Demonstrators in Philadelphia during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 2, 2020 (Matt Rourke/AP/ABC News)
Police-community relationships have been a hot-button issue in America for the past four years. After the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020, the relationships between Americans and the police have weakened. For context, the issue of police brutality was further brought into mainstream society because of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. Floyd, a black man, stopped by police for allegedly using fake money at a convenience store, repeatedly told white Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin that he could not breathe as the officer knelt on his neck. The officer did not resist force, and Floyd died. Taylor was shot in her own home while sleeping. The three officers, Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankinson, and Jonathan Mattingly were conducting a drug raid with a falsified warrant. When police broke down the door, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a warning shot that struck an officer. The three officers returned the fire with 32 shots, with Hankinson ultimately firing the shot that killed Taylor. The officers were acquitted, and Hankison was fired from the police department for shooting. The controversial nature of the police’s actions surrounding these deaths sparked months of protest across the globe concerning police brutality against the black community. However, a relationship between black people and the police existed before the year 2020: policing itself has a racist foundation.
Modern policing is built on white supremacy. Policing today has its origins rooted in slavery — policing in the South developed in the 1700s, primarily through slave patrols. These slave patrols were created to squash slave uprisings in the South and control their behaviors. These patrols continued through the Civil War until the passage of the 13th Amendment, which forbids slavery across the United States. During the Reconstruction era, these patrols were replaced by militia-style groups that restricted freedom for formerly enslaved people. They helped uphold the black codes, a series of laws passed throughout the South after the 13th Amendment. These laws denied black people the right to serve on juries, testify against whites, vote, start a job without previous employer approval, and serve on the militia itself. The passage of the 13th Amendment did not end racism, especially not in the South.
During the 19th century, a more formal police force was also developing. In 1844, New York established a police department. This was followed by other cities like Cincinnati and New Orleans in 1852 and then Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore in the 1850s. The reason for the development of these police departments was the rise of crimes due to the Industrial Revolution. However, the police used racist policies like the black codes in their work.
These racist policies were further perpetuated by the Plessy V. Ferguson case of 1896, which upheld racial discrimination through the idea of segregation between black and white communities. This verdict served as a foundation for police forces to incorporate racism into their practices. Years later, during the civil rights movement, the police practiced riot control, where they used tear gas, police dogs, water hoses, and other measures to break up protests by black Americans.
This policing continued to occur because of Jim Crow Laws. In cities like Detroit, law enforcement defended the city’s color line and kept African Americans and whites segregated. Even though Detroit was praised by Martin Luther King Junior for providing safety during a protest, an officer of the police department murdered a black woman twelve days later. The police officer was exonerated and faced zero punishment, demonstrating the racist policies instituted by the police.
Following Jim Crow, it is estimated that there were more than 30,000 deaths related to police violence from 1980 to 2018. 55% of these deaths went unreported by the National Vital Statistics System, which is the primary death collection agency in the United States, highlighting the idea that outdated racist policies have translated into more modern-day policing, and have even affected agencies that are supposed to report the truth.
Fast forwarding to the present day, police brutality is still extremely prevalent. In 2020, there were over 1,000 fatal police shootings of black people by police officers. Black Americans are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police officers than whites. While it has been over 60 years since Jim Crow Laws were in effect, Black Americans are still affected by these racist foundations of policing. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were only two of the people whose lives were upended. Their unjust deaths led to protests worldwide and an overall greater civil discourse on the concept of police brutality in our country. While George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s killings sparked global outrage, there are others, not only those who have been killed, but their families and the communities they left behind.
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