What Drives a Policeman Against a Citizen: A Comparative Analysis of Police Brutality in the U.S. and Hong Kong
Winter 2020
What drives a policeman against a normal citizen? I always question myself that shouldn’t the police protect our life and property? These questions popped up in my mind after I had witnessed police brutality subjected to a young boy in Hong Kong. I remembered one day I walked on the street, I saw an unarmed young boy was asking the police “where is your conscience” and “where did you go when gangsters chasing up and beating up civilians on the street” across the street, after that, the group of police ran over and beat him up with the baton until bleeding head, the boy was finally under arrest with unlawful assembly. I was quite confused at that time because the boy was unarmed, and there was no assembly and demonstration around, so he was walking on the street like a normal person but not a rioter or protestor. During the press conference, the police force said he was being investigated for disorder in the public place and no one will be arrested because of sparing opinions and judging with polices. The sad truth is media workers were recording the whole incident and the way they libel innocents, which made people furious about the trumped-up charge. As we see, police brutality is a serious problem in civilized society, but it is a global problem as well.
Before we proceed with the discussion on why police brutality happens, let’s see the historical context of police brutality and how does it come up in the U.S first. In the 19th century, the excessive use of force was an unspoken rule in law enforcement, such as they will beat suspects up with fists to extract information. In 1928, President Hoover established the Wickersham Commission, the report revealed that the police brutality was instituted within the police department, which was endemic and nationwide in different countries and continues today. (Jessica S. Henry) Indeed, polices are authorized to use reasonable force to perform their duty, however, in recent years, many cases reveal that police power is above the law, which is uncontrolled. They deliberately use the force against innocents since there is a dominant ideology within their mind, that protestors are causing damage to the city, and they should be punished brutally to warn them that people should not try to break the law.
Now, to look at the deeper history of police brutality in the U.S, we can see the law enforcement and police brutality were targeting various races, especially African Americans. After World War 2, African Americans were given hope of freedom and democracy and started to uphold their human rights. However, white nationalists pervaded law enforcement, and because of the social hierarchy, they were claiming a superior position than others. Let’s see a case that happened in 2009, “a black man in Michigan came upon KKK materials and Confederate flags in plain view while being shown a home for sale – the home of a police officer on the force for more than 20 years who shot and killed a black man without consequence.”(Rashad Robinson) White supremacists had a strong connection to law enforcement, and they had a way to influence police departments.
The foregoing are some individual cases, now let’s turn to a massive riot that related to police brutality in the U.S. The sparking point of 1967 Detroit Riots was some white police officers arrested 85 black patrons from the unlicensed bar, black people started gathering. Looting began on the 12th street. After that, the National Guard and police officers fought to control the rioters. 43 people were killed in total. (history.com editor) As a result, civilians accused that police officers shot at black suspects indiscriminately. When we look deeply, white rioters were still enforcing segregation even it was canceled in the 60s. Once they found that their new neighborhood was black, they would destroy their house, additionally, the large-scale arrests happened on the 12th street, which made people unsatisfied.
After the discussion of police brutality in the U.S, let’s draw back to police brutality in Hong Kong. The recent Anti-government protests have rocked Hong Kong for a few months and brought out the awareness of police brutality since British Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s protests started against the extradition bill to mainland China, even the bill was withdrawn but the demonstrations were still ongoing, and both police and activists have become frequent and violent. Now, the consideration of the movement shifted from full withdrawal of the extradition bill to an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality, because the police force was questioned about the manner in handling the protests, such as the violence that happened in the young boy who we mentioned before, that they beat up people no matter protestors or innocents, in other words, they were targeting to the people who were non-cooperative with the cops even they didn’t break the law. During the movement, they also used some strategies to libel protestors. For instance, planting fake evidence on protestors, and putting sharp bamboo into protester’s backpack, which was captured by TV news, to charge them with using the offensive weapon.
Police brutality could also bring up a huge impact on the freedom of the press as well. The Hong Kong Journalists Association issued the statements a couple of times for criticizing the police force treating media staff unfriendly and blocking them to perform duties. During a protest, news report editor Chan was asking identity card and press card by the undercover officers, “I will arrest you if you don’t cooperate,” an officer said. After that, the officer displayed his ID and press card in front of a live stream camera for 40 seconds, which Chan told him not to do so since it was a violation of personal data law and a privacy breach. (Kris Cheng) Although the police force did not use violence against protestors and journalists in some cases, I would define a violation of professional ethics could be police brutality, which should be condemned.
By and large, police brutality is a nationwide problem no matter in the U.S or Hong Kong. In both cases, the police basically used excessive force against an individual or a certain group of people, including shooting, beating up, and treating them impolitely. Most importantly, the police officers will use violence toward rioters and innocents indiscriminately. Let’s see deeply in the following section, what causes police brutality in the U.S and Hong Kong?
To illustrate the deeper story of why the police force keeps using excessive force against black people and innocents regardless of public opinion and strong condemnation in the U.S, we should find out the psychology between police officers and the relation of subordinate, which forms the subculture of policing. The cause of police brutality can be also hinged on the psychology between police officers and the relation of subordinate, which forms the subculture of policing. Historically, misconduct was common and as part of subculture inside the police department, they had a clear class system that the rookies should obey with senior’s commands otherwise they will face bully, criticism, and job loss. This encouraged police officers should stand with their colleagues, and do not report any inappropriate behavior, including police brutality. A Department of Justice study showed us that “a whopping 84 percent of police officers report that they’ve seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.”(Bonnie Kristian)
Besides psychology factors, if we look deeper into history in America, another main issue was due to racial problems. According to the social hierarchy, white supremacy overrode in this country, therefore, gaining greater access to the law enforcement gave out power for them to oppress the minority groups. Since African American was inferior in the social hierarchy, these cops treated all of them as criminals as urban crime rate raised and kept reinforcing the perception among white police. The Author, Rothstein, Richard, mentioned that “In 2014, police killed Michael Brown, a young African American man in Ferguson, …, it turns out that economic zoning- with a barely disguised racial overlay- played an important role.”(myreader P.106) Author Richard suggested that racial zoning, no matter living zoning or economic zoning, was a key factor to encourage racism and discrimination. He discovered that the police and the government used systematic violence to abuse African American, but if we look deeper, we see the truth behind racial zoning was the southern white ruling class, and because they used to treat African American as slaves, therefore, the racial abuse and the concept was a mindset for a long term, including damaged new African American neighborhood’s house, used excessive force toward black. Here the author, Jeff Yang, suggested that “Louisiana, resident Alton Sterling, the next police shooting of a black man burst onto America's radar. Philando Castile had been gunned down in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, during a traffic stop.”(Jeff Yang) Until today, the black community was easily be targeted by the police, and the police cops overreacted after Philando Castile said he had a gun on his car, then he was gunned by 7 shots, the police brutality therefore caused black lives matter in the U.S.
Let’s jump back to the causes of police brutality in Hong Kong. The reason behind can also rely on psychological factors. Accordingly, the Freudian theory of the psyche by Sigmund Freud, he suggests that there are three parts of the mind, the “id”, “superego”, and “ego”, which are the drive that operates on the pleasure principle, the force of social and moral norms, and the balance of needs between the “id” and “superego”.(SCMP.com) The outside information is vitally important to the “id” because it could avoid the state of tension. However, Hong Kong riot police officers are covered up in heavy gear and masks usually, lack of outside information might encourage blind pursuit of satisfaction. Since they neglect the outside world and seek their own joy, which sounds like playing a real-life video game, so it enhances the suppression of the demonstrators.
Apart from psychological factors, the main reason that causing police brutality in Hong Kong is the political issue and the dominant ideology in their mind. First and foremost, police are being a political tool to eliminate the dissident. The government has thought of the protestors to be an attack on the rule of the law, and as an “undisguised challenge”. Many police officers aimed at the student protesters and questioned the manner of demonstration. I had watched a documentary, it basically talked about why police in Hong Kong thought like this. Under the ruling of China, fighting for democracy is trivial, and upholding the rule of law is a top priority because it can bring up our economic growth. Massive rallies were legitimate means of political expression but blocking roads and damaging society are not acceptable. (Alex Lo) The escalation of violence on both protestors and police pushed everyone under pressure and emotion. Even naysayers, inside the police force, disagreed with the manner in handling the movement, they were not allowed to speak out. There was also another ideology that they were using minimum force against protestors, and those protestors should be gunned down if this happened in a foreign country. The mindset of using minimum force largely encouraged them that they could keep using more force against protestors.
The foregoing are causes of police brutality that happened in the U.S and Hong Kong, the following section will discuss ethical principles that can help us solve the problem. The police force should have been our guardian, friend of justice, and under the government, that should serve the public and listen to people’s opinions. The guardian should obey the law, rather than become it, which means not using excessive force, and selective enforcement to special target. Since information and communication technology is highly developed today, we can click on YouTube and see everything around the world, TV news and journalists can report incident instantly as well, so public media plays an indispensable role on supervising law enforcement. The editor mentioned that “a police officer shot and killed a man during a traffic stop …The victim was running away when the officer drew his gun and fired eight shots at the man's back.”(theglobeandmail.com) First, the police officer lied that a man grabbed his taser because he would be charged with murder if told the truth. unfortunately, the incident was posted online. Therefore, using unnecessarily violent and brutal gains nothing benefits to police themselves.
Besides obeying the rule of law, they should also consider social justice to meet the public interest. Day by day, people tend to be more independent, which means being individuals in society. However, living in an equal chance of society and balancing each individual’s interests is crucial for social justice. Even individuals are separated, all life is in fact connected. King mentioned one sentence that is useful “All life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich … Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” This moral lesson suggests the solidarity of the whole society, if we treat better to others, they will treat us better as well. The same result in police brutality, if police officers treat badly to protestors and innocents, they will fight back against injustice, such as someone who may record the incident and upload it to the internet. Let’s talk about an example of how a sense of solidarity is going to work. Since October 2019, protests have been occurring in Bolivian, and police guards stood with anti-government protesters, one officer in the city of Santa Cruz said “We do not want to be indifferent. The police are joining their people”(Morgan Phillips) Because of a sense of solidarity, they did not want to be treated differently by others, treated equally helped them to realize the value(ethics) of each other, thereby gathered together to fight for same social justice.
If a police officer followed by those ethical principles, they might realize that they were doing wrong and were standing with protesters. Let’s take a look at the example of the Ukrainian Revolution, in 2014, a series of violence took place in the capital, Kiev, involving protesters and riot police. Some police officers defected to the opposition in their protest encampment, Col. Vasyl Krykovskiy, the head of police in the district of Lviv said that “We wear this uniform, and in this uniform I made a vow to be a servant of the Ukrainian people.”(nbcnews.com) This example shed light on solidarity with protestors because they were altogether no matter protesters or police, and being together implied that they were actually connected, such as the relationship between servant and master. Krykovsky also mentioned he decided to defect if police in Kiev had fired on protesters. This was also a sense of social justice to meet public interest because he did not want to kill and fight against each other that everyone should have been love and sympathy. Now, they might safeguard the people instead of the government, and their actions had been reported to the news in order to urge more officers to follow the example. Police in opposite might affix a sign on the station to spread the information why they were doing this. If we took these universal values and ethical principles to apply in the U.S and Hong Kong, it could be a way to solve the problem.
We mentioned so many cases about police brutality but if you have not witnessed it, this is the reason why it is worth being concerned. A new study found that police killings are now a leading cause of death for young men in the U.S. Using statistics showed that it was one of the six main causes of death for men between 25 to 29 in all racial groups. (P.R. Lockhart) This data revealed that police violence already became a public health issue. When we think of causes of death, could be suicide, cancer, etc, there are a bunch of number and data to show the chart, but we don’t have such data for police violence, to raise awareness of the issue, we need more people to concern and do research about the problem. Since it is very common in everywhere, people face about one-in-2000of being killed by police, black people will get a higher rate, the clear evidence showed that “when an unarmed African American man is killed in a state, there is an increase in symptoms of depression among African Americans in that state following the shooting.”(P.R. Lockhart), so everyone could be involved, including ourselves, family, friends, races, or that could be happened when we got pulled over.
All in all, police brutality brings up a huge impact on the social system, including the racial and justice system, that occurs all the points throughout history and all over the world. In my opinion, police officers should get better training with the situation that a suspect did not cooperate with them and should have a better psychological quality to handle protests, by not using excessive force under pressure. I truly believe that police, protesters and us will one day know each other and end the fighting.
Works Cited
Bonnie Kristian, “7 Reasons Police Brutality Is Not Going Away”, businessinsider.com, July 2, 2014, 4:33AM
Jessica S. Henry, “Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues (Vol. 2: Criminal Justice.) page 586, ABC-Clio
South China Morning Post, “What drives Hong Kong police brutality against protesters? Freud may have the answer”, scmp.com, 30 November, 2019.
Kris Cheng, “Video: Reporter stages protest at Hong Kong police press conference over treatment of journalists”, hongkongfp.com, 28 October, 2019.
Kris Cheng, “Privacy chief says grounds for complaint after cop shows reporter’s Hong Kong ID card to cameras”, hongkongfp.com, 27 December,2019.
Jeff Yang, “Will Asian-Americans get behind Black Lives Matter?”, cnn.com.
Leonard Moore, “Police brutality in the United States”, britannica.com
Rashad Robinson, “We can't trust police to protect us from racist violence. They contribute to it”, theguardian.com, Wed 21 Aug 2019
bbc.com, “The Hong Kong protests explained in 100 and 500 words”, 28 November 2019.
Editors, “1967 Detroit Riots”, history.com, JUN 10, 2019
Alex Lo, “Why most Hong Kong people are both blue and yellow in the current dispute”, scmp.com, 1 Nov, 2014
Editors, “How to ensure police obey the law, rather than become it”, theglobeandmail.com, May 15, 2018
Morgan Phillips, “Police join protesters, abandon their posts outside Bolivia's presidential palace”, foxnews.com, November 9.
“Nbcnews.com”, “Dozens of Ukrainian Police Defect, Vow to Protect Protesters”, Feb 21, 2014
“P.R. Lockhart”, “Why police violence needs to be treated as a public health issue”, vox.com, Aug 14,2019.