Video of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers and reports of the torture of Abner Louima by New York City police capture public attention and raise troubling questions about the limits of legitimate police authority in a democratic society. Are such events aberrations or are they extreme examples of a more general problem that plagues American police departments? Although such questions have been raised by the media, politicians, and police scholars and administrators, this is the first study to present a nationwide portrait of how rank-and-file police officers view these and other critical questions of police abuse of authority. Officers provided information on what types of abuse and attitudes toward abuse are observed in their departments, including the code of silence, whistle blowing, and the extent to which a citizen's race, demeanor, and class affect the way police officers treat them; what strategies (including first-line supervision, community policing, citizen review boards, and training) do police officers consider to be effective means of preventing police abuse of authority; and whether police abuse is a necessary byproduct of efforts to reduce and control crime. Responses are also analyzed according to rank, race, region of the U. S., and size of department.

Although the prevalence of police-citizen conflict has diminished in recent decades, police use of excessive force remains a concern of police departments nationwide. This timely book focuses on what is known and what still needs to be learned to understand, prevent, and remediate police abuse of force. The topics covered include: a theory of police abuse of force; the causes of police brutality; measures of its prevalence; the violence-prone police officer; public opinion about police abuse of force; the issue of race; officer selection, training, and attitudes; police unions and police culture; administrative review; procedural justice and the review of citizen complaints; the role of lawsuits; and a survey of police brutality abroad. In the final chapter Geller and Toch suggest new directions for research and practical innovations in law enforcement, from which both police and citizens can benefit. The contributors to this volume are scholars of criminology, criminal justice, social psychology, law, and public administration; former police managers; a police union leader; civilian oversight agency administrators and analysts; civil liberties advocates; police litigation expert witnesses; and media commentators. The combination of theoretical and practical perspectives makes this book ideal for students and scholars of democratic policing and for those in police departments, government, and the media charged with addressing and understanding the problem of improper exercise of force.

Contains ordinances, statutes, executive orders, departmental orders, and other documents pertaining to citizen review from over 30 police departments.

The now-famous videotape of the beating of Rodney King precipitated a national outcry against police violence. Skolnick and Fyfe, two of the nation's top experts on law enforcement, use the incident to introduce a revealing historical analysis of such violence and the extent of its survival in law enforcement today.

Policing and corruption are inseparable. This book argues that corruption is not one thing but covers many deviant and criminal practices in policing which also shift over time. It rejects the 'bad apple' metaphor and focuses on 'bad orchards', meaning not individual but institutional failure. For in policing the organisation, work and culture foster can encourage corruption. This raises issues as to why do police break the law and, crucially, 'who controls the controllers'? Corruption is defined in a broad, multi-facetted way. It concerns abuse of authority and trust; and it takes serious form in conspiracies to break the law and to evade exposure when cops can become criminals. Attention is paid to typologies of corruption (with grass-eaters, meat-eaters, noble-cause); the forms corruption takes in diverse environments; the pathways officers take into corruption and their rationalisations; and to collusion in corruption from within and without the organization. Comparative analyses are made of corruption, scandal and reform principally in the USA, UK and the Netherlands. The work examines issues of control, accountability and the new institutions of oversight. It provides a fresh, accessible overview of this under-researched topic for students, academics, police and criminal justice officials and members of oversight agencies.