Police brutality is a social problem. Research Paper

Police Brutality
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Abstract
Police brutality is a social problem that has roots in the history of the nation. It dates back several decades and has been directed at different groups over the years, from whites, gays, Jews, Spanish immigrants and the African Americans among others. Recent developments have brought about an awareness relative to the focus on the African Americans. Some of the focus is relative to the biases brought by the media while others are a reflection of the failed justice system. There is need to evaluate information about the same from a critical point of view in a bid to unearth the truths, half-truths and the lies from either side of the debate.
Introduction
In the recent years, the media platforms has been awash with the news on police brutality. Every few months, there is an incidence involving the police. This is topic that draws some very heated debates and one that deserves to be elaborated in a manner that gives a critical review, relative to the underpinnings of the situation. As a highlight of the debate, there has been two main campaigns these are; All Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter. These are campaigns that draw the line between the different sentiments. Ideally, there has been a bias in the cases involving police brutality, where majority of the victims are the African Americans (Cosgrove, 2015). There have been several cases where the police have been involved in shootings of unarmed African American men, part of which inflamed the debate and more importantly the tension on the issue. On the other hand there are views relating to the element of police provocation. Some of the quarters point out that in some of the cases the victims will have provoked the police to the extent of being violent. At the same time there are sentiments that point to the element of other races also being involved and finally the police’s need to protect themselves. This is a debate that has turned the police work into a dicey affair as they are always unsure of what could ensure with any given situation (Lopez, 2017). The Movement, Black Lives Matter created after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. The All Lives Matter slogan became quite popular during the 2016 presidential campaign. Of importance in this paper is to review the situation and evaluate the debates on the two sides of the divide with a critical approach.
Background
The unwarranted use of force by the police which is basically referred to as police brutality, is illegal in the United States and spans across several elements (Cosgrove, 2015). These includes; torture, mayhem, assault, battery and finally murder. Some of the more broad approaches also include harassment such as false arrest, verbal abuse and intimidation. It is interesting to note that, elements of police brutality can be traced to as early as the 19 and 20th centuries. Further, all races, ages, genders, ethnicities and classes have been exposed to elements of police brutality in the United States over the years (Moore, 2018).
This is especially the case considering that in the late 19th and early 20th century, poor as well as working class whites were subjected to discriminatory policing especially in the northern cities. This was also the case for the Jewish among other immigrants from the southern and the Eastern Europe, who were treated to police brutality incessantly. In the 1920s, organized crime was a menace and was largely associated with the Italian immigrants. As such, the police in most of the large cities such as the City of New York, would employ illegal measures to flush out the suspected criminals. The issue with immigrants did not stop there as later in the century during one of the most iconic Riots dubbed the Zoot Suit Riot, the Los Angeles Police were involved in activities that were largely illegal (Moore, 2018). Where the servicemen were found to have been involved in extralegal activities against the Mexican Americans. This would mark one of the hallmarks in history which brought to the light the level of brutality that is meant on the Latinos in America (Moore, 2018). Even the homosexuals have been part of the brutality trend especially in the 60s which later led to the Stonewall riots of the year 1969. The police in the case were involved in raiding gay bars. This would later on spark protests against the discriminatory attacks on the gay community, which ironically was being conducted by the police. Some of these incidences are part of what has formed the legislations in the American society as the different communities fight for their rights and protection against such incidences of police brutality. In the after of the 911 attacks on the American nation, there was a national outcry against the Muslim community (Moore, 2018). The police also acted in in kind. They developed covert operations, some of which were geared towards infiltrating the Muslim community and other were simply meant to intimidate the Muslim in America. There was a nationwide discriminatory profiling effort against the Muslim and most of them had a chance to experience discrimination from the police at every stop, from the ports of entry to the streets. What is more concerning though is the fact, it was not just the police that did not trust the Muslim anymore, and the general public was also in on the act (Moore, 2018).
All of the above notwithstanding, the African American community have borne a significant blunt of police brutality. While it is still debatable, some of the prejudices associated with the brutality include the idea that, there racial sentiments among the white policemen involved in the acts (Ballentine, 2016). This is a subject that elicits quite a barrage of debates among them the fact that, the United States has been struggling with racial profiling against the African Americans and other minority races such as the Jews and the Latinos for quite some time (Moore, 2018). These are prejudices that can be traced through the history of the nation and have some ingrained elements that may not be as blunt for the majority of the public to see or experience (Lopez, 2017). However, for the majority minority races cite being discriminated several times in concealed ways, some of which is systemized. Racism remains as the main candidate factor for police brutality that has been reported in the news quite often, against the African Americans.
The Debate
The African Americans have been subjected to police brutality for quite some time now. Some of the recent incidences which have sparked tensile debates are not the first, as this is a practice that can be traced through time. From the early days of slavery in the early 19th century where the African Americans were treated as second class citizens. This would extend to even after the Second World War. This was after quite a number of the African Americans had taken part in the war in an effort to gain the trust and recognition by the government and the community in general (McGrane, 2016). However, this would turn out into another element of exploitation, as the African were openly subjected to discrimination especially in the southern states, where white supremacy such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council (Moore, 2018). The level of brutality escalated between the 60s and the 90s, where even the African American cops were involved in the acts of brutality to gain trust in their ranks. More importantly relative to the level of crime in the predominantly African Americans communities and neighborhoods, this gave way to notions of African Americans being inherently violent. It is interesting to note that African American population only forms 13% of the entire population however, an estimated 31% of police brutality cases are reported in this community. This further reflected by the disproportionate number of African Americans that in the correction facilities. With the killing of victims such as Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and Michael Brown, this stirs the debate even further citing unarmed African Americans being killed by the police (Moore, 2018).
Opposing vi...