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Causes and effects of police brutality
impact of police brutality on victims
impact of police brutality on victims
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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.
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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:
Police brutality is when a police officer causes serious bodily harm to a civilian. Police brutality is shown by the increasing amounts of Taser deaths each year. A chart created by the Seattle Post Intelligencer shows how during the year two-thousand only one Taser death occurred, but in two-thousand-four that number climbed to a staggering thirty-nine. In Baltimore, Maryland Freddie Grey was found dead while under police supervision. The night of Freddie Grey’s funeral Baltimore erupted in protests and riots. The chaos went on for days, the National Guard eventually came in to restore order and peace to the city. Media in recent months has increased focus on racial police brutality. Incidents of young teens dying have created uproars everywhere, media abuses this continues to fuel the fire and spark more
To illustrate, majority of blacks are stop by police more than any other racial groups. Police brutality is base on ethnicity. Officers seem to target black communities for many reasons. Racist cops might view blacks as less innocent compared to whites. Growing up as an African American you witness hearing your parents telling your male siblings to respect officers and to interact with them differently than they would do their families and friends. After the fatal shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The public wanted justice because the incident was not handled properly. The people wanted to express their concerns. After this incident I remember more allegation from black communities begin surfacing that the police use excessive force against them,
When hearing the phrase “police brutality,” many people imagine batons cracking skulls, tasers electrocuting bodies and bullets penetrating innocent teens. While police officers have been known to use violence, police brutality does not occur as often as many believe. In many situations, officers have to act on impulse and curiosity, despite the backlash the media may create.
Police brutality has been a significant issue for many years.. The people affected by this most of all, are people of color. They are subject to racial inequality by the police and the justice system every day. They are being killed everyday simply for existing. The excessive force used by the police specifically towards African Americans is continuous; with the justice system doing close to nothing to change that. This is one of the reasons they continue to kill and harass African Americans. According to Propublica, young black males are about twenty times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than their white peers are. Murderers are walking free, and innocent lives are being taken. Over the past couple of years, thousands of people have been killed on the hands of the police, both black and white.
Police brutality has been an apparent mark on the struggles, trials, and tribulations of people of minorities for years, primarily Black people. From the times of slavery to the present unlawful targeting and murders of black citizens with no justification, police brutality has been an enema in Black American culture for hundreds of years. Seen both in James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” and in the current happenings of the United States. The hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter” has been a focal point in the current struggle for equality of the races. The current outpouring of support for black lives and
Police brutality and racial profiling dates back to the 1700’s in the United States(Rushing). Unfortunately, such treatment by police continues today when police are expected to hold the civic duty to protect and serve. Mistreatment by police is just the start in most cases, when citizens fight back it becomes “brutal”. Police brutality by definition means “The use of any force exceeding that reasonably to accomplish a lawful police purpose.” Police brutality can occur in many different ways with the most common being physical harm. Although that is a big problem, there are other cases of Police brutality that involve acts of false arrest, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, intimidation, etc. An act that can be seen as police brutality could be a criminal running from the cops and an officer shoots a victim with a taser. Many cases of physical harm are police using excessive force to contain and arrest any individual. Since many accounts of police brutality have been directed towards minorities, these cases turn into acts of racial profiling. Racial profiling is the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense. Let 's say for example Trayvon Martin, a simple 17 year old black male walking home from a gas station was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch member. This being one of the many
According to Chaney, “Racism is an ideology, or belief system, designed to justify and rationalize racial and ethnic inequality” and “discrimination, most basically, is behavior aimed at denying members of particular ethnic groups’ equal access to societal rewards. Defining both of these concepts from the onset is important for they provide the lens through which our focus on the racist and discriminatory practices of law enforcement can occur” (481). In addition, police brutality is defined as “the use of excessive physical force or verbal assault and psychological intimidation” (Chaney 482). One may argue that police brutality is a tactic to inflict psychological fear on Black males and can be used to overuse their authority against them. Chaney indicates that “The beating of Rodney King and the deaths of Amadou Diallo in the 1990s and Trayvon Martin more recently are just a few public examples of the historical and contemporaneous ways
A great deal of society views law enforcement officers as heroic and honorable individuals, whose main purpose is to protect and serve the community. For many officers, this description is accurate, however for others; violence and brutality against innocent citizens is part of getting the job done. For years, minorities have fallen victim to police brutality based on racial profiling, stereotypes and other unjustifiable reasons that has cost innocent lives. The involvement of officers in police brutality against minority groups causes tainted and negative views on policing. This reduces their ability to protect and serve the community. Police brutality is a violent incident involving an officer and a victim, usually including excessive force, unnecessary violence and sometimes resulting in a senseless fatality. Minority groups such as African Americans and Hispanics have often been the victims of this form of abuse by officers, however little justice has been done in order to protect these individuals from this form of cruelty by the hands of those with the most power.
In America, police brutality affects and victimizes people of color mentally and socially. Social injustice has become a major issue, which involved the principle of white supremacy vs minorities. The current police brutality that has been occurring is culturally disconnecting ethnicities from one another. According to Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell, “…the cultural disconnect is very real; you have the weight of generations of abuse on African Americans,” (Flatow, 2016). For example, over the past four years, there have been countless acts of police brutality. The three key deaths of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling have become the face of police brutality in the year 2016. People knew that it was unequal treatment of black people by police in the United States and they made it known by creating #BlackLivesMatter.
Officers are trained and taught different polices that require them not to be biased towards any gender or race. Such officers include Sunil Dutta, if you don’t want to get shot, tasted pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.” (Dutta) uses policies to their advantage. Lack of African-American officers, mainly in communities with citizens of color, can lead to an inquiry that there is a bias in law enforcement agencies and their policies. With recent events in the news displaying the misconduct of officers in an African-American communities like, in July of 2014, where the death of Eric Garner because of “chokehold” by a police officer hit home for many African-Americans and made them question the legislative decisions on policies causing a distrust and lack of confidence within the police departments, shying away citizens from
In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
Police brutality is one of the most serious human rights violations in the United States and it occurs everywhere. The reason why I chose this topic is because police brutality happens all the time in the United States and still remains unrecognized by many. Additionally, the public should be knowledgeable about this topic because of how serious this crime can be and the serious outcomes that police brutality can have on other police officers and the public. The job of police officers is to maintain public order, prevent, and detect crimes. They are involved in very dangerous and stressful occupations that can involve violent situations that must be stopped and controlled by any means. In many confrontations with people, police may find it necessary to use excessive force to take control of a certain situation. Sometimes this makes an officer fight with a suspect who resists being arrested. Not all cops in communities are great cops. At least once a year, the news covers a story about a person being beat by an officer. The article “Minority Threat and Police Brutality: Determinants of Civil Rights Criminal Complaints in U.S. Municipalities” by Malcolm D. Holmes from the University of Wyoming, uses the conflict theory to explain why officers go after minorities sometimes causing police brutality. It explains the police’s tension with African American and Latino males. Those minorities are the ones that retaliate more against police officers which causes the officer to use violent force to defend themselves.
Chaney and Robertson, (2013) stated that “The Department of Justice office of Civil Rights has investigated more than a dozen police departments in major cities across the country on allegations of racial discrimination or police brutality”. Police brutality is defined as the use of excessive physical force or verbal assault and psychological intimidation. White police officers who grew up in the south and were raised to see African Americans in a negative way have a lower opinion of them. However, not all white police officers are from the south, some say that police officers are just abusing their power. When we look at what is going on around the country, it appears racism plays a part in police brutality. Even during this new digital age, there are video cameras in police cars facing the front of the vehicle, but that still does not hinder police using excessive
Protests around the world have taken place to fight for justice in the black community. The immense number of deaths of unarmed black men and women is a clear sign that they are more likely to be killed by police than white people. Physical violence and excessive use of force by the U.S. police towards African Americans are seen in the news regularly. “People, including police officers, hold strong implicit associations between blacks, and probably Hispanics, and weapons, crime and aggression," said Jack Glaser. Police brutality statistics show that African Americans are three times more likely to be murdered by cops than any other race. Racial disparity in the United States is a coherent reason for the increase of criminal injustice in the United
Police brutality is an act that often goes unnoticed by the vast majority of white Americans. This is the intentional use of “excessive force by an authority figure, which oftentimes ends with bruises, broken bones, bloodshed, and sometimes even death” (Harmon). While law-abiding citizens worry about protecting themselves from criminals, it has now been revealed that they must also keep an eye on those who are supposed to protect and serve.