Police brutality is defined as the use of excessive or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians (Daninila). Recently, there has been a surplus of incidents involving police brutality. However, police brutality is not a new concept. It has been going on since the civil rights era and long before then. Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, commonly known as H. Rap Brown, once said, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” (Black Radical Congress). His statement, which was said in the sixties, reassures how embedded violence is in America. Specifically, police violence.
According to the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, 461 felony suspects were shot by police last year, which is the highest number seen in decades. These numbers are likely …show more content…
Brown was unarmed, yet the officer felt the need to fire a total of twelve rounds at Brown (Buchanan et al). The jury decided that the officer, Darren Wilson, should not be indicted (Buchanan et al). Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, was shot and killed by a Cleveland, Ohio officer (King). Tamir was in possession of a toy gun, the officers believed it to be real, and supposedly called out for him to drop it (King). However, not nearly enough time was allowed for Tamir to react, a total of three seconds passed before the cop resulted in firing his gun. Tamir ended up dead (King). Social media has made it remarkably easy for crimes like these to gain awareness. Many hashtags, like #BlackLivesMatter, have begun because of the new-found awareness about police brutality. Statistics show that, just this year alone, 1,013 Americans have been killed by cops (“Police Brutality”). The problem of race comes into question when addressing police brutality, and it becomes even more controversial. Some might not consider it a coincidence that all of the previous aforementioned people were all black. African Americans are over six times as likely to be incarcerated as whites, and Latinos are over twice as likely …show more content…
Others argue that changing the training of police officers would take too long. Well, we cannot wait and watch heinous crimes happen. We must start somewhere, and police training is a great starting point. It is true, results would not happen right away. These reforms would take a long time to pass and then go into effect. However, this is a start in the right direction. Body cameras would be extremely costly (Friedman). After the events at Ferguson with Michael Brown, President Obama requested seventy-five million dollars of federal funds for body cameras (Friedman). This is an outrageous amount, the cost of upkeep would also have to be factored into the total cost of body cameras (Friedman). Also, body cameras have not been proven to be completely effective yet. Experiments involving body cameras have been going on, but the conclusions have been incomplete and evidence is
According to the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, 461 felony suspects were shot by police last year, which is the highest number seen in decades. These numbers are likely …show more content…
Brown was unarmed, yet the officer felt the need to fire a total of twelve rounds at Brown (Buchanan et al). The jury decided that the officer, Darren Wilson, should not be indicted (Buchanan et al). Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, was shot and killed by a Cleveland, Ohio officer (King). Tamir was in possession of a toy gun, the officers believed it to be real, and supposedly called out for him to drop it (King). However, not nearly enough time was allowed for Tamir to react, a total of three seconds passed before the cop resulted in firing his gun. Tamir ended up dead (King). Social media has made it remarkably easy for crimes like these to gain awareness. Many hashtags, like #BlackLivesMatter, have begun because of the new-found awareness about police brutality. Statistics show that, just this year alone, 1,013 Americans have been killed by cops (“Police Brutality”). The problem of race comes into question when addressing police brutality, and it becomes even more controversial. Some might not consider it a coincidence that all of the previous aforementioned people were all black. African Americans are over six times as likely to be incarcerated as whites, and Latinos are over twice as likely …show more content…
Others argue that changing the training of police officers would take too long. Well, we cannot wait and watch heinous crimes happen. We must start somewhere, and police training is a great starting point. It is true, results would not happen right away. These reforms would take a long time to pass and then go into effect. However, this is a start in the right direction. Body cameras would be extremely costly (Friedman). After the events at Ferguson with Michael Brown, President Obama requested seventy-five million dollars of federal funds for body cameras (Friedman). This is an outrageous amount, the cost of upkeep would also have to be factored into the total cost of body cameras (Friedman). Also, body cameras have not been proven to be completely effective yet. Experiments involving body cameras have been going on, but the conclusions have been incomplete and evidence is