On March 25, 1994, the Boston Police Department executed a “no-knock” raid that ended in the death of Reverend Accelyne Williams, a seventy-five-year-old retired Black Caribbean minister. Acting on a faulty tip, a thirteen-member SWAT team stormed into the wrong Dorchester apartment, wrestled Williams to the ground, and triggered a fatal stress-induced heart attack. His death became a defining tragedy in Boston’s history of police violence and raised urgent questions about accountability. This article situates the Williams case within the broader history of Black Boston’s freedom struggle against police civil rights violations from the early twentieth century to the 1990s. Through a controlled case comparison of four major incidents, we analyze how moments of police brutality became catalysts for Black political mobilization, ministerial activism, and community resistance. The study addresses three central questions: How does the Williams case fit within the trajectory of Boston’s racial justice struggles? How do such incidents illuminate the city’s persistent racial inequality and segregation? And what can these histories teach us about the broader U.S. movement to “police the police”? Drawing on original archival research, we demonstrate that police abuses have consistently spurred waves of organized resistance in Boston, shaping both local and national debates on civil rights. We identify key historical breaks, continuities, and paradoxes in the struggle for accountability, showing how the demand to “police the police” has long been central to Black political life.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling on the matter in July 2023, the correct test for police misconduct for use of force (the use of force test) in England and Wales remains contested. This paper explores how the largely subjective criminal law test preferred by police stakeholders is inconsistent with addressing the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police highlighted in the Casey Review. In doing so, it makes a novel contribution to police accountability debates by developing a new analytical framework which allows arguments concerning police accountability processes to be more clearly articulated and assessed. The framework envisages three axes of accountability. The conduct axis relates to the actual levels of force used against citizens. The cultural axis concerns the extent to which police accountability processes provide meaningful oversight of police managers and professional standards departments, while the constitutional axis is engaged with the balance of power at the various parts of the police accountability system. Plotting the relative impact of more subjective or objective use of force tests along each axis allows clarity of debate concerning the consequences of the preferred test and thereby highlights the mitigation necessary in relation to the negative consequences of a choice in either direction.

Existing literature examines the effectiveness of civilian oversight in reducing police misconduct. However, little-to-no quantitative research explores possible adverse consequences of this accountability mechanism. Utilizing time series analysis of administrative data on aggregate monthly civilian complaints and police behavior in the largest American city, this article offers evidence of racial inequality in police response to civilian complaints. For White civilians, complaint against the police abates subsequent police stops. For Black civilians, complaint is associated with subsequent intensification of police stops. This intensification only follows complaints against White officers, is conditional upon officer knowledge of the complaint, is confined to stops involving greater officer discretion to perform the stop, and is only observed in police precincts with large Black populations.

It is recognised that civil litigation has a place within the police accountability infrastructure. However, the role of actions against the police for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment, assault, and malicious prosecution (hereafter police actions) is underexplored. Taking citizenship as its analytical frame, this paper probes the relationship between police actions and the police complaints and discipline system over the last 60 years. Its primary focus is the Court of Appeal decision Thompson v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Hsu v Same [1998] QB 498 (Thompson). Here the potential for police actions to expose questionable police responses to officer misconduct, and failings in external oversight mechanisms, came into conflict with the drive towards proportionate civil justice. In prioritising the latter, Thompson increased police autonomy over settlement of police actions, thereby deprioritising the role of the courts in demarcating the limits of state interference with citizens’ rights. It is not suggested that Thompson should be overruled. Instead, it is contended that recognising the impact of the decision on subsequent reforms to police accountability processes and contemporary conceptions of the police-citizen relationship is crucial to understanding the roots of current disquiet concerning police accountability (and therefore to the development of meaningful reforms).