05 creating authority

For this upcoming paper on police violence, I personally do not have much authority on the matter. I can speak for how an average person feels on the matter, and have the authority to do so. However, when it comes to talking about the police officers and statistics of acts of excessive force, I need to show proof from elsewhere. I've been looking up a lot of information on different government and police websites. All of this information is coming straight from the source so is much more reliable than say, an opinion piece on police violence from the huffington post. By using these direct sources, I am actually able to turn myself into an authority on this matter, because of the information that I am using that is coming straight from the horses mouth. It's not enough to simply have the facts though. By putting together all that I've found on the subject in a nice, neat, coherent manner, I'm able to actually create authority of my own. Maybe I'm not a police officer but if I can show that I am capable enough as a writer, then the people reading my paper will be more likely to believe and trust what I say. I think that over time, anyone can create authority for themselves by repeatedly proving that they are able to talk about a specific subject, and that what they're saying is true.

04 Police Violence

For our paper we've decided to talk about excessive use of force by police officers. It's understandable that police officers are going to be worried about what happens to themselves first and foremost, it's the human condition. But, it seems that their methods of self-preservation are going too far. I believe that this stems from poor training, or rather improper focus on training. For instance, while looking for sources for our paper, I found a website that breaks down the training of police officers by hours spent on each topic. It showed that all academies spend 60 hours on firearm training. However, only 83% of academies spend time on Conflict management, and the ones that do only spend a total of 8 hours talking about it! It's no wonder that officers seem quicker to pull out their guns than try to talk a suspect down without the threat of violence. The point that I'm attempting to make is that if we opt for smarter training of police officers, then there might be less police-related deaths in the future.

03 Police Violence

When it comes to police violence I definitely stand somewhere in the middle. It's easy to stand there and say that police have the right to defend themselves, even kill an assailant if necessary, if you aren't the parents of a child who has been wrongfully murdered by police. On the other side of the same coin though, not many of us have to worry about whether or not we will be able to come home to our loved ones everyday we go to work, like police officers do. The recent slew of coverage on a lot of these police brutality stories have started to divide us as a nation. In my mind there is no question that the media has greatly exacerbated this issue. It's certainly important to talk about these issues and realize that there is a problem going on here that needs to be fixed. However, the fact that for a few months straight, the only stories that you would see on the news would be ones about police using excessive force is troubling. Certainly there were a lot of other things going on at that same time that could have made it seem like there was more going on in the world. This over-saturation of police brutality stories only serves to make the average american feel unsafe and even angry towards police officers. As a result these police officers begin to get more on-edge and maybe see threats where none exist. The real enemy here for both sides is fear.

02 Recent argument I had

I had an argument with my friend recently about pre-requisites in college, and how I feel that you shouldn't have to take them. In high school they make you take a myriad of different courses to make you a more well-rounded individual, but also to give you a view of different subjects so you can find which one you like. Why is it then that in college, if you have already chosen to be, say, an English major, that you must take science and math courses as well. My friend was arguing that they still make you take pre-reqs in college for the same reason as high school, to make you an overall smarter individual. I think, however, that this is just another tool colleges use to make more money from students. If this is the case, and schools aren't willing to just part with two full years of tuition from students, then I propose a new plan to allow both schools and students to win. If you have already chosen a major, instead of pre-requisites, they should just make you take more classes that deal with whatever your major will be. What do you think class?

01 Introduction

Hello composition class, this is my introductory blog and also my first blog ever so please bear with the  uninteresting nature of this post.  My name is Casey Patterson and I was born and raised right here in West Palm Beach. I started playing soccer when I was 5 years old and have been playing ever since.  My parents made me take piano lessons when I was a kid and I hated them but as I grew older I began to love music. I played the saxophone in middle school for band class and enjoyed that so much that I talked to my two best friends, ironically they also decided to pick the saxophone, and said that we should each pick an instrument to learn so that in high school we could start a rock band. I picked the drums much to my parents dismay and have been playing ever since. We ended up forming a band in high school and played a lot of local shows around Florida , our biggest venue being Revolution in Ft. Lauderdale. When it came time for everyone to go away to college we had to split up unfortunately. In the past year I've been making my old guitarist Andrew give me lessons  and am loving playing guitar and singing. Him and I hope to start playing acoustic shows around here whenever we feel we're ready. Thanks for listening to my story.