Law Commons^™

Fair Notice, The Rule Of Law, And Reforming Qualified Immunity, Nathan S. Chapman

Scholarly Works

After many well-publicized cases of police wrongdoing, a growing number of courts, scholars, and politicians have demanded the abolition of qualified immunity. The doctrine requires courts to dismiss damages actions against officials for violating the plaintiff’s constitutional rights unless a reasonable officer would have known that the right was “clearly established.” Scholars argue that the doctrine impedes deterrence of rights violations and forecloses compensation and vindication for victims.

One line of attack has relied on empirical evidence to challenge what scholars take to be the main justification for qualified immunity, that it prevents the threat of constitutional liability from over-deterring …

Suspicionless Policing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

The tragic death of Elijah McClain—a twenty-three-year-old, slightly built, unarmed African American male who was walking home along a sidewalk when he was accosted by three Aurora, Colorado police officers—epitomizes the problems with policing that have become a prominent topic of national conversation. Embedded within far too many police organizations is a culture that promotes aggressive investigative behaviors and a disregard for individual liberties. Incentivized by a Supreme Court that has, over the course of several decades, empowered the police with expansive powers, law enforcement organizations have often tested—and crossed—the constitutional limits of their investigative authorities. And too often it …

Assessing The Impact Of Police Body Camera Evidence On The Litigation Of Excessive Force Cases, Mitch Zamoff

Georgia Law Review

In the wake of several hotly debated and widely publicized shootings of civilians by police officers, calls for the increased use of body-worn cameras (bodycams) by law enforcement officers have intensified. As police departments across the country expand their use of this emergent technology, courts will increasingly be presented with video evidence from bodycams when making determinations in cases alleging the excessive use of force by the police. This Article tests the hypotheses that bodycam evidence will be dispositive in most excessive force cases and that such evidence will positively impact the way those cases are litigated and decided. In …

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings 2016, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

In this Article, Professor Wilkes updates his research on police tasering by surveying the fatal taserings by police officers that occurred in 2016.

Missing Police Body Camera Videos: Remedies, Evidentiary Fairness, And Automatic Activation, Mary D. Fan

Georgia Law Review

A movement toward police regulation by recording is
sweeping the nation. Responding to calls for
accountability, transparency and better evidence,
departments have rapidly adopted body cameras.
Recording policies require the police to record more law
enforcement encounters than ever before. But what
happens if officers do not record? This is an important,
growing area of controversy. Based on the collection
and coding of police department body camera policies,
this Article reveals widespread detection and
enforcement gaps regarding failures to record as
required. More than half of the major-city departments
in the sample have no provisions specifying
consequences for not recording …

Different Lyrics, Same Song: Watts, Ferguson, And The Stagnating Effect Of The Politics Of Law And Order, Lonnie T. Brown

Scholarly Works

This Article critically examines the Watts riots and their aftermath in comparison to the Ferguson situation, and demonstrates how little progress America has made in a span of fifty years in the area of race relations. More importantly, the Article points to the politics of “law and order” as the primary culprit for this static social condition.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings, Part 2, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

This article updates the author's previous article on the statistics on deaths resulting from police taserings.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

There is, newfound interest in obtaining accurate information about police use of force in this country. This means, among other things, that we need reliable statistics about police violence. We cannot address the problem of unlawful police violence unless we possess adequate statistical information about all police violence, lawful as well as unlawful.

This article explores the violence of police tasering and the statistics of this practice.

Police Culture In The Twenty-First Century: A Critique Of The President's Task Force's Final Report, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

In response to a series of events involving police-citizen encounters, including those in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, that have strained relations between law enforcement and the communities (primarily minority) that they serve, President Barack Obama established a task force charged with developing a set of recommendations designed to improve police practices and enhance public trust. Headed by Charles Ramsey, Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, and Laurie Robinson, former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, and currently a Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society at George Mason University, the eleven-member …

Good Cop -- Bad Cop: Police Violence And The Child’S Mind, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Police violence against citizens lately has gripped the nation’s attention because of recent cases in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; and elsewhere. Children in those communities and nationwide have been directly and indirectly exposed to these well-publicized incidences of police killings and the aftermath of those killings.

Exposure to police violence may cause children physical, cognitive, emotional, and social trauma. Moreover, the exposure may negatively influence children’s mindsets regarding the criminal justice system and police.

Undoubtedly, these events of late are not the first and only instances in which children have been exposed to physically …