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1 April 2018
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested for the possession of a switchblade.
Gray died seven days later, on April 19, 2015, from “a severe spinal injury” because the
arresting officers failed to put his seatbelt on (Cox). On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was
pulled over and shot for reaching for his ID, after previously being asked to by the officer on
site. On August 25, 2017, Johnnie Rush was savagely beaten and arrested for jaywalking. In
these cases and like many other cases of police brutality, there was no justifiable cause for
the cruel and excessive behavior of the police officers on the scene. Police brutality is not a
new disease. No, this disease has been present since the establishment of the first police force
in America. No sufficient justice is being served. The people not only want to see the
conviction of these abusive officers, but they also want to see the eradication of this disease
that is sickening America. The big question is: how can cops be discouraged from utilizing
excessive use of force? More importantly, how can officers be more accountable for their
actions? The most realistic solutions to the problem that the questions pose are to: 1) require
police departments to report the deaths that occur while civilians are in their custody and 2)
Briefly examining the history of policing, it is an old profession. The first American
police force was established in Boston in 1838 (Potter). When America saw the benefits of
Boston’s police force, a wave of police forces emerged along the east coast and partially the
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Midwest. Dr. Gary Potter, a professor of Justice Studies, stated that the need for the
establishment of a police force arose from the growth of the urban cities of the States. The
population was increasing, and more people were moving to the Northeast because there
were more job opportunities. “Mob violence, particularly violence directed at immigrants and
African Americans by white youths” began to occur more frequently, and systems of old
were becoming ineffective (Potter). Police officers could no longer function as watchmen. As
officers of the law, their primary job had to shift from controlling the masses and preventing
public disorder onto crime prevention. At the peak of urbanization in the United States, the
consumption of alcohol was illegal because it was believed to be “the major cause of crime
and public disorder” (Potter). As a result of the climbing crime rates and instances of public
disorder, police officers began patrolling in an effort to prevent crime (Potter). In the early
1900s, methods of policing altered because America changed. Today, America is changing
again. Despite those changes, policing strategies are not evolving, but how can police change
if they are not held accountable for their actions? In order to improve policing methods and
lessen instances of police brutality, recordings of arrest-related deaths must become more
precise. In order to increase the precision of this data, a majority of police departments must
Admittedly, however, law enforcement has certainly made an effort to improve their
reporting systems. In 2000, the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DIRCA) was implemented.
[report to the Attorney General] on a quarterly basis, information regarding the death
incarcerated at any municipal or county jail, State prison, or other local or State
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correctional facility (including any juvenile facility), including: (1) the name, gender,
race, ethnicity, and age of the deceased; (2) the date, time, and location of death; and
The DIRCA made a lot of changes to what the U.S. government deemed valuable to
record and file. It also inspired the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to create the first Arrest-
Related Deaths Program (ARD) in 2003. In the ARD Program, the FBI maintained a
database in which police precincts voluntarily reported both the amount and the details of
police-related deaths that occurred. This was a critical development in the way the federal
government gathered its data because it could make agents of the law, more accountable for
improvements in the ARD Program coverage over time, there are still a large number of law
enforcement homicides that go unreported, indicating that the ARD is not a census” (Banks,
et al). In a previous study directed by the BJS in 2010, the BJS acknowledged that this was a
well-known issue. Professionals knew that the first ARD Program had a flawed methodology
of gathering data when looking at the results of 2009’s turnout of 55%. In an attempt to
correct this weakness, the BJS focused more on “open information sources, such as media
stories, to identify arrest-related deaths, rather than relying solely on law enforcement
agencies to identify and report these deaths” (Banks, et al). As a result, in 2011, the turnout
only increased to about 69%. Despite the growth, the outcome remained insufficient. Also, it
was quite obvious that the ARD Program did not gather very accurate data as it primarily
depended on police voluntarily filing any arrest-related deaths that transpired in their
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precincts. Thus, the data received from the ARD Program’s reports could have been skewed
or even biased.
On August 4, 2016, in response to the first ARD Program’s weaknesses, the U.S.
Department of Justice announced that it was revising the program. This second ARD
Program mandated that every single law enforcement agency must file all of their police-
related deaths “directly to the Department of Justice, including information about the location
and time of the incident, manner of death, the victim’s behavior during the incident, reason
for initial contact, and the victim’s race, age, and gender, and so on” (Owens). What
differentiates the previous ARD Program from the latter is that if police precincts fail to obey
the terms of the program they “could lose 10% percent of their agency’s funding” (Owens).
According to the BJS, the revised ARD Program was designed to “increase the reliability,
Furthermore, the idea behind the second ARD Program was that if law enforcement
was required to report their officer-related deaths, it would discourage officers from killing
suspects without reasonable cause. However, there is no conclusive data explicitly stating
that the second ARD Program actually deterred any police-related deaths. As stated
previously, the second ARD Program was redesigned in an effort to enlarge the scope of the
compilation of the FBI’s data. To do so, they incorporated news reports of arrest-related
deaths provided by the media. In the years 2003-2009 and 2011, arrest-related deaths
increased and decreased in an inconsistent manner. For example, in 2004, 375 deaths were
reported, and in 2005, 377 deaths were disclosed (Banks, et al). In contrast to both of those
years, in 2006, a whopping total of 447 deaths were reported (Banks, et al). The data
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inevitably caused the public to ask an important question: what occured in 2006 to have
The answer is quite simple. In 2005, only 39% of law enforcement agencies reported
their arrest-related deaths, but in 2006, 47% of law enforcement reported their deaths (Banks,
et al). Comparably, when looking at the data, in 2009, the amount of deaths jumps from 496
to 689 in 2011 (Banks, et al). Again, the difference was how many law enforcement agencies
actually participated. In 2009, only 55% of law enforcement reported their deaths, but in
However, in 2015, the media reported to the FBI that from June 1, 2015 through
August 31, 2016, a total of 379 arrest-related deaths occured (Bank, et al). In an effort to
improve the credibility of the media’s statistics, the FBI conducted a survey with law
enforcement agencies, asking them to confirm or deny the deaths that the media reported (of
which only 69.8% provided a response) (Banks, et al). After computing the numbers, the FBI
then gathered the data that law enforcement agencies reported, and discovered that from June
to August, 427 arrest-related deaths occured; of the 427 deaths, law enforcement agencies
only reported 48, “exclud[ing] agency-reported deaths that duplicated media-reported deaths”
(Banks, et al).
It is appropriate to assert that the ARD Program does not work to prevent law
enforcement-related deaths. It only passively compiles them. In fact, it is certain that there
are gaps in the all of the years prior to 2015’s data. From 2003- 2009 as well as 2011, the
data was unreliable because it relied solely on law enforcement’s will to report the deaths.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to compare 2016’s data to that of 2017 because it has yet to be
completed, but even with the statistics that they may yield, the results will be the same.
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Deaths are not lessening. They are either increasing or remaining constant because no proper
action has been taken. To lessen incidences of police misconduct, the problem must be
To gain more responses from officers, there must be a more severe punishment. There
must be a policy established that imposes a drastic penalty should police departments fail to
participate in the ARD Program. As stated previously, the revised ARD Program required
officers to report their arrest-related deaths. If they did not, there was a possibility that they
would lose 10% of their federal funding (Owens). While this stipulation produced an increase
of police response, it was clearly ineffective if only 69.8% of officers responded (Banks, et
al).
Instead of simply threatening precincts with the chance of losing 10% of their
funding, the new policy would clearly state that should police departments fail to participate
in the ARD Program, their precincts will be thoroughly investigated by Internal Affairs (IA)
along with losing 35% of their federal funding, indubitably. All findings would then be
reported to the Attorney General. The purpose of requiring IA to vet precincts that do not
record their arrest-related deaths would be to check and balance officers’ powers. IA’s
“...report the facts and uphold the integrity of the profession” (Roufa). Generally, if IA
investigated precincts, IA investigators would be more efficient and yield more accurate
without reluctance because an internal investigation is time consuming. For example, the
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U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recommends that an investigation lasts no more than “180
days” because it could easily extend for a much longer time, which means that officers are
away from their jobs for the duration (“Standards and Guidelines for International
Affairs…”). IA investigations are also expensive. For reasons unbeknownst to the public, IA
does not release the price of a federal or state internal investigation. With this in mind, it is
reasonable to assume that should police officers be forced to go on paid leave for the duration
considering the fact that the state will be paying officers for no work. Also, IA requires that
police departments under investigation must submit all of their files and paperwork.
Gathering all of the necessary paperwork is time consuming and costly as it takes officers
away from their primary job. It would also cause officers to work overtime, further adding to
Guidelines for International Affairs…”). When the FBI compiled the data that they received
from the ARD Program, it should have been protocol for IA to investigate the police
departments that reported the most deaths. The threat of an IA investigation forces officers to
“know the laws [they] are enforcing” and to “...have an articulable, defensible [reason for
their] discretion” (Petrocelli). The presence of IA compels officers to perform their jobs
better. Officers begin to focus on the legality of their actions and not on the power bestowed
upon them by the federal government. The threat of a potential IA investigation would most
likely impel a majority of officers to report their arrest-related deaths and deter them from
committing acts of misconduct. Moreover, if the policy manages to boost the police-reporting
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of officer-involved deaths to about 85%- 90%, it would weaken the FBI’s reliance on the
media for data. A majority of the news that the media reports could be described as biased
and oftentimes unreliable. Despite the FBI’s system of checking the validity of the media’s
reports, relying on the media’s data jeopardizes the soundness of the FBI’s statistics, which
the entire nation depends on. This would also improve the faith that the public has in the
government, allowing citizens to trust that law enforcement’s primary job is to help, protect,
investigation, would compel police departments to adhere to the policy and report their
arrest-related deaths, making them more accountable for their actions. This would allow for
the Commissioners of Police of each department to see the areas where his or her officers
investigations produce more accountability for individual officers and entire police
departments, discouraging them from abusing their power and utilizing excessive use of
WC: 2336
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Works Cited
www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/08/04/2016-18484/agency-information-
collection-activities-proposed-collection-comments-requested-new-collection#furinf.
Banks, Duren, et al. “Arrest-Related Deaths Program Redesign Study, 2015-16: Preliminary
www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5864.
www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5259.
Cox, John Woodrow, et al. “Who Was Freddie Gray? How Did He Die? And What Led to
www.washingtonpost.com/local/who-was-freddie-gray-and-how-did-his-death-lead-
to-a-mistrial-in-baltimore/2015/12/16/b08df7ce-a433-11e5-9c4e-
be37f66848bb_story.html?utm_term=.d03a08f33d48.
www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/106/hr1800/summary.
www.simplyhired.com/salaries-k-internal-affairs-officer-jobs.html.
Owen, Tess. “The US Government Will Track Killings by Police for the First Time Ever.”
killings-by-police-for-the-first-time-ever.
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Petrocelli, Joseph. “An Internal Affairs Investigation.” Police Magazine, 5 Apr. 2010,
www.policemag.com/channel/patrol/articles/2010/04/an-internal-affairs-
investigation.aspx.
Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1.” The History of Policing
in the United States, Part 1 | Police Studies Online, Eastern Kentucky University, 25
Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States, Part 2.” The History of Policing
in the United States, Part 2 | Police Studies Online, Eastern Kentucky University, 2
Roufa, Timothy. “What Do Internal Affairs Investigators Really Do?” The Balance, 30 Apr.
2017, www.thebalance.com/internal-affairs-investigator-career-profile-974831.