![]() In 2005, Dondi Johnson was arrested in Baltimore, Maryland, for public urination and placed in a police vehicle. 9 Analysis of those data concluded that in 2015, “young Black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers.” 6įor some victims of police brutality, death is not immediate but results from repeated physical injury while in police custody. The most comprehensive information about the connection between race and death during police encounters comes from data collected by a UK newspaper, The Guardian. To generate discourse and more research on this subject, we propose five intersecting mechanisms through which police brutality is linked to excess morbidity among Blacks at both the individual and the community level:Ī direct pathway between police brutality and health is through injury and death. To date, little empirical work has linked police brutality to poor health among populations who disproportionately experience brutality. 4,8 We argue that police brutality is a social determinant of health, although it has not received sufficient attention from the public health community. ![]() White supremacy and structural racism (norms, laws, and policies that operate in institutions to limit life chances for communities of color) 8 negatively affect health. 5,6 Racially disparate use of force indicates that White supremacy-the systematic positive assessments of whiteness that go hand-in-hand with the devaluation of blackness 7-permeates the US law enforcement system. 2–4 Bandes argues that the term “brutality” conveys more than police misconduct: “It is police conduct that is not merely mistaken, but taken in bad faith, with the intent to dehumanize and degrade its target.” 2 (p1276) We argue for these more expansive definitions of brutality but also believe that police actions that constitute brutality and that dehumanize and degrade occur even in the absence of conscious intent.īlacks are significantly more likely to experience police brutality than are Whites, and whiteness affords protection against police use of force. It includes emotional and sexual violence as well as verbal assault and psychological intimidation. ![]() But as others have noted, brutality goes beyond physical force. Access to these videos has led to unprecedented public discourse on what constitutes brutality, its connections to White supremacy, and the consequences for Black lives.Ĭertainly, excessive use of physical violence constitutes brutality. 1 With current technology, police killing of Black people is recorded for public scrutiny and consumption. Historical evidence of public harming of Black bodies by police dates back at least to the era of slavery, when police disciplined Blacks and recaptured those who escaped enslavement. ![]() However, in the absence of a standard definition or good data, the extent of police brutality remains difficult to quantify. Police brutality toward Blacks in the United States is not new. To reduce racial health inequities, public health scholars must rigorously explore the relationship between police brutality and health, and advocate policies that address racist oppression. We must ask whether our own research, teaching, and service are intentionally antiracist and challenge the institutions we work in to ask the same. Public health scholars should champion efforts to implement surveillance of police brutality and press funders to support research to understand the experiences of people faced with police brutality. We investigated links between police brutality and poor health outcomes among Blacks and identified five intersecting pathways: (1) fatal injuries that increase population-specific mortality rates (2) adverse physiological responses that increase morbidity (3) racist public reactions that cause stress (4) arrests, incarcerations, and legal, medical, and funeral bills that cause financial strain and (5) integrated oppressive structures that cause systematic disempowerment.
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