It’s Time to Crack Down on Police Brutality

It’s Time to Crack Down on Police Brutality

Police brutality has become a widespread and persistent problem in the United States. Police brutality occurs when a law enforcement officers use excessive or unlawful force while on or off duty. "Established: A Pattern of Abuse" is an article in The Humanist, written by Barbara Dority. She states, "Thousands of individual complaints are reported each year and local authorities pay out millions of dollars to vicitms in damages and lawsuits" (5). Dority also describes some of the types of abuse that officers have done. "[They] have beaten and shot unresisting suspects; they have misused batons, chemicals sprays, and electro-shock weapons; [and] they have injured or killed people by placing them in dangerous restraint holds" (5). There have been many cases throughout the country where police officers have been far too brutal and someone has been injured or killed. There have been many hundreds of cases like this and many people are wondering when it will end or even if it will end. Most citizens of the United States agree that it is wrong and needs to be reduced if not eliminated. So it all comes down to one question: what can be done about it? Unfortunately, prosecution has not been sufficiently effective in stopping the brutality. Police forces throughout the U.S. should be made more accountable for their actions. The greatest problem that has developed from police brutality is that the guilty officers are not punished, which leads to another incident of abuse. Authorities should give more effective punishment to officers who abuse citizens. Such punishment would help prevent abuse from happening again and again.

In an anonymous Economist article c...

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...gainst New York cops since 1993, only 180 officers have been disciplined, most of them with just a lecture or the loss of a vacation day" (26). Officers need to be treated like citizens when it comes to that type of crime. They should be sent to jail and just saying sorry should not let them off the hook. They may be law officers, but they are not gods and they should have to face the consequences of their actions as all good citizens must.

Sources Cited

Dority, Barbara. "Established: A Pattern of Abuse." The Humanist. 59.1 (Jan. 1999):5.

Lacayo, Richard. "Good Cop, Bad Cop." Time. 150.9 (1 Sept. 1997):26-31.

Lewis, Edward. " Policing the Police." Essence. 28.7 (Nov. 1997):14.

Anonymous. "Excessive Force." The Economist 348.8076 (11 July 1998): 32.