“The Talk” and Parenting While Black in America: Centering Race, Resistance, and Refuge

2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842110342
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Anderson ◽  
Margaret O’Brien Caughy ◽  
Margaret T. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Parent Education ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Children ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Observational Methods ◽  
Black Parents ◽  
Racialized Violence

“The Talk” refers to a specific type of racial socialization message that many Black parents have with their children about how to safely conduct themselves when interacting with police officers and other individuals in positions of power. With the recent increased exposure of racialized violence against Black people at the hands of police and vigilantes in the United States, many parents of young Black children now feel especially compelled to initiate these conversations to equip their children with the necessary knowledge to protect themselves when interacting with police officers. Black parents bear the unjust burden of striking a balance between alerting their children of possible harm while also not villainizing every member of law enforcement their child may encounter. This qualitative study examines “the Talk” occurring between 45 Black American parents and their young school-age children via observational methods. Findings of this study help to illuminate this critically important experience that characterizes Black familial processes and particularly the plight of parents socializing Black children. Implications for parent education and clinical interventions are also provided.

Politics, Safety, and Officer-Involved Intimate Partner Violence

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-245
Author(s):  
Leigh Goodmark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decisions

The United States relies heavily on law enforcement to protect people subjected to intimate partner violence. The decision to prioritize law enforcement intervention may seem natural, but it is, in fact a political decision, with consequences along three dimensions. First, prioritizing the law enforcement response has precluded the development of other policies to address intimate partner violence. Second, channeling money into law enforcement helped to facilitate the growth of a hypermasculine, militarized environment where violence against women flourishes. Third, the decision to rely on law enforcement ignores research establishing that police officers are more likely than other groups to commit intimate partner violence. These political decisions have profound consequences for all people subjected to abuse, particularly the partners of police officers.

Veto Power

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-194
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Motion Pictures ◽  
The United States ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
White Supremacists

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, police censorship of motion pictures was a significant and always controversial index of the expansion of law enforcement agencies to include activities that many Americans deemed unbecoming of cops. As such, it offers considerable insight into contemporary debates over the scope of police power in the United States. Today’s arguments have deep roots, including in a practice that was far more prevalent—and far more contentious—than conventional histories allow. When it came to vetting motion pictures, the methods of municipal police departments varied widely. But they often illuminated broader problems: Detroit police officers who voted to ban anti-Nazi films were themselves outspoken white supremacists; Chicago cops who balked at cinema’s suggestions of eroticism were also, outside of departmental screening rooms, aggressively targeting sex workers; and Southern lawmen who sought to eliminate intimations of racial equality were known for their brutal treatment of Black residents. Police censorship of motion pictures took place not in a vacuum but within the ever-widening ambit of law enforcement, and it merits scrutiny as a measure of the authority, influence, and cultural identities of municipal cops.

scholarly journals Introduction: African Americans: Official and Unofficial Violence in America

2020 ◽  
pp. 002193472097008
Author(s):  
Molefi Kete Asante
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Active Imagination ◽  
White People ◽  
Control Forces

In this essay the author introduces the emergence of the paddy rollers as control forces to contain the black population during the enslavement of Africans in the United States. Soon after the end of the Civil War the police forces took over the activities that had been the purvey of the paddy rollers: keeping black people in place and out of the way of white people. However, the resistance to abuse, torture, and murder was never far from the active imagination and reality of African Americans who maintained their own humanity. Tracing, in a limited fashion, how the biologically unscientific race became the premise for racism and the attacks on black people by police officers who often took their perceptions of blacks, especially black men, as negative and inferior from the systemic and institutional character of the society’s understanding of superior and inferior humans. This, according to the author, is at the base of hatred, discrimination, and lynching of African Americans in current and previous occasions. He illustrates this by discussing the case of Mary Turner who was killed in the early part of the 20th century for objecting to white mob attacks on her husband.

Police officers, stigma, and the opioid epidemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan E Kruis ◽  
Jaeyong Choi ◽  
Richard H Donohue
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Disease Model ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Opioid Epidemic ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Multivariable Analyses

Researchers have suggested that provider-based stigma of substance use disorders is one barrier to fighting the opioid epidemic. Yet, to date, virtually no study has examined provider-based stigma among law enforcement officers who are on the front line of the opioid crisis. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by assessing provider-based stigma toward opioid-using persons among a sample of 208 police officers working for departments located in the Northeastern Region of the United States. Results show that officers hold relatively high levels of stigma toward this vulnerable population, as measured by perceptions of dangerousness, blame, and social distance; however, comparatively, officers hold less fatalistic views toward this group of persons. Additionally, our multivariable analyses indicated that officer rank, support for the disease model of addiction, and beliefs about the demographic characteristics of a substance-using person are significantly associated with provider-based stigma among officers. Potential policy implications are discussed within.

scholarly journals Police Officers’ Perceptions of Body-Worn Video Cameras in Beijing

2020 ◽  
pp. 105756772091991
Author(s):  
Feng Jiang ◽  
Chuanyu Xie ◽  
Tom Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Battery Life ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Video Cameras ◽  
High Level

The Chinese police started using body-worn video cameras (BWVCs) from 2010 in some cities and provinces. On July 1, 2016, shortly after the death of Lei Yang during arrest by police, the Ministry of Public Security ( Gong’anbu) introduced BWVCs as mandatory for all the Chinese frontline police officers through issuing Regulations on Audio and Video Recording of Onsite Law Enforcement for Public Security Units (RAVR). However, despite the nationwide use of BWVCs, the research literature on BWVCs in China remains sparse. Studies from the United States and the United Kingdom provide evidence of the importance of officers’ buy-in to the new technology. It is, therefore, essential to know Chinese officers’ views and evaluations of using BWVCs. Using an anonymized online questionnaire, adapted from published international prior studies, this article reports and evaluates the views of 255 Beijing officers of the Beijing Police Department. Our analysis suggests that, overall, there was a high level of support and a high level of self-reported use for BWVCs among respondents not only because they are required to use them but also because they wanted to. Officers perceived more benefits than disadvantages of using BWVCs and most thought BWVCs would help them in their daily work without reducing their enthusiasm for law enforcement. Some differences were found between officers from different working units and between male and female officers. There were also weak negative correlations between length of service as a police officer and supportive attitudes toward BWVCs. Most criticisms were about technical issues such as higher expectations on the battery life and BWVC reliability.

scholarly journals Ways of implementation of the national concept of the integrated organization of police activity

2021 ◽  
pp. 146-165
Author(s):  
Khrystyna Solntseva
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Integrative Model ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
National Legal System

The analysis of the current law enforcement system allows to state the existence of certain problems related to its construction and some aspects of activity. After the administrative reforms in Ukraine, the indicators of assessing the level of public confidence in the National Police gradually began to improve, but the practice of foreign countries shows better breakthroughs in the organization of policing. Therefore, the relevance of the article is explained by the need to introduce in the national legal system a new concept of policing, which would take into account the successful experience of foreign countries and course of our country for European integration. First of all, the article is devoted to the analysis of the existing models of law enforcement systems in the world in order to determine the most favorable and effective for national law. It was found that the integrative model of organization of police activities today demonstrates the most effective indicators in the work of foreign police, so it can be considered a guide for implementation in Ukraine. Based on this, the author proposes his own definition of the term "integrated policing". The author pays special attention to the successful experience of the Baltic States and the United States in policing, in particular in the field of training highly qualified police officers, police and community cooperation in partnership, and international cooperation in exchanging experience of specialized law enforcement services. For example, the national legal system should pay attention to such development programs as the creation of port police, increasing the duration of specialized training of police officers, involving citizens in patrols on a voluntary basis, increasing the competence of local police departments. Analyzing the relevant practice of foreign countries, the author pays attention to the peculiarities of the functioning of the national law enforcement system, as well as its own achievements. In conclusion, there are several possible ways to introduce into the legislation of Ukraine the main development programs and principles of functioning of the police of foreign countries in Europe and America. The main result of the work is the design of the concept of an integrated organization of policing and the expected results from its implementation - reaching a new level in the process of European integration.

Antiblackness and the Adultification of Black Children in a U.S. Prison Nation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir A. Gilmore ◽  
Pamela J. Bettis
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Black Children ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
White American ◽  
Gender And Education ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Black Life

Discourses in the early 21st century surrounding the presumption of childhood innocence were undergirded by antiblackness. The theorization of antiblackness within the context of race, gender, and education has been beneficial to understanding how the mistreatment of Black children and the illegitimacy of Black childhoods within the white American racial imaginary is seemingly justified. Foundational to the United States, antiblackness is a race-based paradigm of racial othering and subjugation through a litany of organized structural violence against Black people. Structured outside the realms of humanity and civil society, Black life, through this paradigm, is regarded as other than human. Arguably, antiblackness shapes all racialized, gendered, sexualized conditions and experiences of all Black people, including the age compression of Black children. Antiblackness scholarship posits that there is an institutional unwillingness to see Black youth as children. Discourses on what it means to be a child, who can occupy that position, and when a particular stage of a child’s development is reached, are all structured against Black youth. Pathologized as deviant, adult-like problems, Black children occupy life in a liminal space, where they are denied childhood status but carry adult-like culpability. As adultified Black youth, they lack autonomy and are not granted leniency to learn from their mistakes like their white peers. With their actions and intentions perceived as deviant, ill-willed, or hypersexual, Black children are susceptible a wide range of violence from school punishment, the criminal justice system, sexual abuse and exploitation, and excessive police force.

MOVE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kent Evans
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Police Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
States Government ◽  
Tear Gas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Improvised Explosives

This book is a religious history of MOVE, a small, mostly African American religious group devoted to the religious teachings of John Africa that emerged in Philadelphia in the early 1970s. MOVE is perhaps best known for the MOVE Bombing. In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department—working in concert with federal and state law enforcement—attacked a home that MOVE people shared in West Philadelphia, involving hundreds of police officers and firefighters and using tear gas, 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and improvised explosives. Most infamously, a police officer dropped a bomb containing C-4 explosives, which he had acquired from the FBI, from a helicopter onto the roof of the MOVE house. The bomb started a fire, which officials allowed to spread in hopes of burning MOVE people out of the house. Police officers fired upon MOVE people who tried to escape the flames. Eleven MOVE people died in the attack, including John Africa. Five of those who died were children. Based on never-before-seen law enforcement records and extensive archival and ethnographic research, MOVE: An American Religion reinterprets the history of MOVE from its origins in the late 1960s, its growth in the early 1970s, its conflicts with the United States government from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, and its presence today. It is the first full-length academic study of MOVE since 1994 and is the first book to consider MOVE as a religion.

Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women in the United States

2017 ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenn Walker ◽  
Cheri Tarutani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intimate Partner

Opposition to using restorative justice to address violence against women mainly concerns the fear that women will be re-victimized if they engage with men who endangered them. While law enforcement and criminal justice approaches are necessary to address violence against women, women's choices about when and how to use law enforcement and prosecution to address violence against them, should be respected. Exclusive criminalization of violence against women has not protected many and has further harmed marginalized and Black people. To address intimate partner violence, victims' needs for healing must be met including when the victim-offender overlap applies and an offender is also a victim. Ignoring healing perpetuates violence. Applying restorative justice and its foundational questions, during direct meetings between victims and offenders, or when they meet separately, can address the victim-offender overlap, reduce reliance on punishment, and increase healing.

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