Race And Policing

In the United States over the last decade or so, police relations with the communities they serve has gotten worst and worst. With all of the acts of brutality and over use of force by officers, this is no surprise. In the article “Here’s The Truth About Race And Policing”, by Redditt Hudson, valid arguments and statements are made against policing done wrong in America.
Hudson goes into great depth on how our criminal justice system has been filled with systematic racism over the years. So what makes an officer willingly over use their authority you ask? Well it’s simple, they are influenced by corrupt police officers in their force or they just feel more “in danger” of races that are not white. Hudson talks about his experiences in the police
One thing I related from the article to what we learned in this class was “White Privilege”. This term can apply to both Police officers and they citizens they serve. Officers around the country that are white can pretty much do anything they want with a colored person and get away with it because everyone thinks that the white man always does right. White officers also hide their misuse of force by saying, “my life was in danger” or simply just by saying that they felt like they did the “right thing”. On the citizens side it is the same; white citizens do not get stopped or question nearly as much as people of color do. This is something the that goes unnoticed by the white community. Another term I related to with this article is Social Institution and Stereotype. The Racial System is kept and reproduced with these two terms. Stereotypes create all the prejudices police have towards colored people. For example, black people have a stereotype of being bound to commit crime which makes police more threatened by them. Social Institution maintains the racial system by cops constantly overusing their force on people of color. This keeps the message out that it is somewhat the norm for officers to use brutality against African
I read this article to get a perspective from someone that would be truthful and honest about policing in the world today. The author gives a complete different opinion on how he thinks officers overuse their force. Most officers would talk about positive relations with citizens, while this former officer talked about the negative and brutal relations he has seen between cops and citizens. If I were to do a further investigation on this topic I would look into more stories of brutality and over use of force on colored people that come from police officers of different races. I would also like to look into finding a story about relations of all citizens of a black cop and a white cop that are duty partners. I think a story like that would help be interesting to see the differences and similarities in defense tactics that the officers use on citizens. Police Brutality in America will not stop anytime soon if our police departments do not make an effort to change. As Hudson said in the article, “Training means absolutely nothing if officers don't adhere to it and are not held accountable when they don't” (Hudson,