Introduction
The highly publicized incidences of police misconduct have been a long issue of controversy for an extended period. The police misconducts have had adverse effects on the victims as who in many circumstances get gunned down under the police brutality cases. Over the years, many people have lost their lives in the incidences of police brutality. The controversy has always linked the incidences of police brutality to racial prejudice as it emerges that the majority of the cases of police assault and brutality has been targeting the minority groups. Many claims have been raised over the continued arrests of the blacks, with police having a preformed opinion that they are criminals even before an investigation is done to prove the allegations. Many people, especially the minority groups have continued to suffer in the hands of the police who kill even unarmed individuals. The cases of police brutality have led to various incidents including the McKinney pool party incident and the Rodney King beating.
Police Misconduct and McKinney Incident
The incident at McKinney involved the police racial bias against the blacks and the labeling of the minority groups as being criminals. It occurred when a group of teenage girls went to the community swimming pool in McKinney, Texas to have a pool party. After they had arrived at the pool, the nearby white residents began to harass them, and a fight broke up between them. Another resident called the police who then came and begun to arrest the black swimmers and left the whites. An officer handcuffed a 15-year-old black girl, throwing her to the ground and then pinning her with his knees. When the friends to the girl approached the police to leave the girl, he drew out his gun and threatened them.
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The McKinney incident focuses on police misconduct and the excessive use of force towards the members of the public. The incident also shows the long struggle of the blacks with the police brutality and racial bias against the members of the minority group who have always fallen victims of being perceived as criminals. The misconduct by the police officers leading to the incident can be described by an examination of the police culture and the relationship between the police and their environment ( Kane, 2012). The process of socialization usually start at the police academy and moves on until one gets into the field. When there is a subculture where the public views the police as violent and hostile, then the police are expected to show mutual support and secrecy. The relationship between the police and the community, especially the blacks have been very poor ever since the historical times.
Because the society continues to view the police as violent and the continued loss of trust with the community, there has been continued social isolation of the police from the members of the community. This leads to a closed police society where their interaction with the members of the community is limited. It leads to a defensive culture within the police as they seek to retaliate from their social isolation with the community members. The more the police officers become defensive in their isolation, the more entrenchment of us-verse-them relationship ( Kane , 2012). The minority groups, usually the blacks, have always formed a perception that police target the people of color. There has never been a good relationship between the two, and this has created a we-versus relationship. The blacks have always viewed the police as an enemy and not as someone who is there to provide protection. This perception has led the police to form a defense against such social isolation thus leading to the use of force from the police officers towards the blacks.
Due to the loss of public trust and increasing social isolation, the police officers get under pressure to deal with such situations leading to job stress and affecting their overall socialization process. Because police are human beings, they need love and socialization from the members of the community. While the scrutiny over the police ethical issues continues to rise, the pressure piles up on them to address these issues. All this leads to job stress and strained relationships with the members of the society. The social ecology of the police is that they are already dealing with an environment that isolates them socially, yet they have to survive in that environment ( Donner, Maskaly & Fridell, 2016 ). Ultimately, one way that the police officers cope with their organization environment by taking a lay-low attitude to adapt to the environment.
The police subculture plays a vital role in the explanation of police behavior and attitude. The traditional characterization of the police culture has focused on the description of the shared values, attitudes and norms that have been created within the organization. There is an existence of different attitudinal subgroups of the police officers who may represent the negative attitude of the culture. This group has led to authoritarian and aggressive behavior, and this is reflected in their relationship with the members of the public ( Donner, Maskaly & Fridell, 2016 ). The strained relationship with the members of the community and a view of the police officers creates a them-versus we perspectives. Because there is a perspective from the members of the society concerning the socialization with the police, it has emerged that the majority of the police officers act in defense.
The incident at McKinney involves the strained relationship between the police and the blacks and the view that the police officers wrongly target the people of color as compared to the white. Because of this perception, the police have always experienced social isolation from the minority group thus leading to the kind of prejudice in a we-versus-them perspective. Such kind of misconduct is therefore as a result of the police culture and the existence of social isolation by the public members. Throughout the history of the United States, the relationship between the minority and the police has never been a good one, and this has led to the conflict between the two ( Weitzer , 2014). Whether the view of police racial prejudice against the blacks is a perception or a reality, there is sufficient evidence to show that that strained relationship has always led to the rising cases of the police brutality against them.
Social Learning and Police Culture in Rodney King Beating .
While explaining the conduct of the police has been problematic over the last few years, recent studies link police deviant to the social learning theory which posits that peer associations, reinforcements, and attitude is responsible for the misconducts. The social learning theory attempts to explain the concept of human aggression and violence to be as a result of the direct observation and imitation of behavior from another person ( Maskaly & Donner, 2015 ). Aggression can be learned directly through an operant conditioning which involves both the positive and the negative reinforcements. The primary cognitive factors under aggression behavior include attention, retention, motivation, and self-efficacy. In motivation, an individual engages in a positive behavior with an expectation of receiving a positive reinforcement while self-efficacy is concerned with the behavior to attain a specific goal.
The story of Rodney King beating involved an incident where police officers terribly beat an African American man. King was ordered by the police out of his car and beaten for over 15 minutes as other cops watched. The man sustained serious injuries in the hands of the police officers leading to riots in Los Angeles. This act of aggression and violent behavior of the police officers can be explained using social learning theory. The act of beating can be explained from the view that the specific police officers had observed such violent acts from the social group and learned from it. Excessive use of force by the police is not a new thing, but something that has been there for several years. These police officers participating in the beating must have had motivation and self-efficacy as a cognitive factor in their aggressive behavior.
Violent behavior in police culture occurs when an officer expects to receive a motivation, which is a positive reinforcement as a result of the violent act. This motivation acts as the driving factor to show a violent behavior that has been learned through social interaction ( Maskaly & Donner, 2015 ). Similarly, the police engage in such violent behavior when they believe that they will attain a specific goal. An act of violence must be rewarding to the violent person. An explanation of the violent behavior of police officers using social learning theory asserts that behaviors are learned from role models and then imitated with an expectation of attaining a specific goal and receiving positive reinforcement. Such can be used to explain the misconduct of the police in Rodney King beating that led to riots in Los Angeles. The police culture is based on the need to dwell within the requirements of the organizational goals and whenever a leader or a role model demonstrates aggression, it is more likely that the police officers will be violent.
References
Kane, R. J. (2012). The social ecology of police misconduct. Criminology , 40 (4), 867-896.
Donner, C., Maskaly, J., & Fridell, L. (2016). Social bonds and police misconduct: An examination of social control theory and its relationship to workplace deviance among police supervisors. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management , 39 (2), 416-431.
Weitzer, R. (2014). Police race relations. In The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing (p. 339). Oxford Handbooks in Criminolog.
Maskaly, J., & Donner, C. M. (2015). A theoretical integration of social learning theory with terror management theory: Towards an explanation of police shootings of unarmed suspects. American Journal of Criminal Justice , 40 (2), 205-224.
