Police Brutality

Caroline Lewis

Mrs. Hamner

English 101-18

29 September 2016

Police Brutality

        Martin Luther King Junior once said, “We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”  I am a firm believer that the vast majority of police officers respect the community and take their duties of protecting people seriously; however, it only takes a few to create a bad name for all police officers by taking advantage of their positions. The number of innocent lives lost due to police brutality is rapidly increasing, with about one thousand people being killed each year by police officers in the United States. The number of deaths due to police brutality would decrease if police officers were required to go through more rigorous training and wore their badges with honor and integrity instead of toughness.

        To begin, police officers should be required to go through more thorough training.  Shooting to kill should not be an officer’s first instinct when they feel endangered, because there are many other options for detaining a person.  Police officers must be ready to encounter all types of situations and be trained well enough to keep their cool instead of reacting right away.  All police officers should be required to successfully complete more hours of real-life scenarios, rather than just classroom based material and examples.  It is important that officers are trained to stay calm in all situations and follow the protocol exactly without causing unnecessary harm to any individuals.  

Next, police officers should wear their badge with honor and integrity, rather than with toughness.  At the end of the day, the main duty of a police officer is to protect people and property.  There are many officers that abuse their power by thinking they are invincible just because they are wearing a badge.  Instead, policemen should wear their badges in order to help those in need and be a role model for the youth.  The badges give officers authority, but their behavior gives them respect.  Wearing a badge brings great responsibility and accountability for ones actions and officers must be able to admit when they are wrong.  The badge that police officers wear is much more than a symbol of authority; it is a symbol of courage, strength, and integrity.