-
Essay / Police brutality and violence in Black communities
Stories of police brutality and violence in Black communities are commonplace. Young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men. Statistics like these are daily norms, past and present, police brutality continues to exist, even though steps are now being taken to prevent it. There is a need to raise awareness of this problem to put an end to it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The underlying causes of police brutality run deep. Historically, in the United States, it is the police who have enforced inequalities in the country. They were the ones who enforced racism and segregation by attacking civil rights protesters, disrupting strikes by black workers, and much more. Unfortunately, these values are still visible today in the police. Today, society is not much different. In fact, black communities often face higher crime rates and therefore desire good relations with law enforcement. But that is unlikely until the United States finds a way to address its history of using the police as a tool to reinforce systems of racial inequity. Police brutality is something that has existed in this country in one form or another throughout history, and times need to change. Ted Talk Says Social Justice Belongs to Our Schools Sydney Chafee cites a study that found 88% of white people harbored an unconscious state. prejudice against black people – believing them to be less intelligent, lazier and more dangerous than white people. This quote shows exactly that unconscious racism exists in our society without us even realizing it. In the United States, police officers kill about three people a day on average, a number close to the annual totals in other wealthy countries. But it is difficult to obtain data on these deadly encounters. According to Statista Research, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States is only increasing, with a total of 753 civilians having been shot, including 150 black people, as of October 29, 2019. In 2017, there were had 987 fatal police shootings, and in 2018, that number rose to 996. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. population in 2018 is approximately 62.0% White, 16.9% Hispanic and 12.6% black. The number of police killings, however, is very different since the number of unarmed, non-aggressive citizens killed by police is 44.0% White, 14.0% Hispanic, and a staggering 34.9% Blacks. This completely disproportionate number of murders shows that there is no doubt that the police are corrupt and that racism does exist within the police when it comes to shootings. The fact that black people are killed in 34.9% of these cases is absurd when they only make up about 12.6% of the population. Additionally, Black, Black, Latino, and Native American men are not the only ones at higher risk of being killed than white men and Asian American and Pacific Islander men. The estimated number of killings of young black men means that approximately one in 1,000 black men face fatal police violence – a rate 2.5 times higher than that of white men. These statistics show that police brutality does indeed discriminate on the basis of race, and this is not a deniable fact. These disparities in police use of force reflect inequalitiesracial discrimination more prevalent throughout the American criminal justice system. Black people are much more likely to be arrested for drugs, even though they are not more likely to use or sell them. And black inmates make up a disproportionate share of the prison population. According to podcast series number 3, the case of a man named Erimus is told. Erimus, a black man, was brutalized, beaten, and tasered multiple times while knocking on his neighbor's door, all because he seemed a little suspicious and had a joint grass on him outraged me. Hearing Erimus tell his story and everything he had to go through moved me deeply. Ultimately, for people like Erimus, their trial comes down to a cop's word against a citizen's. In cases like these, it is difficult to convince a judge to accept the word of a black man over that of a police officer. This is why it is so frustrating to hear these cases. Another extremely sad case that shows how horrible this situation is is the Tamir Rice incident where a 12 year old boy, playing with a toy gun, was shot less than 2 seconds after the police arrived. police. This is completely absurd, a police officer shooting within 2 seconds of arriving on scene. The caller even said the gun Tamir was playing with was probably fake; However, this did not stop the police from shooting Tamir dead. Even more absurd is how a police officer tried to justify this action on a Serial podcast, by claiming that Tamir Rice was a “big kid” – 190 pounds and 5-7. However, this is in no way an excuse for him being shot within 2 seconds of the police arriving. Even if an officer mistook a fake gun for a real gun and a boy for a man, why was it necessary to shoot within 2 seconds of arriving on scene? Even incidents like the Tamir Rice affair are not uncommon. There are many stories like these that happen in the USO. Oscar Grant was shot and killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle in 2009 in Oakland, California. Mehserle and other officers had responded to reports of a fight and arrested and handcuffed Grant and several others at a subway station. Grant was handcuffed, unarmed and lying on the ground when Mehserle pulled out his gun and shot him in the back. In court, Mehserle claimed he thought his weapon was his Taser. He was sentenced to two years in prison and released on parole in June 2011. Christopher Harris was walking home in 2009 in Seattle when sheriff's deputy Matthew Paul slammed him against a wall after picking him up. for an assault suspect. Paul remained in a coma and still requires massive medical treatment after suffering serious, permanent injuries to his head and spinal cord. Paul escaped all charges related to the incident and remains a police officer. A local police spokesperson explained the incident by saying that sometimes "...bad things happen to good people." These things happen to completely unworthy people all the time, from Tamir to Erinus to Oscar to Christopher. The impact of police brutality on the well-being of the black community parallels the effects of racism that exists in so many other aspects of daily life: education. , housing, employment and health care. The fact that black people can be harassed and even killed by the police is unfortunately not incompatible with a system that gives some children, but not others, a high-quality education and that allows skin color to dictate employment opportunities or the chances of dying from a preventable disease..