Policing & Society - Assessment 2
This essay is based on Police brutality, where we will explore specific aspects of its complex and unfortunate nature. The original question to answer, in this essay has since been altered for a better attempt to conduct research, and so the modified question we ask in this essay is “Why does Police brutality occur in the United States of America (U.S) and, is it more common amongst the African American (black) community that live there?.”.
For better understandings we must first define Police brutality, which can be described as the “use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police officers when dealing with civilians” ("What Is Police Brutality?," n.d.). Any force that is considered well beyond necessity …show more content…
Because no officer is the same, one will make judgements or handle disruptive situations different from his or her partner. The type of force used may be due to the personal attitudes, personality traits and previous job experiences that one has had which affects their decision making process upon dealing with citizens. In terms of deadly force however, anything that an officer perceives as a threat, will call for him and/or her to respond with survival instincts, or in this case pulling their firearms out, “deadly force encounter inevitably involves the abrupt perception of a situation as life-threatening, and thereby immediately calling for a defensively lethal response” (Miller, 2015), it is here that we are left with questions as to what and what not is perceived a threat in today 's society and whether these perceptions can justify excessive …show more content…
While some reports suggest that police brutality is equally divided between the white community and the black community in the U.S, others do not, one of which takes into consideration, the U.S population. In this case although there have been statistics to prove that more white people have been killed by police than the minorities, African americans are still 5 times more likely to be unarmed and shot by the police than white americans are. This is because there are approximately 160 million more white people in America than there are black people, making 62 percent of its population ("Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no. - The Washington Post," n.d.), and of this 62 percent, 49 percent are killed by police officers, whereas 24 percent of African Americans are killed by police officers and yet they are only 13 percent of U.S population “Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.” ("Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no. - The Washington Post," n.d.). The Operation Ghetto Storm report conducted in 2012 also suggests that black people are killed every 36 hours or more so every 24 hours claiming that they had found an additional 70 cases (313 verified black
This essay is based on Police brutality, where we will explore specific aspects of its complex and unfortunate nature. The original question to answer, in this essay has since been altered for a better attempt to conduct research, and so the modified question we ask in this essay is “Why does Police brutality occur in the United States of America (U.S) and, is it more common amongst the African American (black) community that live there?.”.
For better understandings we must first define Police brutality, which can be described as the “use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police officers when dealing with civilians” ("What Is Police Brutality?," n.d.). Any force that is considered well beyond necessity …show more content…
Because no officer is the same, one will make judgements or handle disruptive situations different from his or her partner. The type of force used may be due to the personal attitudes, personality traits and previous job experiences that one has had which affects their decision making process upon dealing with citizens. In terms of deadly force however, anything that an officer perceives as a threat, will call for him and/or her to respond with survival instincts, or in this case pulling their firearms out, “deadly force encounter inevitably involves the abrupt perception of a situation as life-threatening, and thereby immediately calling for a defensively lethal response” (Miller, 2015), it is here that we are left with questions as to what and what not is perceived a threat in today 's society and whether these perceptions can justify excessive …show more content…
While some reports suggest that police brutality is equally divided between the white community and the black community in the U.S, others do not, one of which takes into consideration, the U.S population. In this case although there have been statistics to prove that more white people have been killed by police than the minorities, African americans are still 5 times more likely to be unarmed and shot by the police than white americans are. This is because there are approximately 160 million more white people in America than there are black people, making 62 percent of its population ("Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no. - The Washington Post," n.d.), and of this 62 percent, 49 percent are killed by police officers, whereas 24 percent of African Americans are killed by police officers and yet they are only 13 percent of U.S population “Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.” ("Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no. - The Washington Post," n.d.). The Operation Ghetto Storm report conducted in 2012 also suggests that black people are killed every 36 hours or more so every 24 hours claiming that they had found an additional 70 cases (313 verified black