Police Abuses And Its Effects On Today s Society

In the past couple of years, phrases such as Hands up, don’t shoot and We can’t breathe have been shouted from the streets. Acts of violence and misconduct committed by the police have masses of people coming together and protesting the widespread problem. However, this current issue has been around for longer than Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two recent victims of police brutality. Offences from our police have occurred and were debated about for decades, but now are being brought back anew in these tumultuous times. Though police transgressions have an infamous place in history and a big part of today’s society, some still do not see it as that big of a problem. Others think the issue is causing the stereotyping of all the cops†¦show more content†¦Then, in November, Tamir Rice was shot in Cleveland. Walter L Scott was shot on April 4, 2015, after a routine traffic stop. Then, Freddie Gray died while in police custody in Baltimore in the same month. These are just a few examples of unreasonable deaths that are fresh in memory. Of course, there have been more deaths than those that make the news. According to Cop Crisis, 1,296 Americans were killed by the police last year, and 239 have already been killed this year. Some other statistics are that a quarter of those who are killed by officers are identified to be mentally ill. Also, Mapping Police Violence found that 98% of police offenders were not charged with a crime. Racism also plays heavily in police brutality, as African Americans are assaulted three times the rate of Caucasians or other ethnic minorities (Wong). These facts demonstrate that police brutality is nothing to be scoffed at, and public safety departments need to rebuild their policies in some way in order to solve this issue. One of the main roots of the problem with police brutality is that our police departments have too much power, as described in this quote, The advent of modern policing has greatly altered the balance of power between the citizen and the state in a way that would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by the Founders (Balko). This is similar to the idea of John Dalberg-Acton, Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely† (â€Å"John Emerich Edward