Whereas racism is thought to be a major cause of police brutality directed at African Americans and other ethnic groups, it is far from the only one. Similar prejudices are thought to have played a role in police brutality committed against other historically oppressed or marginalized groups.
In the estimation of most experts, a key factor explaining the predominance of African Americans among victims of police brutality is antiblack racism among members of mostly white police departments.
Notwithstanding the variety among groups that have been subjected to police brutality in the United States, the great majority of victims have been African American. Many local law-enforcement agencies launched covert operations of questionable legality designed to surveil and infiltrate mosques and other Muslim American organizations in an effort to uncover presumed terrorists, a practice that went unchecked for at least a decade.
And in the aftermath of the 2001 September 11 attacks, Muslim Americans began to voice complaints about police brutality, including harassment and racial profiling. Regular harassment of homosexuals and transgender persons by police in New York City culminated in 1969 in the Stonewall riots, which were triggered by a police raid on a gay bar the protests marked the beginning of a new era of militancy in the international gay rights movement. servicemen during the so-called Zoot Suit Riots, reflecting the department’s history of hostility toward Hispanics (Latinos). In 1943 officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were complicit in attacks on Mexican Americans by U.S.
In the 1920s many urban police departments, especially in large cities such as New York and Chicago, used extralegal tactics against members of Italian-immigrant communities in efforts to crack down on organized crime. At about the same time, Jewish and other immigrants from southern and eastern Europe also complained of police brutality against their communities. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, poor and working-class whites expressed frustration over discriminatory policing in northern cities. Bill Hudson/AP Images African Americans and police brutalityĪmericans of all races, ethnicities, ages, classes, and genders have been subjected to police brutality.