The Jonny Gammage Law: Federal Prosecution of Police Brutality.

• Author: Ellis, Larry

The high profile cases of police brutality we have witnessed in recent years are not just media sensationalism. For every beating like Rodney King's that is caught on video tape and for every killing of an Amidou Diallo, there are hundreds of other victims of police brutality and the numbers are growing. In 1990, 62 people died at the hands of police. By 1998, that number had more than tripled to 205. Police killings are just the tip of a massive iceberg of police abuse of citizens ranging from beatings and assaults to racial profiling, false arrests, and biased court procedures, and to dally harassment and disrespect, especially toward minority youth.

The militarization of our police forcesindeed, the militarization of domestic policy generally is the source of the problem. When the police are militarized, cops-as-soldiers tend to see citizens as the enemy.

Militarization began with the creation of SWAT teams in response to the urban rebellions and anti-war protests of the 1960s. But it has really accelerated under the Clinton administration with the passage of the 1994 Crime and 1996 Anti-Terrorism bills. These bills greatly expanded the US military and federal roles in domestic policing in terms of funding, training, and law enforcement operations. These bills created many exemptions to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act which prohibited the military from domestic policing. Today, with SWAT teams in 90% of cities over 50,000 and 70% of towns under 50,000, the US military is training police and accompanying them on police operations.

Put the militarization of policing together with the traditional racial bias of the police and the result is deadly.

The Police Murder of Jonny Gammage

In Syracuse, New York in the 1990s, we have had five people die in police custody under suspicious circumstances, all of them black people. But it was the police killing of a Syracuse native while driving through a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania suburb that galvanized a movement for federal prosecution of police brutality. We call it the Jonny Gammage Law.

Jonny Gammage Jr., a young black man, was murdered by five white police officers outside, Pittsburgh on October 12, 1995. Gammage was killed during a routine traffic stop, allegedly for driving erratically but likely for "driving while black" at night in the white suburb of Brentwood. He was handcuffed and placed on the pavement. Only then did officers beat him with at least 20 blows by nightsticks, a metal flashlight...