Organizing at the Intersections: A Roundtable Discussion of Police Brutality Through the Lens of Race, Class, and Sexual Identities (From Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City, P 251-269, 2001, Andrea McArdle and Tanya Erzen, eds. -- See NCJ-188321)

• NCJ Number: 188332
• Author(s): Dayo F. Gore; Tamara Jones; Joo-Hyun Kang
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 19 pages
• Sale Source: New York University Press
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper highlights a roundtable discussion about police brutality and its intersections with issues of race, class, sexuality, and gender.

Abstract

The three participants are members of the Audre Lorde Project (ALP), which is the Nation's only center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, and transgender people of color. In 1997, ALP added a Working Group on Police Violence to its organizing initiatives in response to increasing reports of police violence against such people of color in New York City. The roundtable reported in this paper consists of members of this Working Group on Police Violence (Dayo Gore and Tamara Jones) and ALP's executive director (Joo-Hyun Kang). The roundtable first defines "police brutality" as "any form of abuse of power committed by police officers," which encompasses not only physical attacks and murder by police, but also the other ways in which the police fail to serve the people they are charged with protecting. Such abuse of power includes failure to properly investigate reported crimes; verbal harassment and verbal attacks; and illegal stops, searches, and seizures that are often a reflection of police racist assumptions and stereotyping. The roundtable discussion notes that the conditioned devaluing of certain groups of people by police, based on race, sexual orientation, gender, and class influences the way they treat such people in their policing duties. The roundtable further advises that when particularly conservative governments send out strong messages about conservative "values," while cutting back on funding for programs that build competent public infrastructures to serve marginalized and poor communities, then acts of police brutality increase. Under the attitudes and actions of such governments, marginal groups tend to be devalued and ignored as irrelevant and impediments to the goals of those in power. Police believe that under such governments their abusive actions against such groups will go unpunished. 10 notes