Understanding Police Brutality

1440 Words3 Pages

What is police brutality? Here are a few examples to give an idea of what police brutality is. As stated by Zabrina, “In Queens, a strip club patron at a bachelor party preparing to get married the next day ended up dead after a chaotic confrontation characterized very differently by each side. The police claimed that he ignored their orders to stop and believed he was going for a gun; his friends who were with him insisted that they didn’t even say a word, just started shooting 31 shots, 11 rounds, and 4 shots between each of the three police officers. The officers were acquitted of any charges (Zabrina).” Another case stated by Zabrina dealing with police brutality would be,” In 2006, a pizza man heading home after a nice evening at a nightclub in Modesto was pulled over because they thought he might have been a suspect in another incident that had just occurred downtown. The officers yelled at him in English and Spanish to get out of the car, but because the man was deaf, he did not hear these orders. Not even a minute later, they fired with beanbag shotguns, breaking the back window of the truck, hitting the man in the stomach, torso, and legs as he ducked for cover. All the while, he was yelling that he was deaf “(Zabrina).
The examples above are very solid examples of police brutality. The real question is what actually is considered police brutality? Many people think police brutality is only when a police officer hurts a civilian while being arrested. However it is more complex than that, Police brutality is the use of excessive physical force or it can come in the form of verbal abuse/intimidation by a member in the police force. Police brutality began to become more noticed after a major riot that changed the complete o...

... middle of paper ...

...rstand that these principles are universal though, and the bottom line is that they trump departmental procedures and custom every time” (White).
Police brutality is becoming more of a serious case in the United States as the year’s progress. The Rodney King riots of 1992 was a starting point for people starting to notice the brutality the police force was using against the public. This opened the eyes of many people and showing them that something needs to be done to solve this problem. As the crimes still continue to happen, the officers involved need to be punished more severely for their actions. A police officer should not be able to get around the laws and not get punished for things a normal civilian would do to get arrested. From 1992 Rodney King riots in LA to this current day, police corruption and brutality has increased greatly and needs to be resolved.

Open Document