THE FUTURE OF POLICE BRUTALITY Essay, Research Paper
THE FUTURE OF POLICE BRUTALITY
This report is going to cover the future of police
brutality, what it is, where and when it happens, and what
we can do to stop it.
We as the public need to realize that there are always
two sides to any story. When we hear that someone was
injured of even killed by a police officer we automatically
think that the officer was wrong for what he did, when in
reality he may have been saving his life or the lives of
others. Most police officers don?t go out on patrol
looking for some one to hurt. Most of the time when some
one has a run in with the law it is for good reason. You
might here that John Doe was shot to death by the police
while he sat in his car Saturday night, but what you
probably won?t here is that John Doe had a 9mm pointed at
an officer, and he was a murder suspect. If you only heard
one side of that story then it would be easy for you to
assume that the police shot up poor Jon when in reality,
Jon and anyone else should have known that if you point a
gun at a police officer then you are probably going to get
killed.
On the other hand this also works the other way too.
You might here that Officer Curtis was killed in a car
crash while on duty last night. What you might not here is
that Officer Curtis was chasing down an escaped murder.
The point is that if you only listen to one side of the
story then it is easy to think that things happen for no
reason, when there is a good explanation for them.
Although many cases of police brutality can easily be
explained there are many more that are actual cases of the
police using excessive force. I am sure that everyone saw
the video of the Lousiana State Trooper who was yelling at
the lady and pulling here out of the car before she could
ever get her seat belt off. If this was a dangerous
criminal then it would have been justified but the only
thing that lady was guilty of was speeding, hardly a
serious crime.
There was a case in Los Angles where a man was stopped
for drunk driving and hit the officer when other officers
arrived they handcuffed the man placed him on his stomach
and six officers sat on him. The man later died, the
officers said that they were trying to restrain him. I
have a
hold down a drunk man who was handcuffed on his stomach and
had been doing cocaine. An autopsy showed that there were
a number of factors that could have been blamed for the
mans death(blood alcohol level, cocaine in his blood, the
officers setting on him while laying on his stomach,) all
of these things could have been the reason that this man
went into cardiac arrest. Because of all the other
possibilities the officers were cleared of any and all
wrong doing.
Some places such as New York, and Los Angles have a
much larger problem with police brutality than places like
Delaware, Ohio. One reason could be because of the higher
crime rates in those areas. Police officers may be afraid
if they let problems evolve into a confrontation where they
are on the defensive then they my face bodily harm, so they
take matters into there own hands, Also some police may be
tired of taking out Americas trash, so they are taking out
there hostility on every other criminal. Both of these
reason are not really acceptable because the police know
what there job is going to be like before the put the badge
on so they should just mellow out for a while and just do
there job like they are supposed to. In the future I don?t
think that police officers will be able to get away with as
much beating up of criminals as they do now because sooner
or later someone is going to go to far and do something
like assault an off duty police officer and then they will
be in trouble for assaulting one of there own and they
won?t be able to hide from that.
If people start to see the police get in trouble for
their actions the maybe they will start to have a better
attitude towards them. On the other hand if the police are
always getting in trouble then criminals may think that
they can provoke the police into assaulting them so that
the police actually get in trouble for doing there job and
the criminal will probably get millions of dollars just for
getting assaulted when they probably deserved it.
So the public faces a tough decision. Do we crack down
on a police officers authority to do what is needed to
apprehend a criminal to keep a few officers from abusing
their power or do we simply catch the officers who are out
of line in sting setups?