VERBATIM
Rodney King. Abner Louima. Amadou Diallo. Those names evoke the public outrage over police brutality in the 1990s. But Marilynn S. Johnson, an associate professor of history at Boston College, argues that cycles of brutality and reform have existed for more than 150 years in New York City, with far-reaching consequences for today's notions of what constitutes proper and effective law enforcement. "New York's experience with police brutality dates back to the founding of the force," she writes, "and has taken many different forms." Ms. Johnson's new book, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City, is published by Beacon Press.
Q. Cycles of police brutality and reform extend back to 19th-century New York City and repeat themselves despite high-profile reports and blue-ribbon commissions. Did you expect to find that pattern?
A. One of the things that became clear to me pretty early on was that outbreaks of public concern about brutality were usually tied to corruption, or at least allowed [brutality] to become a public issue. If police were being corrupt as well as brutal, then brutality could be condemned. If they were just being overzealous in doing their jobs, people would look the other way ... The question for me was trying to figure out whether this was a cycle that would repeat itself over and over endlessly, or whether there were ... moments where real breakthroughs occurred that would serve as a template for successful policing efforts in the future.
Q. The September 11 attacks increased public willingness to tolerate abuses in the name of public safety. Is the pendulum on brutality still swinging back in that direction?
A. Yes, unless we can get at some of the fundamental issues involved. One of my points in writing the book was to understand some of the long-term negative implications that police brutality has for good policing, and to try and challenge the idea that tough, aggressive, often "over the line" policing, in terms of civil rights and liberties, is the only thing that protects us in times of high crime or terrorism or threats to public safety.
Q. What police work is most likely to degenerate into abuse or brutality today?
A. If you look at all the reforms that have been successful, areas like the "third degree," crowd-control tactics, or certain uses of deadly force, the police and public have realized that these tactics are counterproductive. In ordinary forms of street brutality, it's been much harder to make that case. That's where we seem to slip back, when there's an epidemic of gang violence or drug-related violence or terrorism ... and we're right back where we were in the 1890s and the 1920s and the 1960s and all the times we've done that in the past. We don't seem to have any collective memory about the negative impact of those tactics in the long run.