro to the street. The Negro bled and lay unconscious. I tried to wipe the blood from him, and the officer spoke roughly to me and ordered me away. Friends of the Negro dragged him into the hallway. My journey was down 8th Avenue to 36th Street, and down 7th Avenue to 35th Street, and I saw a number of police officers strike a number of persons with their clubs. ”

“ There was an epidemic of violence and of horrible sensual crimes with women-victims, ending often in suicide. There were mob riots by demobilised soldiers, or soldiers still waiting in camps for demobilisation. Police-stations were stormed and wrecked and policemen killed by bodies of men who had been heroes in the war and now fought like savages against their fellow-citizens. ”

“ The momentary excitement caused by this altercation was swallowed up by the advent of a squad of police, which wheeled into the avenue from 43d Street, and checked the pursuit of the bleeding remnants of the invalid corps. Those immediately around the young man pressed forward to see what took place, he following, but edging towards the sidewalk, with the eager purpose to see the first fight between the mob and the police. ”

“ Peaceable, law-abiding workmen, who had never dreamed of rioting, were left with broken legs, broken arms, wounds of every description. One man, Linnell, died almost immediately, others from the effect of their injuries. The next day a regular court-martial in Bow Street Police Court, witnesses kept out by the police, men dazed with their wounds, decent workmen of unblemished character who had never been charged in a police-court before, sentenced to imprisonment without chance of defence. ”