Police Brutality Cases

Some of the most important officials in our government are the police officers. These government officials are responsible for preventing crime, protecting people from criminals, maintaining public safety, enforcing laws, and providing emergency services if needed. With hundreds of thousands of police officers employed with local law enforcements in the United States, there is plenty of room for error. Police often have to deal with altercations where people are unhappy or upset, creating a difficult situation for all parties. If someone the police officer is dealing with has a weapon of some kind; the officer may feel threatened or interrogated. When this happens the officer is more likely to use their weapon in a violent force in order to …show more content…
It has been shown that blacks are more likely to be involved in crime and be arrested. In recent years, the media has highlighted multiple times where police officers have shot down African Americans . In most of these cases the African American doesn’t have a weapon. Therefore, it makes the police officer appear they are shooting because of racial prejudice. In 2014, one of the first major cases of racial prejudice and police brutality was with an eighteen-year-old black male named Michael Brown and a police officer named Darren Wilson. “The encounter began when Wilson stopped his vehicle to tell Brown (who was unarmed) and Wilson (still seated in his vehicle) during which Brown was shot in the hand. Brown then ran away a few yards and turned around, and Wilson opened fire again. Autopsy reports revealed six gunshot wounds, including two to the head.” The case of Michael Brown is just one of the recent examples of police officers using unnecessary force to detain someone. Then it’s found that the use of unnecessary police force results in the death of an innocent unarmed person that can’t and isn’t necessarily allowed to defend themselves. Beyond police using guns against blacks in a forceful way; their are other cases of police officers treating blacks differently without guns. There have been other ways that officers have killed unarmed blacks when the black person was …show more content…
“In addition to firearms, many police officers also carry and are trained in using non lethal weapons that are meant to incapacitate or subdue people without killing them. Such weapons include baton sticks, pepper spray, and tear gas." In the last couple decades there have also been an increasing number of police departments using tasers as a so called non lethal weapon. However, if someone has a health issue, such as a heart problem, then the use of a taser could instantly become fatal. “Law professor Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. and lawyer Lauren Farmer analyzed police and media reports of stun gun incidents and concluded that at least 618 deaths had been caused by police Taser use between 2001 and 2013. They argue that many CED incidents, including nonfatal ones, constitute “frightening abuses of authority and exercises of violent power”” Police using tasers as a weapon can change a person mentally or physically. Whether that is taking the person’s life all together or changing the person mentally so the person can no longer function correctly. In the media it seems it has become the new normal for police to overkill African Americans when it’s not necessary. “On November 24, 2015, Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was formally charged with the murder of Laquan McDonald. Van Dyke, a white officer, had shot the seventeen-year-old African American sixteen times on October 20, 2014, in an