TITLE:
Applying Medicine’s “Never Events” Model to Law Enforcement’s Disparate Killings of Black Male Civilians
AUTHORS:
Tiffanie Victoria Jones
KEYWORDS:
Police Brutality, Black Male Image, Critical Race Theory, Never Events, Law Enforcement Policy Reform
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.5,
May
14,
2021
ABSTRACT: Background: George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide and international shock, grief,
and support, shedding long, overdue light on the need for dialogue and policy
reform regarding how American black people are handled by police officers. Much
of the outrage stems from the fact that officers have historically escaped any
penalty for unjustly taking the lives of American black citizens. Purpose: Utilizing George Floyd’s 2020 murder as a case study, this paper nests the
perpetrator perspective within CRT’s victim perspective to propose a model
whose long-term goal is that continued practice of harshly penalizing reckless
and murderous officers would aid in repairing some consequences associated with
systemic racism within the criminal justice system. Research Method: The
method described in this position paper is a model based on the medical
system’s “never events” policies called “Just N.O.”. The proposed model is
composed of four constructs and is tailored to law enforcement officers whose
lives are not in danger when they kill civilians in their care.