Negative Effects Of Police Brutality

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You’re sitting at home and you turn on the news, it’s another headline of an African American teenage boy shot and killed by the police. What do you do? You turn the channel because it doesn’t affect you or you tell a friend that it has happened again. Often called police brutality, the use of excessive and/or force by police when dealing with a civilian has negatively impacted the lives of police officers and African Americans. Although it may be seen as a defensive tactic for police officers, excessive force has become the cause of death to many African Americans teenagers.

Police brutality happens more often than reported by police officers and citizens, but the ones that end deadly for African Americans are the ones the media acknowledges. …show more content…

Officers are also afraid that their mistaken incident will become a viral video on every social media site (Schmidt). The main goal for most of these reforms is to better the police force and community–police relations, since these incidents have changed the views of many (Thomson). African Americans already have poor judgement of police forces, because most feel like the police officers intent is to kill them (Trumbull). Police departments want to change this by hiring more minority police officers. They truly believe that by bringing in minority officers it will cease the criticism the police forces receive (LaFraniere). Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC said, “If you visited from Mars in the last month, you would think police do no good in society at all”.

The effects of police brutality on African Americans can be harder to deal with than the effects on police officers. African Americans are often targeted, stereotyped, and discriminated against by police officers. There are many cases where it has turned out tragic for African Americans during face-to-face contact with an officer more than any other race. Statistics show that African Americans are 2.5 times more likely than whites and 1.7 times more likely than Hispanics when being targeted by an officer (Reports). These incidents have led to four things in African American communities:

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