Constraining my remarks to that period of time and well be asking the question of what is it like to be arrested during these times in history . An arrest is a simple thing, right . It seems like a simple thing. There are few necessary elements to making something an arrest. The person making the arrest has to be a representative of the state. They must accuse a person of knitting an offense against the community. They must move them from the place within to a place without the community, after making their arrest. So it seems like a fairly simple process. Yet, were absolutely fascinated with the scene of the arrest. And this suggests that there is something more to the arrest that we want to understand. Headlines about arrests always have grabbed attention. These are just several of the headlines that a came through from the 20th century, headlines about arrests. There are thousands and thousands of headlines about arrests. We are all familiar with them from our daily newspapers and just think how many Police Procedurals we watch today. It seems like even reading about an arrest in the newspaper or watching accounts of arrests on television news, the many different ways we hear about arrests, thats not enough. We also have to watch dramatic representations of arrests, right . A whole bunch of different ways. Hear music about arrests. Arrests seem to be very central to our culture and there is nothing new about that. Some of these will be familiar to you guys. I think were probably, im guessing, the thing that were familiar with is dragnet, right . Basically it goes all the way back into plays and, you know, cheap fiction published in the mid to late 19th century. A lot of that was theme of the importance of an arrest. One thing thats struck me, if youre very familiar with arrests from reallife, even if you, yourself, have been arrested, you still spend a lot of time wanting to hear about, read about and watch other people being arrested or fictional accounts of other people being arrested. We talked about this in class a lot of people who are incarcerated spend a lot of time consuming popular cultural accounts of the criminal Justice System including a lot of arrests. So the arrests are important in our culture and it has been since our nations beginnings, even. It is both a practical act, the arrest or the threat of an arrest is one of the most direct concrete physical ways that a government can try to shape our behavior as citizens. An arrest is also a ritualistic act. Its an act with sort of a heavy meaning beyond a practical meaning. Its a way that agents of the government can mark what behaviors and what circumstances, by what people are outside of the community and unacceptable. More directly than anything else, the possibility of the arrest has been how the state has controlled the behavior of people within the United States. Our nation was founded with a profound understanding of the centrality of the process of arrest to our political system. Four out of 10 of the amendments to our constitution and the bill of rights are about the rights of people who are accused of crimes, right . Including the rights related to when do people have the right to take you. When do people have the right to arrest you . The founders were convinced that who the nation chose to arrest and how they made and executed that decision was one of the most important issues for the health of our country. And yet, historians have rarely spent a lot of time exploring the history of the arrest and how to what extent historians have it stays the same and to what extent it changes over time. When they have done so, they have rarely done so from the perspective of the people most immediately involved in the arrest. Actually, we dont know very much about what Police Officers thought and how they understood what they were doing when they were making arrests. There has been too little work done on that question. But we also dont have very much information at all, very much analysis at all about people who were arrested experienced that moment of arrest, which is both a practical moment, and a moment of rituals. Most of us agree and here, sometimes it has been good and necessary for the police to arrest people. It is important to keep that as an open question in our mind, because what are the alternatives. Most of us also agree that people have sometimes been arrested for the wrong reasons and in wrong ways. And for reasons other than simply protecting other people and their property. Most of us are well aware that policing has often been largely about maintaining social order. What they used to call keeping the peace, right . As much as its been about protecting, stopping violent or exploitive behavior. Were aware that often arrests have heightened, have increased in response to social unrest. When there has been major strikes, labor strikes, particularly earlier in the century. Moments of demands for justice from certain oppressed Minority Groups, right . Largely africanamericans, in our country. But we know that order is often in the eyes of the beholder, and so policing has sometimes had a political content as well as an anticrime function. I think thats something that people would broadly agree with. And i think the broader significance of the arrest is why we all find it so fascinating. We have to keep looking at it again and again and again. Every day thousands of arrests are constantly drawing a border around what Authority Figures imagine to be the community. Revealing who is inside and who is outside of the law, or the orderly community. Who is allowed to participate and who must be removed from view . So lets look now at what it appears as, when we observe the border being drawn. So this class is going to approach this question of the arrest from the perspective of the arrestee. On another occasion ill explore the perspective of Police Officers. But here im going to talk about the perspective of the arrestee. Were looking at the arrest from the perspective of the person being arrested. We can see three very different moments of arrests. From different periods of time. We see a Violent Arrest at a protest. We see, this is a woman being arrested for street walking, and we see a guy who is arrested for going on a highspeed chase, misbehaving, trying to evade arrest after a night of drinking. You can see that the three people being arrested are being treated in very different ways, having very different kinds of experiences, for a whole bunch of different reasons. Policing has evolved in a lot of practical ways that shape what arrests look like and felt like. I will stop here we go. Lets start figuring out what the arrest is by looking at what it does and what it has done. How has the experience of being arrested changed from the 1880sthrough 2001 . And how did it remain the same . Were going to organize this, that top left hand picture, it almost looks like its a fake group of police, but, i got it from a very reputable source and i think maybe they just look like that. Different kinds of police in different eras. Were going to ask five different questions. Were going to go through them in order. Well first ask, who was likely to be arrested during this period . Second, what were people arrested for . Third, well ask, how were people arrested . Fourth, well ask, how much control did people have over their arrest . What could they do . Is there any way they could shape what happened during their arrest at different times . And then finally, how did people feel about being arrested . That fifth one is one that we will sort of fail to answer, right . Well never actually quite get to that but thats actually the question i most want to get at. If you guys know that in this class we largely do discussion, right . Were largely all about getting answers through active discussion, and so i want you to think about this lecture as a really, really long discussion question, okay . What were going to try to do is talk through some of the things that happened, some of the ways being arrested changed or stayed the same over the century with the goal of coming to the end, and working together to think through how people must have experienced arrest during these times. The reason that we have to come through it, through this indirect way, its really hard to get evidence about how people experienced arrest, right . People didnt tend to write it down, right . Where they did write down their experience during arrest people didnt keep it. They werent archiving where the writings of more elite people might be kept . So we dont have very many records of what being arrested was like and even when you start interviewing people as i have been doing recently, we start interviewing people about being arrested, one thing that i really noticed is that they tend to not tell you what it felt like to be arrested even when you keep on asking them and it took me a long time to try to figure out why that was and suddenly, it shouldnt have taken me that long. Being arrested is a traumatic experience or not always, but it can be a traumatic experience. People do not like to remember it and they do not like to talk about it. So its really hard to get at this question of what its like to be arrested. Nevertheless, well make that effort today because i think its very important, both for understanding people who were arrested and what their experiences were, but also, i think that in understanding the arrest, it tells us a lot about the people who are inside the law. What they are avoiding, right . And why they are avoiding it. What they are afraid of. Why they dont step over that line to the outside of the law. I think its a really important question. So, if you were arrested, im trying to remember which way to turn this . Here we go. So first, who was arrested. The answer isnt simply immigrants. There are a whole bunch of different answers to this question. If you were arrested at any time in history, the chances were that you fit pretty specific demographic characteristics. You can predict pretty well in any time in history who is most likely to be arrested. Some of those you guys probably know, some of the demographics through history. What would be some characteristics who would be likely to be arrested, at any time in american history, in the 20th century . Just yell it out. Drunk people. Yeah. Actually, its almost like you already read my lecture and youre up on the next section because well talk all about drunk people. What about demographic characteristics. What kinds of people are most likely to be arrested demographally . Poor. Poor people. Minorities. Minorities. And thats going to change, whether from immigrants like were talking about up here to africanamericans. Being the most overpoliced group and in other areas, mexican americans. Young boys. Yep. Particularly you should put up your hands, im sorry, im not doing a good job with calling. But, yeah, so people who are teenagers, right . We were talking about some of that and also, the most obvious ones men, right . Men. Men are by far, men and boys are by far the most likely population to be arrested doesnt change over time. So just to give you some numbers on that. One of the most consistent features of people who are arrested through the progressive era to the present is that they are going to be male. 90 pretty much, almost at any time, you dont get too far from the 90 mark that the people who are arrested will be male. Female arrests get a little bit higher in time, but basically, you had 10 in 1897, 10 in 1989, these numbers are from pittsburgh but they are pretty representative of the entire country but its a pretty steady number throughout american history. 90 of arrests will be of men and boys. Age is going to jump around a little bit more than that, which, as some people pointed out, you have juveniles. Particularly 16 and 17yearolds, will be very likely to be arrested at pretty much all times in history. Very heavily arrested age group. Arrest rates for juveniles are going to skip around a little bit more than the really consistent gender arrest rates. In 1897, 20 of all arrests were of people 20 or younger. Thats how they kept those numbers instead of cutting them off at 18. A little bit different. In 1956, again, youre going to have Something Like 20 of the people who are arrested are going to be, in this case, under 18. So you have and this fluctuates down to in the 1950s, they actually arrested more like 8 , 8 to 9 , Something Like that, on juveniles, in the 1950s. 1952, they claim only to have arrested 3. 7 juveniles so it does fluctuate as they develop different kinds of Police Policies to deal with juvenile population. Thats a number that will change a little bit more but generally speaking, juveniles, older juveniles, 16 and 17, heavily policed and heavily arrested population. After that, in almost all periods, youre going to have 20yearolds and 20 to 30yearold and 30 to forty yearold will be in some cases 30 to 35yearolds are the majority of people arrested, thats in the 1950s and 1960s, when you breakdown those numbers almost all of them are being arrested for drunkenness. And vagrancy. Were going to clean up the streets and in periods, they are targeting older men. Not that 30 to 35 is very old but relatively older men. Okay. So basically, though, youre going to be a young or youngish male if youre arrested at any time. This isnt going to change that much. One thing that does change is after the war on drugs starts you actually get an increase in the 1980s and 1990s on juvenile arrests, so you get up somewhere to near 25 of arrested juvenile arrests, and thats new. Minority status. If youre a member of a racial minority, you are always often not always, but often, particularly likely to be arrested and thats why we have this slide up here because it seems so, in some ways this article seems so familiar, this is actually an article which is making the case, its from 1912 in pittsburgh, and its actually making the case that immigrants are not criminally inclined. A counterintuitive case at the time that actually immigrants arent particularly likely to commit crime. That they are more likely to be arrested for nuisance violations and things like that. But the reason that they are making that case is that most people assume that immigrants, in this case, in this period, they are talking about eastern and southern european immigrants, are particularly criminally inclined. As you get black migration up from the south during the early 20th century, particularly up through world war i and into the 1920s, the eastern and southern europeans are going to be sort of merged into the general way of whiteness. People stop recognizing them as a Distinct Group and their place will be taken by africanamerican migrants, southern migrants, who are seen as particularly criminal, particularly the ones who have recently come up from the south are seen as having brought some sort of inherent criminalality with them. They will be very likely to be arrested. So, for instance, in 1967, nationally, africanamerican arrests are about five times the rate of white arrests, okay . And thats going all the way back to 1967. Were very familiar with that story of overincarceration but thats also true in terms of arrests. So, for instance, in pittsburgh, in 1989, 54 of arrests were of nonwhite people, which is going to be in pittsburgh. Very largely africanamerican, where as they make up, at that time, something around 1 3 of the population. So its a very extreme form of overrepresentation among the arrested population. Quite disproportionate. Another category that some of you guys brought up is economically marginal. This is something that has a very long history. In 1987, if you look at the Police Records from pittsburgh, they do a very good job writing down all of these characteristics so all the people they have arrested that year, and its interesting to note that on the long list of people they arrested, 58 of the people they arrested gave their occupation as laborer. Okay . As laborer. So 58 give their occupation as laborer. When you add in the other most frequent occupations, which are no occupation, clerks, right . And, this is going to get a little more complicated but the other really common one is housekeeper. Thats because women are going to call themselves housekeepers, so thats basically all women, the 10 of women coming in, not almost all, but a lot of women would be calling themselves housekeepers. But when you add in those categories, youre at Something Like 80 of all people who are arrested are from these very lowest populations, social economic populations in 1897. Again, thats something which really isnt going to change dramatically over time. There is obviously some exceptions, right . There is a list of hundreds of occupations in which people are arrested in pittsburgh, right . But definitely the huge numbers are coming with the laborers, the clerks, no occupation. In 1967, nationally, 24 of everyone who was arrested was a laborer, right . At a time when only 5 of the population was on the census as laborers. So again, that will be the very lowest category of people, who are unskilled workers, using their strengths to make their daytoday living without having a particular training. So thats going to be consistent over time. There is almost no variance in that. Economically marginal. Another important characteristic of people who are going to be arrested is that they are going to be members of a non in many cases, members of a group thats deemed nonconforming or threatening, and that group could be a group with a political orientation. It could be, for instance, there are a lot of periods in time in which communists were very heavily overpoliced and subject to arrest. Communists and hippies. If you want to go back into the 1960s and 1970s, people thatdressed like hippies, out there doing hippie things, were very likely to be arrested with their guitars. But they were very likely to be arrested, you know, at this time, of anarchists. They were often subject to arrest, or black panthers, later on, being arrested in part because they are a member of a Minority Group. But they are going to be arrested at much greater rates than other members of black populations because they are a member of this sort of adversarial group thats deemed threatening or menacing. Gay americans, right . Gay americans, who are often seen particularly through much of the 20th century, were widely seen as sort of a dangerous group of people, sort of a danger to our nation, potentially subversive, right . Were very, very heavily overpoliced, very, very likely to be arrested. So if youre arrested, you usually were a member of some of these kinds of population. The thing is, how this comes back to our question of, how did you experience your arrest . Is that not only were you a member of this population, but you also were well aware that these populations were overpoliced and subject to, you know, subject to disproportionate arrest. This is all over the newspapers, you know. There is nothing new to this realization that there is overpolicing by race or by politics or anything like that. Newspapers were always well aware of it and people complained about it constantly. So if you were a member of one of these groups and you were arrested, at the moment of your arrest, you would have carried that with you. You would have been aware that there was this broader context in which your arrest was taking place and i assume that that would have shaped how you experienced your arrest. So were going to go now to the second question, which is why were you arrested . So what were people arrested for . Historically . And this is actually something that surprised me a little bit, though apparently it didnt surprise tommy, because he knew very well that the people who were arrested were almost all arrested for the vast majority of people arrested are actually arrested for order charges, right . Rather than for public order problems such as drunkenness rather than criminal more formal criminal charges. So the simple answer, if you havent thought about it too much, when you asked, well, what are people arrested for . You might say they are arrested because they committed a crime and when you commit a crime, you know, youre arrested for it, but actually, that doesnt take into account a lot of things that stand between committing a crime and being arrested. And one of them is, most people, at all times in american history, most people who have committed Violent Crimes or property crimes have not been arrested. Right . Weve never had a clearance rate of crimes nationally in the United States that was anything like 50 , right . So when you commit a crime, even a Violent Crime or a property crime, which even those crimes which are reported, which many crimes arent, the clearance rate is always, you know, 30 , you know, at best. 20 , you know. Wherever you are. So when you do commit a crime, chances are, that youre not going to be arrested for that particular crime. And thats even assuming this clearance rate assumes that the person who ends up being assigned to the crime was actually the person who did the crime. Assuming sometimes thats not the case that makes the clearance rate even lower. So for that reason it cant be the case, if youre a person who is arrested, even if you had committed a crime, you wouldnt see the arrest necessarily as a necessary natural consequence of that crime, because often, usually, when people commit that crime in almost every case, they dont get arrested. So its a little more complicated than saying i did the crime. Now i expect the arrest. You actually cant quite expect the arrest. So in pittsburgh, in 1978, 33. 5 of cases were cleared. Pretty good. The f. B. I. Now says there is a 20. 5 clearance ill sorry, in 2000, the f. B. I. Reported a 20. 5 clearance rate nationally. Only 16. 7 of property crimes are cleared. I was looking at that time rates of experience in the 1970s for car thefts and it made me want to go back into the 1970s, it was like the rate of clearance was like 4 or 5 or something. I was like, no one ever gets arrested for stealing a car in the city of pittsburgh, but it happened all of the time and they didnt ever seem to be able to solve it. So there was this kind of mushy relationship between committing a crime and being arrested. Much more mushy than people appreciate. Most arrests have actually been for things that were least luckily to think of as crimes, when we think of as crimes, those there the last things that tend to come up. The president s crime commission, however, noted in 1967, there was a big national study, thats why i keep coming back to it. But they noted in 1967, nearly 45 of all arrests are for crimes without victims, or crimes against the public order. And in 1982, two scholars named george telling and james wilson had a very creative innovative idea of broken windows policing, right . Which was basically, if you wanted to stop crime you neely need to arrest people for order violations. But the fact is throughout the 20th century, thats absolutely been what the police have been doing. The police have been spending most of their time, most of their arrest time, arresting energy, for order violations. Ill talk a little bit about that and show you some numbers. So when people are arrested, if you were arrested in the 19th century its extremely likely that your arrest was for an order violation. So here is 1896, pittsburgh, who gets arrested for what . 1 of people who get arrested in pittsburgh in 1896 are arrested for Violent Crimes. Just like 2 are arrested for order crimes. You have 10 who are arrested for and there are others, i dont even know what that is, you have 10 who are arrested for moral crimes and that would be, what would that be . Moral crimes at this time would be not even rape, im putting that in Violent Crimes, moral crimes would be prostitution, gambling, and sodomy, right . In 1896. So it would be like all sorts of any sort of sexual crime, victimless, sort of sexual crime or gambling, kind of, you know, mood behavior would fit in there. Adultery, any sort of, you know, violation of a pretty rigid sex codes of the day, would have been moral, thats 10 but the rest of the crimes, almost 86 of the time when a Police Officer clasped handcuffs on somebody they were putting cuffs on for an order crime. That will be mainly drunkenness. It will be drunkenness or its going to be disorderly behavior. I went ahead and put assault, simple assault in with Violent Crimes. But actually, simple assault, quite arguably, would also fit into an order crime. So basically, the police are spending most of their time getting loud rambunctious, out of control people, vagrancy is in that category, people who dont seem to belong. When we get to later periods im going to put drunken driving in that even though its dangerous, its so far, a victimless crime. They are putting people who are violating the public order, they are mainly with their policing. When you get up to 1956, you see the numbers have changed. You actually have relatively more attention to kind of the bread and butter crimes. The crimes we think of when we think of what the police are doing. Arresting people for. You actually have 11 that are arrested for property crimes. 5 are arrested for Violent Crimes. You saw this other category, which im not quite sure how to process, and you have moral crimes that have actually shrunk a little bit during that period. Still substantial. 68 of your arrests are still going to be for your crimes against the public order. And then if you go up one more click, in 1989, same city, you actually see it has changed pretty substantially, right . But you still have order crimes. The lions share of what people are being arrested for. Thats decreased a little bit. Anybody want to have a theory on why that might have decreased . Anyone have a theory . This is a theory but im thinking, i think its stop and frisk. Policing got more broad around this time in the ways in which they are going to be interacting with the population, so instead of arresting somebody if they are trying to interact with somebody on the street, instead of arresting them for Something Like disorderly conduct, or vagrancy, which now they are not allowed to arrest them for because some laws were passed in the 1960s and 1970s, instead of that they will be stopping, frisking, and having some sort of interaction on the street. Thats one way that changes. So the vast bulk of these arrests are going to involve officer discretion, right . Order crime arrests are arrests that an officer isnt given a warrant for. An officer observes something on the street which appears to him, to him or her in the later periods to be a disorderly thing, and that officer is going to define that keeping the public peace and order, demands removing that person from society but thats very much about officer discretion. That said, if officers had discretion that was very different than what the people who are paying them wanted, right . They would have to, you know, shift over time. So this is a pretty steady process. Police everywhere are doing this, you know, pretty consistently over the entire century. So we cant, you know, we have to imagine that this is what the public are looking for in their policing. They have some choice in who they are going to arrest. But presumably who they arrest for these order crimes is going to reflect what the people who are paying them want for them to be doing rather than just, you know, a whole bunch of rogue officers all the time. So what that might do with how you would feel about being arrested, is it might make you feel like there was a real disjuncture between anything you might have done and the fact that you were doing arrested. That wouldnt be such a simple relationship to you. Even at the time because would you be aware that there was a lot of discretion going on and a lot of slippage between doing a thing and being arrested for a thing. So lets talk a little bit now about some of the technicalities. Well talk about how were people arrested . What did the arrest what would it feel like we have to start thinking about what kind of technology was brought to bear, you know, how did the officer behave, what kind of rules were they following . And, of course, from the very beginning of this period, the progressive era, many officers were armed with revolvers, what they called police revolvers, or later on, youre going to get up to colson, smith wesson, like in the 1960s catalog. But officers were not required in the progressive era, it will vary from placetoplace but they are not required to have arms. Sometimes they have only their police batones, they are an important part on how they are going to try to control people. But officers are allowed through this period to have a sidearm. There were debates back in the middle of the 19th century aboutwhether police should be allowed to have side arms, and there is actually i almost included it here but it was going back too far but some people were like, we dont trust the police, if they had, you know, what would they do . Who would they be shooting at . None of us would be safe . In these major newspapers there was this question about how carefully are we selecting our police in the mid 19th century, whether they should be armed. But by the progressive era and all the way through the 20thcentury, police have the right to carry arms and often were required to carry arms in addition to their night sticks. They are going to be armed, and there is going to be a steady complaint in newspapers in all periods, right . About the potential of some officers using Police Brutality. So Police Brutality, if you go back and search through the newspapers, its not something that people start complaining about in the 1960s and 1970s. Its something people are complaining about all the way through the 20th century. Its a staple of newspaper articles. I have a quotation here from a letter to the editor and i found it, it was written by retired Police Officer, from the early 1970s, and i thought it was really interesting, it was written by a retired Police Officer and the place i found it was in the Police History archives, which means the police historians decided to keep it. The people who were themselves retired police, who have a little group that saves up things, they decided to keep this letter so it had a certain endorsement, i think, from policemen. What it said was, it was responding to the charge that Police Brutality in the 1970s was often brought against africanamericans, and it says, among so many Police Officers of many races and national origins, there are some who are hot tempered, bad mannered or even brutal but let me say from experience, that the victims of their volatile temperaments when aroused were white as well as colored. So there was a general understanding that everybody would admit to, that there was sometimes a problem, sometimes a very serious problem with Police Brutality so when youre arrested, you would also be aware of that potential, and this is disturbing, but im going to share it anyway. But basically, if you go and look through, as i did, look through a newspaper database, i looked through newspapers. Com database, and, which has a lot of 19th century and through the 20th century newspapers, up to the present, i just did a key word search first for the phrase, after i came across it several times, for the phrase, negro killed, resisting arrest. I searched that phrase and i got 98,699 hits. Now, that doesnt necessarily mean, there are problems with searches and sometimes the words are off and things like that. So, you know, take it for what its worth but i had to sit down for a minute and kind of think about that. And they werent particularly clustered, and also, word negro isnt going to be used in the newspaper into certainly not by the 1980s. So its a huge amount of people, black people resisting arrest. Not all of People Killed resisting arrest were black. There was a mexican person killed resisting arrest but there was always this potential, when you were arrested for violence and for for lethal violence particularly, that you had to be aware of. How would they transport you . Part of arresting you is getting you, getting you in those cuffs, right . But part of arresting you is getting you back to the station where you could be put in a jail cell. This is something which actually did change substantially over time and changed what it meant to be policed, right . And one thing that happened was, that, at the very first part of the period were talking about, during the progressive era, Police Officers were mainly on foot. They were mainly on foot so if they arrested someone they would actually have to spend the rest of their shift walking them back to the Police Station, if they would walk with them, walking them back to the Police Station, getting them booked in and getting back and their whole beat would be unpoliced during the time they were going on that long trek. It was even worse if people would not agree to go with them, you know, and walk along with them on that and they would have to do things like carry, or they would do things like carry people they arrested in wheel borrows. Around 1890, most major municipalities acquired patrol wagons so that meant if they could get word back to the station, they could send out the stations patrol wagon to come out and pick up the person they had arrested, but again, ate long period of time and that Police Officer has to keep the person subdued like during that period of time. There is just a lot of wiggle room for things to happen during the arrest. So it becomes its actually very hard and Police Officers cant communicate with each other. They cant call to each other for help, so during the arrest, if they need backup for something there is no backup. You have to Call Community members, you know, to back you up, if they are willing to do that during this early period. Now, they also start getting call boxes, which are stationary call boxes. They also get that around yeah, around 1890. They start acquiring call boxes that can communicate back to the station, which makes that process easier. But its still a long way. Its not until the 1930s that they start getting cars, and these cars around that same time are equipped with police radios, and that makes it a lot easier for them to actually arrest people and quickly subdue them and put them into a car and bring them back to the station. However, police radio in cars are expensive so some municipalities dont get them until the 1950s. So for a long time, until the middle of the century its very difficult sometimes to arrest people. Were people when they were arrested, likely to give you respect . Treat you with respect . You know, again, we have limited information about that, but i do have one thing that really struck me, when i was looking back through the Police Station history record, in 1968, the commander of the Pittsburgh Police issued a statement on courtesy, that was circulated to officers about how you have to treat people in the general public. In the statement he says members of the Police Bureau shall treat the public, their associates and superior officers with respect and courtesy. They shall be quiet, civil and orderly at all times. They shall avoid the use of profane or abusive language. They shall control their tempers and exercise discretion in the performance of their duties. They must use maam or sir if the names are not known and mr. Or mrs. If surnames are known. They are never allowed to call somebody kid or boy. And then there is a list of words that they cannot use. Its a list of 10 or 12 words that i will not share with you right now, but, they are words that i had to look up and figure out actually in some cases. But they are actually saying, you have to stop using some of this abusive language, it tells you a lot about happened before they tried to institute those reforms in 1968. Did you have rights right after 1966 . Youre going to be read your miranda rights. That will be one huge change in the architecture, the structure of the arrest. Coming now oh, im going to show you now, sorry, didnt show you the different modes of arrest, but we have an early kind of onfoot arrest of a tramp with a police dog. They are arresting we didnt talk about horses but they did use horses, they still do right . They were available obviously before the cars, not so much to transport people but to arrest people. This is sort of early patrol cars. State Highway Patrol car. You get the idea, and here is a Police Officer talking into his police radio. Very iconic. What control did people have during their arrest . What could you have done if you were being arrested during the 20th century . There are a couple of ways that could you have exercised control depending on who you were and what your situation was during your arrest. First of all, and this is going to be particularly true in this earlier part of the century, that you have control by your the importance of your vehicle operating. Your cooperation. If it is really hard to arrest you and really hard to get you to the station they really value your willingness to be willing to walk with them instead. And i have a 1901 newspaper story which is kind of funny about a guy who is being arrested in 1901. Harry baldwin of media, pennsylvania, was kicked out of a music venue for disorderly conduct. Two officers on foot tried to take him to the Police Officer headquarters. Baldwin had objections and announced he would die first. Baldwin fought desperately, grabbing both antagonists and falling with them. Every telegraph pole was a friend as he clung tenaciously. The offers finally became exhausted and had to hold him down until help arrived. Ultimately six people had to carry him, carrying him upsidedown. Thats from 1901. So you had some control by your willingness to acquiesce to arrest. So, for instance, when you read about arrests during this period, people will say things like, okay, you can arrest me. But i have to go tell my mom im being arrested. Shes over at the next house, or like i have to go upstairs and trade coats with my friend so i have the coat that i want when im arrested. Things like that. So you actually had a little bit of wiggle room because your compliance was so important to them from a practical viewpoint. You also had people say, you cant arrest me. Youll have to get more people. There are newspaper stories like that, im sorry, youre just one guy and i dont think you can do it. And so there is a lot more with police not so able to communicate with each other. There was a lot more of that kind of objection. Okay. What other kind of control could you exert . One thing that you had was that a lot of people throughout this period were skeptical of Police Techniques in arresting. Sort of skeptical of the police arrest. And so you actually frequently, and this is going to be again from the very beginning of this period, to its end, youre going to have a lot of Community Resistance to arrests, and particularly, where police are not so connected with one another, that can be decisive. There is an 1888 newspaper article from pennsylvania that says, the way to look at it the way to look at it and the lesson to learn from it is that people who offend must expect to suffer. Its a common thing to resist arrest and to laugh at con stables but public sentiment must be turned the other way. So the newspaper is chastising people to stop laughing at the Police Officers and trying to help people who are being arrested. So one thing you had in your corner if you were being arrested is that you could try to mobilize people around you in these early periods. Try and mobilize people around you to help you resist arrest. Thats a common thing to happen. And this is also something that doesnt happen as soon as i would have expected. You guys just read john edgar widemans book, and in the book one of the scenes that i find most powerful, his book, brothers and keepers, its written by his brother, robbie, and he says, in the summer of 1968 we fought the cops in the streets. Sure enough, punch out fighting like in those wild west movies. Everyone at home, up on homewood avenue, which is an africanamerican neighborhood in pittsburgh, was duking with the cops. Funny thing was it was just fighting. There wasnt no shooting or nothing like that. Somebody must have put the word out from downtown. You can whip their heads but dont be shooting any of them. So you actually had, and i was trying to figure out how unusual that was, he was making the claim th the police were constantly fighting with police in the community. So i was looking through newspapers, every couple of weeks, in the pittsburgh newspapers, they have a story of what they call the term you have to search for is melee. Every couple of weeks somebody is being arrested, and Community Members come out, lets fight with the police to object to their being arrested, people were throwing bottles at police cars, police threw rocks at police cars and this is the melee, right . Is a sort of common thing so when youre arrested, you can also be charged with, you know, incitement, and so if youre an incitement to riot, a very common charge, if youre arrested, if you try to incite people around you to riot, thats an Additional Charge for you as well. But its a frequently used Additional Charge because it was a very, very common thing to do. Particularly in the black communities and particularly among war protestors, right . Whwere also being very heavily policed, and gay populations who were also being very heavily policed so a whole bunch of different groups would try to rally people around them in order to resist arrest, so you had potentially that kind of option, if you wanted to resist. You could also evoke your allies on the outside, so, for instance, if youre being arrested, you could call and you frequently did, you know, call on people to help you out and demand that the police give you good treatment because they know that you can call on these allies. So for instance, the best exam of that that we were just talking about earlier, wealthy people, who are being arrested. The police understand that they would have that many of them have wealthy associates so when they are being arrested they might be treated differently because the police are concerned about how these wealthy associates or supporters might be able to sort of push back at the conditions of that arrest. If you werent wealthy, if you were an africanamerican, and, you know, you could call on the naacp, who was always fighting, various kinds of groups, if you were a member of a labor union early in the century, you could call on your labor union. So you could make that claim during the arrest, that you have support, right, that they cant treat you like this, because youre going to have this sort of external support to push back against it. You had a certain amount depending on who you were, you had a certain amount of discretion in the arrest. That brings us to the last part of, the last question, which is the one i really care about. And the question that the other questions are meant to feed into. Its also the question that were going to fail to answer, but were going to start taking a stab at it because i think its really important, and that is, how did people feel about being arrested . What was it like at that moment that you were arrested . And i talked about, at the beginning, about how hard it was to get at this question because people dont want to answer it and people dont care to record it or keep it, where its been recorded. But what i want to do is think about what it feels like to be arrested now and nowish, right . I want to push that back to these historical arrests, to imagine how it might have been similar to and different from these historical arrests given e structural differences and similarities that weve been talking about. I asked you guys, and i also did a couple of interviews about, i did a couple of interviews of people who were arrested in the 1970s and asked them how it felt to be arrested and i also asked you guys to write down how it felt to be arrested and ive been looking at some of those and i want to read off some of those answers now, or tell you about some of the answers that i got from my interviews, to start thinking about some of the ways it might feel to be arrested, because there is a real diversity of experience and maybe thats the first thing. Thats the first thing that many of you guys said in the response. It depends. It depends. Are you being arrested for drunkenness . That might feel really different than being arrested for a more serious charge. It might feel even trivial. It may not affect you very much. I told you the story last week of the guy who, i came across, i was sort of entertained by, i guess, although it wasnt entertaining, it was a Police Brutality story but i was entertained by his behavior which was, when he was arrested, he asked the police to please cuff his hands in the front so he could finish his pizza. He was not impressed, not horrified by the scene and was game with engaging further with the police at that moment. So, it really depends on why you are being arrested. Is it for something serious . Something casual . Somebody else wrote in response, it depends on whether you are being arrested for something you did or something you did not do. If you are being arrested for something you did, you wonder what the penalty will be like or what is likely to happen. If you are rested for some you did not do, you are thinking what is going on . So, the circumstances of the arrest is really going to change dramatically. Also, who are you when you are arrested, would it really change who you are. Being a person who is fairly respectable before being arrested in some ways can backfire on you because then people are so, the Police Officer is so horrified or offended by your crime in relationship to your status. That actually seems like you have been a fake all along. How have you betrayed your class position. The one arrest i witnessed was of a white man in chicago in the 1990s. When he was arrested, i told you guys a longer version of that, but when he was arrested by two white believes Police Officers, one thing they said to him was you are an embarrassment to your race. The fact he was white to these races Police Officers was particularly offensive to them that he would not be sober. Ok. So, there is a bunch of different ways you can be arrested, different circumstances but i want to read some of these answers. A lot of people said when you are arrested, one thing you feel is confusion. That can be related to substance abuse. A lot of people that are arrested have some substances in their system. You may well not be entirely coherent and aware of what is going on around you. Even if you are completely clear on substances, you might still be very confused about what is going on, particularly if you are not guilty of that charge, right . Or you dont believe you are guilty of that charge. That could come as a great shock. Somebody said it does not register what is going on at first. Or if there is a huge time period that passes between the time you committed that crime and the time you are arrested. I was talking to a guy that was arrested after a year after the crime, he thought nobody was looking for him anymore. All of a sudden, here is the police. It is like this interruption of another life he had been building. There is a lot of, there could be a lot of confusion. Somebody else said when it is your first time being arrested, it is easy to be intimidated by the process and the unknown. It is important to keep your cool. Other people describe the process as a disempowering. A helpless feeling as if you have no power or control over your person. Demoralizing. Like being cut doing something your mom told you not to do and being caught redhanded. The shame, guilt and embarrassment is overwhelming. Another person said the world shrinks before you and your future is instantly changed the moment you are thrown in handcuffs. All of your free will and rights are gone. There is another set of rules that apply. Plus, you are about to find out real fast to his there for you. Being arrested and being pulled out of the community makes you realize whos going to still be there for you when they try to pull you out, what part of the community will claim . Right . Other people, another quote that i thought was powerful was somebody was arrested as a teenager. Being arrested was very scary, humiliating, embarrassing and demoralizing. The whole act of being arrested is humiliating whether you deserve it or not. People are looking at the spectacle, assuming the worst, gasping, shaking their heads, some even recording which could lead to your arrest becoming viral. The shame of that. It makes you numb, ashamed, but sometimes proud. I think that is important because the person who was arrested is not necessarily going to be acknowledging the prer authority and moral righteousness of the person who was arresting them. They may feel like they have a different set of rules they have been following and the person that is arresting them has a different set of rules, values. Therefore, being arrested, standing against that might be something that would be proud in some ways. I have a couple more. One, being arrested brought about two very distinct characteristics. Fear and emotion. Very few times in life that i have ever known fear in such a tangible or physical way. So much so, that the only way to keep fear from totally consuming me was the forcibly stave emotion. I must stand in this line i must get naked. And be inspected. I must continue to be moved. Do not let the fear swallow me up. I want to talk about that fear because somebody else said, thinking about it since i read it, remembering the night he was arrested, a laser passing over around his head and realizing in retrospect later that that had been obviously a rifle sight. That kind of terror that you have, the realization is what makes time slowdown. What i do in these moments might be the most important things i ever do, yet i am totally constrained in what i am able to do. Confusing and terrifying. It is truly dangerous. It is an intense feeling, which i will now give one of my favorites being arrested is like facing one of your biggest disappointments. Its like getting the lowest score after studying all semester. It is like throwing up vomit in front of a girl you like. It is like blacking out while awake. The other thing that arrested means is you screwed up. Other people got away with it. Most people commit a crime, they are not arrested having been arrested means you failed to anticipate the danger that you are in. So, i think it could also make you feel unlucky. Not mad at yourself. But also, oppressed, besieged, like the police are targeting you even if you have done the very crime you are arrested for. Ok, so, anyway we will need to Work Together and we will do this in future classes together these source of insight from people who were arrested in the last 50 years and triangulate them with what we know about the structures and conditions of arrest in earlier periods to try to correct recover and arrestees remembrance of the arrest. We have to do this for these peoples lives and their experiences matter and we have to know if we want to understand our nations history. We cannot just skip that important part of it. But, we also have to know because it tells us a lot about what america has been and is. What must we do to stay within the law and what happens to us if we stray outside of it . What and who do we see as a threat to order and what does that say about our idea of order or identity as a community . That said, i would love to have a discussion about this, if people have questions or thoughts. Comments, questions. What you could do is put your hand up and they will move the microphone to you. I was really interested in how you were mentioning clearance rates. I was wondering if there is anything in particular that goes into determining who gets off free, the percentages fi guring out robbing cars in pittsburgh in the 1970s, how do you find out those statistics . Part of the problem is you cant know who does not get caught. You can only know who does get caught. Fascinating to have the list of people who stole cars and did not get caught compared to who did. That is exactly what you can have. That is part of it. The only interesting thing about clearance rates is that clearance rates are much higher for Violent Crimes than for property crimes because people can usually identify a person who is a suspect in that. A car theft, so difficult to track down. I think they have gotten better with recent technology. Yeah, it would be fascinating to be able to know who gets caught and who doesnt. To do that, you have to have a separate system of deciding who did stealing we unfortunately dont have the capacity to do. Questions . Comments . Yes, tommy. As far as you said in pittsburgh, people were fighting. How do you think the response would be in wealthier communities as opposed to the reaction in poorer communities . Yeah. Good question. I think it is very different because i think from my familiarity, what happens is that in a poorer community, in a community that traditionally has high arrest rates, right . That family members anticipate the possibility of an arrest and it is not as shameful. They also are very ready to believe that there has been some injustice in the fact that their loved one has been arrested. I think that if you are a person who is arrested and you have other family members who have been arrested, neighbors who have been arrested, youre in a situation in which arrest is relatively normalized in your community, you actually end up getting some really good family support. Whereas, if you are in another kind of community where they see themselves as inside the law, i think often you are ostracized, you are cut off. I would like to hear more from people in my relatively limited experience, that is what i think. In some sense, the more prosperous you are if you do end up in prison, which you may not, but the more prosperous you are, the less sympathetic your family is to be with you situation. Yes . How do people feel about being arrested i think your initial arrest, if you ever get involved, have an issue with police, you dont know what the process is. Youre unlearned, you dont know what to expect. If you are arrested, again, maybe you committed a crime and you know what the process is, you may know the circumstances are what your parameters are based on where you are from and how you act, you know . The rural areas are not like the innercity or suburbs. Knowing what is expected as far as the temperament of Law Enforcement, you know how it is going to affect you. In my neighborhood, you make sure your hands are visible. You basically comply with whatever is said otherwise it can be detrimental. Good point. You had mentioned increased arrest rates for incoming populations into a general area like immigrants and minorities. Look at those people versus people in poverty, high arrest rates. Those things kind of go hand in hand because most immigrants are povertystricken and most minorities are povertystricken. Or does one factor outweigh the other . I think they are both important. I think that but, it is definitely the case that if you say a member of a Minority Group and you managed to not be impoverished, right . Youre economically successful, you are still likely police cannot detect that when they see you on the street. So, you might not be able to be marked in that way. In part, it may be that everybody who is a black or whos on gary andhungarian or whatever, it is marked on the street as being poor and that might be picked up. It is true those overlap. It is also true that a member of a Minority Group is also over policed. This is true, again, but probably because of the difficulty in identifying or racial prejudice, right . Im wondering if you could comment during your research in terms, in the context of public demonstrations or even protest, on what the effect of what a public arrest would be throughout history or the world . We know it might be a preventative measure to stop something from occurring but possibly it incites more violence. Yeah, that is definitely something that has been interesting to me looking through the pittsburgh Police Records. In the 1960s and early 1970s, basically after 1966, pittsburgh gets really serious about training officers for dealing with demonstrations. One thing that they do is that they sit there and map out. We are well aware. They map out how is it that you could effectively police a demonstration. It is very different than policing other areas. People are in solidarity with each other and theyre in higher density. So, they actually have strategies that they start to develop about how to move in a wedge and things like that. Those are thigs we are familiar with today and they have refined them further in the last couple of decades but you could see that technique and mapping being done even as early as 1967 and 1968 and it has been happening all around the country. Any more . What did you call it . What did you call the police . Targeting, certain demographic. No . Something you just said. Over policing . Yeah. Why is it do you think they over police the poverty people rather than over police the suburbs . Do you think they are related to the amount of people personally, i feel like it relates to how much the minorities are arrested versus the rich, when the rich may be committing the same crimes we are committing, but we are the ones that get pulled over and we are the ones getting stopped and frisked when they do the same things in the more upstanding communities, the same things going on. Yeah, i think part of it simultaneous over policing and under policing, because on the one hand, much more likely to be arrested, particularly on in order charge. Walking through the streets of your neighborhood or a drug charge now, right . But, at the same time, we did this little survey in class talking about how many people have been victims of crimes. I cannot tell which surveys were from people that were incarcerated or people who traditional kent state students. But, it did seem like there is an awful lot of a lot of people who suffer a lot of crimes in this very class. On the one hand, there is over policing and very likely to arrest you. On the other hand, there is under policing and less likely to arrest you who committed a crime against you. Why does that happen . That is the 5 million question, right . I personally think its a larger structural issue rather than something that we want to lay at the door of the specific officers usually. It is a question of what orders they are given, the expectations their superiors have for them. A question of how many people they assign to those areas and how well resourced they are. I assume they get the message over time that you are not rewarded so much for doing this kind of work in this area. You are expected they often have quotas and they have to fill those quotas. Different kinds of arrests you have to do during your days work. Depending on where you are, i know in new york city, i was hearing a story you might get a different quota of how many people you are expected to pick up during your shift. It is almost rucing the crimes before the crimes are committed. You can decide. I cant decide. Surely shortly thereafter . Yeah, that is a good question. Plenty of people died by being hit in the head with police sticks. It was not like it was a fatality free situation. I wish i could answer that question. Even today, we dont have good numbers for deaths in police shootings. We certainly dont have good historical numbers for it. It would be great to do that project. That would be a huge project but i think we could get some of those answers, but i dont have them. Sorry. Good question though. [laughter] i feel like if you want to find out how people feel what it is like to be arrested, its not something that happens for a moment, that is what it shows on camera. Everybody is drawn into that. That is what you might be looking into, the cameras, lights, everything flashing. It is about what that person feels in that moment. Being arrested, it is not over until you are out of prison or jail. I guess my question to you is how would you feel if they came in that door right now and arrested you . What would you do and how would you feel . That journey through those moments of your emotions is how you find out the answer. Thank you. That think that is true. If i could say the reason why i am focusing on this moment, i think you are right. It is that i am interested in that sort of specific interaction. I want the journey of what happens inside but also interested in what is that scene of the arrest . The very moment, the power that is exchange. What happens dramatically between these two people when one of them reaches out and says you cant stay here in this community now. We are going to take you away. What is that human moment between the two of them is ultimately one thing i would like to understand, as well as understanding the longterm outcome and outcomes to families and communities as well. Thank you. Andre . Normally, there is a red district. That is how the causeandeffect happens and the temperament of Law Enforcement changes. Innercity, more crime. Thats just a fact. You have everything going on in the city. Whereas, those things dont happen outside. I think really about how it feels about being arrested, you hit it on the head. Unless you have actually been arrested, you dont know what it feels like so you have to go through the motions. Im sure you dont want to be arrested. [laughter] it is always intriguing but nobody wants to feel the feeling. When you really do, its really its really straining on the body and emotions. You think about your family, what is going to the head of the person who was arrested. Lots of things happen. You feel a range of emotions and its not really chaos and confusion for me, based on me being arrested prior too. Im aware of the situation, but i dont understand the unintended consequence that could occur if i dont comply or things get out of control. That is right. A practical consequence of arrest. Even if you are not traumatized by the drama of the moment or the terror of the moment, yeah. I think we have time for one more. One more, and how about two more . [laughter] two more. Tommy and nick. Yes . Society, the home body. I feel like there are a bunch of answers to that. Do you think women tend to be less violent, physically . We can disagree on that. I think women historically were most likely to be in the home in private basis. Women were not likely to be seen as problem drinkers because they were drinking inside the home so nobody was going to arrest them for public drinking. They could be drinking a lot, but they are treating inside the home so they will not come to the attention of the police and that is probably true even today. That women may be more likely to be off the streets and sort of in private spaces than men. It is a speculation i have but i think it is a combination. Again, it is a prejudice you dont want to arrest a woman because she seems less threatening even if she perhaps is very fierce. She might appear to you to be less threatening because of your preconceptions about women and men. And women are smaller in size, generally speaking. They might seem less menacing for that reason as well. Yes. Ok, one more, and thats nick. Hoh. Youre not nick. I was thinking, when we have the pie chart about different crimes, back to the 1980s, i think. More Violent Crimes became on the radar. Do you think that it is americas obsession with serial killers started also . I dont know. I dont want to be obsessed, but people like jeffrey dahmer, bundy, things like that. Do you think that has a correlation between crime rates and fascination with serial killers. Interesting question. [laughter] no, i mean, i do think what happened in the 1980s, for real, is that violence rates went down. They have been going down. Actually, you actually have a much safer people are much safer. I think when they started to get much safer in reality, they started to sort of focus on these, you know, things like serial killers. True crime stories. It almost is like, it sort of was an inverse to their actual level of danger. They started to want to i dont know, they wanted to gin up their own fear. I do think there is a correlation between this sort of decline of real crime rates and the increase of things like fascination with serial killers. There was something going on in the 1980s and 1990s. Really good question. Thank you guys so much. It has been an interesting class. It is an honor to be here with richard for two reasons i am a journalist and what that means is my work is deeply dependent on talking to people but it is based of those who have the time and inclination to do the deep research that richard demonstrates in his book. Try to make that clear over and over with that research some of the things here not so interested in talking about so i just paid back the favor to be here. But the second part is there is a notion im doing
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