Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 298
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-5381-0800-0 • Hardback • March 2018 • $42.00 • (£35.00)
978-1-5381-3147-3 • Paperback • November 2019 • $31.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-5381-0801-7 • eBook • March 2018 • $29.50 • (£25.00)
Loretta Prater, PhD, is a retired professor and dean of the College of Health and Human Services at Southeast Missouri State University, where she provided administrative oversight for the Department of Criminal Justice and Sociology and a Regional Police Academy. She has served on numerous boards in various communities and states, including as the president of the Southeast Missouri Chapter of the United Way. She currently is a member of the Family and Community Trust Board of Missouri, and is the Chairperson of the Community Advisory Council for the Missouri Foundation for Health.
Prologue
Introduction
1: Homicide or Natural Causes: How did Leslie Vaughn Prater Die?
2: Police Brutality: Myth or Reality?
3: Profiling: Reported Research and Personal Experiences
4: Review of Police Departmental Responses to In-Custody Deaths
5: Fueling a Legal Battle
6: To Settle or Not to Settle in Wrongful Death Cases Involving Police Officers
7: Silent No More: Strategies of Advocacy to Elevate Public Awareness
8: MOMS (Mothers of Murdered Sons: Unarmed and Killed by Law Enforcement
9: Police Academy Workshops: A Proactive Strategy to Address Police Misconduct
10: No Justice, No Peace: Paths in Seeking Change through Public Policy
Loretta Prater was truly an exemplary “mother of the movement” and before the tragic events of the last few years created so many more mothers who lost their children due to excessive use of force by police. Her struggle for justice is important and instructive.
— Barry Scheck, civil rights attorney; co-founder of the National Innocence Project
This is one mother’s vivid account of the death of her son to the unfortunate outcome of police brutality in our society. The detail Prater gives in describing the death of her son is exceptionally riveting and gets at the questions that all parents want to know when they lose their children to police violence…”what happened to my child?” Not surprisingly, the bureaucracy, legalese, and fear gets in the way of these much-needed conversations around police accountability, police behavior, police violence on its citizenry, and the use of racial profiling in communities of color, particularly African-American communities.
— Arrick Jackson, Dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Ferris State University
Justice is always unfinished until an account has been accepted by all impacted by the injustice. Prater’s well-crafted narrative illustrates a victim’s painful quest to seek offender accountability and to transform her family’s harm into growth.
— Linda Keena, PhD, interim department chair and associate professor, University of Mississippi
Written with the heart and courage of a mother and the vision of an innovative interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Loretta Prater's Excessive Use of Force: One Mother’s Struggle Against Police Brutality and Misconduct represents a searing account of the pursuit of restorative justice for her son, family, African American communities nationwide, and the entire nation. Excessive Use of Force is cutting-edge public policy scholarship that brilliantly connects rich research, thoughtful public policy insight, and relentless policy advocacy. Deeply moving and engrossing in its determination to tell a truth too long ignored, this work demonstrates that the personal is always policy-worthy. The story of Leslie Vaughn Prater is an example of a story whose time has come to be told. Using the method of triangulation, Dr. Prater weaves together an urgent call that human lives denied humanity, will always echo for justice. Chapters examining myths and reality of police brutality, reported research on personal experiences and accounts of racial profiling, a review of police departmental responses to in-custody deaths, awareness strategies, the hopeful audacity of the MOMS organization, and proactive policy strategies for police academies and the public to address misconduct, make this work a must-read for anybody and everybody whose lives have been significantly impacted by a criminal justice system greatly in need of an infusion of truth, hope, humanity, and justice Dr. Prater has provided for all of us that much needed medicine. For that, we all should be grateful.
— Zachery Williams, associate professor, University of Akron