Police Brutality Within The African American Community

“The African American community is not making this up. It’s not something that’s being politicized. It’s real”

As I was conducting research about police brutality I came up with three questions I wanted to find out. I wanted to know what race group is affected by police brutality the most, why they were affected by this the most and what to do to stop police brutality involving shooting civilian. This Paper talk about how police brutality is a major issue in America right now. There’s many different types of police brutality but police officers killing civilians is something that is issue in our nation currently. After doing reaching this topic I was able to find out that African Americans have been affected by this the most out of any race. African Americans are affected by this the most because in some cases African Americans are usually stereotyped and this causes them to be treated different by police. Ways we can help this issue is by supporting these organizations that are against police brutality and encouraging police officers around the nation to always have a body camera on them at all times.

The brutality of the police force has been a long worldwide problem, but especially between the years of 2012-2016. Black people are being unjustly beaten and shot in plain sight for doing nothing while being unarmed. Journal of African American Studies “Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system” (482). “Black males with more “Afrocentric” features may receive longer sentences than blacks with less Afrocentric features like lighter skin and straighter hair”(482). Nowadays it is important to know about the police force. It’s important to know our rights as citizens and be careful around cops. Not everybody is good, but not everybody is bad also. In The New York Amsterdam News 21 people were killed by Chicago police in 2008. Entire families were being attacked. They believe it’s because of their skin color and how they are different. The year of racism started off with the world seeing the police murder of Oscar Grant. “The media have pushed people away from hearing the issue of police brutality, and it has fallen off of the radar screen.”(2) “You can’t give in. They will try to make an example out of you, try to break your spirit!”(2) African Americans say do not trust the cops with anything. “They will ruin you.”(2)

Living in the information age, the prevalence and awareness towards social problems are able to receive more access than ever before. We always hear the term Social Problems being thrown around habitually in the 21st century, but the term Social problem is defined as “A general cause that motivates activists and social movement organizations to address a particular troubling condition”. (CITE). The current world has too many social problems to name off in under 5 pages so for this paper I would like to focus on perhaps the most prevalent one that we are seeing way too often these days. Police Brutality and racial profiling. As a white male, someone who is a criminal justice major in hopes of eventually becoming some type of law enforcement for my career later in life, you may ask why I even care about this issue since it isn’t necessarily affecting my life directly. My response is simple, I am tired of seeing the hashtags behind these deaths and one death from police brutality is already too many.

Over the past five centuries, black people have endured violence in many different ways. Today, police officers use deadly, excessive force that leads to inexcusable assaults, beatings and shootings. This demonstrates the governmentТs role in initiating and prolonging racial suppression and provides the explanation for police brutality to become a federal crime(Black Radical Congress, 3). In history, racist violence, police brutality, has been used to suppress the racial blacks and to preserve power and privileges for the white race. This was done for five primary purposes. First, it has forced black people into slavery or low wage situations. Secondly, to steal land and other resources. A 3-rd was to maintain social control. A fourth

Over the past decade, police brutality has covered major headlines because officers have acted out in ways that have made citizens question their motives. Things such as unjustified shootings, deadly chokings, and rough treatment have all added to the constant problem of police brutality in the black community. Annoyingly, the police officers responsible for the killings and abuse are not held for long before they are discharged to their normal routines. Since many people believe that the issues of police brutality is based on race, officers should be held accountable for their misconduct. Accountability will permit officers to treat all with equality; therefore using the appropriate amount of force on everyone. Often cops are indicted in less than 1% of killings, but the indictment rate for citizens is 90% which is a major problem. If someone does wrong they should suffer the consequence no matter who they are. As a result of misconduct officers tend be mistrusted by their communities. Deaths in the black community often stems from police officers using excessive force such as assaults, beating and shootings.

A young man’s brutal death at the hands of the police is found justified in a court of law due to his “suspicious” appearance: a black hoodie and his hands in his pocket. An elderly woman is fatally shot in her home for her relation to a suspected criminal. A married man with two toddlers is choked to death after a minor traffic stop by an officer who later claimed that his unarmed victim was wielding a gun. These people all have a few commonalities: the color of their skin, their presumed guilt at first sight, and their ultimate unjustified death administered by the law force. These are not uncommon occurrences. Due to the staggeringly disproportionate rate of African-Americans killed by the police, and the underlying rampant racial profiling, police brutality towards blacks in America must be called to light.

A national problem that is affecting me personally is the issue of police brutality. I am an African American female living in a society where there is an overlooked where between my community and the police task force. Before I delve into this topic, I need the reader to understand that I know all policeman are not bad and that all African Americans are not innocent. The problem I am addressing is the apparent discrepancy of police officers assuming that just because someone has a darker complexion that means that they are doing something illegal.

Police brutality against African Americans is nothing new in today’s society. Twenty five years after the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and countless other unarmed African American men and women have become victims of police officers. Riots and protests in places like Ferguson, Baltimore and Cleveland have garnered the issue and unprecedented amount of attention, especially in the media. It has also caused an outcry among the American people for both sides involved. Notably, it has brought about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s penning of Between the World and Me. In his short novel addressed as a letter to his son, he discusses the fear that all African Americans Coates himself saw growing up in Baltimore. He tells his son, and therefore the reader, stories of his own childhood and young adulthood and of the problems and issues he sees within America. These problems lie within the justice system, the education system, and within our society as a whole.

In today society, police brutality is seen in many news media. You cannot go on social media or television without seeing a police officer shooting an unarmed African American male for very little reason. Recently twenty-three years old Stephon Clark was shot by Sacramento office officers in the back for allegedly resisting arrest for breaking windows. When comes to police brutality, African Americans is the fore front of this topic. This topic called police brutality goes back to the slave patrol when the patrollers will monitor the slaves and the slave owners to make sure that the slaves will get the punishment for staying out of order. As Black America knows, this problem has been embedded in our community and in America for over 200 years, while white America is till hearing about it. However, that not one of the biggest problem with this issue. The issue is when African American women like myself or male will stop seeing cops getting away for murder or assault. When I am going to stop seeing my people rioting and show the criminal justice how angry we are with this racial systematic practice.

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

Police brutality against African Americans was a huge impact in Los Angeles, California in 1991, and continues to be a problematic situation in America today. On March 3, 1991, a group of white LAPD beat Rodney King. After this incident occurred a lot of negative events started to transpire. A lot of African Americans were angry and demanded justice. The relationship between the LAPD and the Los Angeles community in 1991 were horrific and still continues to be awful today. Police brutality just seems to be increasing more overtime, which means the increase in the community not trusting the police. Police brutality can be a huge disadvantage when it comes to community policing.

Police brutality is an excess and unnecessary use of violence police officers use toward civilians. Police abuse has been going on since the time of slavery when police officers captured slaves who tried to escape. Since this issue has been going on for a long time, I believe that people are getting accustomed to this issue. Police brutality seems to be a big issue in America. However, other countries do not seem to have police brutality as an issue. This makes us wonder why America has higher police brutality than other countries. America is the most diverse country which means there are the most number of people in U.S who are of different race than Caucasians. This idea link race and police brutality together. I chose this topic to argue because recently, the violence against people of color has been brought up more often by the media; however there has been no punishments against the officers or change in leadership to resolve the issue. People do not seem to understand that police brutality can be traumatic for African Americans. Violence is not just physical, it could be

One point the Salem Press encyclopedia makes in the article “Police Brutality debate” concerns racism in the police force. The author asserts that evidence such as the murder of the unarmed Michael Brown by a police officer after a confrontation on August 19, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri shows that race does negatively impact police response to civilians (5). Considering that the officer involved was acquitted of all charges further defends the case that racism is a major issue. Arguably, if Michael Brown was white, he could have lived. Another example the Encyclopedia uses is Eric Garner, who was choked to death by police officers, while unarmed (“Police Brutality”). This situation further expresses the argument that black people are more stereotyped to be threats than white people. Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson focus on how racism correlates to police brutality. In the article, research suggest that Black males are seen as hostile and criminal which justifies the point that racism is present within the police

First and foremost, in cases of using deadly force, a person is likely to have lost their life, which is the greatest loss when concerning police brutality. On a larger scale, the impact affects a large portion of citizens. With so many incidents of police shooting unarmed African Americans, the trust of police officers is being lost among people. Many African Americans are turning from trusting these protectors into fear of them, with the attitude that they could be the next victim of this type of brutality. Recently this has been the most covered issue pertaining to law enforcement and many believe this to be an issue based in racism. Marc Mauer (2006) quotes law professor Randall Kennedy, “’the most lethal danger facing African Americans in their day-to-day lives is not white, racist officials of the state’” (p. 158). With all the news coverage many people may think that that is the case, but in reality these incidents are not as prominent as other issues that the African American community faces. But the issue of brutality does not just affect African Americans, there are many other cases of police wrongdoing that does not receive as much attention, whether it is miss use of nonlethal force like pepper spraying of protesters on a college campus or just miss use of soft or hard hands. Impacts of brutality are much larger than the victim; in recent months both riots and civil protests against police