Talk:Police brutality against Native Americans

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Whitlesj3134.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:28, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

BLP and NCRIME concerns

Whitlesj3134 I'm going to remove the section about recent cases of police brutality. There are a few reasons for this, but ultimately it's that we have to be extremely, extremely careful when writing about crimes on Wikipedia. Here are the reasons:

1. Try to avoid making definitive statements about something that happened to someone. By this I mean that we should try to avoid stating that something is police brutality unless we have a source that explicitly states that it's police brutality. The reasons for this are twofold. First, it can be seen as original research because we are assuming that something was a case of police brutality based on a limited amount of information. In most cases news stories don't have the entire story and sometimes may even have written the coverage in order to make it more likely that people will read it - meaning that they may tweak things to have it appear in a certain light. This leads into the second issue, which centers around legal concerns. If you make a definitive statement without a source that explicitly states that claim, the person(s) involved in the event could accuse Wikipedia of libel and say that we're publishing false statements. It's part of the reason why the notability guidelines for crimes tends to be so cautious. An example of this would be this news story, as some would call this police brutality while others would say that the police were reacting to a threat. It's one of those grey legal areas out there and one of the involved officers could complain and say that by making a concrete statement we're committing libel.
2. Also try to avoid listing crimes unless they have gotten a lot of coverage. Most crimes will only get about a few days or a month of coverage, which is unfortunate (to say the least). It's what drives movements like Black Lives Matters, as stuff along these lines tend to get ignored. However Wikipedia isn't really a place to correct that (not that I think this is what you were trying to do) and ultimately you should only list someone if they have received long term coverage, especially if that coverage is in an academic source. Crimes that only gets about 1-2 months of coverage or less are frequently challenged and removed on Wikipedia.

I would recommend that you look for cases where they have two qualities: one is that they have continued coverage that stretches beyond a couple of months (preferably about a year later, but over 6-7 months should be fine) and ideally had coverage in academic sources. The other is that the source specifically mentions that it's a case of police brutality or uses an equivalent term like "excessive force". Don't feel that you need to include every single case that may seem like police brutality - it's sometimes more effective to focus on just a few cases and flesh those out to give the context of what happened.

A good example would be to mention the Dakota Access pipelines, as there are several news stories where protesters have accused the police of using excessive force. ([1], [2], [3]) This source looks like it should be good as well, and discusses police brutality against NA in history. This would also be a good case to look into because they use the term excessive force. Just be cautious because while the NA state that they felt that the police used excessive force, the courts rejected their claim. This means that you should avoid stating that it definitely was and instead phrase it like "In (year) the (tribe) brought a trial against (police), claiming that they used excessive force." By using the word claim and other things like alleged, that gives Wikipedia a bit of a security blanket because we're saying that it was the tribe stating this and that it was alleged brutality.

Don't let this discourage you. The page looks overly good otherwise. You just need to be careful about the WP:BLP and WP:NCRIME guidelines, as articles that contain things about living people and/or crimes tend to be somewhat bigger targets for other editors. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• I also changed the solutions section to an advocacy one. Be cautious about labeling something as a solution, as this can be seen as promotion for the groups. Sorry if all of this sounds complicated - anything crime and politics related tends to be a tricky thing to navigate. I've written a few pages under my main account about crimes from years ago and received similar advice, so it's definitely tricky. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Potential Sources

These are quantitative sources:

• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/ (but Native Americans are bundled into "other")
• When Police Kill [4]

Do read WP:BLPCRIME and WP:BLP before posting individual cases. Cases that have received sustained media attention include the deaths of:

• Loreal Tsingine
• Jackie Salyers
• Jeanetta Riley [5]

Other issues/angles

• The American Indian Movement's first priority in Minneapolis was contesting police brutality against American Indians.
• Andrea Smith discusses BIA police brutality here
• See Ch 8 and 9 of Native Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Theoretical and Policy.

--Carwil (talk) 16:09, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Question Regarding Lack of Scholarly Sources

Hello Wikipedians! I am creating a new article on police brutality against Indigenous Canadians. Do any of you have advice for structuring unbiased accounts of individual cases and causes, especially with a lack of formal research on the subject? Skyef25

Wiki Education assignment: This is America

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 September 2023 and 18 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CamilleOM (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Llynn2 (talk) 17:36, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposing New Changes

I propose changing the name of the existing Wikipedia article from “Police Brutality Against Native Americans” to “Native American Interactions with Law Enforcement and Police Brutality'' in order to expand the discussion of indigenous police brutality by enriching the page with greater historical contextualization.

I will update the page with more relevant statistics regarding incidents of police brutality and rates of mental health disorders in native communitie, as well as information about advocacy groups like the Lakota People’s Project. I will also include information from the federal government acknowledging police brutality against Native Americans and create a subsection on tribal law enforcement on reservations. The “Advocacy” section of the article will also be updated with information on the American Indian Movement Indian Patrol, Lakota People’s Law Project and National Indigenous Women’s Research Center.

Additionally, I will restructure some of the article’s organization, renaming the “Effects” section to “Causes and Correlated Issues”. Also, I will remove grammatical errors and certain pieces of unrelated information or opinionated claims from the existing article, such as “Police brutality is often associated with Black People are worse on the scale of racial profiling,” or “The issue of police brutality against Native Americans has deeply-rooted, historic causes.” CamilleOM (talk) 19:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)