Police brutality

Lore & Background

The first modern police force is widely regarded as the Metropolitan Police Service in London, established in 1829, though some scholars argue early forms of policing began in the 1500s on Caribbean plantation colonies as slave patrols. Early records suggest labor strikes were the first large-scale incidents of police brutality in the United States, including the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Pullman Strike of 1894, the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, the Ludlow massacre of 1914, the Great Steel Strike of 1919, and the Hanapepe massacre of 1924.

The term 'police brutality' was first used in Britain in September 1848 by The Puppet-Show magazine, which wrote: 'Scarcely a week passes without their committing some offence which disgusts everybody but the magistrates... police brutality is becoming one of our most "venerated institutions!"' The first use in the American press was in 1872 when the Chicago Tribune reported the beating of a civilian under arrest. Hubert G. Locke described the term as covering practices from calling a citizen by their first name to death by a policeman's bullet, with the average citizen thinking of the wanton vicious beating of a person in custody.

Sometimes riots, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, are a reaction to police brutality. The 1991 beating of Rodney King, an African-American man who was stopped for speeding and resisted arrest, resulted in permanent brain damage, skull fractures, broken teeth, and broken bones after being severely beaten by four white officers. This incident was recorded as one of the worst police brutality cases and spread internationally.