Melvin Santiago of the Jersey City Jersey Police Department was not simply shot in the line of duty, he was viciously ambushed by a man determined be a cop killer and, possibly, to commit suicide by cop (Kulbarsh, 2015). The attacker, Lawrence Campbell, age 27, assaulted an armed security guard inside the Walgreens pharmacy, took the guards pistol, told witnesses he was going to be famous (New Jersey police officer shot, 2014). Campbell waited in the parking lot for the first cruiser to arrive and opened fire on officer Santiago as he stepped out of his vehicle. Thirteen shots were fired, and Santiago was struck in the head. As the shooting was happening, other officers arrived and began firing at Campbell from their vehicles.
In today’s modern society, many feel that is okay for a police officer can kill a man armed with a harmful weapon at any cost. On many news channels, there are various amounts of articles and reports about a police officer committing this act. Even though a police officer has the right to take action against an armed man, this could be argued in many circumstances. In the 2013, Sammy Yatim was a young adult with a mental illness and was armed with a weapon on a streetcar in Toronto. Yatim was confronted by Const.
These examples show that what Brent Staples wrote about fear and guns is still true till this day, as more and more cases are shown in the media of an police officer killing unarmed, non-aggressive African
These men don’t fight back and cooperate just to get shot. ”Mike had had his hands up, but still the cop had shot him dead. Ninety minutes after the shooting forensic detectives finally appeared”(Chang ,87). The man had surrendered and didn’t fight back just so the cop could shot him dead. later on the cop wasn’t charged but released for a certain time just to come back later and “protect” people.
Tamir Rice was a twelve-year-old boy playing in the snow at his local park, making the mistake of waving an air pellet gun at strangers- a mistake that would cost him his life. A bystander made a call to 911, and when the police arrived on the scene, within seconds of exiting the vehicle, Rice was shot. According to an article by the Pittsburgh Tribune, although police have been caught in the act, captured on camera committing a crime, they are not prosecuted 96 percent of the time. November 22, 2014, twelve-year-old, Tamir Rice, was playing and posing with his air pellet gun when a man sitting in the park called 911 to report, “there’s a guy here with a pistol, pointing it at everybody… [The gun] is probably a fake, but you know what,
So the assailant must fire their guns in order for there to be a gunfight to actually occur. The early data supplied by SOP-9 (a formal firearms discharge report) didn’t clearly differentiate hit probability in firearms “incidents” from those in actual gunfight. A firearms discharge “incidents” could include officer suicide. I honestly don’t think we want our officers killing themselves; we need more officers to protect us from what we have encountered in this new era of time we live in.
Amadou Diallo was shot forty-one times by four NYPD officer from a special squad called the “Street Crime”. Amadou was shot after he was confused with a person that had a rape charge a year before. All four officers
If you by attention to the news you have heard about white officers shooting unarmed black people and getting away with by saying the magic words “I was afraid for my life”. There has been some scientific evidence that might help us understand why this is all happening. Bobby Azarian, who has a PhD in neuroscience writes in this article for alternet about “The Neuroscience Behind Why White Cops Kill Black Men”. It talks about how in 2014 a South Carolina pulled over an African American for not wearing a seatbelt. When the officer asked for ID the “young man reached under the seat for his but was shot in the leg before he could even take it out”.
Many people, mainly people of color, suffer from police brutality. Coates asserts, “And you have seen men in uniform drive by and murder Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old child whom they were oath-bound to protect” (9). This shows that although the victim was a child, the police still killed him. 26-year-old Timothy Loehmann killed Tamir Rice because he carried a replica toy gun. Police brutality is still a significant problem in the United States.
The police officer could have solved the situation in a hasty manner. Using deadly force is obligated on occasions such as self-defense or protecting other individuals from danger. Police officers have to make quick decisions, but they should know if it's correct or
Amadou Diallo , Four NYPD officers notoriously rained 41 bullets down onto Diallo in the Bronx, killing the unarmed Guinean immigrant as he tried to enter his apartment building. Patrick Dorismond, in Manhattan with a friend when an undercover cop approached and
Wrong Shooting in Front of the Camera The President of our nation says the recent deaths of black males are “symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system”. That goes to say even the powers higher up see what issues we face. Policemen “protect and serve” motto has been even more questionable lately than usual. The lives of black males are being taken away left and right and to make matters worse, its shot on camera now. The issue is that it should be enforced by law to make sure whole incriminating scenarios involving an active police member should be clearly recorded, without hindering factor.
Last year, Shaneen Allen, was stopped by New Jersey police for making an unsafe lane change. She informed the officer that she was a resident of Pennsylvania and had a concealed carry permit, and that she had a handgun in the car as well. Allen, a black single mother of two and clear of any previous criminal record decided to purchase a handgun after being robbed twice in a one year span. There isn 't any evidence to prove Allen had any intentions of doing anything harmful with the gun.
Many people agree with Maring that the armed police are violating citizens’ right against wrongful death and injury because a lot of innocent were wrongfully killed by them, but I personally do not hold such idea. How many is “a lot”? There’s an indisputable fact that our brain is negativity bias and we tend to pay more attention to negative news rather than positive news. That is why news like a guiltless person being shot by a police is more likely to attract audience, making them immediately jump to an assumption that a lot of innocent are killed and forget about what police forces have done to rescue the public. According to a statistic given by the Washington Post, of the 995 people shot by the police in 2015, only 94 were unarmed.
When it comes to police officers, it is even worse to kill others. It is necessary to at the very least, attempt to de-escalate situations before shooting a gun. Police officers usually risk their lives for people, so why not continue to in special situations? In an article by City News Toronto, an eight-teen-year-old named Sammy Yatim is shot nine times and is also tasered all because he was holding a knife. Andre Mann says: "Yatim's shooting raises the question of whether it's time for Ontario to have consistent and uniform guidelines on how police should de-escalate situations before they lead to the use of force."
