Police Brutality Research Paper

Police brutality against African Americans then and now Above is a photo of the officers who beat Rodney King with nightsticks after a high speed chase in 1991. The officers were responding as backup for California highway patrol. A highway patrol officer attempted to arrest Rodney with his weapon aimed at him telling him to get on the ground. At this point the sergeant of LAPD Stacey Koon ordered the highway patrolmen to put their weapon away because LAPD was taking control. The officers swarmed Rodney, and after he resisted arrest they tased him twice. Rodney tried to run and this is when the officers began to beat him with the nightsticks. He tried to get up and Sergeant Koon ordered the officers to beat him with “power strokes”, aimed at his joints. Rodney was treated

Let’s take a look at Chicago; in December of 1969 police raided a home of two Black Panther members. During the raid there was a supposed extreme firefight between members of the Panthers and raiding police evidence however, shows that the Black Panthers only fired one shot in comparison to the hundred shots fired by police officers that killed two leaders of the Panthers and injured four. The officers told investigators that the panthers had shot several times through the door of the apartment, later it would be discovered that they had punched holes in the door with a hammer, to cover up what had really happened. Even given the obvious attempt to cover this up, no officer was charged. This kind of facade was not uncommon, in Chicago several other members were imprisoned, with no real evidence against them. In 1980, a New Orleans a white police officer was shot and killed by a black male. The response of the New Orleans police force was to start doing what they called booking, and bagging, this is where they would beat arrested black men with phonebooks and put plastic bags over their heads so they could not breathe. A story much closer to