Guns & Police

Southern states policing development was different; they had ‘slave patrol’. It was first created in Carolina colonies in 1704. They had three functions, to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves. To provide a form of organized terror to control slaves, and to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law if they violated any plantation rules. After Civil war it became to control freed slaves who were now laborer workers under Jim Crow segregation laws designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.

Job Description:

The responsibilities for a police officer should be very simple, to protect the people. But based on our country's history we know that people in power have trouble in knowing whom they treat as people and whom they don’t. The job description for a police officer is to keep the peace,

Handle routine calls for service
Respond to emergency calls or in progress crimes
Enforce criminal, traffic, health and safety code violations
Assist during major emergencies and natural disasters with evacuations and perimeter security
Arrest and book prisoners
Prisoner transportation
File crime and incident reports
Conduct basic investigations
Evaluate and secure crime scenes
Public event security
Render first aid In appropriate situations
Make death notifications
Locate and interview victims and witnesses
Serve arrest, traffic and search warrants
Patrol assigned beat or area in a car, on foot, on a bicycle or horse
Conduct surveillances
Other duties, as assigned

A lot of police officers don’t follow their job descriptions. One of their duties is to make death notifications and in 2015 NVSS recorded 523-law enforcement related death. The counted identified 1,086 such cases, 487 cases appeared in both list. Police in the United States killed at least 1,166 people in 2015. They do a bad job reporting the death and also do a bad job in putting causes of death, and now with social media a lot of the times we have the videos of cops killing innocent African American people and getting away with it. So why do police officers shoot and kill unarmed African Americans? There protocol is to shoot to stop, they are trained to fire one or two rounds from their revolvers then decide if they need to keep shooting. Again, we still see police officers shoot 8 times before they even take their next breathe. I don’t actually believe they fear for their life, I believe that they are racist. Africans Americans get stopped twice as more than White Americans. And once they are stopped there is a higher probability that they will get a ticket, get arrested, or end up shot, or dead.

Statistics and Data:

African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. Nationwide, African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested, and 42% who are detained. Children who still learning and growing are getting detained because of their skin color and the racist stereotypes that come with it. African Americans/ Hispanics make up 32% of population but comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015. The negative impact of a criminal record is twice as large for African American applicants. We all know that racism and oppression still exist today in 2018. So it’s easy to believe that African Americans get stopped by police officers for no reason and look for any excuse to imprison them because then after that they will either go back to jail or never get a good job. African Americans live in a system that is designed to prevent them from succeeding. Police officers play a huge role in that.

One of the worst states with police brutality is Chicago; African Americans take up to 33% of the population. And about 77% of police arrest was black youth. A lot of these police officers aren’t held accountable for the innocent arrests and murder victims. These police officers are getting away with police brutality and bothering the black youth. Getting arrested a young age could make it impossible to get a job or go to a good College. It’s like there doing this with the purpose to keep the black youth in prison.

Conclusion:

Compare to other countries, it is interesting to see how much Americans police officers depend on their guns. In Britain, Irish Republic, New Zealand officers don’t carry guns only in their care. So why can countries be safe without guns, but the United States can’t. A Lot of innocent people are dying and I don't see the police department trying to do anything to fix it whether its by changing police officers training routine and finding other ways to stop someone without having to kill them. When it comes to mass shootings, police officers manage to detain the killer without even shooting; it could be because those mass shootings are caused by White Americans. This can also prove that maybe it has nothing to do with police officers training with guns but with racism.

So how can we move forward knowing that the police force was created to detain slaves, and then imprison free African Americans, and now killing them? I think for starter those police officers killing these black men should be punished for their actions, and they should be more repercussions to those who don’t follow their duties as a police officer, and go out killing people. There has to be a way to live safer if you have other countries doing it as well. So maybe we should take some notes and see what works for us as a country, because the system we have now is still living in 1800s mindset. Slavery is over and we should not be seeing or ever have been seeing innocent people killed because of the color of their skin.

Bibliography:

Text:

Dr. Garry Potter, Novel, “The History of policing in the United States Part 1” (2013)
Joseph Erbentraut, Article, “Report: Chicago Police Are Getting Away With Brutality...” (2014)
Kate Wheeling, Article, “How Many People Are Really Killed By Police In The United States” (2017)
Rick Noack, NewsLetter, “5 Countries Where Most Police Officers Don’t Carry Firearms…”
“Criminal Fact Sheet” http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/
“Police Officer Job Description” https://www.policetestguide.com/resources/police-officer-job-description/

Images:

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Guns and Police