Let’s be honest: police accountability has been a nagging issue in the United States, smoldering for decades and sometimes boiling into public outcry. You would think that in a nation so committed to justice, it would be easy to hold officers accountable for bad acts. But anyone who’s attempted to track a civil rights case against the police knows it’s not easy—it’s more like running through a maze of dead ends, legal snares, and barriers meant to shield the powerful.
How did it come to this? American policing has some of the country’s deepest-seated hierarchies in its history. Academics note that contemporary policing in America has its roots in slave patrols in the South and early attempts to manage labor in the North. Policing, from the start, wasn’t only about public safety—it was about who gets to wield power and who does not. That legacy continues today in the heaviest-patrolled neighborhoods and in the communities that bear the brunt of disproportionate police brutality.
If you or a loved one has been mistreated by the police—whether roughed up, falsely accused, or worse—the obstacles to seeking justice are formidable. First, finding a lawyer is incredibly difficult. Less than 1 percent of people who believe their rights were violated ever file a lawsuit. Most attorneys simply can’t take these cases on because the economics don’t work, especially if the victim isn’t seriously injured or killed.
Even assuming that you can find legal representation, the obstacles keep coming. Judges have considerable discretion to throw cases out before they get to a jury. And if your case makes it past that hurdle, the pool of potential jurors can be inclined to believe the police. Even solid cases don’t often win—plaintiffs succeed in only roughly 15 percent of cases.
Next is the labyrinth of legal principles. Pleading requirements routinely demand information in the possession of the police. Fourth Amendment concepts grant police officers wide discretion to resort to force. And qualified immunity insulates officers unless there is a prior case with virtually the same facts. Suing cities is even more difficult, requiring evidence of policy driving systemic misconduct. Court orders to compel departments to change practices are very difficult to obtain.
Money is another issue. Even when a plaintiff prevails, the individual officer seldom pays a dime. Cities typically pay settlements and judgments, commonly siphoning money out of public programs instead of police budgets. Worse, many departments don’t even examine these lawsuits to learn from error. As experts point out, if departments don’t examine legal results, they can’t improve—and the misconduct cycle repeats.
Reform attempts are underway, but they come slowly. Proposals such as abolishing qualified immunity, mandating that cities pay damages, broadening jury pools, and expanding civil rights legal assistance are improvements. Some legislatures, such as in Colorado, have enacted bills that hold municipalities financially liable except in cases of conviction of officers for crimes. Even the most ambitious reforms address only portions of a very entrenched system, however.
Abolitionist thinking goes about it differently. Instead of reforming the system, abolitionists insist on thinking about public safety from the bottom up. The case is made that policing, as presently designed, is too entrenched in hierarchy and coercion to be repaired.
Instead of relying on communities to fund alternatives that focus on conflict resolution, mental health care, and meeting basic needs, they might actually do just that. Some cities already have pilot programs where civilian responders who are well-trained deal with some emergencies without arrest or force.
Popular culture also engages with these debates. Jordan Peele’s film Us is an allegorical interpretation of American hierarchies, a world where the oppressed people reside underneath society. The twist—that the protagonist herself originated in the underworld—emphasizes a fundamental lesson: freedom from oppression is not merely a matter of personal survival but about deconstructing systemic frameworks that hold inequality intact.
Where does this leave us? The battle for police accountability is finally a fight over the heart and soul of American democracy. Obstacles are steep, stakes are huge, and answers—incremental reforms or radical overhaul—are highly contentious. One thing is for sure: so long as the system insists on protecting police from accountability, the pursuit of justice will continue, creeping forward inch by inch through litigation, demonstrations, and grudgingly obtained reforms.