Police Brutality

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There is not enough being done about police brutality in today's world. Police officers aren't being punished enough for their mistakes and therefore aren't trying to better themselves as much. According to a Washington Post analysis, at least 385 people were killed by police nationwide during the first five months of 2015, which is more than twice the amount of police shootings counted by the government in the last ten years. Clearly, that number is extremely underreported. Of the 385 deaths that had happened in the year at the time the the article was written, only three had resulted in the officer being charged and only 54 of the thousands that have happened in the last decade have resulted in charges to officers. Currently, reporting a…show more content…
According to the Washington Post, about half of the victims are white. But that isn't taking into account the number of unarmed victims, two-thirds of which were black or hispanic. The number of hispanics affected by it is very underlooked by the media. The Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice discovered that the number of Latino victims of police brutality cases was 30% above average last year. Killings of Hispanics happen a lot more often than people realize, but they don't tend to “generate widespread outrage among the public” according to http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/09/opinions/reyes-police-brutality-latinos/index.html. No one knows why police shootings of Latinos don't draw more media attention, but it is likely that it is because people mostly think of racial issues between blacks and whites, which isn't always the…show more content…
One major minority in today's world are people with mental disorders. There are many people that have died as a result of police encounters that had mental disorders. 92 of the 385 victims killed earlier this year were identified as mentally ill. Police need to better examine the situation before making harsh judgements and potentially ending the life of someone that has done nothing wrong. In about half of the police shootings earlier this year, police were responding to a domestic disturbance call, such as a threatening partner or a child threatening to kill themselves. According to the Washington Post, half of the shootings took place because someone was suicidal or behaving erratically. The most common offences that police were responding to were traffic infractions and routine duties, such as serving warrants. Most of these cases could have probably been prevented if they were handled differently when the officer got to the

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