This young woman was victimized by a Chicago police officer and had pictures of multiple bruises and wounds that resulted from her experience. She reported this officer to the proper authorities only to be ignored. And according to CNN she is just one of thousands of people who have reported cases of police brutality only to be overlooked. This video shows how deep corruption can go. Why were none of these officers ever investigated when there is suppose to be a whole team dedicated to doing just that?
According to Banks (2004), the courtroom is another place where ethics is constantly being questioned. Lawyers have many gray areas and many times it depends on what their primary concern that will result in actions taken later, such as withdrawing from a case, or discrediting a truthful witness from the opposing side.
Until the mid 18th century, lawyers was not a career trusted by the government because they encouraged lawsuits and appeared more concerned with the financial benefits then they were with benefiting the community. There exists a great deal of discretion from judges and prosecutors, and corruption can be easily persuaded to those in such powerful positions.
Police Brutality can occur because of the amount of power, and discretion officers are allowed to have. However, according to Walker (2001), many conservatives feel the answer to fighting crime is to “unleash the police.” “Unleash” meaning to give the police more power, more resources and an increased numbers in patrolling officers. However, this is not really addressing the issue of crime but is an attempt to try and quick fix a problem by throwing money at it. Allowing, officers to skip over procedures and proper channeling for getting information, making arrests and conducting searches is playing on dangerous grounds. The exclusionary rule as well as other laws have been put in place to protect the public for a reason.
Allowing more power will not help nor will increasing the number of patrolling officers. Many studies have shown that increasing patrols, increasing officers, and giving them more power will not reduce crime. It is by using community oriented policing that crime will start to become affected. Community oriented policing tries to focus at the problems at hand and find a permanent solution. For example, if there was a problem with people speeding a good way to solve this may be to install speed bumps instead of having an officer there give out speeding tickets all day.
5 comments:
Hello. Nice discussion here. This type of police brutality goes to show the "overpolicing" issues that face our agencies nation-wide. Often times, (some not all) police officials feel they hold more power than a citizen and exert more force than necessary. Things often get out of hand, and people get hurt.
That was a powerful video clip. It's scary to think that we can't trust law enforcement; especially when their job is to protect and serve. Sometimes power gets in the wrong hands of individuals. Police brutality is something that is becoming all too common. It's a sad day when people are afraid to call the police for help.
Thanks for the comments. Yes, it's very sad that what happened to this woman. She was the one who called the police and as a result she wound up arrested and beaten. Indeed, inncidents such as this will have citizens scared to call the police. What is even worse is that this officers are not being held accountable for their actions. The agencies in charge of investigating are turning a blind eye to the thousands of complaints being reported.
Whats going on Stephen. Good discussion on the material from the book. Also, the video clip is tremendous. Police officers should not be hurting the victims they should be helping them because it is there job to protect and to serve. Sometimes the power of police officers can be taken to the far extreme for unnecessary purposes. When people have problems the only department that is available is the Police, if officers tend to have a negative image then citizens are going to be afraid to ask for help. Overall great discussion and video clip, keep up the good work.
Thanks for the comment! It is sad that citizens are afraid to call the police because of incidents such as this one. One of the reprocussions is that when citizens feel they cannot turn to the police they may feel they are left with no other option but to deal with certain situations themselves, and by doing so can result in citizens taking the law into their own hands.
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