Police Bias has a Long History

This week in San Francisco history (1934), police shot and killed two striking longshoremen during a clash with strike breakers attempting to unload goods on the waterfront. One hundred and nine other strikers suffered serious wounds during the clash that became known as “Bloody Thursday.” During the pre-World War II era, police commonly supported management’s attempt to violently break strikes with replacement workers creating a setting of mistrust between citizens and police.

This relationship often found additional complication when circumstances infused a dimension of race into the occasion. We would do well as a society to remember that the often palpable mistrust of law enforcement among some communities is rooted in long standing historical realities of which even the participants may not be aware.

At The Bruce Law Firm, our sensitivity to these realities has proved crucial in identifying bias in evidence presentation, jury selection and beyond.