Shamika Woumnm
COMM/215
March 9, 2015
Amanda McClure
Police Brutality and Murder in America
Most commonly people have a bitter hatred for the police. This is because beside the news tending to hype things up, they continue to make the young African American youth the Michael Brown’s and Shawn Bell’s in their communities. With that kind of corruption, the officers that continue to commit these haneous crimes and get away with them make all police officers look bad. When in fact there are only a few bad eggs in the basket. I’m not here to state how bad the police are, I just want people to know that misconduct does happen, it is real and it’s wrong. These minority officers are making the streets dangerous for our youth and for the officers that want to do their job properly. I believe that the murders, corruption and brutality is a definite problem with those officers that are commiting these crimes. Not saying that all police commit these crimes and that all police are corrupt however from Ferguson to Brooklyn to Boston, MA who’s safe? We absolutely need the police officers who lay their lives down at every watch the public, however we need to weed out the bad eggs so that we can pave a safer road for the civilians and officers of the future. Origination
Police brutality has had a long history in the U.S. In the early days of policing, acts of mass brutality were usually attributed to the poor labor workers. From the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (Bruce, Robert), to the Pullman Strike of 1894, the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912 (McPherson, John Bruce), the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 where one hundred and forty six men were gun down by the National Guard (Mauk, Ben), the Steel Strike of 1919, and the Hanapepe Massacre of 1924, where the police would brutally beat striking laborers. Next came Prohibition, The Civil Rights Movement, The Vietnam War and the Nixon Administration which all had large scale acts of police brutality