The harmful effects of policing—From the neighborhood to the hospital

Abstract

From historical slave patrols and the enforcement of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws to the more recent War on Drugs and “stop and frisk,” police violence is one of the oldest forms of structural racism in the US. Policing tactics have relied heavily on the use of force to subjugate Black and Hispanic and Latinx communities and uphold white supremacy by enforcing race, class, and other visible and invisible boundaries. To maintain these boundaries, police officers are trained to use strategies that include violence and harm, forcing their subjects to acquiesce. While not a new phenomenon, police violence among racial and ethnic minority groups has been catapulted to a subject of considerable attention within the national public discourse, capturing the interest of individuals, communities, and policy makers across the US over the past year. Following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, there has been a sustained public outcry against police training and tactics, brutality, and the allocation of police funding in cities across the US.

However, structural racism is embedded in policing like other US systems. Thus, instances of police brutality and violence toward Black and Hispanic and Latinx youth are not isolated instances at all. In the year since George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, at least 229 more Black people have lost their lives at the hands of police. Indeed, the system of policing in the US must be understood as a chronic and continuous injury to the body, mind, soul, and overall well-being of Black and Hispanica and Latinx bodies. Policing has clear associations with health and well-being, for even the youngest members of society. And though, in the past year, many health care professionals have proclaimed “Black Lives Matter,” we have been reticent to discuss the role of policing in health and health care.