One morning in 2003, Calvin R. Mitchell Sr., a resident of Chicago, decided to go out and find a fan that would help push around the hot air in his tiny, stuffy loft apartment Uptown. He was stopped on his way back to his apartment by two police officers (Shenoy).

One officer asked him if he had a receipt for the fan. While Mitchell reached into his pocket for the receipt, one of the policemen placed handcuffs on him. He was arrested and held for thirteen hours without being charged. Bear in mind that Mitchell was not dressed in gang colors, was not wearing a hat turned sideways, was not walking with his pants sagging down. He was, at the time, a 51-year-old grandfather who had retired from a career in public service with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds' Office. When asked, the owner of the store where Mitchell went confirmed that Mitchell had not stolen the fan (Shenoy).
Ten days after this happened, Mitchell, who was a regular activist in neighborhood community meetings about policing the area, filed official reports of complaint with the Internal Affairs department in the Chicago Police Department, and the Office of Professional Standards, which is a civilian group charged with investigating reports of excessive force by police officers.

How could such an ostensibly clear example of police brutality take so long to investigate? How could it take two commissions so long to go over the alleged facts of the case, and yet not be able to render decisions? What additional factors are at work? Ron Daniels writes of a “we against them” fraternity mentality and the “blue wall of silence” that keeps so many police officers from testifying against one another (Nelson, p. 245), or even giving anonymous corroboration to suspicions of brutal treatment. Civilian investigative boards were in fact created because such problems existed within Internal Affairs Divisions: police officers turned out to be highly unreliable in the task of investigating one another over accusations of the use of excessive force.

Daniels also writes of the bias that favors police officers. If a police officer arrests someone, public opinion automatically shifts toward that person’s having committed a crime. A police officer’s testimony in court is treated with greater weight by juries than testimony given by civilians. Race is also an extenuating factor in this situation, because members of minority communities face a different side of the police department than members of affluent, white communities. Daniels asserts that police officers “behave like an occupying army” in communities dominated by minorities, but not in places where well-to-do white citizens live (Nelson, p. 245). The question, of course, is worth asking: do police officers behave more like enemy soldiers in poor, minority-dominated communities because the people who live there are more likely to commit violent crime and need rougher treatment, or does the rougher treatment itself create a mood of hostility that leads citizens to take up arms against one another and against the police department? This is probably too complex a question to just take one side.

The experience of Lt. Arthur Doyle, who had a proud career with the New York Police Department, shows the many tensions at work within police organizations. In 1963, he decided to apply for a position after a four-year stint in the Marine Corps. After taking the written examination and the physical test, he was told that he had failed because he was missing a tooth. Incidentally, Arthur Doyle was an African-American.

When he returned to his military base and told his base dentist about his rejection, the dentist’s response was shock – Doyle’s physical condition would have been sufficient to get him into the Naval Academy, let alone a city police department. He wrote a fairly strong letter on Doyle’s behalf, and Doyle was admitted into police academy. At graduation, Doyle turned to smile at another one of his colleagues, who turned out to be a white man with rotten teeth (Nelson, p. 172).

Other tensions filled the New York Police Department. After Doyle went to work in the Forty-fourth Precinct in the South Bronx, he learned some of the unwritten rules. While there was an official hierarchy of the police department, there was also an invisible, informal, yet influential power structure that sets the more powerful rules. These power brokers might be officers, or they might be fellow beat cops. Some of the rules that these leaders put in place would not be fit for printing in a family newspaper. For example, any suspect who assaulted a police officer was not supposed to be able to walk into the station house under his own power. The beating was supposed to be so severe that the suspect would not be able to walk. If a suspect was able to stand who was accused of assaulting a police officer, the arresting officer was often reprimanded by colleagues, if not by superiors (Nelson, p. 173).

Another unwritten rule involved suspects who ran from police officers. If officers had had to chase suspects, either in a car or on foot, a beating was routinely administered. The effort of a long chase would get the adrenalin pumping in the police officers, who would move swiftly to take that energy out on the suspect. It was an extreme form of this energy that led to the severe beating of Rodney King. It was also this form of energy that led to the ugly confrontations during the Harlem riots in 1964. Police officers would, in Doyle’s opinion, use their nightsticks indiscriminately, resulting in an inordinate amount of brutality on unarmed citizens. This led to the perception of police and rioters as two mobs moving against one another, instead of a protective force alleviating the stress of a particular situation (Nelson, p. 174).
While race is often cited as a motivating factor in much excessive force, this is not always the case. Lt. Doyle writes of the New York Police Department’s response to antiwar riots at Columbia University in 1968. A group of white students had taken over a building, even going so far as to throw furniture out of windows, and one student had even jumped out of a window and landed on a policeman. The violence of the police response, which included the “wild” use of nightsticks on unarmed students, happened because, in Doyle’s opinion, the officers believed that the system would protect police officers who had committed brutal acts because they were assigned to maintain order (Nelson, p. 175). However, Doyle points out that “the majority of cops [are] good, hardworking, conscientious individuals. They [care] and [want] to do a good job. But there [are] enough bad cops…to give law enforcement the taint it [has] received”(Nelson, p. 178).

Significant case law has weighed in on the boundaries of excessive force. Campos v. City of New York revolves a man who approached an officer who was off duty, tapped his shoulder, and asked him for money. The officer contended that Campos was trying to rob him, while Campos claimed that the officer looked like a friend of him, who owed him money. While both of these narratives may sound somewhat dubious, at the end Campos walked away, after a brief argument with the police officer. After Campos had begun to walk away, the officer pulled a gun and shot Campos in the back. The result was T9-10 paraplegia, leading to medical bills in the amount of $165,000, with lifetime medical expenses related to the paraplegia expected to run $4.5 million. Campos had been a fast food cook at the time of the incident, but is now studying computer programming. Campos decided to sue the city on the basis of the claim that, even if the officer thought he was being robbed, the way in which he shot Campos involved the use of excessive force. Eventually, a jury gave Campos $17.5 million, which was later reduced to $17 million. Campos was acquitted of any criminal charges associated with the case (“Man shot by police officer”).
A similar case arises in Wacik v. State of California, from February of 2003. The plaintiff was running from police officers who were trying to execute a traffic stop, which escalated when the plaintiff sped off. After the car was forced to stop, Wacik hopped out of his car and ran away. When the officers finally caught up with him, they held him face down and handcuffed him – all part of standard procedure. Then, however, they raised his right leg, held his foot fixed, and twisted it, leading to a fracture in the right ankle. Wacik filed suit accusing the use of excessive force and battery. The verdict found the defendants liable for battery and excessive force. There was an award of $45,000 for economic damages and $150,000 for noneconomic damages, in addition to a $395,000 award for attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this case was the fact that the plaintiff was the aggravator of the situation, up to the point of excessive force. It was his decision to run away from the police by car, and then again by foot. However, the fact that the officers had achieved a clear physical advantage over the suspect before administering the brutal acts of force was key in the jury’s deliberations (“Police twist suspect’s leg”).

The Ninth Circuit of Appeals has, however, upheld the use of lethal force to stop someone who is mentally ill who is already wounded and is violating the law. Generally, law enforcement personnel are trained to use different tactics to subdue mentally ill people, particularly if they are unarmed and are clearly emotionally unable to control their actions. However, if those mentally ill people are armed and have recently done something of a serious nature, those special tactics do not necessarily apply (“9th Circuit”).
In Sacramento County, California, the sheriff’s office received complaints about a man carrying a sword and wearing a ski mask while walking down the middle of the street through suburban residential streets. This person turned out to be Matthew Blanford. When deputies arrived, they got out of their vehicles, pulled their guns out and yelled, “Sheriff’s department, stop, drop the sword” (“9th Circuit”).

Unfortunately, Blanford was wearing headphones, and claimed later that he neither saw nor heard the deputies giving their commands. Instead, he kept walking. The deputies walked behind at a distance of 20 to 25 feet, a distance consistent with their training for people carrying edged weapons. Both deputies fired three times, and one of these bullets cut Blanford’s spine, making him a paraplegic. He sued, claiming excessive force, unreasonable seizure, and false arrest under the Fourth Amendment. Because he was not “immediately or directly” threatening anyone with his weapon, and because he did not recently commit a crime or threaten to inflict serious physical harm, he claimed that probable cause did not exist. In fact, he was walking away from the deputies while they were ordering him to comply with their request, and while they were shooting him (“9th Circuit”).

Instead of shooting him, Blanford said, the deputies knew that backup was coming and should have waited. His appearance of emotional disturbance should have made deadly force an inappropriate option, and he should have been treated as one in need of mental assistance, instead of being treated as one who was a violent criminal. In addition to this suit, Blanford also filed state-level claims for assault, battery, and negligence in the areas of hiring, training and supervision of personnel against the county (“9th Circuit”).

However, the Ninth Circuit found that the deputies knew that Blanford had committed a crime and was acting as though he might continue to commit crimes. This inherently made him a threat to anyone that he could reasonably charge with his sword. This included the range that the deputies were trained to track him at. Because he was armed, and warned that he would be shot if he did not disarm, and then appeared to ignore the warning and instead raised his sword and grunted, while seeming intent on getting into a residence while carrying the sword, the Ninth Circuit held that the shooting was constitutional (“9th Circuit”).

There are cases where the use of force is found conclusively not to have been justified and, in fact, to have been excessive. The case of Solomon v Auburn Police, 03-1707, in the Sixth Circuit of Appeals, is one of these instances. When the environment of an arrest is defined as “non-hostile,” the right to qualified immunity is lost.

In the apprehension of Francine Solomon, who weighed around 120 pounds, each of the two officers who arrested her weighed about 250 pounds. Each of these officers grabbed one of her arms, while one of them pushed his entire weight against her, with his arm firmly against her back and his leg in between hers. He took her arm and twisted it around behind her, breaking it in several places. She would spend six days in the hospital for the required surgery and recovery (“6th Circuit”).

The circuit court had several factors to consider when deciding whether or not an officer had used excessive force. How severe was the crime? Did the suspect represent an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or other around them? Was the suspect actively attempting to resist arrest or to run away from the scene?

After taking these factors into consideration with the situation, the Sixth Circuit ruled that the amount of force that these officers used against Francine Solomon would have appeared excessive to a reasonable police officer. Relevant facts for this determination included the following: she was with her children; she did not threaten the officers verbally; she did not try to escape the scene; and she cooperated with the officers. Ironically, these officers never bothered to notify her that she was under arrest (“6th Circuit”).
There was a dissenting opinion in this case, that considered the officer’s decision to handcuff Francine Solomon to be constitutional and, by itself, was not excessive force. The other actions, in the opinion of the dissenting judge, fell in the area covered by qualified immunity. However, the majority of the panel felt that the officers had used force excessively. MORE..