Black And Blue Police Brutality - 2115 Words

Black and Blue: Police Brutality in America As far back as I can remember, I was told that the police had a responsibility to protect and to serve: to bring safety and justice to those who could not provide it for themselves. I was told that I could always trust a police officer when I was lost in a crowd without my parents, I was told that I could always count on a police officer to be a fair and un-prejudiced extension of the law, and when I was a child, I believed all of that to be true. Fast forward to the year 2014, when a young black man named Michael Brown is shot 6 times while attempting to raise his hands in surrender, and a man named Eric Garner is suffocated by a chokehold applied during an arrest by police officers, amongst a†¦show more content†¦While brutality is certainly a looming factor in police-minority relations, defenders of the police force often find myriad ways to justify the unnecessary violence perpetrated against minorities. Some may argue that, â €Å"police encounter some of the most terrible and critical situations in society, and (they) deal with them every single day,† as Joshua Bieber of the Broomfield Police Department states, â€Å"and it is our job to assess the situation and respond accordingly, often within a matter of seconds.† When asked about his opinion on the death of Michael Brown, Mr. Bieber merely responded, â€Å"If Michael Brown had listened to Officer Wilson in the first place, he’d still be alive today. Maybe in jail, but still alive.† What Mr. Bieber’s statement seems to indicate is that it is the obligation of every individual to simply obey the police, even when the police are unreasonable or even unethical in their approach. While I agree with Mr. Bieber’s assessment of the level of stress that police must invariably suffer every day on the job, I do not think that it is fair to expect citizens to simply obey every order given to them by police, lest they be shot as a repercussion. It is every man and woman’s right to be given fair trial in a court of law, however there are at least three instances this year alone of deaths at the hands of police officers during an arrest. However, not all citizens are expected to act in