Monday, January 26, 2015
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.
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Great post, I agree with you, that is their job and they need to protect themselves, but also they act and treat individuals really bad and sometimes killing innocent people.
ReplyDeleteThat was well said Casey! You couldn't be more right when you made the comment about being a parent to a wrongfully murdered child and again when you mentioned the uncertainty of whether or not an officer in the present day would make it home at the end of the day. Both of those scenarios are often overlooked or not brought up at all in conversations about the topic. Fear is definitely a motivator in situations of violence; excessive or otherwise and I think that often there isn't enough time to gauge the situation and the potential danger or lack thereof and the body's fight or flight response kicks in and before you realize it things have escalated and an unfortunate encounter turns tragic.
ReplyDeleteThe controversy involving police brutality did not start with Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It has been going on for years... Unfortunately. The murders of those two men simply relit the old fires. Also keep in mind that many of these cops (at the time they committed the murders) are so jaded that (at least in one example) they take any sign of suspicious activity as a threat, such as one young man reaching for a black wallet in his pocket; the cops in question believing said wallet was a firearm. If government employees with the right to commit violence are really that paranoid, certainly, there is a problem with the system altogether.
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