Police Power Abuse

Michael Villar

Mrs. Ricobaldi

English 12CP

02 May 2016

Police Power Abuse Abuse of power and discrimination are bound to happen when people are given the position of authority over others. This happens in businesses, households, and in the police force. The corruption and abuse of policing is a serious problem facing many people living in the world today. But in countries that are less developed there is an abundance of power abuse and corruption especially over the poor and marginalized who fall within the lowest quintile of income (Agbiboa). Seeing that this happens in other countries looks horrible but that is because the corruption is easier to see in the underdeveloped countries, but the fact that it happens in other places means that

Police are trained to demand control of all situations some officers even have problems separating their career life from their personal life. They "eat, live, die" police work. Their identity is defined by the uniform that they wear and any conflicts in their life are seen as challenges to their dominance (“The Misuse”). This training shows that the police are given the idea that they have authority over other citizens. The officers of the law are also trained to use force continuum which means to only use the amount of force necessary to control the situation and the person. It begins with officer presence, vocal direction and soft empty-hand techniques. If the person continues resistance, the officer may escalate to hard empty-hand techniques, chemical agents and upward toward lethal force the idea is to bring the person into compliance and under control without causing injury” (“The Misuse”). This system gives the police the idea of needing superiority and full control over the suspect in all cases also this gives the officers the permission to use the amount of power that they feel is necessary in order to gain the control of the situation. So when they stop somebody that has the predetermined negative connotation and fear of police will be scared of what is going to happen so they will be more likely to try to run or resist the officers commands and direction even if

, they are abusive of this power and cause many unnecessary problems. For example a twenty year old black man was stopped for dancing in a residential street. The officer was able to get the man's identification and continued to run his name for warrants, found nothing then told the man he was free to go. The man then responded with profanities. The officer then told him that he needed to watch his language then let him know again that he was not being arrested, the man continued to use profanity and ended up getting arrested for manner of walking in roadway (“Ferguson”). This shows that the police do sometimes cause problems because although there was no reason for the man to get stopped in the first place so he ended up getting in trouble for his reaction to getting stopped for doing nothing meaning he never should have got arrested because citizens have freedom of speech and the cop did not have initiate their confrontation in the first