My Views on Police Brutality

You may have noticed that there have been way too many unfortunate events of police brutality on the news lately. During the first week of September, police killed more civilians than the total number of police officers killed so far this year. By the end of the month, 99 people were killed, according to the Killed By Police database. At least 77 of them were shot and killed. The Guardian reports that 873 people have been killed by police in 2015, and the number is growing. I cannot vouch for every case including the death of a suspect or a cop because all of these instances are different and they all must be taken case by case. With this being said it is nearly impossible to pick a side but I believe that more often than not, police officers are using an excessive amount of force that has taken far too many lives.

Confidence in law enforcement is relatively low, and large portions of the “black community” believe police are likely to use excessive force on suspects. In fact, a 2014 Pew Research Center survey confirms racial divisions in response to the Ferguson police shooting. Since 2000, investigators in the Stereotyping and Prejudice Research Laboratory in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago have been working to develop and refine a first-person-shooter video game, which presents a series of images of young men. These images are set against realistic backgrounds such as parks or cities and the assailants are either armed or unarmed. The player’s goal is to shoot any and all armed targets but not to shoot unarmed targets. Half of the targets are black, and half are white. The laboratory is using this game to investigate whether decisions to shoot at a potentially hostile target can be influenced by the target’s race. The end result was the participants were faster and more accurate when confronting a subject that matched stereotypes considered prominent in American society, such as armed blacks and unarmed whites, but when the roles were reversed, unarmed blacks and armed whites, they took longer time to react and made more mistakes than the first trial. Leaving to question does this also occur in our police officers when they are on duty.

Although black men make up only 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the 90 unarmed men shot to death by police in 2015, according to the Washington Post. It’s very cliché for a white male cop to shoot an unarmed black man. In the past African Americans have been used as slaves where they were verbally and physically abused by the white man if they ever disobeyed their owners. That’s just it, they were treated as property and not as human beings. A type of mindset such as that cannot just disappear in a few years, they are still discriminated, called names such as ‘thug’ or ‘hood-rat’, and being targeted by law enforcement.

“Brutal actions perpetrated by police officers too often go unpunished…” and “...police must be held accountable for their actions...” says The Harvard Law Review website. This is very true because there have been several examples. One famous example, with the case of Rodney King back in 1991. To sum it up, Rodney King was a 47 year old taxi driver who was brutally assaulted by cops from the result of an extensive car chase. Footage of the assault shows 4 officers surrounding King, several of them striking him repeatedly, while other officers stood by. Only 4 of the 7 officers present were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force and 3 of those 4 were acquitted of all charges. Parts of the footage were aired around the world which resulted in riots that caused nearly 60 deaths, more than 2,000 injuries, and almost $1 billion in damage.

Most cases of police brutality may be over-exaggerated but each situation needs to be taken case by case. Although race and police brutality do not directly correlate, they are most often portrayed in a very sensitive light, where as something drastic or violent has to happen for it to go viral on social media #BlackLivesMatter. Perhaps something as drastic as 41 shots being fired at a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea named Amadou Diallo. The highlight of these events only results in more violence once they have gone viral, so this needs to be stopped at the source. Time Magazine says that “the outbreak of violence is an unavoidable and understandable reaction to decades of corruption, abuse, lack of economic opportunity, and ongoing neglect of crumbling communities in the city” also “...the riots were perhaps necessary to highlight the situation and bring about lasting change.” I very much agree with these statements, in regards to Ferguson, but it is a sad reality that we are living in, in which a riot becomes necessary to settle a dispute because violence should never be the result of violence, but it is. I do not believe in a riot based strictly upon video footage, I disagree that a video of a person being abused/killed by a law enforcement officer should be a big enough reason to rile up so much anger. These rioters and protestors need to learn the entire back story of the crime before using the victims detriment as an excuse for anger. In most police brutality cases the victim is at fault due to committing a crime before the video begins recording but law enforcement should never resort to their last resort(their gun) unless their life or someone else's life is being directly threatened.

To address the issues of stop and frisk, I believe that this topic has to be cleared up because too many politicians these days are using bombastic language that could deceive the average citizen so I decided to define the different law terms that are being used when law enforcement officers are infringing on our rights. According to The Lectric Law Library, excessive force means that “a law enforcement officer has the right to use such force as is reasonably necessary under the circumstances to make a lawful arrest. An unreasonable seizure occurs when a law enforcement officer uses excessive force in making a lawful arrest. Whether force is reasonably necessary or excessive is measured by the force a reasonable and prudent law enforcement officer would use under the circumstances(a.k.a it is regarded case by case).” According to US Legal, a lawful arrest refers to “the legal custody of a person under warrant or under a probable cause.” As defined by the Cornell University Law School, probable cause is “a requirement found in the Fourth Amendment that must usually be met before police make an arrest, conduct a search, or receive a warrant.  Courts usually find probable cause when there is a reasonable basis for believing that a crime may have been committed (for an arrest) or when evidence of the crime is present in the place to be searched (for a search).  Under exigent[pressing] circumstances, probable cause can also justify a warrantless search or seizure. Persons arrested without a warrant are required to be brought before a competent authority shortly after the arrest for a prompt judicial determination of probable cause.”

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that these four elements are necessary for a lawful arrest:

1. Oath or Affirmation made

2. Probable Cause determined

3. Specific Warrant issued

4. The actual arrest or detainment

The fact of a lawful arrest establishes the authority for a full search of the person. It also establishes that such search is a reasonable search but cannot be conducted by law enforcement once the suspect has been detained, apprehended, or is deceased without the appropriate warrants. According to the Chimel V. California case, “When a man is legally arrested for an offense, whatever is found upon his person or in his control which it is unlawful for him to have and which may be used to prove the offense may be seized and held as evidence in the prosecution”.

All of these definitions propose that actions (when law enforcement suspects that there is a weapon present that could threaten themselves or the lives of others) cannot be made on scene but must be conducted through a long process. Unless the law enforcement officer has an eyewitness account of a life-threatening weapon, there first reaction can never be shoot to kill. These violations of a citizen’s rights and abuses of authority are unconstitutional and should never be underestimated.