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US ER Doctors Reveal They Know Police Use Excessive Force

By David Packman

A new report in the January 2009 edition of the Emergency Medicine Journal may contain evidence that the epidemic of police brutality in the US is very real. That report reveals that 99.8% of US Emergency Physicians believe that the police use excessive force when detaining suspects.

How are they so sure of this? The report goes on to say that 97.8% of those doctors surveyed have personally treated people that they suspect have been subjected to excessive force and nearly two-thirds of those have treated two or more victims of excessive force.

The problem, revealed in the report, is that doctors don't know what to do with that information, even though nearly half wish they did have procedures in place to report incidents where they suspect excessive force had been used by the police. This only adds to the problem as it allows those cases of misconduct to go unnoticed and even when reported by the victim, it means that doctors aren't interviewed as a means to corroborate reports of brutality.

The survey, performed primarily by Dr. Jared Strote of the University of Washington in Seattle, goes on to state that about 71% of physicians have not reported cases where they suspected excessive force and the reason for that is that nearly 97% of departments don't have any procedures in place to report such cases.

The most common forms of excessive force reported were blunt trauma caused by closed fist and foot strikes, followed by overly tightened handcuffs which have been known to cause permanent neurological damage.

However, one point to keep in mind with this report is that it only offers a glimpse of the problems with excessive force used by police officers. It does not take into account that many victims of police violence may never make it to an emergency room, instead many are taken straight to jail and some of those may never receive any medical treatment for their injuries at all.

As said before, police brutality in the US is a systemic problem and not just an issue of a few bad apples. Unfortunately the system works against victims of police misconduct and offers few chances to help those who could testify on their behalf and help stop this problem.

With reports like this, though, that finally offer a glimpse into the extent of the problem when law enforcement agencies refuse to gather any real statistics on cases of abuse, we might have some hope to convince the public that this is a real problem and that it can affect anyone, innocent and guilty alike, and thus must be addressed.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on December 24, 2008 (boomark / email).