ABSTRACT
Police in the United States engage in practices that are violative of the constitutional mandates and civil rights and civil liberties protections that they are duty bound to uphold and adhere to. Beginning in the early twentieth century and in the decades that followed, there were multiple instances where so-called “commissions” were established to investigate widespread officer and departmental wrongdoing. The police have a troubled history involving the freedoms and protections guaranteed under the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution and have privileged what they have referred to as “public safety” over constitutional mandates. In the furtherance of “public safety”, the police have engaged in practices such as racial profiling, suspicion-less stops and frisks, and illegal searches of homes and individuals. These questionable practices and policies continue to the present.
