Essay on Police Brutality

Police brutality and racial profiling have become one of the most common topics of discussion in the United States today. Both of these things have had a huge impact on the African American population’s everyday lifestyle. There have been many controversial examples of this in just the past two years. Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown and Walter Scott, were all killed during an encounter with a caucasian police officer. Was there a valid reason for the police encounter? Was the victim holding/carrying a weapon? Was the police officer threatened verbally or physically?

When looking back at all of the success of the civil rights movement, it seems that our country has come a long way on many important social issues. Whether it’s ending racial segregation in public facilities or putting an end to disenfranchisement of African Americans, our country has made many strides. That being said, our country still has a long way to go in order to reach true equality for all. Specifically, when it comes to the subject of police brutality. Throughout history, African Americans have been plagued by unfair treatment from members of law enforcement and with each passing year it seems to become an even bigger issue. In fact, it has led to the protest of many powerful members of society, including Tina Charles of the WNBA.

We often trust police officers to protect our homes and our loved ones, but what if the officers we trust can actually harm our loved ones? Over the past few years, unjustified shootings, rough treatments, and severe beatings have been on and off on our tv screens and on our phones. We hear various stories especially from minorities about their unforgettable encounters with police officers who hurt and accused them. According to CopCrisis, almost 3,000 Americans have died over the past three years. One of the relevant factors why this issue keeps happening is racial discrimination. Police officers have been discriminating and accusing minorities over the littlest offenses like selling DVDs outside supermarkets or

We must acknowledge that people of color are still thought of as a different. There are still people in the world that believe being racist is right, but there are also some who believe that everyone is equal. But often what we hear about is the racial profiling within the American walls that we all live in. “Nationwide, driving while black has been criminalized, racial profiling used for traffic stops and searches for suspected drugs or other reasons, the practice especially common in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Texas” (Rodriguez, 2012). “Los Angeles has settled many lawsuits arising out of more than 50 deaths related to lethal police choke holds, and many other cities are paying out large sums to settle instances of police misconduct” (Angola, 2013). Due to the demands for services, the police presence is generally situated in poorer communities as the crime rates and calls for service are statistically higher in these areas. As a result of greater police presence, those who reside in poorer neighborhoods have developed a perception that police use excessive force frequently (Weitzer, 1999). This information is understandable that police are called to poorer communities but this does not make an excuse for what has been headlined on the news for the past couple of weeks.

Being a minority in the United States has never been easy and does not seem to be getting any better. Minorities have been exposed to violence by law enforcement for many decades. Law enforcement 's are tasked with protecting and serving its citizens, not to harass and assault them. Police brutality is a continuous problem in the United States and officers need to be accountable for their actions. This research project will examine how police brutality often leads to death because of some officers ' unnecessary physical aggression and poor judgment, some incidents leads to unjust shootings, and finally, the misconduct of police officers. By understanding how police brutality is increasing and the violence that comes with it, police officers can then receive better training and learn how to gauge certain situations to avoid the use of violence and abuse their power.

African Americans are highly diverse group and a part of this diversity is police profiling, equal rights and discrimination. Individual versus society, blacks, for example are more likely than whites to report having negative interactions with police, to be exposed to media reports of police misconduct, and to live in high-crime neighborhoods where policing may be contentious—each of which increases perceptions of police misconduct. Relations between the police and minority groups are a continuing problem in the United States and other multiracial societies.

Police Brutality is an ongoing problem and should be resolved immediately. Many officers involved in misconduct cases do not stand trial, police brutality is a national crisis. The purpose of this paper is to look at what police brutality is, what the effects can be and ways to prevent it from happening. Many cases occur because of the police and there feeling of power, and others because of race, class, or sexual orientation. Changes must take place in order to stop police brutality.

On the topic of police brutality and violence against minorities the main question is where does it start. Some say it starts from a lack of training, other say it is a moral or racial issue, others say that there isn’t a problem and it is just how things work. In reality there is more than just these problems. Police violence stems from a lack of training: officers that do have racial biases, although far from all officers; the standards for what is too much and when differ from area to area, keeping what is and isn’t unclear; and that most acts up until recently have gone unreported or unknown. Yet there is one more variable that can change the story, and that is location. Mixing all this together gives the basis of what cause police violence

Police brutality is a serious human rights violation in the United States. Over the past years police have acted out in ways that has made citizens wonder if they’re really doing their job. People have often questioned if police officers are abusing their authority. There are three main reasons why policemen engage in some type of brutality; society, personality, and the organizations that trained them are the reasons behind officers engaging in use of excessive force.

The people of the minority community have been affected by or possibly for countless of years, have been abused by police forces across the United States. The misconduct of law enforcement towards minorities has been accountable for many of untruthful arrests, inaccurate convictions, and even deaths of the African American. Police discrimination and racial profiling have been serious concerns over the years and is still a considerable important subject to the minority people in today’s society. Today, law enforcement officials are using life-threating and excessive force that contributes to outrageous beatings, horrendous attacks, and unreasonable shootings. This is a terrible and terrifying factor the minority face just because of the color of their skin.

There is a widespread and persistent problem of police brutality across the United States. Thousands of individual complaints about police abuse are reported each year and local authorities pay out millions of dollars to victims in damages after lawsuits. Police officers have beaten and shot unresisting suspects; they have misused batons, chemical sprays, and electro-shock weapons; they have injured or killed people by placing them in dangerous restraint holds.

Police misconduct against people of color has been an issue for centuries and it continues to be a problem today. According to Packman, police misconduct is any action performed by and officer that is unethical, against employment guidelines, unconstitutional, or criminal in nature. Police officers are sworn in to protect and serve our communities from criminal acts (Brenner and Ardebili, 2011), but in reality all they really do is put fear in the people of color. People of color know that they are at a higher risk of being stop and harassed by a police officer because of their skin color. According to Siegel (2015), “police are more likely to use racial profiling to stop black motorist as they travel further into the boundaries of predominantly white neighborhoods” ( p. 209). This shows how police officers believe to know where a person belongs and where they do not just by the color of their skin. There has been cases in our history that provide evidence to how Black people have been in certain places at the wrong time and come in conflict with

Historically, minorities have been victims of police brutality in the United States. Since the middle of the 19th century a dominant white social class maintained racial injustice through a police force willing to use violence against minorities. This violence expressed itself in the years immediately after the civil war through brutality in various forms. America has a lengthy an disgraceful tradition of police brutality to attain a sense of law and order in its society.

In today’s society, law enforcement has become an even larger issue than early times involving the safety of the black community. The fear and hesitation of trusting police officers has been a common worry amongst the black community for centuries upon centuries. A major question that people continue to ponder is, if they can not trust the law, then who can they trust? There are over a million incidents where an innocent man, woman, or child has come into conflict with a police officer, the majority of the time results in the loss of their life. Not only are police officers killing innocent people; in some cases, they are also getting away with it. White officers have become a part of the leading cause in the murder of innocent African Americans who are more likely to be killed than any other race. Police officers should not be allowed to get away with breaking the law just because they are a part of the law.

Other factors could be the media using cases that could easy up roar community when in all actuality police using excessive force has been an issue for years. This has become a very touchy subject due many people has been affect in some way or form from this. Some may argue that crime is simply increasing and police must use more force to enforce the law. Many feels that the younger generation is disrespectful and resistant to law enforcement. Also, is possible that some people feel entitled to as they wish and taunt the police. Has police brutality increased in the United States in the last couple of decades?