With the country of the United States having so much backlash for its history with slaves and continuous disagreement with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, many individual cases have been broadcasted for the world to see the true understanding of what it means to be a person of color in America.
With violence seeming to continue across the U.S. with people that are African American, America has undergone a huge setback in their time of equal opportunity for all.
The BLM protests since last year have played a huge part and continue to do so in the work to move the stride forward to enable that every single person regardless of race has the same rights and freedom of opportunities as others.
In the case regarding Ronald Greene, his family was told that he died in a car crash when in reality the body cam footage shows him being brutally hit and tased to death. This is a simple example of the larger picture that needs to be ended and stopped.
The report from the LSP said that two troopers pursued a vehicle being driven by Greene following an attempt to pull over Greene for a traffic violation of some sort and it ended when he crashed his vehicle.
The largest problem that is faced here is the effects of the disagreements surrounding this topic. With most of the separation and anger being to the opposing side. The worst part about this that many could agree with is that most people just want the same thing. Most want freedom of opportunity and this is not present throughout much of the United States right now.
Thinking Questions:
1. Why does this keep happening in our country and not others?
2. What needs to be done in your opinion to limit these individual cases?
3. What is the most important aspect of a police stop or an arrest because that seems to be where most o these situations happen?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/us/ronald-greene-video-louisiana-police-death/index.html
5 comments:
First of all I believe that this case is not only a failure of the justice department but also just a straight up hate crime. The officers involved clearly tried to cover up what happened and showed no remorse or guilt until the body cam caught them. I think that this just shows how police officers in the US know they won't be held accountable for their actions so they continue to perpetuate racially motivated violence. Derek Chauvin was one of the first officers to be held accountable for murder and I think police injustices will continue until all police involved I excessive uses of force are charged. Police reform needs to happen in the US and fast. Officers should know the difference between a handgun and taser, they should get of the neck of a dying man when he says "I can't breathe." Officers need to be held accountable.
The simple answer to the first question is that it isn't just happening in the U.S. Numerous countries have had consistent issues with law enforcement unfairly targeting racial minorities, like with the Canadian government targeting Indigenous people. It just so happens that the U.S.' law enforcement system has a direct connection with racial discrimination - the prison-industrial complex and American standardized law enforcement was created around the same time as slavery was abolished, and our police and prison system were built around the premise of racial discrimination, so our police system is the most obvious example of institutional racism across most first-world countries.
The best way we can limit these cases is to revamp the policing system entirely, and the first two steps of this would be to re-train or replace all acting officers and defund the system to put towards more pro-active social programs. This decreases the strain on the police programs to solve all issues within an area and will make the main goal of the police system to de escalate violent situations instead of propagate them and have proper training and incentive to deal with minor issues without violence. It's absolutely ridiculous that any acting officer wouldn't know the difference between a tazer and a handgun and would need to use either in the event of a nonviolent crime. Most countries don't even allow most of their officers to have weapons like pistols or tazers on duty, and I think the U.S. should follow in their footsteps.
I think this is a continuous trend that happens in the US because of how our law enforcement is trained and even brought up. Racism is taught, and people have a bad habit of falling into the mindset that one race is superior to other races. Not only that, but people of high authority like police officers feel like they do not have to suffer any consequences an also follow their own set of rules.I think more training needs to be done in law enforcement along with more background checks. More money needs to be put into training about racism, social reform, and proper conduct rather than weapons and supplies. I think a lot of the time, officers pull people over due to racial profiling and start behaving a certain way which gets people mad, but even in that case police officers should be trained to deal with hostility without it leading to violence an death.
These issues with police brutality and misconduct did not show up overnight. While more cases seem to be coming forward now, that is only because of movements like BLM that make it "ok" for these injustices to be talked about. It is horrible that this is the world we live in, but it does not mean this should continue to be the norm. There should not be deaths "fudged" by police to keep their own names clean/ hide their terrible actions against minorities, specifically Black men. Just as this problem was not created overnight, the solution will not be quick. I agree with Shreya that all law enforcement officers need proper training on addressing and ending racism, misconduct and actions towards social reform. The justice system also needs to hold these cops responsible and not turn a blind eye, if cops believe they can continue getting away with their clearly biased (racist) behavior, they will never change their actions. My sympathies go out to Ronald Greene's family and I hope to see fewer and fewer families affected by these preventable deaths in the future.
This isn't something that is just happening in the US. Many other countries continue to have issues with racial discrimination in law enforcement. But focusing on America right now, it's truly shameful that despite being in the 21st century, racism is still as prevalent as ever. Caroline worded it really well by describing the timeline of the American law enforcement system with the abolishment of slavery. I completely agree with her course of action as well, as I feel that literally the very LEAST we can do is have police officers go through some type of training to prevent these hate-fueled situations from continuously happening. I also think decreasing some of the police funding and funneling it towards other campaigns to prevent violence and educate children before the need for law enforcement would be extremely beneficial. One comment I have on the note of defunding the police though is that I wish there was a different phrase or way of wording this movement. People that support the process of redistributing funding know the benefits and what "defund the police" really means, but those that don't support it because they don't understand it only have more extreme reactions and completely shut down when they hear people request this big "defunding." In addition to re-educating cops, we need to work to re-educate Americans because I think a few too many have forgotten what a little human decency looks like.
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