Race and Policing

History of Race and Policing

W. Marvin Dulaney (1996) provides one of the best accounts of the history of blacks and policing in America. He describes the lack of protection blacks experienced in both the North and South during colonial times, the antebellum period, reconstruction, postreconstruction, and the twentieth century. Slave patrols, slave codes, black codes, physical abuse, intimidation, and harassment were used to control both the slave and free black populations. For over 200 years (until the civil rights movement of the 1960s brought significant changes in attitudes), most whites did not support racial equality and viewed blacks as inferior. As a result, blacks were subjected to harsh treatment and punishment, and they were often left unprotected by the police. Kennedy (1997) provides several examples of unequal protection during antebellum America and the “Jim Crow” era (1877–1950s), when segregation laws were in force. Murder, assault and battery, rape, and lynching are examples of ways in which blacks were victimized first by slave owners and then by others. After emancipation and well into the twentieth century, the convict lease system provided numerous opportunities for law enforcement officers to arrest blacks. Blacks also were left unprotected by the police during race riots in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Unlike civil disturbances during the latter part of the twentieth century, race riots were attacks by whites against blacks; usually, the blacks were unable to protect themselves and were not protected by the police.

Several landmark Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Mississippi (1936) and Mapp v. Ohio(1961) addressed treatment of blacks by the police. In Brown v. Mississippi, three farmhands were tortured by police and coerced to confess to the murder of a white farmer. The Supreme Court ruled that coerced confessions were unconstitutional and inadmissible. In Mapp v. Ohio, police officers in Cleveland, Ohio, broke open [Page 1325]Mapp's door and seized a trunk that contained obscene materials. The Supreme Court held that the exclusionary rule was applicable in state criminal proceedings. As a result of that finding, evidence that results from illegal searches and seizures is inadmissible.

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