Abusing the Force

Abusing the Force

The fundamental purposes of law enforcement is the serve and protect the individuals of society. Rough treatment is often times afflicted upon unruly citizens as an alternative reform of discipline. Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations of today. The secrecy, stress, and dangers of police work leads to an insular and close-knit occupational culture that results in a strong distinction between members of the police and society. An in-depth investigation on police brutalization and its causes of corrupting within the 1991 beating of Rodney King is evaluated by means of the credibility within the rights of citizens in Canada and the United States, the effects from prejudice affliction, and the societal disparagement on morals of the cultures in policing.

Corruption is both a result and cause of the separation of the police from society. The isolation of the police can lead to a divergence of the values of law enforcement officials from those that the rest of society professes to uphold (McAlary, 1997). The early morning of March 3, 1991 illustrates the horrific crime in Los Angeles, California. Several California Highway Patrol cruisers chase Rodney King, a robbery parolee, speeding over 110 miles per hour down the Los Angeles strip. King, an African American, is eventually forced to stop after running through several red lights at intersections. As the other two passengers of the car complies with police requests to exit the car and are subdued with minor resistance, King refuses to exit the car, thus a beating is administered by three Caucasian officers at the order of their sergeant who is on the scene. He is subsequently stricken over 56 times by wielding PR 24 metal batons, kicked at least 6 times, and shot twice with a Taser electronic stun gun, holding over 50,000 volts of electricity per shot (Lepour, 1991). Additionally, twenty-three other officers stand watching on the scene in which none made effort or suggestion to stop the crude combat. Consequently, King suffers extensive injuries including skull fractures, broken bones, and nerve damage to his face and body. Meanwhile, George Holiday, one of the several civilian by-standees awaken by noises of the police helicopter and sirens, videotapes the initial beating from his nearby apartment. Twelve days later, the three police officers ...

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...r peers from the rest of society. The division may be further entrenched by a perception on the part of some officers of public animosity towards the police (Will, G. F., 1998). Every instance of corruption is further reinforces the distance between society and the police by increasing public hostility and distrust towards the police.

Policing is an extremely emotional occupation and it is difficult for officers not to involve personally in their work. They are not merely human forms of robots, firing their guns arbitrarily with a complete lack of sense or emotion. No matter what type of activities police officers are involved in, they are often required to use force to rectify certain situations, thus this primary discrepancy is difficult to distinguish between what is required and what is excessive force. As long as police officers play by the rules of their peer group and the public continues to negatively label them, any rapprochement between the two is unlikely. Fundamentally, police officers rely primarily on instinct and as long as their basic intention is to promote good and not evil while citizens need to trust that the instincts of an officer are generally correct.