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Police Brutality In All American Boys

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All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is a novel discussing the point of view of two young teenagers after an incident of police brutality has occurred. Rashad, an African American, ROTC young man was suspected to be stealing and assaulting an older White woman from the local liquor store that resulted in him getting brutally beaten by a white police officer one Friday night. Along with Rashad, there’s Quinn, an all-American Caucasian high school senior, who plays basketball for the same school Rashad and friends attend and actually witnessed the beating of Rashad on the same night he was just trying to find someone to buy alcohol for him before heading out with his friends. Ironically, the white police officer who beat Rashad …show more content…

In many cases law enforcement likes to do justify many of their wrongdoings on the hunch that he was “just doing his job” in the instance of killing or brutality injuring an innocent man or child for being somewhere at the wrong place or time can be validated with a simple statement (Kiely 209). Similar to when Paul was once telling Quinn “It’s harder to be a cop here now than it used to be” (Kiely 167). Nostalgically thinking back on time when Whites made up majority of the town's population and minorities precisely made up a unreasonably small fraction less than half thus implying that because there are more minority races particularly African Americans taking occupancy, the town has become more prone to violence, stealing, and other crimes . According to The New York Times, “In 15 high-profile cases involving deaths of Blacks, one officer faces prison time” (Lee). Implicating that only one officer out of 15 cases was convicted for the crime he committed and the others were given a leave of absences from duty. For the families of those who didn’t receive rightful justice they were granted payouts to pay for funeral expenses leaving the officer able to walk away scot free acquitted of all charges. However, thankfully the family does walk away with a hefty amount of money but, at the expense of their love one’s life. Racism within law enforcement takes so many innocent lives each year on account of just because of race alone regardless if a crime was committed or not. However, society as well is a major component revolved around

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