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100 B.U. L. Rev. 1047 (2020)
Cycles of Threat: Graham v. Connor, Police Violence, and African American Health Inequities

handle is hein.journals/bulr100 and id is 1065 raw text is: CYCLES OF THREAT: GRAHAM V. CONNOR, POLICE VIOLENCE, AND AFRICAN AMERICAN HEALTH INEQUITIES DENISE HERD* ABSTRACT This Essay explores how Graham v. Connor and the policies it codified contribute to multiple and interacting levels of health inequities caused by police violence in African American communities. First, police violence leads to higher rates of deaths, physical injuries, and psychological harm among affected individuals. Second, police violence contributes to a general climate of fear, chronic stress, and lowered resistance to diseases in communities even among those not directly harmed by police. In addition, use of excessive force and hyperpolicing in African American communities reduce opportunities for employment, education, housing, and social integration for residents in those areas. The socioeconomic marginalization of these communities makes them breeding grounds for crime, which increases levels of policing and related violence. Finally, Graham illustrates how African Americans and other marginalized groups suffer from police violence through framing black health problems as crimes needing policing and punishment instead of as illnesses requiring treatment and other forms of public health interventions. From this perspective, African Americans with mental health problems, drug problems, and chronic diseases such as diabetes, as in the case of Dethorne Graham, are targets of police violence in communities with few health resources and high levels ofpolicing. * Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health; Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Director of Health and Social Behavior, and Division Head of Community Health Sciences, University of California Berkeley, School of Public Health. 1047