Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Aaron Hinds: Police Brutality in America
Recently, I came across of yet another incident involving a police officer, unjustly, murdering a unarmed black man. What makes this case so astonishing, however, is what the police officer did minutes after he murdered Walter Scott. Luckily, a bystander was able to capture everything on his phone camera and a journal entry was able to list the events in detail. You can see both the video and the timeline if you click here. I do warn you, the images and sound can be graphic and disturbing to some to watch.
If the link doesn't work, you can copy and paste the URL into your browser:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/walter-scott-murder-timeline-of-events-in-south-carolina-captured-before-during-and-after-video-of-shooting-by-officer-michael-slager-10161573.html
This will serve as a recap of the events that took place. As you can see from the video, the events that happened this past Tuesday are baffling. A white officer, Michael Slagger, pulled a black man over onto the side of the rode for a broken taillight. However, after a brief scuffle, in the cop's report, the black man who was unarmed, Walter Scott, tried to grab for the officer's taser. As you can see there was an object that flew out of the officer's hand, however, it does not seem like it was as a result from Scott trying to grab the object. Afterwards, Scott started to run for his life with his back turned to the officer. The officer later shot Scott back about eight different times. Also in his report, I don't know if it was mentioned in the article provided, Officer Slagger stated that he shot Scott in self-defense because he was in fear for his life (keep in mind that Slagger is 33-years old and Scott is 50). After the shooting, the cop proceeded to scream at the Scott who has not moved a muscle since he fell to the ground, a typical response when someone kills you. Something that really disturbed me on the humanitarian aspect of things is that the cop was all for cuffing Scott while he was on the ground, however, he did not have the decency to check his pulse to see if was still alive; I think this should have been a quick response if one was to shoot a person in the back 8 times. It was not until another officer appeared on the scene that Scott's pulse was checked and subsequently pronounced dead. However, this is where it gets interesting. Before the other cop appeared to check Scott's pulse, Slagger picked up the object that was thrown before Scott was shot and placed it right beside Scott's dead body, an act that seems like Slagger was covering his tracks. Police brutality, especially against minorities, has reached a new level with officers framing scenes to make it seem like they were the victims defending themselves. Slagger, after the video was found and put in court, was found guilty of murder by a South Carolinian court.
As you come away from this story, here are some things to think about:
Do you think that there's needs to be a reorganization of how police departments train their officers? In this situation, do you think that race was involved in the shooting? Why do you think police officers in America have become so "trigger happy," or have they always been like this? How would you attempt to make our community safer if we can't trust our protectors with the proper tools to handle certain situations?
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Do you think that there's needs to be a reorganization of how police departments train their officers?
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with this. Officers are clearly not trained with comprehensive methodology to handle situations with appropriate force. There needs to be strict implementation (for the first time in american history) of police standards no matter what race they are dealing with.
Why do you think police officers in America have become so "trigger happy," or have they always been like this?
Police officers in america have a long history with the concept of being trigger happy. Look at the era of MLK. So many innocent protesters were killed by excessive police force.
How would you attempt to make our community safer if we can't trust our protectors with the proper tools to handle certain situations?
Referring back to the first question, officers need to be better trained. They need to be more thoroughly vetted before they're hired, and they truly need to be held to a higher standard.
Ironically we're talking about this in my Criminology class while I'm talking about it. There is no doubt an inherent bias within the criminal and legal system against people of color. Too many cases happen each year in which excessive force is applied against minorities and legal cases involving minority defendants are mishandled or unfairly judged to argue otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I think the public is more prone to make the people involved in these cases martyrs. Any number of cases is too many, be it one in a month or a hundred. in a week, but in American culture we have such an emphasis on the individual, combined with a historic dramatic news story about racism, these actual number of cases is though to be widely inflated to reality. Just a point I want to note. I'm not in any way condoning the cases or defending the offenders.
Something a classmate brought up was a district/county in Nevada that had this problem, the stat was something like "8 black deaths at the hands of police in one year". A Federal internal study was initiated and they found that there was a large amount of racism existing in the police force, so they recommended a training program to specifically overturn it. At the end of it, the police force became a model for others to use.
My solution, as crappy as it is, would be to wait it out. Few people in our generation (or at least where I grew up) would actively support racism. But there's always that stereotypical grandma or uncle that, while sitting quietly at a family picnic, blows the clam atmosphere to bits with a comment about the lazy blacks or job-stealing mexicans. Older people grew up in a society where racism was a lot more publicly accepted, which has reversed for the most part. Unfortunately, the adults in charge are the ones that grew up in that era, and so are more prone to hold those views.
I think the next progress will come out of us liberal, annoying, no-good, college kids moving into power.
Ironically we're talking about this in my Criminology class while I'm talking about it. There is no doubt an inherent bias within the criminal and legal system against people of color. Too many cases happen each year in which excessive force is applied against minorities and legal cases involving minority defendants are mishandled or unfairly judged to argue otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I think the public is more prone to make the people involved in these cases martyrs. Any number of cases is too many, be it one in a month or a hundred. in a week, but in American culture we have such an emphasis on the individual, combined with a historic dramatic news story about racism, these actual number of cases is though to be widely inflated to reality. Just a point I want to note. I'm not in any way condoning the cases or defending the offenders.
Something a classmate brought up was a district/county in Nevada that had this problem, the stat was something like "8 black deaths at the hands of police in one year". A Federal internal study was initiated and they found that there was a large amount of racism existing in the police force, so they recommended a training program to specifically overturn it. At the end of it, the police force became a model for others to use.
My solution, as crappy as it is, would be to wait it out. Few people in our generation (or at least where I grew up) would actively support racism. But there's always that stereotypical grandma or uncle that, while sitting quietly at a family picnic, blows the clam atmosphere to bits with a comment about the lazy blacks or job-stealing mexicans. Older people grew up in a society where racism was a lot more publicly accepted, which has reversed for the most part. Unfortunately, the adults in charge are the ones that grew up in that era, and so are more prone to hold those views.
I think the next progress will come out of us liberal, annoying, no-good, college kids moving into power.
1. I do agree that there needs to be a way in which police departments train their officers in order to avoid racial biases. However, I do not know how effective this practice will be because the individual officers have already formed their own biases and it may be difficult to eliminate those. We need to put more of a focus on diminishing the racial biases in the country as a whole, and as a result racially motivated crimes and police brutality would diminish as well.
ReplyDelete2. I do not think that police becoming "trigger happy" is a new issue. There has always been cases of police officers abusing their power and causing the deaths of innocent Americans. I think that this seems like a a new development because it has recently become a forefront issue. The murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have inspired an immense amount backlash among the black community and the American community as a whole. Following this, the American public has started to be made aware of how massive the problem of police brutality is in the United States.
3. I believe that the only way to remedy this problem is to address the issue of racism in the United States. We are still an extremely racist society and it leads to racial biases in the policing of the United States. We need to begin at the root of the problem in order to combat it's effects.
There as always been a history of police brutality in the US because police forces attract people who want the power that the job provides. Yes racism is a very prevalent issue, but the 'trigger happiness' of officers stems from the fact that many join so they can carry the gun, and hold the power that the badge provides. Going forward I don't think we need to change how officers are trained, we need to change how officers operate. We need to end this idea of us vs. them and get officers more involved in the community. Community policing takes cops out of patrol cars and puts them on bikes, or walking beats. This makes them interact with members of the community in situations besides when they are called to a crime. When your jobs almost entire interaction with the community is seeing the worst the community has to offer and that will jade any good hearted person over time.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that there's needs to be a reorganization of how police departments train their officers?
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is an issue with the training of police officers. I would seriously doubt any arguments that try to show that police academies train officers to be racist and shoot people; I would argue they do the exact opposite. All of these cases are indicative of individual officers or departments, but not the training they are getting.
In this situation, do you think that race was involved in the shooting?
I don't think there is any way to know that race was involved in this shooting. We can make assumptions about what the officer was thinking, but without any knowledge of the individual officer, I don't think that we can justifiably say race was involved. Yes, there is a major discrepancy between blacks and whites that are shot, but I don't think that just because a black individual is shot necessarily means that race was a factor.
Why do you think police officers in America have become so "trigger happy," or have they always been like this?
The first issue I have with this question is that it assumes that officers have indeed become trigger happy. I don't personally think this is true. Josh Goldstein, who is a professor at American University, wrote a book in 2011 titled "Think Again: War". This book was very indicative of questions liked this, and actually argued the opposite. Because of social media and other outlets that have allowed us to spread information quickly, we feel like violence is more widespread, when indeed it is not, we just have more access to it. I have seen this video numerous times on facebook, but not once on the news.
How would you attempt to make our community safer if we can't trust our protectors with the proper tools to handle certain situations?
Again, I think this question makes a dangerous assumption. I don't think all police officers want to kill people, or are even willing. I think most police officers are much more wanting to help people and make people safe. So, to answer the question, I don't think we should change the status quo too drastically. I think we should continue with reforms, but nothing crazy is necessary.