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Police Brutality

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A police force is an organized body of people empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. In today’s society, it is often questioned if policeman’s purpose in society is fulfilled. Since 2015, police have killed 964 people in the U.S. Despite being only 13% of the population, black people were 25% (242) of those killed. (MappingPoliceViolence.org) These killings are often identified as police brutality. Police brutality is the use of any force exceeding reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose. Police brutality is a rising but yet unsolved issue that remains relevant in today’s society. Differences between African Americans and police officers often affect interaction amongst each other. When police officers aren’t representative of the people they are supposed to protect, they often use cultural differences, racial tensions, and bias to target or view these communities as dangerous.
Tensions between police officers and African Americans have been existence since the early 1950s. Before the 19th century, there were no police forces that we would appreciate as such anywhere in the world. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. As Northern cities grew and filled with mostly foreign wage workers who were nearly excluded from the ruling class, the wealthy superiors who governed the various municipal hired hundreds and thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working-class neighborhoods. Conflicts increasingly occurred as police would violently attack those who failed to comply to the new rules of these “police”. Today, these incidents still happen in dejecting societies. These tensions help create negative stereotyping within police and blacks. In the article “Racism & Police Brutality” by Cassandra Chaney, she describes the current situation of police activity by saying “The reality is that this country has armed our law enforcement with 21st century technology, yet continues to hold them to a 19th century code of conduct. We make excuses for the damage they cause, while we look the other way and hope nobody embarrasses us into actually doing something about their behavior.” She describes how police aren’t being

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