I’d like to discuss the excessive use of force among police officers. Personally, I hold all officers of the law in the highest esteem and greatly appreciate their self-sacrificing decision to enter a career dealing with our population. Police officers risk their lives on a daily basis in order to keep citizens safe from the deviant population and to manage cities, towns, and even villages. How do you feel about police officers? What guidelines are police following when they need to use force? How do officers execute these guidelines? Why should Americans be concerned? These are some questions that we will discuss here.
International news agency out of London, Reuters, gives the results of a survey that received over 36,000 responses of Americans. When asking the question, “Do Americans trust the police to be fair and just?” the report showed that 53% of Americans believe the answer to be yes. The response that over half of Americans do not trust the
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How would police officers react to one of their own being prosecuted? The public’s response would surely be that because of the unarmed human beings that have been shot and killed by these men, officers were guilty. The hope that African Americans hold on to is that when the justice system analyzes the situations they will see that the officers were in the wrong for using deadly force. Governmental website The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) outlines,
“Broadly speaking, the use of force by law enforcement officers becomes necessary and is permitted under specific circumstances, such as in self-defense or in defense of another individual or group.”
The NIJ then goes on to state that there is a scale that officers should use to determine what level of force is adequate in defusing situations they face on the job. This scale ranges from only officer presence on the low end to lethal force on the high