What Career Should I Pursue after the Military?

Study Finds Racial Bias Police in Pr. George’s; White Officers More Forceful When Arresting Black Suspects

The Washington Post November 4, 2001 | Craig Whitlock and David S. Fallis A study has uncovered widespread evidence of racial bias by Prince George’s County police, finding that white officers use more physical force than black officers when arresting African American suspects.

The pattern was detected during an examination of all use-of- force reports filed by Prince George’s officers during the first six months of 1999. Researchers determined that black suspects generally received rougher treatment at the hands of white officers than black officers, regardless of the degree to which they resisted arrest.

The study — which has not been made public — found no significant difference in police treatment of white suspects. The research was financed by a $270,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The findings bolster accusations of racial brutality that have dogged the Prince George’s County Police Department for decades. Although allegations of racist behavior by police officers are common in the majority-black county, until now they have been rooted mostly in anecdotes and popular suspicion.

The Prince George’s police are under investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division to determine whether county officers have engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination or excessive force. The study’s findings are likely to influence the probe, which was announced last year and could result in legal action to force the police to adopt reforms or submit to federal oversight.

“It sounds like the last nail in the coffin,” said Edythe Flemings Hall, president of the Prince George’s chapter of the NAACP, which pushed for the federal investigation. “I consider it to be very damning, a very serious indictment of the [police]. How can the Justice Department come back now and say there’s no problems?” The study examined 244 use-of-force reports, which included 125 encounters between white officers and black suspects in Prince George’s. (Latino and Asian officers and suspects were excluded from the analysis because of a small sample size.) Researchers scored contacts between officers and suspects based on a “force factor” scale, which measured the amount of police coercion – - from strong verbal commands through deadly force — relative to the suspect’s resistance. Altercations were analyzed based on how they escalated, including who became aggressive first. Pepper spray was most frequently used to subdue suspects. In four cases, police used deadly force.

The most significant finding came when researchers investigated whether the race of the officer and the race of the suspect could explain the amount of force used. They found that white Prince George’s officers wielded “the most disproportionate level of force” on black suspects compared with any other racial combination. web site force factor reviews

“This would indicate more than a few white officers using greater levels of force on black suspects,” the study concluded. “In fact, a fairly consistent pattern of this practice would have to be in effect for these results to occur.” In comparison with the findings in Prince George’s, researchers found that race had no bearing on the amount of force used by Miami- Dade County, Fla., police, who also participated in the study.

Ronald E. Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association and a longtime critic of the Prince George’s police, said the study independently confirms what he called long-term, disparate treatment of blacks by county officers.

“The department has such a horrendous history of being violent to communities of color; it is perpetuated in the organization,” said Hampton, who served as an officer in the District for 24 years. “If . . . you come up through the academy today, you can’t help but be exposed to the culture.” Police Chief John S. Farrell, who was sent an advance copy of the study in July, declined numerous requests for comment.

In past interviews, Farrell has said that shortly after he was hired six years ago, he concluded that Prince George’s officers relied too heavily on physical force in making arrests. He prohibited the use of wooden nightsticks and instead equipped police with pepper spray and retractable metal batons. He put an end to the practice of ordering drivers and passengers in traffic stops to exit their cars and lie facedown on the pavement.

He has ordered the entire police force to be trained in the use of beanbag guns, straitjackets, electric stun weapons and other devices designed to subdue people without killing them. Farrell said he has also hired consultants to teach officers communications skills and has emphasized sensitivity training.

Other police officials said the department has made great strides in reducing excessive force during Farrell’s tenure and expressed frustration with what they described as unfair and outdated criticism.

“We’re under tremendous scrutiny for everything we do,” Maj. Jeffrey A. Cox, Farrell’s chief of staff, said in an interview. “We have worked so hard to turn things around. This police department can’t live down its reputation from the 1970s, when none of us were around.” That was the decade in which the department became widely known for its rough tactics, prompting the local president of the NAACP to dub the county “the Police Brutality Capital of the World” in 1975. Black residents flooded the nearly all-white police force with complaints of unprovoked shootings and beatings, usually to no avail. see here force factor reviews

In 1976, the Justice Department sued Prince George’s for violating federal civil rights law, charging the police department with racial discrimination in its hiring and promotions. At the time, blacks represented 25 percent of the county’s population but only 4 percent of the police force. The lawsuit led to an agreement to diversify the department.

Although the county hired more black officers, problems persisted. In 1990, after an unarmed African immigrant was fatally injured by four white officers during a traffic stop, a special commission warned that the department would have to change its culture to win the community’s confidence.

The commission singled out what it called the department’s “go for bad” attitude — a crime-fighting strategy that relied on physical intimidation. “The ‘go for bad’ syndrome may be the single largest cause of the current problems confronted by the [police],” the commission wrote.

Among the members of the commission: County Executive Wayne K. Curry (D), then a lawyer in private practice. He did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

The police department has improved its record of hiring minorities in the past two decades, but it has failed to keep pace with demographic changes in the county.

Today, about 63 percent of Prince George’s residents are black. In contrast, the police department remains majority white. Of the county’s 1,380 sworn officers, 52 percent are white and 41 percent are black, with the remainder listed as Asian or Hispanic, according to police figures.

Blacks have made slightly greater inroads into the department’s command staff, holding 44 percent of the jobs with the rank of captain or higher. Farrell is white. All three of his deputy chiefs are black.

Despite the recent reforms, the department has struggled to dispel its image as a heavy-handed agency.

From 1990 to 2000, Prince George’s police shot and killed more people, per officer, than any of the 50 biggest police departments in the United States. Although police shootings have declined in recent years, Prince George’s still ranked second in the nation in fatal shootings per officer from 1996 to 2000 — Farrell’s first five full years on the job.

The Post tried to interview several black officers for this article, but all cited department rules that discourage them from speaking with reporters. One high-ranking black police official initially agreed to an interview but was later ordered by superiors not to comment.

Clifford Mack Sr., former president of the county’s now-defunct Black Police Officers Association, said excessive-force problems are not confined to white officers. Police of all colors broke the rules with little fear of punishment during his 23 years on the force, he said.

But he said white officers are often more scared than black officers during confrontations with African American suspects, primarily because of real or perceived differences in their cultural or economic backgrounds. As a result, white officers may react with greater severity or unnecessary force, he said.

“That can be the driving force: the fear factor,” said Mack, who retired in 1998 as a sergeant.

Occasionally, there have been overt signs of racism in the department.

Last summer, for instance, federal prosecutors alleged that Officer Stephanie C. Mohr had a pattern of improperly allowing her police dog to attack or threaten minorities. Prosecutors cited two cases in which Mohr, who is white, allegedly used racial epithets. She was convicted in August of releasing her dog on an unarmed, unresisting Latino man.

The researchers set out to examine how much force police use to arrest suspects, relative to the level of resistance encountered by officers — “a measure that has never before been captured,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina and one of the study’s authors.

The research was conducted under rules that ensured secrecy. Officers were asked to describe each violent encounter in detail on a paper form. The names of officers and suspects were replaced by a tracking number. The forms were faxed — using a secure telephone line and a secure fax machine — to an independent law enforcement research group, the Police Executive Research Forum in the District.

There, researchers keyed the information, including the races of those involved, into a database. The forms were then destroyed at the county’s insistence.

Researchers wanted to follow up on the police reports by interviewing suspects to obtain their accounts of their treatment by police. But police officials prevented them from doing so, despite promising at the outset to allow the interviews.

“They pulled the plug,” Alpert said. “County attorneys said, ‘We don’t want you interviewing the suspects,’ even though it was agreed to ahead of time.” As a result, the extent to which officers used force may be understated because researchers were forced to rely solely on written police accounts, Alpert said.

Dennis Kenney, a former research director at the Police Executive Research Forum and a co-author of the study, said: “The sense we had was that there was concern about us [through interviews] reawakening issues with citizens who already had resolved things . . . frankly, that some of the ones who had decided not to sue [police] might change their minds.” Prince George’s officials did not forbid researchers from studying data already gathered, so they moved ahead with the analysis.

Alpert said he asked county police to participate in the study partly because Farrell was a member of the police forum’s board and because of the chief’s previous career with the Miami-Dade Police Department. The Miami agency also agreed to participate in the study and had worked with Alpert in the past.

National Institute of Justice officials declined to comment on the study, saying they were still reviewing the results and had not decided when — or if — it would be released to the public.

Craig Whitlock and David S. Fallis