Police Brutality

Police Brutality

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Police Brutality

Introduction

The police officers are basically required to maintain peace and order, while upholding the constitution of a country. They are required to protect citizens of a country from any form of danger. This protection need to be extended to the property of the citizen. However, the situation is changing. Police have recently been involved in brutal acts against the citizens they are supposed to protect. Today hundreds of women and men are murdered by the police every year in the US. The exact number of people that are brutally killed by the policy is not known since most cases are not recorded. Police brutality in US involves the use of excessive force by the policy toward unarmed criminals or suspects, mostly involving extrajudicial killing. The availability of limited information however proposes that African American men are excessively impacted by utilization of lethal force by police. However, they are not the only ones experiencing this; policy brutality is extensively felt by many including the hopeless homeless people in the country. This paper discusses policy brutality in the US.

Police Brutality

The feature that differentiate police from other society groups is their power to apply coercive force when need be. Police might be called to apply force during an arrest, dispersing an disruptive crowed, breaking up an altercation, or while conducting myriad of other official duties in their daily routines. The force might range from pushing an individual to get the person attention or employing firearm. Between the two extremes, there is a number of other forms of forces that include deliberate use of chemical agents, firm arm grip, and baton blows. Whichever the applied technique, policy are anticipated to apply just necessary force to handle a particular situation. However, they sometime abuse their power by applying excessive force on the very citizens they are supposed to protect. When police use unreasonable force in precipitous response or arrest as in the protest demonstrations decades, utilization of the civil rights, labor, or other contentious problems, citizens ends up being police victims, and confidence of the public in a police force can crash. Known police abuses attract extensive media, political, and public attention and in some instances, criminal and civil courts attention (McEwen, 1996).

Police brutality has become a great issue in the United States. According to statistics, police officers in 2015 killed about 1139 individuals in the United States. Among them, more than 25% were Black Americans (Kennedy, 2016). This number is totally disproportionate to the national population share of black people in the country. Black American are significantly more based on statistics probable to die at the police hands compared to Asian, Latino, and white Americans. Among individual killed by police officers, Black victims are above twice as probable as white victims to have been in possession of fire arm during their death. This demonstrates a high case of discriminatory police brutality in the country (Kennedy, 2016). It clearly demonstrates that black people are more subject to discrimination as compared to other races in the country. Nevertheless, revived protests and human rights defenders organization efforts in Black lives movement as well as other groups of community have pushed the society into seeing the reality. Despite extensive and developing recognition of the problem gravity and the radical need of change in the practices of law enforcement, still police officers are rarely apprehended for their actions. Prosecutions and investigations of excessive use of force and killings by the police are the exclusion rather than custom. Officers facing excessive force criminal charges, they are frequently acquitted, or they do receive excessively lighter punishment if convicted, compared to sentence provided for typical citizens with similar charges. This continuous use of excessive force is caused by lack of accountability and impunity which is central to the police discrimination and violence cycle over Black Americans (Chaney & Robertson, 2013).

Police brutality is a problem recognized by all in the United States with a feeling that something needs to be done to stop it. However, there is very little done to eliminate police brutality in the country. The main challenge starts by lack of clear records on cases of police brutality in the country. In most cases, only in situation where the public intervene that the police are investigated and charged. In other situation, the police violence victims are labeled as notorious criminals or they may just be disregarded as criminals who tried to challenge the police officers. No investigation is voluntarily carried out by the police force even when the beheld ‘criminals’ have bullet wound, but without evidence that they were armed or trying to violently resist arrest (Chaney & Robertson, 2013). It is therefore evident that a lot need to be done to fight police brutality. The main solution so far has been public protest. However, the criminal justice system has not employed much effort in harnessing the situation. A lot need to be done in instilling discipline in the police force, especially in the aspect of their power boundary, and when their interception can become a violation of rights. The judicial system should also assist in this war by stopping being very lenient with police officers charged with public brutality. This can assist in easing the situation.

References

McEwen, T. (1996). National data collection on police use of force. Joint drafted with the National Institution of Justice. Retrieved from < https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ndcopuof.pdf >

Chaney, C., & Robertson, R. V. (2013). Racism and police brutality in America. Journal of African American Studies, 17(4), 480-505.

Kennedy, R. F. (2016). Excessive use of force by the police against Black Americans in the United States. 156th Ordinary Period of Sessions. Retrieved from < http://rfkhumanrights.org/media/filer_public/7d/84/7d8409c1-588f-4163-b552-1f6428e685db/iachr_thematic_hearing_submission_-_excessive_use_of_force_by_police_against_black_americans.pdf >