Thursday, March 1, 2012

Police Brutality Caught on Tape


When speaking of our criminal justice system and law enforcement, the topics of police corruption and police brutality always find their way to the highlight of the conversation. Personally, I am very interested in the topic of police brutality. I am very interested in why it happens and how it can be controlled. I am aware of and support police discretion and giving officers the luxury of patrolling without being monitored and letting our officers act and respond on their own; I feel these acts make our profession professional; however, the inconsistencies among officers cause a lot of controversy.
Studies are showing that police, prison guards, and other law enforcement authorities use of excessive force and other tactics to violate victim’s civil rights has increased over the years, and the vast majority of these cases are not being prosecuted. There are so many cases, nationwide, about police brutality. Most of the time in cases involving minorities, they seldom get justice. Other cases officers who are caught committing these crude acts are only suspended for a short time. Is this because they wear a badge, get superior treatments, and get away with things? I always wonder what the true, underlying reason is for these kinds of acts by our police officers, the people we should feel safe around, the people we call on for help. It makes me wonder if some individuals who decide to go in to law enforcement do it for all the wrong reasons.
Here is a link to an article about an instance where five officers were caught on tape beating an unconscious suspect and were actually fired from their agency.http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7637333&page=1
 After a high speed chase for over twenty minutes, the man in the van, Anthony Warren, spins out of control and the van begins to tip and roll, ejecting him from the vehicle. Due to the high speeds and being flown out of the van, the impact caused Warren to become unconscious. While he lay there, not moving or resisting, showing no signs of fighting back, the officers swarm him and used their fists and feet to strike his unconscious body. Warren suffered from internal bleeding, skull fractures and other serious issues; all of what he thought was from the accident, and not knowing he was also crudely beat by the officers while unconscious. The worst part of the police officers’ behaviors is they were all seasoned veteran officers.


Now, the question is, did the officers have a right to beat this man? Some critics say, “yes they were right to fire the officers.” Others say the man deserved it because he pissed the officers off; he tried killing officers and other innocent bystanders during his reckless acts. Some people believe the officers could not tell whether or not the man was unconscious and they felt they could have a very dangerous man on their hands and they did what was called for and necessary. If you all watch the video you can clearly see that this man was no longer resisting an arrest and was making no attempt to resist. Officers knew how fast they were driving and saw the man get ejected from the car, they should have known the impact that this accident could have caused to Warren. Like I mentioned earlier, police brutality has been on a rise, but when will this ever stop? Why is it now, in these days that we are facing these types of issues, especially with the better training we give to our officers?

2 comments:

  1. With any job or profession there are going to be some bad apples or people who break the rules, it is just inevitable. The problem here though is that it effects the police force in a much more negative way in comparison to any other profession. Police officers are looked at like they cannot and should not make any mistakes. When someone is using excessive force like in this video. The video creates a very negative effect of the police as a whole. However, i think that since the great emergence of video surveillance, police brutality has lessened. Cops now know that they could be on camera at any time. Back in the day cops could do whatever they want and really not have to answer to anyone because it was their word versus the offenders word. Now a days cops are video taped by random civilians all the time.

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  2. Clearly we need to train our officers more and give them training on ethics, because now a days police officers are being reckless and careless on what they are doing. The officers see the guy get flown out of his vehicle, they see him laying there not moving and what do they do? Injure him even more. They are the people who are suppose to be protecting us, i feel so much safer now! Just because the officers were mad does not give them the right to beat him up. I am glad they got fired and the guy should of pressed charges on them.

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