RT Article
T1 Am I my brother’s keeper? Can duty to intervene policies save lives and reduce the need for special prosecutors in officer-involved homicide cases?
JF Criminal justice studies
VO 34
IS 3
SP 306
OP 351
A1 Jones-Brown, Delores
A1 Dawson, Akiv
A1 Blount-Hill, Kwan Lamar
A1 McIntosh Fuller, Kenethia
A1 Oder, Paul
A1 Fradella, Henry F.
A2 Dawson, Akiv
A2 Blount-Hill, Kwan Lamar
A2 McIntosh Fuller, Kenethia
A2 Oder, Paul
A2 Fradella, Henry F.
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1770794999
AB Duty to intervene (DTI) policies impose an obligation on peer officers to prevent or terminate unreasonable force occurring in their presence. But policing suffers from an organizational culture that may thwart this stated duty. By examining the facts related to the deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and George Floyd in Minneapolis against existing DTI policies and the reasonableness requirement articulated in Graham v. Connor, we conclude that their deaths should have been prevented by officer intervention. In an empirical analysis of the standard operating procedures of the police departments for the 30 largest U.S. cities, we found that less than half had DTI policies and that the content of the existing policies varied significantly. This variation may have contributed to our finding that departments with DTI policies did not report fewer officer-involved deaths (OIDs) than departments without such policies. However, nearly half of the departments with DTI policies did report fewer multi-officer OIDs than single-officer OIDs. Compared to departments without DTI policies, more OIDs in departments with DTI policies resulted in formal charges. We recommend mandating the adoption of a uniform DTI policy as a mechanism for enhanced police accountability in officer-involved killings.
K1 Race and policing
K1 officer-involved homicides
K1 Police use of force
K1 Duty to intervene
DO 10.1080/1478601X.2021.1964694