preview

Police Brutality In Pop Culture

Decent Essays

In today’s culture we seem to find ourselves wanting to watch more and more crime movies and television shows. In an article on The Daily Dot by S.E. Smith, he asks the question “Why are we glamorizing police brutality on television?” Smith goes on to say that: “Culturally, we’re fascinated by law enforcement. Long before Telecrime and the later Telecrimes, people were ravenously consuming penny dreadfuls, procedural serials, and detective novels. The police and law enforcement genre dominates pop culture to this day, from the mystery section of the bookstore to every night on television; at any given time, some network is airing a law enforcement show.” After reading further into this article, I found myself wondering, how many police shows …show more content…

We are always to assume that police officers are there for the greater good and or in an emergency when one calls upon them. However, one could say that this is strongly connected to certain communities and the majority race that the community holds. For example, a community such as Malibu, CA might agree that their police are in fact doing their greater good deeds and protecting the city, but in a community such as Baltimore, MD where their percentage of total population of African-Americans living there are 65%, they might have a different view about their police officers. Especially with their recent police shootings, this community and ones just like it, who’s majority are people of color, have learned that when they come into contact with law enforcement, it may come with fatal consequences. Some of these shows like The Blacklist, depict evidence tampering, suspects being beaten in order to get further information, and or direct disregard for Constitutional Human rights and civil rights. But like in this show, and others alike, most of this is said to be done for the greater good of the public and to ultimately catch the bad guy. Is this what really happens in the law enforcement community? And do these shows persuade us that police officers should be allowed to catch the bad guy by any means possible, even if it is by manipulating the criminal justice system? Many people of color feel that manipulating the system is happing to them in order to protect police officers from actions or mistakes they have made. For example, In the case were a young black man named Michael Brown allegedly had his hands up but was still shot by a police officer in Ferguson, MO. After the verdict came in by the grand jury, many questioned whether police officers

Get Access