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47 Buff. L. Rev. 1275 (1999)
Patterns of Injustice: Police Brutality in the Courts

handle is hein.journals/buflr47 and id is 1283 raw text is: Patterns of Injustice: Police Brutality in the Courts SUSAN BANDESt INTRODUCTION Legal consequences often hinge on whether events or incidents are categorized as isolated or connected, individual or systemic, anecdotal or part of a larger pattern. Courts tend to portray incidents of police brutality as anecdotal, fragmented, and isolated rather than as part of a systemic, institutional pattern. Though numerous doctrines-including federalism, separation of powers, causation, deference, discretion, and burden of proof- provide partial explanations for the judicial fragmentation of police misconduct, it seems clear that courts cannot or do not choose to see systemic patterns for reasons that transcend doctrinal explanations. This article explores those reasons, which, ultimately, are relevant not only to police brutality, but to the larger judicial tendency to anecdotalize systemic government misconduct. It is inevitable that courts must decide which details, events, and persona are relevant to a particular story of police conduct. Every narrative highlights some details, and downplays or discards others that seem to threaten its tProfessor, DePaul University College of Law. I am grateful to Albert Alschuler, Erwin Chemerinsky, Paul Chevigny, John Conroy, Barry Friedman, Tom Geraghty, Jeffrie Murphy, Judith Resnik, Sharon Rush, Carol Sanger, Austin Sarat, Stephen Siegel, David Sklansky, Welsh White, and George Wright for their comments on drafts of this paper. I also received very helpful comments at faculty workshops at the Cornell, University of Colorado and DePaul Law Schools, at the 1998 meeting of the Working Group on Law, Culture and the Humanities at Georgetown Law Center, and at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association in Aspen, Colorado. Thanks are also due to Michael Carter, Patty Galvan, Tom McGuire, Rebecca Morse, and Manuel Rupe for their excellent research assistance, and the DePaul Law School Faculty Research Fund for its support. 1275

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