Abstract
The emergence of modern policing in the United States has sought to improve police efficiency and effectiveness, increase public confidence in the police, and reduce misconduct such as police brutality, or the use of unreasonable, unnecessary, and/or excessive physical force during police-citizen interactions. However, police brutality is inherently antithetical to community-oriented policing efforts based on improving police-citizen relationships and establishing community partnerships while also combatting crime. Instead, repeated allegations of brutality can produce community-level animus and undermine the efforts of the police; this can occur through a decrease in the overall perceived legitimacy of the police and spur reduced citizen cooperation and compliance. Further, recorded high-profile accounts of alleged police brutality are now easily accessible and rapidly circulated and have generated a maelstrom of public outrage surrounding the use of force by police; consequently, communities with historically fractious relationships with the police, such as racial minorities residing in economically disadvantaged areas, may be especially impacted by the deleterious effects of police brutality. Taken together, these issues underscore the need to elucidate the nuances of police brutality and its associated controversies.