“As a Police Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve the community; to safeguardLives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak againstOppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect The Constitutional rights of all persons to liberty, equality, and justice.” (Philadelphia police oath) I decided to open with that just too basically compare and contrast. It’s sad to say that a very large number of officers don’t adhere to the oath that they took when becoming police officers, it’s a very large number of officers who have been abusing the “power” given to them by the United States of America, police brutality has been a major problem in the last 3-4 years, to the point that movies and documentaries have been made to reenact the heinous crimes that police have been doing. Let’s take a look back to when the first events of police brutality first started taking place, the all too familiar 1900’s; more so the 20’s through 80’s.
Around this time African Americans were beginning to branch out into the United States starting to take on the minimum but offered opportunities that they were given, but racism was a big game changer back in those days, oppressed and sectioned out were the Blacks of America. Nothing was fair not even going to the bathroom, there was many reported cases of police beatings and raids on African American communities and this in my opinion is where things started to slowly grow into a worldwide problem that we soon wouldn’t know would affect America. For the sake of history I’d like to take you back even farther, when police brutality was just used as a sense of “expression”, 1874 the NYPD Tomkins Square riots, over 7,000 people gathered in Tomkins square, described by a protester as “police attacking men, woman and children, without discrimination, a total “orgy of brutality” the evidence is there, it’s not always the people. As an officer of the law your first obligation is to protect the people of the USA, not hurt and bash them because of a false power you have been given. Now fast forward to the case that anybody can explain, the case of Rodney King who was brutally beaten by four LAPD officers who ultimately were acquitted of all charges in the case.
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Now I know that a lot of information to take in, especially with all the facts and statements that I pulled for your enjoyment, but this is only the batter to the cake, let’s move into the 2000’s, more importantly 09/11/2001, also sadly known as 9/11, a date that the USA will never forget but with the pain of that day came an emergence of misconduct and the birth of false power. “9/11 changes the entire direction of the police violence movement. Police are suddenly framed by government and the media as almost untouchable as “heroes of 9/11, Police surveillance, harassment and criminalization of Muslims, South Asians, Arabs and other Middle Easterners is dramatically increase.” Discrimination in police brutality started taking full effect, not only for protection but because of fear. America was caught off guard that day and wasn’t the same after that, they stared passing laws that invaded peoples personal life such as the Patriot Act that allowed the government to collect information on citizens to regulate “terrorist acts” and see who is who when they need more info on a set person’s life, the sad truth is that police brutality is an ongoing thing, even the reports that we the citizens don’t hear about are out there.
One may ask ” what does an officer have to fear ?” well I’ve come to the conclusion that officers are people too, yes as surprising as that is they to also fear of losing their life, and the proof is all around us. But does that give them the right to oppress another human being because of their unfortunate conditions? No it doesn’t and this is why police power needs to be regulated, not for the law but for the safety of all Americans. Across America the citizens are beginning to fear the police force and the actions they take when “controlling” a situation, most times police officers use over excessive force and it, in most cases ends very badly for the side it was going for. For example; July 17th, 2014 to most people this was a regular day, but it would soon turn into tragedy, on this day a man named Eric Garner was choked to death in a headlock by a police officer using excessive force to arrest him for selling what was identified as cigarettes. His death started the “I Can’t breathe ” quotation that was the last few words that Eric was sadly able to utter as life left his body, this brings me to my point of cops needing to know when to stop, the force here that was used on Eric wasn’t called for but who can you blame ? God, bad timing, either way you try and define this it was wrong, Eric’s death was just one of many other cases that involved the brutality of police officers.
It seems as if the system doesn’t know how to contain the incidents and control of their own sworn officers, body cameras have done its job once in a while up until when the officers begins to turn the body camera off for more odd reasons than them arresting people. A lot of police supporters like to argue that “Police are just doing their job, the excessive force is just an extra measure to ensure their safety since they are the targets” and to be honest… this statement is completely airheaded and wrong, police really have nothing to fear, it’s a double standard when it comes to self-control, yes it is possible for officers to lose their life in the line of duty but when you actually think about it the fear factor is the officers not the citizens; but this does not apply to criminals who are targeting police. I’m beginning to go deeper into the subject and I’m seeing a change in my writing pattern, I want to slow it up and talk about the public also known as the Citizens of the United States of America. Sadly there isn’t a neutral climate when rating police officers, because it’s the issue of race in America.
The belief that one set group of Americans are better off with the police community more than the others, in this case it’s the blacks and Hispanics vs the Whites. Sadly this is the truth of this country, all of the past neglecting of certain peoples has spilled over into the future of America, and as much as you want it to not be true it will ultimately be the sad truth of the USA. Then you have to look at the “targeted group” and its clearly more African Americans that are being killed by police officers than any other race, but the cops got smart they did crimes and hid behind the safety of the “shield” which is also called the Tenth Amendment, yes and it states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Basically stating that police officers have the power to regulate and enforce the law, but the problem is that they are beginning to stretch their power to places where they shouldn’t and relying on the people to speak on the non-lawful things they are doing.
