The Misinterpretation Of Police Brutality

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.

In the novel The Scarlet Letter, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s portrayal of the women; specifically Hester, shows that he is indeed a feminist author. He made Hester the opposite of what women back during the Puritan times were. He made her as a strong, determined, and independent women who did not need a man in charge of her life during a time where women were treated as non-equals to men. Specifically Nathaniel Hawthorne made Hester as a strong independent women who had survived without a man taking care of her, embraced the Scarlet Letter that was meant to shame her, and even guiding and leading Dimmesdale when back then it should have been him guiding and leading her.

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

¨I need more money¨, as my brother yelled as I was walking into his dorm room to visit him. He looked aggravated and tired while he was surrounded by papers on his bed that looked like bills. The next five hours were spent trying to make a plan for the next three years to pay for him to go to college. In the United States, college athletes should be paid for playing because they should get a reward they are putting their lives life in danger, and itś a way to pay for college.

32 percent of black people killed by police this year were unarmed, compared to 15 percent of white people and 25 percent of Hispanic and Latino people. Police brutality has a been a topic that you have seen through the news lately. This has been a constant problem, especially with minorities. A bunch of innocent minorities has died because of police brutality, People such as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and etc. These people have accused of doing something that they were really not doing. Police brutality is a growing problem in America and it is has taken a bunch of innocent lives.

In recent years and in light of recent tragedies, police actions, specifically police brutality, has come into view of a large, public and rather critical eye. The power to take life rests in the final stage of the criminal justice system. However, the controversy lies where due process does not. While the use of deadly force is defined and limited by departmental policies, it remains an act guided chiefly by the judgment of individual officers in pressure situations. (Goldkamp 1976, 169). Many current studies have emphasized the racial disparities in minority deaths, primarily black Americans, killed by police through means of deadly force. The history of occurrences reveals the forlorn truth that police reforms only receive attention in wake of highly publicized episodes of police misconduct. The notorious 1992 Los Angeles riots brought the matter to mass public attention and prompted improved law enforcement policy. Significant local reforms resulted, for instance, ending the policy of lifetime terms for police chiefs. Additionally, on a broader platform, in 1994, Congress approved provisions to the Crime Control Act in effort to tackle police abuse in a more structured way.

Police brutality has been around for over 20 years. Police are supposed to protect and serve the people. Some communities don’t feel safe around the higher authority. Majority of the heavy populated black communities are harassed the most by officers. 25% of police officers surveyed stated that they’ve witnessed fellow officers harassing a citizen “most likely because of his/her race.” Los Angeles leads with the highest number of police killings in 2014 over 24 million people been killed, and 16 million of those people were black/ Hispanic Latino.

As of September 1, 2015, in the United States police officers have killed 776 people and 161 of those people were unarmed at the time of their death (MintPress). There have been too many incidents where police officers have injured or killed someone that could have been prevented. Using maximum force with a suspect has become a routine in many confrontations. Officers have not been given the proper training to deal with individuals and how to handle them without using a weapon. If they were given more training on how to deal with situations resulting in using a weapon to stop an individual during certain scenarios police brutality situations would decrease, lives would be saved, and police would get their good reputation back. However, police departments would have to spend more money on re-training. Some people agree with police brutality and think that a civilian deserved their punishment, which is not right because no one deserves to be beaten or killed. Situations involving police brutality have been increasing throughout the years, which is a problem that must to be solved.

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.

The heated issue of police brutality and police officers violating civil rights has extensively covered media headlines for several years. Hundreds of people are killed every year by police officers, and many of these cases bring up issues of police brutality. More often than not, it is usually a white police officer and an african american offender encounter that sparks media attention. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is just one of these cases that has caused a major divide in the United States. Michael Brown was fatally shot by Officer Wilson after an unfriendly encounter in the streets. Those who believe that Officer Wilson made the right decision in shooting Michael Brown, point to the fact that the grand jury chose not to indict him. Although Darren WIlson was not charged after the shooting of unarmed Michael Brown, some people believe that his actions were unlawful and he should have received some sort of punishment for his wrongdoing. Acknowledging all of the facts of the investigation, Officer Wilson did not act properly in the circumstances of the time.

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.

Police brutality is defined as “excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians,” and this has become more prominent within the United States throughout the years (Danilina). There has many cases where police brutality has been seen via news channels, and it has dismantled the unity of trust between the civilians of the United States and the law enforcement who are supposed to protect the everyday people from harm. The issue is if the law enforcement is actually right within their means of protection, or have they gone too far with using excessive force in any situation that may or may not be harmful to them. There is, also, the question of whether racial profiling is the biggest contributor to police brutality.

Most people in the United States understand that there are occurrences of police brutality, although the episodes of such brutality is minute in comparison to what is perceived to be the case by the general population. Police brutality is a perception of excessive force, though depending on the situation, that very force may in fact be the use of proper force. When it comes to Americans receiving their knowledge of current event, they usually refer to the media, in which a major topic today is police brutality.

In today’s society, a lot of teens ages 12-18 are constantly associated with mass media. Whether it is books, movies, news papers, TV shows, or music, there are items of mass media that are censored and some that are not. There are always going to be things that need to be censored, but why should we ban these two books from the standard curriculum when they say racial slurs that were used at the time it was written?

Police and community relations has always been a work in progress, some communities are more challenging than others. There are various factors that impact the relationship police have with civilians such as geographical location, race, gender, personal experience and in personal ones as well. In the last few years police and the African American community on a national level been more disconnected due to a pattern of unforeseen circumstances of unarmed black men being shot and killed by officers, that end up serving no jail or repercussion besides paid administrative leave. Police brutality is defined by The Law Dictionary as the use of force used unnecessarily. “Force that is used beyond what is necessary to handle the