Police Brutality and its Contributors

In the past two years, the United States has seen an extreme increase in the police use of deadly force. This deadly increase is speculated to have many contributing factors, some contributing factors are, internalized racism, knowing that if they do something they will not be punished, and the blue wall of silence. These are just a few of the many contributors to police brutality. People may believe that this is the way that we must live, and that nothing will ever change it.

Furthermore, the cause of this increase, in one word, is ignorance, but with new rules, that demand individual accountability, better training, demanding higher education, and monthly evaluations we can help lower police use of deadly force.

If we were to hold our police accountable for their crimes, we would see a decrease use of deadly force. Over and over, in the news, we see police officers failing to be held accountable. We see families crying together over slaughtered brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. On the other side, we see a peace officer stating over and over that it was in ‘self-defense’, but the victims were out living their lives. With a simple Google search, we can find the endless list of victims of these shootings. USAToday.com has an article named, Police killings of black men in the U.S. and what happened to the officers, by Josh Hafner, as the name of the article states, it is a list of some of these victims, from years 2014-2016, and what happened to the officer who shot them. One of the many people on this articles list was Terence Crutcher, the article states, Betty Shelby [] called the unarmed Crutcher a ‘bad dude’ before fatally shooting him with his hands up as he stood near his vehicle in a street.

In 2017 she was found not guilty and would go off to resign from the department and live her life doing something else. The book, Police Brutality, which is part of the Opposing Viewpoints Series, also stated another example of police officer receiving nothing, not even a metaphorical slap on the wrist. The book took an excerpt from the article, The real problem in Ferguson, New York and all of America is institutional racism, by Vincent Warren, Two days later, a grand jury in New York City failed to indict the white police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner as bystanders taped the incident. (pg. 42) If we were to hold our police officers accountable there will be a decrease in police use of violence.

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