Police Brutality Essay Sample

About 1,000 civilians are killed each year by law-enforcement officers in the United States of America. By one estimate, Black men are 2.5 times more likely than White men to be killed by police officers (Peeples). Police brutality has existed against people of color since the 1840’s, when the police were made into an organized institution. Civil activist leaders like Martin Luther King Jr highlighted this issue again in the 1960s and said on August 28, 1963, "We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality" (King).  People of Color have been unfairly targeted by police as is shown by the staggering disparity of arrests and death from police between White and People of Color. If People of Color in the United States of America experience police brutality then programs that help work on implicit bias for police officers and police culture should be implemented. They will help police officers not rely on stereotypes when working. 

People of Color are unfairly targeted by the police and are discriminated against. According to Lynne Peeples in an article called What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work, Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed than white men. (Peeples) This evidence proves how racial bias is a large factor in the aggressive actions of the police and this causes People of Color to be arrested and killed in a larger amount than their white counterparts. This discrimination is allowed to happen due to the corrupt police which allows this to happen, rather than officers being screened and tested, they simply are allowed to do what they seem fit and our often not punished. According to Zara Abrams in the article What works to reduce police brutality, “On the surface, the implicit bias literature is dismally depressing, because it tells us that everybody has automatic stereotypes that operate unconsciously and affect behavior.”(Abrams) This explains why implicit bias needs to be worked on and officers should be screened before jobs as large amounts of bias could cause great harm to innocent civilians. 

The police system allows racist people to become officers and rather than work on their behavior, they focus on covering it up, which allows law enforcers to be practically untouchable. According to Juan Antonio Juarez in the book Brotherhood of Corruption : A Cop Breaks the Silence on Police Abuse, Brutality, and Racial Profiling, Juarez tells of the deplorable people he worked with that were predators, committed brutality and dabbled in drugs, but were never punished due to the police system. (Juarez) It is an insider's look on the terrible atrocities committed by the police but these actions are kept silent by a secret code, which makes them complicit in the acts committed.  According to Zara Abrams in the article What works to reduce police brutality, “Police officers need to get comfortable both giving and receiving such interventions—and that culture must be modeled and supported by the highest levels of leadership within an organization.”(Abrams) This source explains how to stop corruption from happening in the police force by members of the police intervening when another is doing harm, rather than them keeping quiet to avoid persecution and should be developed on a large scale. 

Reforms dealing with the psychology that causes police to commit acts of brutality needs to be implemented to stop brutality from happening. According to Zara Abrams in the article How to actually stop police brutality, according to science, when a policy that prevents police officers (Abrams) from handling suspects when the chase ends in Las Vegas was implemented, it caused a 23% drop in the use of force in the department, an 11% reduction in police injuries, and a major drop of racial disparities when the officers use force. This supports my paper as it introduces psychological reforms that encourage the changing of thinking of police officers and that less violence will be required to be used to prevent killings and acts of brutality. 

Not only should psychological reforms be enacted, reforms that work on tracking the problem of police brutality and officer screenings also should be added to prevent people who have done brutality to not get hired at another job and see how widespread the problem is. According to Lynne Peeples in the article What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work, “If an officer is fired for misconduct, or resigned to avoid an investigation, they shouldn’t be able to get hired by another agency,”(Peeples). This supports my paper as it explains how the police need to be screened before being hired for previous offenses and behavior. Policing needs to be more evidence based and officers should build trust with civilians. Other reforms need to be implemented to make courts create laws that protect civilians and to prevent law enforcement from being untouchable and from exploiting people. 

All things considered, People of Color are unfairly targeted by the police and are discriminated against. Ultimately, the police system allows racist people to become officers and rather than work on their behavior, they focus on covering it up, which allows law enforcers to be practically untouchable. Therefore, reforms dealing with the psychology that causes police to commit acts of brutality needs to be implemented to stop brutality from happening.