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Police Brutality In America Essay

908 Words4 Pages

Police Brutality in America

In the United States, the polices’ purpose is to “protect and serve.” Sadly, every so often this is forgotten and an abuse of power comes into play. In certain places in the country the presence of police is not a pleasant one. Primarily for people of color. More often than not they get the short end of the stick. When we think of police brutality we often just shout it out any time someone is being harassed. Are the really being brutalized though? The real question everyone needs to ask is, what is police brutality? According to the law dictionary, “Police brutality is the use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians. “Excessive use of force” means a force well beyond what …show more content…

“Force incidents often are not properly reported, documented, investigated, or addressed with corrective measures. Supervisors throughout the chain of command endorse questionable and sometimes unlawful conduct by officers (Rosenfield 2014).” Excessive and sometimes consequently deadly force has become something officers turn a blind eye to. Police are not trained properly how to deescalate a situation without the use of their weapons. “officers do not make effective use of de-escalation techniques, too often instead escalating encounters and employing force when it may not be needed and could be avoided (Rosenfeld).” Drawing their firearm should be the very last resort unless the suspect has a firearm drawn at the officer. If the presence of a weapon is not physically visible, then the first thought should be to grab their Taser, not fire their gun.
Relations between civilians and police haven’t always been as terrible as they are now. Some type of way we need to improve that relationship. Police are needed for robberies and assaults. How can you trust the unit as a whole if you have that bunch of bad apples spoiling the whole image? Not all officers are bad or trigger happy but some sort of screening needs to be done so that these issues with the bad ones can cease to exist. If a change isn’t made this tension will only continue to

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One common opinion is that officers should not use more force than is necessary or reasonable, and even then, that force should be used only as a last resort. “Police use force to affect civilians’ conduct. On a day-to-day basis, they do so most often by employing the least degree of force available to them, their mere presence. Cops wear uniforms and drive distinctly marked cars so that, without saying a word, they may have an effect on citizens’ behavior” (Fyfe, 38). When an officer’s presence fails to fulfill the desired conduct, the next course of action for said officer would be verbalization.

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Police officers have vowed their life to protect and serve. They risk their lives every day for their communities. As the last few years have sped past us, police officers have been very aggressive with the force they use when arresting a suspect, or even people in general. According to a Texas article on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, “police officers typically use force offensively rather than defensively and do so with at least some degree of premeditation.” (Gross,2013, page 167).

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Furthermore, citizens fear crimes being committed along with the officers that battled the crimes. While the media’s outtake may sometimes be truthful, the situation is worsened on

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