The History of Policing in America

Qualified immunity is a threat to people of color in America. Police officers can get away with violating people’s Civil Rights, even if they were in the wrong. According to The Guardian (2020), white supremacy has infiltrated the police force throughout the United States, but history shows otherwise. Linda Burnham states that patty rollers were authorized to stop, question, search, harass and summarily punish any Black person they encountered (2016). In the 1700s, slave patrols were paid to capture and brutalize enslaved people, giving any white person the right to kill or hang a person of color as they saw fit. White supremacy created policing to keep people of color in line, and it still exists today.