Police Brutality as Hate Crime

By Karl T. Muth - 07 April 2015

Karl T. Muth explains his proposal to use a "hate crime" framework in police brutality cases.

There is substantial momentum in public sentiment – particularly in urban areas of developed and developing countries – in favor of holding police accountable for incidents of police brutality, particularly incidents involving the deaths of civilians involved. The police are entrusted, via the State, with a monopoly on violence (Hobbes, 1651; Locke, 1690) to ensure the security of people in their person, as to their homes, and as to their interest in chattel property. To the extent they misuse, abuse, or exploit this power in ways the exceed the bounds of their social contract with the populace, they should be held liable – the frustration of the masses today stems not from a taxonomical disagreement (as it did in the 1960’s and 1970’s) about what constitutes abuse (Jacobs, 1979; Fine, 1989), but from a procedural disagreement as to how abuse should be handled. The question today is simple: What framework should be used to punish inappropriate police activities?

I have had strong feelings about police use of violence ever since I lived in Detroit as a teenager and witnessed abuses of police power, invited bribery on the street, requests for indulgences from shopkeepers that were shoplifting-by-any-other-name, physical assaults of unnecessary severity during routine encounters between police and pedestrians, a police assumption of access to abuse and exploit sex workers, and so on. These feelings were amplified and clarified years later when I was in Kampala, Uganda during the Walk To Work protests. These protests, primarily organized in objection to the high tariff for petrol, were seen as alternative to an illegal general strike. Rather than striking, Ugandans engaged in a protest wherein people walked to work, sometimes for many hours, rather than taking buses or boda-bodas or minitaxis or scooters. The police reacted violently, assaulting, gassing, and killing protesters.

I have also, however, come to the conclusion that a new framework will likely not be created for the policing of the police. The issue of police brutality is seen by many legislators as politically-dangerous. A layer of uber-police above the existing police force (quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) is likely not the answer, and the Departments of Justice and Defence in the U.S. (and similarly-empowered agencies in other countries) have been reluctant to create or take on this role. The next question is: Do we have existing frameworks that could be appropriately translated, or adapted, to the challenge of confronting police suspects who have abused their power and put civilians at risk?

I suggest we do have a framework that makes sense: Hate crime legislation.

Now, some will claim this is an inappropriate repurposing of hate crime legislation.

But I would argue it is not really a repurposing – most, if not all, police brutality cases are hate crimes, in the broad sense. The police are a historically-empowered group with a history of violent, prejudiced acts undertaken to the detriment of a specific group (civilians). This victimised group is generally unarmed or disarmed or inferiorly-armed, historically disempowered, and often vulnerable. The incidence of these violent acts between groups (police using violence against civilians) is far higher than the incidence of the same violent acts within the actor group (police using violence against other police).

I propose the debate of a hate crime framework – even as a rhetorical exercise without an eye toward its implementation – would help refocus the discussion in the police brutality debate and may highlight the immense power differential – and potential for abuse – between police and the people they supposedly protect and too often victimise.

Further Reading on Related Topics:

Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
David Jacobs & D. Britt, Inequality and Police Use of Deadly Force… (1979)
John Locke, Second Treatise on Government
United States Commission on Civil Rights, Report, Vol. 5 (November 1961)
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Fiacco v. City of Rensselaer (February 1986)
United States Supreme Court, Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000)
United States Supreme Court, Monroe v. Pape (1961)