NCJ Number
127093
Date Published
1980
Length
237 pages
Annotation
This study documents a network of public officials and influential community leaders supportive of a status quo in Long Beach, Calif., that includes police brutality and corruption.
Abstract
The study focuses on the case of Conner Everts, who was arrested by two Long Beach police officers in 1966 on trumped-up charges and subsequently beaten by them. This study examines the record of the police department and documents patterns of brutality and harassment by Long Beach police. Police racism and sexual harassment determine the use of police discretion in making arrests. In the Everts case alleging police brutality, local courts were favorable to police testimony, but dismissed the testimony about police violence. The only city newspaper was cautious in its reporting on the Everts case and other police news. Interviews and research by the author unfolds a network of relationships among city politicians, lawyers, legal firms, newspaper owners, judges, and police. This network supported the police officers when Everts pressed his case against the city of Long Beach. Everts was vindicated only after the U.S. Justice Department entered the case under legal precedents established in civil rights cases. Chapter notes and a subject index