preview

African American Police Brutality Essay

Decent Essays

“The African American community is not making this up. It’s not something that’s being politicized. It’s real” - President Barack Obama, speaking about police brutality to law enforcement officials at a White House Panel. Police brutality is the deliberate use by police of more than necessary force, used to accomplish legitimate police missions of subduing violent people, catch criminals and suspects or protecting life and public order. In the year 2014, 1108 people were killed in cases of police brutality. Of those 1108, 23.5% (265) of the victims were African Americans. In a poll conducted in 2009, 54.4% of African Americans said that they or people they knew experienced violence at the hands of police. Only 44.2% of the African Americans taking the poll …show more content…

One organization, made specifically to get justice for victims of law enforcement is the Stolen Lives foundation. The Stolen Lives Foundation’s goal is to compile and create a list of people killed by law enforcement agents from the year 1990 until now. Through many efforts over 2000 cases were documents in the second edition of the Stolen Lives book published in 1999. These 2000+ cases are evidence of the true injustice, within the communities and the national epidemic of police brutality. “The Stolen Lives Project aims to restore some dignity to the lives lost.” The Stolen Lives website claims that “though their lives have been stolen from us, we will not allow them to be forgotten” Another foundation, though not about police brutality, but there are cases of police brutality that do have to do with this foundation, is the Black Lives Matter Foundation. The Black Lives Matter Foundation was founded in 2012 after the death of 17-year- old African American student, Trayvon Martin. The Black Lives Matter Foundation’s movement is based on rebuilding the Black Liberation

Get Access