Power of the Police
The short story “The Baddest Dog in Harlem” is written by Walter Dean Myers and is a short story in the collection of short stories “145th Street”. 145th Street is also where the “the Baddest Dog in Harlem” is taking place.
Some friends were sitting on the rail outside of Big Joe’s place. Suddenly the police appear and the trouble starts. The police are looking for a man with an automatic gun. Lots of people are gathering to see what is going on, and a kid yells out that he saw somebody in the building that the police were staring at. Immediately the police start shooting. After a while the owner of the apartment in the building that the police shot at shows up. She wants a black person to go with her and the
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The police exploit their power without even being sure of anything. With great power comes responsibility, and the police do not live up to this responsibility.
It is possible to draw several parallels to “American Skin (41 shots)” by Bruce Springsteen. In the song, “41 shots” are repeated many times, because it was the exact number of bullets, shot by four policemen to kill an innocent man named Amadou Diallo. This is just like the ridicules amount of bullets the police used in “The Baddest Dog in Harlem” just to kill an innocent person.
“Lena gets her son ready for school
She says "on these streets, Charles
You 've got to understand the rules.
If an officer stops you,
Promise me you 'll always be polite,
That you 'll never ever run away
Promise Mama you 'll keep your hands in sight"”
This part shows how anxious people are for the police. The Police are way to powerful, just like in the short story. The ironical part is that the police should make people fell safe, but does the opposite. “41 shots
And we’ll take that ride
Cross the bloody river
To the other side
41 shots... cut through the night
You 're kneeling over his body in the vestibule
Praying for his life”
This part of the song is similar to the ending of the
There has been many situations in which police officers have abused their power. In these cases police officers have brutally beaten or killed innocent civilians. Everyone has heard about a story about how police officers have abused their power by utilising their personal beliefs rather than the reason their profession requires. Some officers cannot disunify their professional life from their personal life. Their identity is distinguished by their uniform. Any struggles in their exclusive life are seen as a threat to their dominance, jurisdiction, or power over the other person and the situation. It is either ethical or unethical. There is no accommodation for the victim to voice their opinion or position. Situations like these are known as Ferguson trails, Floyd Dent, Najee Rivera, and etc. These people have either lost their life or been physically abused. Police officers should wear body cameras because with body cameras it protects others, protects officers, and proves the reality of the actual situation.
We as a society are feeling less and less trusting of with police officers. All officers are giving an oath to serve and protect people. But unfortunately that only happens when they are being watched. When no one is watching many police officer take advantage of their authority. Many police officers lie, abuse power, radial profiling and can become corrupt with too much authority.
Many of the issues facing police today can be traced back to the 1960s. We talk about the '60s being a time of peace and love, but that's not really what was going on. Now, at the time, the theory was that the police should be morally impartial. Police were supposed to simply uphold the law without getting personally attached to victims or suspects (Muscato 2003).
Police officers are individuals who enforce the law upon their community to ensure that their citizens remain safe. In the past couple of years, officers of the law have been involved in acts of brutality that seem to go beyond the proper measurements of protection for their citizens. Policemen are supposed to protect their citizens from danger and from harm, not impose a threat on them. The fact that officers have a history of abusing their power indicates that their trust amongst the community has been corrupted. Those who have been affected of police brutality feel as though they have been deceived. They no longer feel that police officers will protect them, but rather abuse them, and that is a problem. We have began to live in a community in which an individual feels frightened when seeing a cop, rather than feeling protected. Some individuals may argue that police brutality is not a problem due to the fact that it is not consistent enough to catch the attention of needing a solution. However, that idea means little when the level of brutality has led to the death of several innocent victims in some cases. We must not wait for there to be a pattern of death at the hands of police officials to consider this a problem. One death indicates that preventive measures must be taken to ensure that these officers are no longer put in the position to abuse their power to begin with.
not be open and admit that they use police discretion. The reasons why this myth exists is solely because of legal issues involved, the police organizations that might be involved and the image that will be portrayed in regards to authority to the rest of the community.
There are a lot of incidents that happen between police, and criminals. Always a mix up, confusion, miscommunication, and sadly, police brutality, but police always get the benefit of the doubt because of lack of evidence. A incident happened way back in around 2009, it was actually on January 1st. A twenty-two year old young man named Oscar Grant was shot at Fruitvale Station, by an officer that “thought” he was using a taser, but actually used a gun. If that officer would have had a body camera on, he would’ve been more aware of what he was doing, and he would have been caught sooner because they would have been able to see, and tell that Grant wasn’t being defiant.
Have you ever asked yourself what it would be like to become a police officer. Becoming a police officer isn’t an easy take because they have to risk their life everyday to protect and serve the community. They have to go through the dangers of arresting criminals when there is a chance that they could die. However, in today’s society only a small amount of the police officers actually serves their community and protect citizens from danger. Right now, most police officers abuse their power to the point where they don’t seem to care for the safety of the community. They would usually arrest innocent people, make accusations, and even use their power as a source to show their dominance. If you think about, whenever you are stuck in traffic
With the legitimate use of force and the confrontational nature of their interaction of community, the police work offers opportunity to officers to abuse their authority when their authority is perceived as being threatened. For example, police have to be suspicious even in regular duties like patrolling the district. They remain suspicious to everyone in the street. Most of the time, police officers work on their own without much monitoring, for instance, no one guide them when they patrol, when they face challenges from the public, they have to make the decision on their own of whether respond to the challenge by abusing their authority. It is the vagueness of their work train the police to be suspicious to any minor change in the surrounding environment in order to maintain the social order. The ambiguities also offer room for them to make choice as well as the possibility of corruption.
Police Officers worldwide are becoming way too powerful, to be “protecting” and “looking out” for we the peoples best interests. First, let 's start out with a word for word definition of Police Power and their responsibilities. “In United States constitutional law, police power is the capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of their inhabitants.” But yet the cops are the ones killing unarmed, or no imminent threat to them or others. Now, I’m not a genius but I know that isn 't, part of protecting our health, safety, and to be shot by the ones who are suppose to protect us. In 2015 a shocking number of 1140 people were shot and KILLED by our police force according to The Counted. The police are suppose to be looking after us, protecting us
There are good and there are bad cops. Sometimes people hate cops because cops sometimes overestimate their capabilities, but sometimes they are very nice. What makes cops overestimate their power? Or what you should you do to avoid overestimating their capabilities? Basically, almost all cops know the law in the USA. However in some countries they don’t know the law, but they should do everything based on the laws. Consequently, if they ask you to do something, you must do it, but sometimes people refuse to do, and later they complain that the cops overestimated their power. When I lived in Ukraine, I had a lot of problems with cops because I didn’t know the law.
Force that police tend to use on subjects that pose a threat has become an escalating issue in society today as we know it. Sometimes the public gets the notion that the police abuse their authority and use dangerous
Since a very young age we have been taught to put our trust into police officers. If we are in distress, they are always there to help since it is their job to protect and serve the common citizen. So what happens when the individuals we are supposed to trust to bring justice are the ones causing the injustice we see in the news? Recently, several police officers have been under fire for their excessive use of force. The number of casualties caused by police officers in the recent years have citizens demanding a reform in the system that officers work under.
Police officers are given a lot of power because it is needed to help protect citizens and the community. However, police often abuse their power by the over use of force, corruption, sexual misconduct, bias based policing, and failure to maintain police ethics. (Peak, 2011)
Police officers are often viewed as oppressors and unjust by the community, when in reality they are just doing their jobs. The job of a police officer is to apprehend criminals and detect crime, and the maintenance of public order and to the extend and complication of this duty police officers often need to make split second decision that is not often view by the public as what we call “self-defense” which is a right we all have as human beings and stated in the Universal Declaration of
In A Time To Kill, by John Grisham, two drunken white men violently raped, beat, and nearly killed a 10-year-old black girl named Tonya Hailey. Her father, in a clouded rage, executed the two rapists with an M-16 on their way out of the courthouse. His vigilante form of justice was not well taken by many in prejudiced Ford County, Mississippi. On the other hand, he had lots of support from the black community and from any white person whom dared to step into his shoes. A young, thirty-something lawyer named Jack Brigance was hired as his defense. He personally hoped it would give him national recognition, but his outlook turned sour when an all-white jury was drawn to decide on the fate of this Negro man. As