Police Brutality : Use Of Excessive And Unnecessary Force By Police

In the Ferguson, Missouri case involving a white police officer (Darren Wilson) shooting an unarmed African American teenager (Michael Brown), the worldwide media immediately claimed that the officer shot Michael Brown for no reason besides the color of his skin. Many rumors and assumptions spread like wildfire after white police officer Darren Wilson was found innocent by a judge of having purpose to shoot Brown.

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.

Police brutality can be defined as a cruel or inhuman treatment by a police officer. Police brutality situations can happen in different ways, for example a person can be stopped by the police for what appears to be a routine traffic stop, for not using a turn signal and the situation can get out of control. The driver can become defensive to the police officer and does not understand why they

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.

While racing down the freeway on March 3, 1991, driver Rodney King and friends were leading the Los Angeles Police Department on a high speed chase making it up to 115 miles per hour. When King was eventually caught, officers pulled him from his car and began to beat King with their batons hitting and kicking him more than 50 times and shocking him with stun guns in a period of two minutes as he struggled helplessly on the ground outside of his car. King suffered 11 skull fractures, kidney damage, and brain damage. This was one of America’s first viral video of what excessive force is, and it changed the way police interacted with communities forever. The use of police force is an obligation, but unfortunately some officers may misuse, or abuse

Of course we all know about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri this past August. Michael Brown, who was

Have you ever thought about what happens if a person breaks a law? What if this individual breaks a minor law and creates a larger problem? A strong topic is upon our society when it comes to law enforcement and the tough physical and verbal oppression that they have the potential to put on people when it comes to breaking the law. Police officers are supposed to be society 's saviors, guardians, and our friends. However, when things do not go quite right, and when someone breaks the law, there will always be that chance that things could escalate. These officers are supposed to deescalate situations and solve problems. That is what society relies on them at any given moment. Sometimes it takes an escalation of force to deescalate a criminal situation. This is why society sees the men and women in uniform with weapons capable of hindering life to the fullest. However, when this force is used and abused, it creates problems. The public eye becomes weary of the police in many different ways for using excessive force to deescalate a situation. Excessive force and police brutality are often caused by depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, as well as other mental disorders; due to the way they are portrayed by the media, excessive force and police brutality have a direct effect on the American society as well as fellow officers in all branches of law enforcement.

Police brutality is abuse of power in the form of excessive force committed by the police. Examples of this range from physical assault to psychological intimidation. Contrary to popular belief, many forms of police brutality include emotional and psychological aspects on top of physical. It can also take the form of false arrests, verbal abuse, and racial profiling. In countless accumulating cases across the country, police brutality has proved lethal (Danalina 1).

What is police brutality? Police brutality is an act of misconduct done by a member law enforcement through the use of an extreme amount of force to physically, mentally, or emotionally attack a member of society. Many law enforcement officers, those sworn to protect and serve, have abused their rights and authority to ferociously assault and manipulate citizens, even if they were innocent. Citizens who have been attacked have been left with physical and emotional scars that can never go away; in some cases, it has even caused death. In a report by David Packman, prepared for the Cato Institute in 2011, states that 247 deaths were linked to police misconduct cases.(Packman 2011)

Police brutality is an intentional act of undue force that a law enforcement officer uses to control a situation. This act violates the human rights of civilians and thus is unlawful behavior that exceeds the officer’s governmental power.

This case sparked many other cases similar to Mike Brown’s situation. He was shot and killed

Over the last 16 years police brutality has gotten bigger. Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilian. Which in this case is used everywhere in the U.S. with every race. But people think that they only use assistive force on black people. But, in some cases that’s not true the use assistive force on every race.

Police brutality is one of the worst human rights violations in the United States. This has been going on since slavery time and the Civil Right Movement. Over the past decades, people are led to believe that the police are becoming new criminal. Police brutality is the use of excess forces dealing with the citizens. Which can ranges from false arrest, severe beating, racial profiling, politics, shooting, fatal choking and other form of harsh treatments.

Very recently in the US, there has been more attention focused on the police; namely, police brutality and racial profiling. More notably in August 9th of 2014, Michael Brown was shot by a Ferguson Missouri police officer. The teenager was unarmed and was

Another tragic killing that caught the attention of the movement was Michael Brown’s death in 2014, who was also killed by police in Missouri. Brown, like Martin was also unarmed when he was killed. Brown and a friend of his named Dorian Johnson, where stopped and were asked to stand on the sidewalk and soon after Brown was encountered by the officer he began to enforce physical