Saturday, February 5, 2011
Corrupt Police
On Friday, a video showing police beating a 15-year-old burglary suspect was released. In this video, as the boy was being chased by the police, he falls and then places his hands behind his head and his neck, showing a sign of surrender. However, the police got out of their cars and kicked him about fifteen times, even as he was barely moving or showing any sign of resistance. Even after detaining him, they still kicked him in the groin several more times. The seven police officers were fired, but two appealed and returned back to their jobs. The rest of the officers were disciplined and four were indicted. The judge feared the video going public which would influence potential jurors and asked the officers to move out of the country. However, Quanell X, a local activist, obtained the video that was supposed to be hidden and released it to the media. The four indicted were charged with misdemeanor. I think that it was especially wrong for the police to do such a thing. It was extremely necessary and since the boy was already surrendering, detaining him and punishing him for burglary is already enough. What do you guys think? In the video, it said one of the arguments were that the police were still following "reasonable police procedures". Do you agree with that? Were the police justified or not?
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6 comments:
I don't imagine that standard police procedures are to hit a man with a care and then as he is on the ground surrendering you go and kick multiple times. Police usually only have to get rough if the person they are trying to attain exerts unnecessary resit and fights back. This 15 year old looked pretty hurt after getting hit by the car so i don't feel multiple kicks was needed. Even if he committed burglary, they already had him so the police didn't need to take out their anger on him. In class we were working on making our own constitution and one of the ideas we had to consider was "How will you keep the police... acting in the interest of justice" my group tried to make it as fair as possible because police most of the time are concerned with themselves and take out their anger on people around them. I guess these police don;t follow the constitution and feel people like this 15 year old have no rights. Sometimes people are just sickening.
Is this the whole story? I can't imagine why the police would be so brutal without provocation. Even with provocation, the policemen's behavior is unacceptable and I can't believe that two were able to return to their jobs after an appeal. In my opinion, that was not "reasonable police procedures."
I think it's necessary to use force in order to subdue a resistant individual. The police may have believed the suspect was resilient because he was running from them. However, I think that it would only be necessary to forcefully restrain the suspect and then put him in handcuffs. I think the policemen were too excessive in their actions and their consequences were appropriate.
In now way was it a reasonable thing to do on the police's part! The fact that he is a minor and surrendered goes to show that the police were totally in the wrong. I think it's good they are all fired. It makes me wonder if it was racial tension issues regarding such an attack or not?
They call beating a surrending kid senselessly "following procedures?" If so, I think we really need to change the way our country's police act. Even though that police do need to use force to arrest their suspects, that was too excessive. The suspect was already surrendering, which means he wasn't going to struggle of put up a fight in his detainment. The cops should be making bonds with its people, not beating them without any reason. I feel as though these cops deserve some serious punishments for what they did, or atleast get fired.
Police are always corrupt, it just takes a while for it to be exposed. I bet these incidents happen more then 10 times a day but they don't get uncovered because the police protect each other in these unlawful acts. When they use racial profiling to target minorities for crimes just because of the stereotypes that they carry, then that is corruption. They are assisting the people of their race in getting lesser punishment. Police constantly hurt Black and Hispanic men, because they have pre-suspensions of those races. If a minority had an shiny object in their pocket then the police immediately assume that it is a gun. If a white man had a shiny object in his pocket, I really doubt they would shoot him.
Some people may say that the Police have stressful jobs and that they need to do this in order to do their "job."
Really? If a job is too stressful were you have to commit violence towards individuals when it isn't necessary then quit.
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