Police Brutality Shootings

What counts as a lawful or reasonable shooting? Videos of police brutality are surfacing over the course of this year and more specifically over the past few weeks. Although the videos or recordings are not photographs, they still hold significant meanings and interpretations. The many recordings include the shootings (murders) of Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Walter L. Scott, and many more. I believe that videos, specifically the recordings of police brutality, have the power to transform similar to how Sontag describes photographs in which she states “that photography transforms scenes of violence and suffering into something beautiful to evoke empathy, pity, or shock. The effect along with the creation of the photograph can transform while bearing witness”. Although I agree with this view, it is difficult to associate beauty to the horrific scenes of police shooting black people. Not only are the shootings depicting the blatant racism and discrimination in this country, there is the fact that less than one percent …show more content…
I recently had a workshop on police brutality and there were many instances where several statistics about police shootings, specifically of minority groups, were shown. It was shown that less than one percent of all police shootings are reported whether it was justified or unjustified. Furthermore, police officers have taken the lives of over five hundred black people already this year and reports are predicting many more deaths based on this ongoing trend. As can be seen, the news stations do not seem to care about the lives of black people. The fact that for some apparent reason, most likely racism and or discrimination, the new stations feel the need to not report on the killings of black people just demonstrates how racism is still amongst our society and will presumably continue to thrive for decades to