English 101
2/26/13
Police Brutality “Police brutality is a civil rights violation that occurs when a police officer acts with excessive force by using an amount of force with regards to a civilian that is more than necessary.” Police brutality, a word that was first used in 1893, has raised many questions. Some of these are: what are the causes of police brutality, and what are some prevention steps we can take to avoid police brutality? Police brutality has been an increasing pandemic that if not stopped will get out of hand eventually causing riots. This has been seen time and again throughout history. An example of a riot caused by police brutality is The Detroit Riot of 1967 “In 1967, police raided a after-hours party in Detroit and wound up trying to arrest 82 people who were celebrating the homecoming of two soldiers from Vietnam. This resulted in neighborhood protests that lead to looting, vandalism and arson. Once again, the National Guard was called in after five days of rioting. At the end of the riot, 43 people were dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 were arrested” (Gane-McCallan). There isn’t one single thing that causes police brutality but more of a few compounding factors. One of these …show more content…
Most victims of this type of police brutality don’t even realize that their rights have been violated because they didn’t know them. An alternative to knowing your rights you can just ask for an attorney and just refuse to speak until you have discussed with them. This can be helpful; however, it is also a part of knowing that you do have a right to an attorney. The final prevention step is training the police force further and identifying the ones that may have an anger management issue. Obviously, identifying and treating cops that may have that problem would reduce the chances of police brutality