Police Brutality
Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland have increased the public’s attention to the problem of police brutality in the United States. Police brutality is not a new phenomenon in our country. In fact, one of the most devastating cases that heightened the nation’s awareness of policing and race was the Rodney King event in 1991. The “videotaped beating of [an African American man,] Rodney King[,] by L.A.P.D. officers, and subsequent riots triggered by the acquittal of the officers involved,” disrupted Los Angeles and the rest of the nation (“The Legacy of Rodney King,” n.d.). The events brought up concerns about racism and police brutality within the Los Angeles Police Department at that time. Lately, the …show more content…
The “us versus them” mentality has been well documented and former Baltimore Police Officer Michael Wood recounts how it becomes ingrained in an officer’s mind, saying that “it’s ingrained in you that this is a war, and if someone isn’t wearing a uniform, they’re the enemy” (Balko, 2015). With this mentality Police dislike any threat to their authority and sense of power and they will take whatever actions are necessary to prevent this from happening. Intersectionality, which describes the overlapping of social identities and related systems of oppression and/or discrimination, also plays an important role in the case of police brutality. Specific social categories operate to structure and carry on inequalities, which can cause officers to believe that they need to control and punish criminals in order to make them part of the status quo. White privilege, as it relates to broader notions of power, could also account for some of this oversight, such that privileged people are unaware and unconscious of their implicit biases and misconceptions about others who are not white or different from them. Educating the broader society about the differences that make people experience hardships and other forms of systemic inequality, are necessary. White privilege is a system of unearned benefits given to white people, providing them with an advantage based on their race. It is this system that seems to have granted immunity to officers who are not brought up on charges as a result of often-fatal shootings of racial minorities. Although the prosecution of officers involved in police brutality cases has risen, the number of convictions has
Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland have increased the public’s attention to the problem of police brutality in the United States. Police brutality is not a new phenomenon in our country. In fact, one of the most devastating cases that heightened the nation’s awareness of policing and race was the Rodney King event in 1991. The “videotaped beating of [an African American man,] Rodney King[,] by L.A.P.D. officers, and subsequent riots triggered by the acquittal of the officers involved,” disrupted Los Angeles and the rest of the nation (“The Legacy of Rodney King,” n.d.). The events brought up concerns about racism and police brutality within the Los Angeles Police Department at that time. Lately, the …show more content…
The “us versus them” mentality has been well documented and former Baltimore Police Officer Michael Wood recounts how it becomes ingrained in an officer’s mind, saying that “it’s ingrained in you that this is a war, and if someone isn’t wearing a uniform, they’re the enemy” (Balko, 2015). With this mentality Police dislike any threat to their authority and sense of power and they will take whatever actions are necessary to prevent this from happening. Intersectionality, which describes the overlapping of social identities and related systems of oppression and/or discrimination, also plays an important role in the case of police brutality. Specific social categories operate to structure and carry on inequalities, which can cause officers to believe that they need to control and punish criminals in order to make them part of the status quo. White privilege, as it relates to broader notions of power, could also account for some of this oversight, such that privileged people are unaware and unconscious of their implicit biases and misconceptions about others who are not white or different from them. Educating the broader society about the differences that make people experience hardships and other forms of systemic inequality, are necessary. White privilege is a system of unearned benefits given to white people, providing them with an advantage based on their race. It is this system that seems to have granted immunity to officers who are not brought up on charges as a result of often-fatal shootings of racial minorities. Although the prosecution of officers involved in police brutality cases has risen, the number of convictions has