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50
kicks to the unarmed King shocked the nation.19 The videotaped beating was shown
again and again on television sets across the world (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, 3). The
subsequent trial, verdict, and civil unrest further stunned the nation, including
President George H. W. Bush, who said the video was “revolting” and that he “felt
anger” and “pain.” Bush wondered how he could “explain this to my grandchildren”
and he found it “hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the
video” (12). A USA Today poll that found that “86 percent of white Americans and
100 percent of black Americans answered that the King verdict was ‘wrong’”
(Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, 12; “Agreement on King” May 1, 1992, 4A). The
Independent Commission that reviewed the Los Angeles Police Department’s
practices in the wake of the King beating called the incident a “landmark in the
recent history of law enforcement, comparable to the Scottsboro20 case in 1931 and
the Serpico21 case in 1967” (Christopher Commission Report 1991, I; Skolnick and
Fyfe 1993, xvi).
The images caught by an amateur cameraman of police brutally beating King
and the ensuing civil disorder altered the public’s perceptions of police
19 King suffered a broken leg, nine skull fractures, a concussion, a shattered eye socket and
cheekbone, and nerve damage that left his face partially paralyzed.
20 In 1931 in Scottsboro, Alabama, nine African American youths were arrested and charged, on the
basis of highly questionable evidence, with having raped two white women in a freight car. They
were hastily convicted and sentenced to death or life in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned
their convictions. The shallow charges, suspect trial, and underlying racism were a major rallying
point for civil rights activists, including the Communist Party that provided for the boys’ defense
(Goodman 1994, x-xi).
21 Police officer Frank Serpico was a whistleblower who exposed rampant corruption in the New York
Police Department in the early 1970s (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, 178). The scandal received national
headlines, and the story was turned into a bestselling book and the hit movie Serpico (1973), starring
Al Pacino.
Object Description
| Title | Policing accountability: an empirical investigation of state-sponsored police reform in Riverside, California |
| Author | Gomez, Jose Adolfo |
| Author email | jagclash@yahoo.com; jgomez@treasurer.ca.gov |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Political Science |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-01 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Restricted until 13 Oct. 2010. |
| Date published | 2010-10-13 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Renteln, Alison Dundes |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Newland, Chester A. Wong, Janelle S. |
| Abstract | The police have the ability to detain, arrest, and use force when necessary. Police accountability is thus of paramount concern to the public. Numerous examples of police misconduct, including cases of excessive force, brutality, and corruption, appear regularly via the news media. These incidents often evidence systemic organizational problems in law enforcement agencies. Scholars have observed that attempts at police reform have placed too much emphasis on individuals behaving badly, rather than on the systemic problems of the police department.; Beginning in the second half of the 1990s, federal and state Attorneys General began employing institutional reform litigation, in the form of consent decrees, to reform law enforcement agencies and enhance police accountability. The consent decrees were crafted to address systemic organizational dysfunction in local police departments. The United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) conducted most of these reform interventions. However, a notable exception was the settlement agreement between the Attorney General of the State of California and the City of Riverside, California.; There has been little research on the efficacy of these efforts to rehabilitate law enforcement agencies. This analysis is a case study of the effectiveness of the institutional reform intervention by the California Attorney General into the Riverside Police Department (RPD). The detailed examination revealed that the intervention produced constructive changes in the way the RPD conducts its business. The RPD became more professional, effective, transparent and accountable as it implemented the provisions of the consent decree, demonstrating that institutional reform litigation can result in meaningful police reform. The shadow of the law was ever present, encouraging an ethos of cooperation and exerting pressure for meaningful organizational change. The Riverside experience suggests that a facilitative oversight style produces constructive collaboration between the parties, improving the likelihood of durable police reform. Moreover, consent decrees to correct systemic police misconduct should not be the exclusive purview of the USDOJ. State Attorneys General can effectively initiate police reform and in some cases state intervention is a more appropriate alternative. |
| Keyword | institutional reform; police reform; police accountability; state attorney's general; police misconduct; organizational change; consent decrees |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Riverside |
| Geographic subject (state) | California |
| Coverage date | 1993/2008 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1664 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Gomez, Jose Adolfo |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Gomez-2358 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Gomez-2358.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 62 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 50 kicks to the unarmed King shocked the nation.19 The videotaped beating was shown again and again on television sets across the world (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, 3). The subsequent trial, verdict, and civil unrest further stunned the nation, including President George H. W. Bush, who said the video was “revolting” and that he “felt anger” and “pain.” Bush wondered how he could “explain this to my grandchildren” and he found it “hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video” (12). A USA Today poll that found that “86 percent of white Americans and 100 percent of black Americans answered that the King verdict was ‘wrong’” (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, 12; “Agreement on King” May 1, 1992, 4A). The Independent Commission that reviewed the Los Angeles Police Department’s practices in the wake of the King beating called the incident a “landmark in the recent history of law enforcement, comparable to the Scottsboro20 case in 1931 and the Serpico21 case in 1967” (Christopher Commission Report 1991, I; Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, xvi). The images caught by an amateur cameraman of police brutally beating King and the ensuing civil disorder altered the public’s perceptions of police 19 King suffered a broken leg, nine skull fractures, a concussion, a shattered eye socket and cheekbone, and nerve damage that left his face partially paralyzed. 20 In 1931 in Scottsboro, Alabama, nine African American youths were arrested and charged, on the basis of highly questionable evidence, with having raped two white women in a freight car. They were hastily convicted and sentenced to death or life in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned their convictions. The shallow charges, suspect trial, and underlying racism were a major rallying point for civil rights activists, including the Communist Party that provided for the boys’ defense (Goodman 1994, x-xi). 21 Police officer Frank Serpico was a whistleblower who exposed rampant corruption in the New York Police Department in the early 1970s (Skolnick and Fyfe 1993, 178). The scandal received national headlines, and the story was turned into a bestselling book and the hit movie Serpico (1973), starring Al Pacino. |
