Analysts worry that the imagery of "terrorist" and "immigrant" will be a potent source of increased uses of excessive force (Bai and Tang 2002).

Finally, the fact that juries rarely convict police officers for use of excessive force indirectly contributes to this culture. The police officers accused in the Diallo killing and the Rodney King beating, for example, were acquitted. Author and former prosecutor Scott Turrow wrote about the difficulty of even indicting officers who had patterns of abuse. In one case, the jury returned a hung verdict against a known "hitter," despite the baton marks on the back of the victim. Even more disturbing, members of the jury joined the defendant at the celebration party, held after the trial (Turrow 2000).

These systematic biases make it difficult for the media to devote adequate coverage to instances of police brutality. The entrenchment of the use of force in police culture...
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