Los Angeles V. Mendez Case Study

In the first response paper that was assigned, I wrote on the County of Los Angeles v. Mendez case, where the use of excessive force is argued in an instance that left the victims with a crippling injury on top of many bullet wounds. Mendez sued because the officers in question shot sans warrant and against the Mendez couple’s fourth Amendment rights. Thus, the policy issue reached the Supreme Court to rectify relevancy for excessive force in this particular case that could put more favor to the police or the victims. This was an especially sought over topic as it was happening at the peak of police brutality covered by/in the media and many eagerly awaited to see an outcome that could reflect and change modern America. The Supreme Court’s stance in this case is impactful because if the police deputies win, then the policy will “promote police officer safety and help preserve the integrity of the qualified immunity doctrine by keeping standards of behavior clear,” and if the victims win, it will, “preserve the balance of protections for police officers and citizens and provide better incentives for officer reasonableness during every stage of an investigation” (Hopkins and Temchenko 2017). Even though the real stance that allowed for the case is the police officers entering the premise sans warrant, of which Justice Elena Kagan was sure to point …show more content…
The consensus however, is that there has been less reconciliation at all when it came to affairs of black people. Minorities in general are given considerably more grotesque treatment compared to whites, even though the law is not supposed to see/recognize color. The goal then, for this court case which deals with a person of color victim who had to have his leg amputated, is to show that there should be consequences on top of the backlash for the mistreatment of citizens in excessive