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 hard time believing that it took six officers to

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?