Police Brutality

Abstract

"It is as much the duty of Government to render prompt justice against itself in favor of its citizens as it is to administer the same between private individuals." Abraham Lincoln. In early August 1997, reports surfaced of a police brutality scandal in New York City. Newspapers across the country reported that Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant to the United States, was arrested on August 9, 1997, and brought to the stationhouse of the 70th Precinct where New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers took Louima into the bathroom, beat him severely, and sodomized him with the handle of a plunger. Though a recent study by Amnesty International had reported an alarming pattern of excessive force by NYPD officers, local authorities predictably refused to recognize that the Louima incident might represent something more than an isolated occurrence.