Police Officer Research Paper

The job of a police officer requires them to put their lives at risk to protect others and the threat seems to end when the uniform is off. Does the threat really end for officers of color? Eric Adams opens a small window into his world as a colored officer with his article, “The Thin Blue Line Between Us.” Though he takes his job seriously and upholds his badge with honor, he is aware that not all police actions are for the best. He recognizes the brokenness of the system that he must fight against with his fellow community members. Being a police officer of color comes with the decisions: “Is this right or wrong? Am I doing right by my job, or by my people? Did I do the right thing? To Eric he is not just black, he is not just an officer.
He is one human who believes that the system can change. He shows hope for a “more righteous tomorrow” (Adams, 2016).
Adams not only tells of his time as an officer, but also as a protester marching “shoulder to shoulder with outraged New Yorkers” (Adamas, 2016). As noted in an article, during the times of his marches, known as the Louima/Diallo decade, there were about 7,000 protesters marching across the Brooklyn Bridge chanting “No Justice! No Peace!” (Danticat, 2014) When going from chanting to protecting the only thing that changed was how the protesters perceived Adams. What do we do about these horrific incidents that are happening in our nation? Adams proposes that we “seek unity, not find division” (Adams, 2016), and to take action. When referencing action throughout his article he does not insist on the use of violence. He wants to use stronger gun reform, to address the mental health epidemic, and to work on defusing situations rather than allowing them to escalate to where force must be used.
The protests before were not the beginning, nor the end of the anger, frustration and hurt that the community has felt. The police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have been the more recent devastating tragedies. Alton Sterling was a 37 -year-old man who was selling CDs and DVDs outside of a convenience store. A 911 call alerted the police of a man walking around with a gun. This would not be the first-time Alton was approached about this situation. The police proceeded to tackle Alton without stating why they were arresting him. The combination of his confusion and fear lead him to struggle with police. They took this struggle as him trying to run or reach for the gun in his pocket. This led to his being tased, and then shot. Sadly, the police felt that being tased and shot once was not enough to get him” under control,” so Alton was shot a total of four times. The shots to his chest ultimately led to his death and the officers put on administrative leave (Shoichet & Berlinger, 2016).
Philando Castile, a 32 -year-old man was driving with his girlfriend and child in the car. They were pulled over by police for a busted tail light. Routinely Philando informed the officer of his firearm and permit to carry one, yet when reaching for his ID he was shot. After he was shot his girlfriend began recording, and you can clearly see Philando bleeding with the police officer yelling at him to “put his hands where he can see them” while the girlfriend is trying to explain that he was reaching for his licenses. Once the other officers arrived they treated his girlfriend as if she had committed a crime, without trying to console her while her boyfriend is dying. To her and the audience this seems strange and heartless. It was documented that he was pulled over because “Yanez signaled to another officer that he was pulling Castile's car over because his "wide-set nose" matched the description of a robbery suspect” (Collins, Feshier & Nelson,2016). Officer Yanez was charged “with second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts for dangerous discharge of a firearm near the passengers in the car at the time of the shooting.” (Collins, Feshier & Nelson,2016). Even though it is legal to use deadly force in Minnesota, it was believed to be unneeded in this situation.
One thing these two men had in common was their run-ins with the law.
Documented in an article titled, “The Driving Life and Death of Philando Castile,” Philando was pulled over at least “46 times and racked up more than $6,000 in fines.” An interesting fact about these stops is “only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car — things like speeding or having a broken muffler” (Hurt, Knight & Lill, 2016). Many of his tickets and citation were due to his license being suspended or the lack of proof of insurance. This led to his being in court for the tickets he was not able to pay, due to low income. The amount of trouble Philando has gotten into would persuade anyone to think that he deserved to be pulled over, because his previous offenses, but did he deserve to be
shot?
Alton Sterling’s charges are of a different nature.
After researching his criminal record I uncovered from the article, “This is Who Alton Sterling Was,” before he was killed, that Alton had been arrested for “aggravated battery, simple criminal damage to property and unauthorized entry, domestic abuse battery, carnal knowledge of a juvenile, failure to register as a sex offender, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and illegally carrying a weapon with a controlled dangerous substance” (Hogan, 2016). His last offenses put him in jail for five years in 2009. Though he had a rough past with police everyone he encountered never spoke ill of him. He was known as a loving father trying to make ends meet by selling DVDs, CDs, and he even had a job as a cook. He did have a gun in his pocket that he did not have a permit for. Though this is a crime to be arrested for, it is not one to die over.
Members of the black community are not the only ones being “targeted” in this war. Two police officers were shot point blank while they sat in their patrol car in New York City. The shooter, Ismaayl Brinsley, posted on social media about his frustration towards officers in general, due to the recent Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases (Mueller & Baker, 2014). After shooting the officers he proceeded to run from the cops to a subway platform, where he killed himself. This assassination was not fully planned and the two officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were shot just because
of the uniform they wore.
Adams highlights the shooting in Dallas that was unexpected by not only the officers, but the protesters. Broadcasted by CNN this peaceful protest ended in five deaths of officers and seven total injuries. The shooter did not target the protesters, but the officers who were protecting their first amendment right to protest. The 25 -year-old veteran just served seven months in Afghanistan and is to believe to have suffered from PTSD. After shooting from his apartment building, from several floors, he was killed by a bomb in the garage (Karimi, Shoichet & Ellis,2016). His believed PTSD plays into Adams’ argument about how the mental health epidemic seems to slip through the cracks when addressing the public. When paired with a mental disorder your vision of protest is distorted into “the delusional hate of dangerous radicalization” (Adams, 2016).
In 1995 Eric was one of the many founders of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. This organization offers many workshops and courses that people of color can take that inform them on what to do in certain, potentially life threatening, situations. They had critics who commented that they “were being divisive” when offering courses on how to act when pulled over by an officer (Adams, 2016). Given the recent circumstances the classes seem as needed as a CPR class. You hope you’ll never have to use it, but there will be that heart-stopping moment when the material will come into play.
This article has been a summary of not only the tragedies that have affected the black community, but also the police community as well. Adams has not shown bias to one side of himself, or the other. He does not let his job and ethnicity define who he is, or how he feels about the incidences that are happening around him. Just as color should never define us, the same stands for the uniform. Let us come together as a community instead of being divided by the colors of black and blue.