Silence, Power, and Injustice

Historical Patterns of Police Violence against Women in Detroit

Note: this investigative report is a project of the  Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab , a part of the  U-M Carceral State Project , and is based on cases drawn from the website exhibits  Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era  (published 2021) and Crackdown: Policing Detroit through the War on Crime, Drugs, and Youth (to be published in 2022).

Cover image above: "Pickets at Police Headquarters to Protest Fatal Shooting of Negro Woman by Police Officer," July 13, 1963 ( source ).

Introduction: A History of Silencing

Police violence against women in the city of Detroit, and in particular against poor and working-class Black women, was systemic during the second half of the twentieth century. Black women are more likely than any other group to have incidents of police violence against them covered up by law enforcement agencies or simply ignored. Many victims failed to report police brutality and mistreatment out of a sense that nothing would come of filing a complaint, or fear of the consequences of doing so. Police officers often made direct threats or committed retaliatory violence against women who attempted to tell their stories. The mainstream media also provided far less coverage for violence against Black women in comparison to white women, or even Black men. In prominent cases that generated publicity because of the courage of victimized women, the mainstream media often criminalized them and presented the police version of the story as the truth. For these and many other reasons, the long history and continued prevalence of police violence against women of color remain largely unknown.

Gwen Warren, 17 years old, led a  campaign against police brutality  in 1969 after officers assaulted her for political activism

The civil rights movement that gained strength during the 1950s and 1960s challenged the deep patterns of racial segregation and inequality in Detroit, including through recurring protests against brutality by law enforcement officers and demands for justice by Black residents who faced routine victimization by the Detroit Police Department (DPD). Civil rights organizations worked to elect liberal mayors who  promised to reform  the police department, but very little changed in terms of the problem of racialized police violence in the Black community, not least because of  deliberately ineffective procedures  that enabled the DPD to investigate and exonerate its own officers when accused of wrongdoing. The 1973  election of Coleman Young , the city's first African American major, on a platform of ending police brutality and racial terror, especially by abolishing the  notorious STRESS unit , raised hopes of a new day in police-community relations. While the police reform movement did achieve some successes, the structural issues of police violence and the culture of abuse with impunity nevertheless persisted through the turn of the century.

The mid-to-late 20th century was also a time when women of all races were fighting to obtain legal rights and full citizenship. However, even as the second wave of the feminist movement achieved significant breakthroughs in formal equal opportunity under the law in the 1960s and 1970s, gender-based discrimination persisted. This was especially true for women of color, who were largely ignored by the mainstream white-led feminist movements, especially when the movements for gender and racial justice developed along separate tracks. Feminist groups, for example, often demanded more policing to protect women from violence even as civil rights organizations fought against police brutality and viewed law enforcement as the problem and not the solution. This lack of intersectionality during the civil rights era led women of color--and especially poor women of color--to experience compounding effects of discrimination, oppression, and violence. Black women in Detroit have long been disproportionately subjected to the widespread misconduct and violence perpetrated by the city’s police force. 

This exhibit excavates the patterns of police violence and oppression against women in the city of Detroit between the late 1950s and the early 1990s. In particular, the data reveal that police brutality and mistreatment of Black women took place through:

  • Violent encounters that escalated from traffic stops, in particular when women asserted their constitutional rights and protested unjustified police harassment
  • Police raids of private homes and politically motivated searches of large groups of Black people
  • Routine police harassment of female sex workers, often escalating into violence that the DPD falsely claimed was caused by the Black women as aggressors
  • Sexual and physical assault of Black women picked up by police on the streets of Detroit
  • Retaliatory violence against Black women who filed complaints about police brutality and misconduct, including on behalf of their sons and male partners
  • Targeted violence against women who participated in political activism, especially youth involved in  Black Power demonstrations  (also see  this separate report )
  • In addition, Black women frequently filed complaints that police did not protect or assist them when they requested help

Courage and Activism: Breaking the Silence

Most of the attention in today's debates about police brutality and misconduct focuses on what happens to Black males, especially in street-level encounters and since males are the overwhelming victims of fatal police shootings. But police violence also disproportionately targets Black women, especially vulnerable women from marginalized and lower-income neighborhoods. These stories are often silenced in mainstream media accounts and ignored or falsified by police departments and other government agencies. The stories in this exhibit, however, could be recovered from the archives only because of the incredible courage of the women themselves as they came forward to file complaints, demand justice, and fight to expose the violence that they suffered. So often, these women confronted coverups by law enforcement agencies, efforts by those in power to criminalize and delegitimize them for daring to challenge the authorities, and policies designed to shield the perpetrators from accountability. It is clear that the problem of police violence against women was not rare, or caused by a few 'bad apples,' but was instead widespread and systemic--and systemically covered up--in the city of Detroit as in other large urban centers.

 Cynthia Scott  (1963) +  Barbara Jackson  (1964); photographs originally in the Michigan Chronicle, Detroit's Black weekly

Two major incidents during the early 1960s--each covered in a previous special investigative report by the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab--illustrate how the egregious patterns of police violence against Black women included unprovoked physical assaults and even murder, deliberately concealed by official agencies that falsely portrayed the victims as the criminal aggressors.

The 1963 fatal shooting of  Cynthia Scott  led to wide-scale protests against police brutality in the Black community and an incredible effort to uncover the truth of the incident, covered up by the official lies. The brutal police assault of  Barbara Jackson  a year later led her to file one of the first complaints with the newly formed Michigan Civil Rights Commission. Both women were sex workers who stood up for their constitutional rights and inspired civil rights and black power organizations, as well as thousands of individual Black Detroiters, to join the crusade against police brutality.

Despite the protests and lawsuits seeking justice for Cynthia Scott and Barbara Jackson, at the height of the surge of civil rights protests across the United States, almost nothing changed in Detroit. These events could have led to a systemic uprooting of a system and culture of police violence that was incredibly dangerous and blatantly unconstitutional, yet the white liberal administration that was in power resisted demands for change and instead painted Black Detroiters as a criminal threat. Most Black women who suffered violence at the hands of the police were much less well known than Cynthia Scott and Barbara Jackson, and most of their stories are lost to history and will never be known. The remainder of this exhibit presents the narratives of Black women who filed complaints with the Detroit Police Department, with civil rights agencies, or to the media--making sure that their stories would be part of the historical archive and not be silenced, even if they rarely achieved justice.

Map: 130 Police Incidents Involving Women, 1957-1993

 The map below displays 130 separate incidents of police brutality and misconduct against women in the city of Detroit between 1957 and 1973, as documented by researchers in the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab. Most of these incidents could be discovered because Black women filed complaints with the Detroit Police Department, to civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, to the city of Detroit's civil rights agency (the Detroit Commission on Community Relations), or to the Michigan Chronicle (Detroit's weekly Black newspaper). The 130 incidents displayed here are only a very small fraction of the actual encounters of police brutality and misconduct that Black women in Detroit experienced during this time period, because the  official archives are full of silences  and contain only the tip of the iceberg of what actually happened in history.

The Detroit city government, and the Detroit Police Department's internal investigation agency, exonerated police officers in almost all of these brutality and misconduct incidents. Civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s  demanded a civilian review board  to conduct independent investigations of police brutality, but instead white liberals and conservatives alike, including the liberal mayor Jerome Cavanagh, insisted against all evidence that the police department could police itself. Then police violence escalated in the aftermath of the  1967 Detroit Uprising , including enormous  brutality against Black political activists  and the  STRESS operation  that terrorized many Black residents. After 1973, the election of a Black mayor, Coleman Young, and the implementation of affirmative action to hire more Black and female officers, raised hopes that the DPD would fundamentally change under Black political control. But the routine encounters between police officers and civilians on the street always contained the potential for brutality, especially in a police department that continued to cover up illegal and unconstitutional actions. And the  militarization of the war on drugs and gangs  between the 1970s and the 1990s targeted poor communities of color and ensured that racial and gender injustice by law enforcement remained a crisis in the city of Detroit.

The remainder of this exhibit illustrates police violence against Black women, and their courageous efforts to seek justice in response, through specific categories of encounter.

Driving While Black

"You can be stopped for any reason, even if the officer doesn't like the way you look at him, he can stop you." -Detroit Police Officer to Mary Langley, August 3, 1985

Police officers exercise a significant amount of discretion when patrolling roads and enforcing traffic laws. While people of color and women specifically are already more likely to be stopped for minor traffic violations, these interactions are also much more prone to escalate into incidences of greater consequence and violence. Officers often believed that women driving or sitting in cars alone in certain areas were “suspicious” and assumed to be sex workers, meaning police preemptively criminalized them without cause. When such women accused them of violence, officers would contradict the statements and “justify” their actions by claiming that the women were uncooperative, resistant, aggressive, and criminal. From day to day occurrences of racial profiling and discriminatory policing to the most egregious examples of police violence, misconduct surrounding motor vehicles and traffic stops was pervasive in Detroit in second half of the 20th century. Below are the stories of a few women whose experiences exemplify this pattern, although there are many others reported in the map above, and far more that went unreported.

Patricia Grandison and Barbara Gould (1969)

Michigan Chronicle, June 7, 1969 ( Source )

Patricia Grandison (Black, Female, 28) and Barbara Gould (Black, Female, 25) were beaten by Patrolmen Herbert Talbot and Andrew Zazula following a traffic stop. The two women were driving home from a bar when they noticed they were being followed by a police car and pulled over. The officers asked to see Grandison's license, then verbally harassed her with racial slurs, leading to an argument between the two. The officer then dragged Grandison from the car and proceeded to beat her with blackjacks. Gould pleaded with the other officer to interfere and stop the beating, which led the second officer to assault Gould with his fist. The women were checked into Detroit General Hospital about 3 hours later, around 5:30 a.m. Gould was charged with assault of an officer and given a fine and a year's probation in a trial following the incident. (Police officers routinely charged victims with crimes, including assault, in order to exonerate themselves for illegal acts of violence). The officer's report claimed that the injuries sustained by the women were a result of their resisting arrest after being pulled over for driving without lights.

Muriel Ann Roberson and Taft Gault (1972)

Letter to Mayor Gribbs Regarding Roberson Complaint, 1972 ( Source )

Muriel Ann Roberson and Taft Gault (both Black Females) were assaulted by STRESS* officers after being pulled over by three officers, one of them Michael Sullivan. After pulling Ms. Roberson and Ms. Gault over, the officers immediately exited the squad car with guns drawn and dragged both women from their vehicle. Officers searched Roberson and reached under her blouse. Officers threw the two women onto the ground, and one pushed his foot on Roberson's neck. During this interrogation, they were repeatedly called "Black bitches." Officers also threatened to "blow their goddamn heads off." Officers forced the two to remain on the ground until the STRESS crew left. Following this event, Roberson was threatened by STRESS officer Jim Ginotti and Sgt. Jerome Malinkowicz to not file a complaint on August 16, and she received several threatening phone calls pertaining to this incident.

White police officers generally demanded total subservience from Black citizens during traffic stops and responded with violence when people protested the reason for the stop, objected to racist language and other forms of mistreatment, and in general asserted their constitutional rights. Retaliatory false arrests were common as a tactic to cover up police brutality.

*STRESS (Stop the Robberies—Enjoy Safe Streets) was a militarized police unit within the DPD in the early 1970s. They were responsible for a significant increase in police violence during their 3 years of existence, including the deaths of 22 individuals. Civil rights groups in Detroit eventually forced the abolition of STRESS because of the unit's extreme abuses and criminal activity. For more information about STRESS, visit the Detroit Under Fire website section  here .

Complaint of Donna Stallings ( Source )

Donna Stallings (1978)

Donna P. Stallings (Black Female) was sitting in a car alone in 1978 when she was approached by four 12th precinct police officers. The officers instructed her to get out of the car and she questioned the reason for this. One of the officers answered, "because I said so". Before she had the chance to respond, one of the officers grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the vehicle. The officers then proceeded to beat Stallings, including bashing her head into the side of the car and punching her in the stomach. Police disputed Ms. Stallings's statement and denied that they used any force besides what was necessary to restrain her, although she was clear in her report that she was continuously assaulted after being placed in handcuffs.

Map of Police Brutality/Misconduct during Traffic Stops

The map below shows other documented incidents of minor or alleged traffic violations which escalated into acts of misconduct and violence by police officers. This representation only shows a fraction of the total events that likely occurred, which we unfortunately do not have a record of due to a lack of reporting, dismissal of reports, and/or archival constraints.

Click the top-right arrow to view the full map, and view each incident in the pop-up box by clicking on the dots. Blue = Police Misconduct, Red = Police Brutality

 

Caught in the Crossfire

Even when women were not the direct targets of abuse, they often become collateral victims when family members were assaulted, stopped, searched, and arrested--especially during raids of private homes. Police violence is frequently justified as a necessary component of the militarized policing in the wars on crime and drugs. Violence increased inside homes through an escalation of  drug raids  and warrantless entries, especially with the expansion of  civil asset forfeiture laws , and the risks to individuals who were merely present and not the targets of such investigations increased substantially. There have been many encounters that resulted in abuse because women were attempting to protect a loved one, protesting on their behalf, or were simply in a location where armed police busted through the door. Mothers especially have endured a large amount of criminalization and violation while trying to protect their children and rally against police abuse.

Carrie Stewart (1961)

Complaint of Carrie Stewart, 1961 ( Source )

Carrie Stewart (Black Female) reported two white vice squad officers entered her home, without a search warrant, looking for her brother Willie. She asked the officers if they had a warrant, as was legally required--to which they replied that they didn’t need one, because their badge was enough. When the officers ordered her to help them locate her brother, she refused. An officer grabbed her, and she kicked him while trying to get away. The officer then pulled a gun on Ms. Stewart. Willie then arrived and the officers took him to the alley and questioned him. Their father complained about the warrantless search to the 7th precinct, and the inspector said the officers had not been authorized to conduct the search.

Lilian Butler (1966)

Complaint of Lillian Butler, 1966 ( Source )

Lillian Butler (Black Female, 33) was the mother of Letchur Philpot (Black Male, 15) who got into a fight with another young male named Melvin Stein. The teenagers were approached by four police officers who broke up the fight before proceeding to beat Letchur using batons, causing injuries to the jaw, stomach, and legs as well as giving him a concussion. Ms. Butler was notified by police that her son was in the emergency room and rushed to see him. She saw her teenage son handcuffed to a stretcher, severely bruised and obviously beaten. The officer in the hospital harassed Ms. Butler and rejected her explanation of why she was there. Ms. Butler was with another boy named Earl Dickinson at this time. The officer in the hospital struck Ms. Butler and detained both her and Earl for assault and battery. They were released the following morning, Ms. Butler with assault and battery charges, Earl with no charges. The police were not held accountable for Letchur's injuries; Melvin Stein was eventually taken by police to a precinct to claim responsibilities for Letchur's injuries.

Young Female College Students (1972)

Michigan Chronicle, December 23, 1972, during the brutal STRESS Manhunt

Multiple female Wayne County Community College students, including a 17-year-old girl, were sexually and physically assaulted as well as verbally abused by officers. This occurred during a search that was a part of the STRESS  “manhunt”  in 1972- a widescale hunt for 3 Black men who had been involved in a shootout with officers outside of a dope house. Officers kicked down the door of an apartment and upon entering, threatened to "kill all of you." They took the five men who were present into the kitchen and forced the four women to go into the bathroom one at a time. Two women said they were forced to strip down to their underwear. One woman, 17 years old, protested when told to undress. One officer hit her in the chest with his pistol, and told her to "hurry up and get your clothes off." The other woman, after she removed her blouse, was slapped in the face by an officer. The officer forced her to take off her bra then groped her. There were many other similar instances of assault, warrantless searches, and other rights violations as a result of the manhunt--including dozens against women who were the sisters, mothers, and friends of the suspects--during a flurry of home invasions and racial profiling street stops that the Michigan Chronicle labeled a reign of "terror" by the DPD.

Michigan Chronicle, December 23, 1972 ( Source )

Gross Negligence

"I have called different branches of your so-called police department and nothing has changed… I am a single woman with two children trying to live in peace… but that is rather hard to do when you’re laying in your bed sound asleep at three o’clock in the morning and the sound of gunfire awakes you to find a bullet has just come through your thirteen-year-old son’s bedroom window” -Jacqueline Wedlow, 1986

Complaint of Jacqueline Wedlow, 1986 ( Source )

Women of color are the most likely of any group to have their grievances ignored when they attempt to reach out to police to report a crime or to seek assistance. Law enforcement agencies have historically viewed many crimes against women as less legitimate, especially those involving    sexual misconduct and domestic disputes , but Black women, in particular, have suffered the brute of this negligence. There has long existed a lack of minority representation among police, a poor understanding of nonwhite community needs, and low community support- all resulting from widespread violence and distrust. These factors have together led to an inability for police to effectively deal with the communities that need protection the most. This  over-policing/under-policing paradox  that resulted largely after the white flight from inner cities and the heightened perception of rising crime in the deteriorating “ghettos” that were left behind, now composed of majority individuals of color. This was followed by careless discussions of the nature of urban violence that only further alienated law-abiding Black residents who initially had wanted to form partnerships with the police and other governmental institutions to create safer communities. 

Rosmarie Riviera (1963)

Rosemarie Rivera (Black Female) was too ill to go to the hospital, so her neighbor, Wilma Simpson, called the police for help. Rivera was pregnant and suffering from high blood pressure, but the police refused to take her to the hospital.

.Gladys Washington (1966)

Gladys Washington (Black Female) was driving on Griggs Street when her car stalled out and she was hit by a vehicle driven by an unidentified white male. The speed limit was only 25, so the man should have been able to stop when he saw her vehicle wasn’t moving, but she reported that the man had been driving at least 15 miles per hour over the speed limit. When a police officer arrived on the scene, he was unwilling to listen to Mrs. Washington's explanation and told her to “shut up” Instead, the police officer agreed with the man's story and refused to issue a ticket for his driving. The officer showed a strong preference for the white, male driver, despite injuries that left Mrs. Washington in the hospital for five weeks. Mrs. Washington's car was also totaled in the accident.

Elizabeth Vaughn (1972)

Michigan Chronicle, October 14, 1972 ( Source )

Elizabeth Vaughn (Black Female) and her husband were refused help by the DPD as an arsonist burned down their home. Her family was subjected to constant harassment and violence as a Black family that moved into a predominantly white neighborhood. Neighbors shouted obscenities at them, threatened them, and poisoned their dog. While they were moving in, neighbors called the police, who forced one of their sons to leave his own home because he did not have a key. Their house was set on fire twice in a three-month period, and a police car was present during the incidents and did nothing. The police were complicit in the racist and violent harassment that forced this Black woman and her family out of their neighborhood.

While women of color were disproportionately affected by police negligence, all women were more likely to have their grievances ignored for many decades-- especially in situations involving domestic abuse.

Elizabeth Burnett (1981)

Burnett Complaint, 1981 ( Source )

Elizabeth Burnett (White Female) was turned away by 11th precinct officers multiple times after reporting that her husband was stealing money from her, refusing to let her see her children, and beating her. The officers repeatedly claimed that they could not do anything because, since they were married, Mrs. Burnett's property was also her husband’s. They also refused to investigate the claims of assault because she didn't have any visible marks. The 11th precinct officers also made racist remarks about how Burnett should have known what she was getting into by marrying a Black man. The officers' dismissive attitudes eventually forced Burnett to go to a domestic violence shelter. She later filed for divorce and got her kids back, but her husband was never charged.

“Armed and Dangerous”

Criminalization to Discredit Victims

Most often, the officers involved filed the incident reports and therefore retained control over the official narrative. In such cases, as well as in response to complaints that may be filed by the victims themselves, there is a steady pattern of officers alleging they were being attacked by said victim as a justification for their violence in an attempt to make their actions appear reasonable. Many times, the official reports filed by officers claimed that their abusive actions were a response to a threat or attack with a “dangerous” weapon such as a knife, or in the case of Jaqueline Springer (below) a purse. This was often accompanied by no evidence, without weapons found, and may even be a narrative added to a report significantly after the fact. By framing women as “dangerous,” officers sought to clear themselves of all wrong-doing and justify their violence as self-defense. This was a common practice of Detroit Police officers; most of whom were large men, supposedly trained, and armed with guns. Yet, they would claim on reports to have felt threatened by small women ( Barbara Jackson , for instance, was 5'0", 116 lbs) whom they referred to as "unruly" or (often falsely) claimed to be armed with knives.

Michigan Chronicle, March 31, 1962 ( Source )

Jacqueline Springer (1962)

Jacqueline Springer (Black Female, 18) was on her way to school when she was stopped by police and accused of loitering. The officers then assaulted her, giving her bruises and cuts on her face and legs. Jacqueline quoted one of the officers saying "if you were a man, we would scatter your teeth all over the street." She was then taken to Jefferson Station. Jacqueline's father, Frederick Springer, happened to be the executive vice president of Council 77, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, a prominent position. Upon his arrival, the officers acknowledged that Jacqueline was not at fault. Springer spoke to Inspector Bruce Grubb, who promised an inquiry. During the investigation, the officers claimed that Jacqueline had assaulted them with her purse, which prompted them to assault her. When asked why they did not arrest her for "assaulting a police officer" as opposed to "loitering," they said they had forgotten to do so.

Mary Lee King (1966)

Mary Lee King (Black Female) was beaten, bitten on the neck, and dragged to a scout car from her home by DPD officers. Patrolman George Patrick claimed in his report that she had tried to jump on his back with a knife, but witnessed denied any attempted attack by Ms. King. This incident followed Ms. King’s son, Howard King, having escaped an arrest and being assaulted physically and verbally by Officer Patrick. Ms. King had stepped outside her home after her son came running in, to find out why he was being chased. Mary Lee King was taken to the Second precinct and Receiving Hospital to treat the bite on her neck. While at the hospital she was strapped to the bed to prevent her from consulting with her attorney until after the courts closed. She was released at 8:30 PM and charged with “obstructing a police officer from performing his duty.” This incident was part of a  two-year harassment campaign  against Howard King and his mother because they filed a police brutality complaint with the DPD and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.

Michigan Chronicle, July 30, 1966 ( Source )

Police Commissioner George Edwards Holds Cynthia Scott's Alleged Knife, 1963 ( Source )

Cynthia Scott (1963)

Cynthia Scott (Black Female, 24), a sex worker, was shot in the back two times and killed by Officer Theodore Spicher. Spicher claimed that Scott attacked him with a knife after he sought to arrest her, allegedly for larceny. Multiple witnesses disputed this story and stated that Spicher shot Scott as she walked away after refusing to submit to an 'investigative arrest,' which he did not have the authority to carry out. The incident led to massive civil rights protests.

Donald Johnson reported witnessing the incident out of the window of his home, where the officer was questioning Cynthia Scott and a male compansion before she crossed to the other side of the street. Johnson reported the officer saying "take another step and I'll shoot you," to which Cynthia Scott responded that she was going home. Spicher then shot Cynthia Scott, and multiple witnesses saw the officer and his partner plant a knife on her body. To view a full exhibit dedicated to Cynthia Scott, see  here .

As occurred with Cynthia Scott, the discrediting of victims of violence was especially prominent in cases involving female sex workers. Law enforcement officers often described women as “known prostitutes” in order to impose a framework of criminality on them, which then made claims of aggressiveness and “resistance” appear validated and allow for justification of violence.

Statement of Barbara Jackson, 1964 ( Source )

Barbara Jackson (1964)

Barbara Jackson (Black Female, 22) was severely beaten by white police officers after being arrested for soliciting prostitution and alleged larceny. She took her story to the Michigan Chronicle, the local Black community newspaper, and also gained support from the NAACP. She filed a complaint against the officers, Patrolman Raymond Peterson and Patrolman Dennis Wojtalewicz, with the Community Relations Bureau (CRB), the DPD’s internal investigative agency. This led to an investigation riddled with corruption and continuous efforts to discredit Ms. Jackson’s story and the abuse she endured. The report claimed that her injuries were “a direct result of her un-cooperative and unreasonable behavior” and found that the officers “conformed to the rules and regulations of the police department." This was coupled with instances of intimidation against Ms. Jackson to prevent her reporting, as well as the use of witnesses who were unreliable, but would affirm the officer’s narrative. This led her to further appeal her case to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, which eventually ruled in her favor and acknowledged that she had been assaulted by the officers. To view a full exhibit dedicated to Barbara Jackson, click  here .

Sexual Assault at the Hands of Officers

“It’s all about police subculture, the relationship of power. He’s got a gun, right? She sees the gun, and if she resists, it’s, 'I can arrest you if you don’t do what I ask.' It becomes extortion.”-David Robinson, former DPD officer (in his 2019 book You See a Hero, I See a Human Being)

There has been a long history of hyper-sexualization and "othering" women of color, specifically by white men in positions of power. This racially derogatory portrayal of these women as being uniquely "wild" and of having bodies that are less "pure" has served as a justification for widespread sexual assault and gendered means of control. In regards to police presence in minority communities, there have been long-lasting patterns of abuse of power and extortion that have led to the systemic abuse of women of color by the people who are supposed to protect them. A Tufts University study performed in 2002 found that only 17% of Black women report sexual assault; this number is almost certainly much less when the perpetrator is a member of law enforcement and in the previous decades that this exhibit focuses on. Thus, most incidents go unreported or are silenced by institutions that prioritize the protection of officers, even when they commit the most heinous of crimes, leading to widespread corruption and coverups. When reports are made public, Black women victims often face skepticism and criminalization; if their charges are proved despite these obstacles, the officers are labeled as individual 'bad apples' rather than as products of a corrupt system of abuse of power.

M.H. (1970)

Detroit News, April 23, 1970 ( Source )

M.H. (Black Female, 21, identity redacted) was picked up by two officers, raped at gunpoint, and stabbed multiple times. She was hospitalized with serious injuries, including a laceration to her jugular vein. She was then paid $5,000 by the Detroit Police Officers Association (a mostly white police union) in exchange for dropping the charges of rape and assault that she had filed against the officers. She stated that she felt she deserved some compensation for her injuries, but didn’t want to deal with the court proceedings. The prosecutor dropped charges against the two officers after this corrupt deal that the Detroit Free Press labeled a clear case of bribery.

M.A (1971)

"What is it worth for you to not go to jail?" -- "What do you mean?" -- "You know what I mean" -Officer to M.A.

Misconduct Report Against Patrolmen Lemaux and Ortman, 1971 ( Source )

M.A. (Black Female, 17, identity redacted) was forced by two plainclothes officers to perform oral sex on them after she was questioned for talking to a man on the street. The two officers drove her near the train tracks, then had her perform oral sex on them, implying that this was her only way to avoid jail time. At first, the officers disputed her complaint by labeling her a "suspected prostitute."

A formal complaint by M.A. led to a full investigation during which she submitted to two polygraph tests, both suggesting that her final statement was truthful. The accused officers were asked to also submit to a polygraph, to which they both refused. They were then given direct orders to do so, which they defied under the advice of their council, resulting in their removal from the force.

The prosecutor declined to bring charges against the two officers, because the only witness against them was M.H., a "suspected prostitute."

Female Teens (1991)

Memo Regarding Assault by Officer Joel Snyder, 1977 ( Source )

Two 14-year-olds (Black females, identities redacted) were raped by Officer Joel Snyder after a Halloween Party for the Explorer youth group at the Brewer Recreation Center. After the party, he took 7 minors to a drug store where he bought alcohol and condoms. He then took them to a hotel, drank with them, and had sex with the two girls. He further encouraged three other youths to engage in sex with one another. One of the girls reported the incident and stated that she had been taken to this motel 4 times prior by Snyder to have sex. The family of the girls sued Snyder for the sexual assault and in January of 1992, he was sentenced to 10-15 years in prison. In June of 1993, the two girls received a combined $550,000 from the city of Detroit as a settlement for the assaults.

Concluding Note

These stories and visual representations only capture a small amount of the total incidents of police violence and misconduct that occurred toward women and girls in the city of Detroit. The records of the events included here are only available because the victims filed formal complaints and demanded official investigations--often at great risk to themselves, including retaliatory abuse. There are many stories of females in similar situations that will never be uncovered for reasons that include a fear of reporting abuse, systemic police coverups of investigations, the closed nature of most police archives, and reports that lost or destroyed, intentionally or accidentally, over the course of time. But the small number of documented incidents represent the tip of the iceberg and illuminate the larger historical trends of police violence against women, especially women of color.

About the author:  Lily Johnston  completed this report while an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan and a research associate with the  Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab . She graduated in 2021 with a major in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience and a minor in History of Law and Policy.

Editing by  Matt Lassiter , Professor of History at the University of Michigan and the director of the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab.

Full documents and citations for all materials used in this exhibit are linked from the document excerpts and captions.

"Silence, Power, and Injustice: Historical Patterns of Police Violence against Women in Detroit"

Written by Lily Johnston. An initiative of the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab

Gwen Warren, 17 years old, led a  campaign against police brutality  in 1969 after officers assaulted her for political activism

 Cynthia Scott  (1963) +  Barbara Jackson  (1964); photographs originally in the Michigan Chronicle, Detroit's Black weekly

Michigan Chronicle, June 7, 1969 ( Source )

Letter to Mayor Gribbs Regarding Roberson Complaint, 1972 ( Source )

Complaint of Donna Stallings ( Source )

Complaint of Carrie Stewart, 1961 ( Source )

Complaint of Lillian Butler, 1966 ( Source )

Michigan Chronicle, December 23, 1972, during the brutal STRESS Manhunt

Michigan Chronicle, December 23, 1972 ( Source )

Complaint of Jacqueline Wedlow, 1986 ( Source )

Michigan Chronicle, October 14, 1972 ( Source )

Burnett Complaint, 1981 ( Source )

Michigan Chronicle, March 31, 1962 ( Source )

Michigan Chronicle, July 30, 1966 ( Source )

Police Commissioner George Edwards Holds Cynthia Scott's Alleged Knife, 1963 ( Source )

Statement of Barbara Jackson, 1964 ( Source )

Detroit News, April 23, 1970 ( Source )

Misconduct Report Against Patrolmen Lemaux and Ortman, 1971 ( Source )