Criminology Explains Police Violence by Philip Matthew Stinson Sr

Author:Philip Matthew Stinson Sr [Stinson, Philip Matthew Sr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9780520300095
Google: IQi9DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2020-01-21T03:32:36+00:00

Denial of Responsibility

Blame is deflected through denial of responsibility as a technique of neutralization. Sykes and Matza explained that delinquent youth often view their own behavior as the result of forces outside of their own control, as if they were a “billiard ball” being helplessly propelled into new situations.78 This technique of neutralization helps to understand the context of police violence within the police subculture, in which “defiant citizens” are viewed “as provocateurs in need of police control.”79 Further, “When police use violence or choose to use the force of law illegally against citizens, they are merely responding to the provocation of citizens—situations and events that they have little or no control over and for which they are not responsible regardless of their own contributions to the situation or their departure from social expectations.”80

Abusive police officers often rationalize the illegal use of excessive force as the natural consequence of someone else’s bad acts. I first witnessed this type of police behavior when I was a rookie police officer many years ago. One night on patrol I encountered several teenagers roughhousing on the lawn of a downtown funeral home. It was well after midnight, and the lawn was basking in the bright floodlights that illuminated the outside of the funeral home. I was soon joined by two other officers, including a police sergeant. While we were talking to the teenagers, I was startled when—without any apparent provocation at all—the police sergeant punched one of the boys in the face, knocking him to the ground. The sergeant then directed me to handcuff the teen and arrest him for assault. The sergeant later said he had no choice but to punch the boy in the face; he said he had been provoked when he noticed that the teenager’s fist was clenched as he stood talking to us calmly with his hands at his sides. Of course, the teenager never clenched his fist and he posed no threat to the police officers there. But as the sergeant explained to me later that night, “The good guys always win.”

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