Crossing the Line of Police Brutality

-By definition the term police brutality is “applied in the context of causing physical harm, it may also involve psychological harm through the use of intimidation tactics beyond the scope of officially sanctioned police procedure.” In today’s society we have police known as riot police, who are known throughout the world to use extreme force. Statistics show almost every time the riot police are involved in crowd control, there is at least one fatality and multiple injured. This is why I believe this is one of the most important issues in the World today. Police are there to protect us but from April 2009 to June 2010 in the United States there were 5986 reports of misconduct from police officers. Police brutality has today’s citizens doubting the police department, and how they go about their arrest. Police brutality is an everyday occurrence, especially in cities where there are large communities of Blacks, Latinos and Asians.

Police brutality is defined as “excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians,” and this has become more prominent within the United States throughout the years (Danilina). There has many cases where police brutality has been seen via news channels, and it has dismantled the unity of trust between the civilians of the United States and the law enforcement who are supposed to protect the everyday people from harm. The issue is if the law enforcement is actually right within their means of protection, or have they gone too far with using excessive force in any situation that may or may not be harmful to them. There is, also, the question of whether racial profiling is the biggest contributor to police brutality.

There is no question that police brutality, when it occurs, is one of the most egregious violations of public trust that a public servant can commit. Police officers, those individuals taxed with protecting the public from danger, should never be in a situation where they pose a threat to the public. Furthermore, there is no question that police brutality occurs. Moreover, generally when there are allegations of police brutality, there has been some type of underlying violent incident. In addition, while issues of brutality may seem clear-cut to a disinterested observer, it is critical to keep in mind that law enforcement officers are not presented with textbook examples of the appropriate or inappropriate use of force, but real-life scenarios involving quick decisions. There are many arrest and non-arrest scenarios where officers need to use force to protect self or others; and the degree of force required may be greater than what a disinterested observer would assume. Another recurrent issue in debates about police brutality is that racial bias appears to be a motive behind police brutality. When one considers that minorities are disproportionately likely to be arrested and convicted of crimes, one would expect to find a disproportionate number of minorities among those alleging police brutality. Therefore, while acknowledging that police brutality, when it occurs, is a serious problem, the reality is that most

Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict defines police brutality as the use of excessive or unnecessary force by police against the public. Excessive force is explained to be any behavior or force beyond what is reasonably necessary in order to control a situation. It is a common misnomer that people believe some police use excessive force more often than not. What’s more concerning is most of the time people believe that this excessive force is usually focused upon the African American men, women, and children. This misnomer is typically found to be found in city settings where the population consists of mostly African Americans. The population make up causes the common belief to seem more true than it may otherwise appear.

The history of Police Brutality for minorities; especially people of color has left America wondering have times changed. Police brutality has deemed the opportunity for socioeconomic advancement or access to good and services for many Black/African Americans dating back as far as 1955. The system of Police brutality has affected many realms of society for minorities’ employment and family life. After some scholarly research, police brutality is still prevalent in the Black/African American community; moreover, it comes in many different forms and fashions. Police brutality is the use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians. Excessive use

Police brutality is a controversial issue that has recently been in the news, but seems to have always been an issue in America. Police brutality refers to the intentional use of verbal or physical attacks directed towards individuals by the police force that result in false arrests, sexual abuse, or death. (Dudley, William 13.) Most of these actions are linked to racial profiling: the targeting of individuals for suspicion of crime based solely on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. (Dudley, William 13.) Statistics about how often racial profiling and police brutality occurs, movements such as Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, and police reform efforts are just a few points as to why this topic is so controversial today.

The role society plays in how these crimes are perceived, discussed, and what measures are taken to try to resolve these issues is ultimately what can change the thinking that how police officers handle things now is right. Racial injustice is occurring at the hands of people who are suppose to keep this country safe. There are many people who contribute to this problem, but where

Racism and police brutality in America” by Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson touch upon racism and brutality in America. Their article talks about respecting the cops but they also mention police brutality through stories from people that experienced this. Although Satzewich and Shaffir reached out to people to cops to write about their personal experiences and thoughts about racial profiling, Chaney and Robertson’s article is a stronger source because they used several sources and focus on both sides of the situation.

Police brutality is a controversial issue that has recently been in the news, but seems to have always been an issue in America. Police brutality refers to the intentional use of verbal or physical attacks directed towards individuals by the police force that result in false arrests, sexual abuse, or death. (Dudley, William 13.) Most of these actions are linked to racial profiling: the targeting of individuals for suspicion of crime based solely on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. (Dudley, William 13.) Statistics about how often racial profiling and police brutality occurs, movements such as Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, and police reform efforts are just a few points as to why this topic is so controversial today.

Police brutality is the use of excessive force by a law enforcement officer in which the use force is neither warranted nor necessary (Micucci and Gomme 487). While we know the definition of police brutality and excessive force, it is somewhat controversial on what justifies the use of such force. In many different cases across America, there have been riots and revolts involving the use of police brutality by the police party involved. Police brutality is a problem because in many of the cases, people have the impression that the defendants have done nothing wrong that resulted in the officer using excessive force. On the other hand, there are cases where race would be considered as a problem since the tensions between the minority communities and the police force still exists. However, Miller argues that if the race proportions between officers and the ethnicity groups were controlled (meaning more blacks in place of the white officers), evidence suggests that anyone of any race may be involved with cases involving the use of excessive force just as equally (106). The most important part of this topic is whether or not the use of such forces will be justified. According the Prusinski, the reasonableness and the justification of the use of force involves many factors including “the nature of the crime, the safety of both the defendant and the police officers, and whether the defendant was resisting or trying to evade arrest” (854). Because of the consideration of the many different circumstances, conditions and factors, many of cases in which people complain about the use of excessive force are justified under the circumstance of resistance, safety, and nature of the

Police brutality is not a new subject. It has been around for numerous years, and like most issues, has resurfaced to the public’s eyes. The recent events brought up the question: Does there need to be a reform in the system in the police system? In this year alone, there have been countless cases of individuals being harmed or even killed by police officers for reasons that continuously are not explained. What has people more attentive to this injustice are statistics showing that most victims in these police attacks happen to be African Americans and other minorities.

Police brutality is a problem in our society mainly because there are police officers that are getting away with not only physically hurting innocent people, but murder as well. In the past year, there have been between 865-939 cases of people being shot and/or killed by cops (Calacal 1). Racial profiling is one of the main factors in this problem. African Americans and Latinos are the people we see being abused by police on the daily. So far this year, 215 African-Americans and 94 Latinos have been killed by police. Data shows that a black person is 3 times more likely to be killed by a police than a white person. Several officers

Most of the police brutality cannot be attributed to any significant proof but is only based on racial profiling. As such, the police attempted to detain suspects who they assumed to be behaving in a suspicious manner, any form of resistance resulted in fatal shooting. Furthermore, in most cases, blacks who were shot were not armed even though police tried to prove that they had within their reach dangerous items like knives (Russell-Brown, 2004). While carrying out their duties, police officers justify their actions against black people by arguing that they felt threatened or were in a position that forced them to shoot. It shows that speculation and a negative attitude against black people were the main reasoning behind the brutal treatment

Officers are trained to use certain measures to prevent an incident from escalating to brutal or deadly force and due to the environment of most minority communities, officers frequently have to resort to use-of-force. In a study by the Center for Policing Equity, which took three years to conduct, reviewed 19,000 cases of use-of-force by officers representing 11 cities between 2010 and 2015. They found that officers only employ use-of-force in 2 percent of all the police-citizen interactions, however African Americans were subjected to use-of-force 3 times the number of Caucasians, showing a disproportionality high difference (Williams, 2016). When interviewing police officer James, I asked, “When you have to pull your gun on a subject, what race is the individual, most

Unfortunately, police brutality is a trend that continues to increase daily. In fact, the Washington Post stated there was 807 people shot, and killed by police in 2016. Not to mention, in 2015 there was 901 people shot, and killed by police in the United States. However, there are many underlying factors that lead to any police involved shooting, or police brutality incident that occurs. Furthermore, it is important to understand these factors, so officers could prevent any more police brutality incidents from reoccurring. One factor, that has led to police brutality incidents in the past, and continues to cause police brutality incidents today is when an officer makes a negative assumption about a specific ethnic group, or a distinct group of people who share cultural characteristics (Zastrow, Kirst-Ashman, 2015). This is may cause an officer to think that because the individuals are the same race, and share a common set of physical characteristics and common beliefs, that they are all the same (Zastrow, Kirst-Ashman, 2015).