Police Brutality – Systemic Misuse of Authority and Abuse of Police Powers

Police brutality is the systematic misuse of authority and abuse of police powers through the unwarranted infliction of bodily or psychological pain to civilians by law enforcers during their official duties. The routine enforcement of law using excessive force against unarmed civilians and the correctional misuse of facilities to manipulate, inflict, injure or subject a civilian to torture amounts to police brutality. Militarily prisons and federal penal correctional facilities through the personnel operating the facilities can practice police brutality through extreme subjection of pain and torturous acts with attempts to solicit information or evidence form an inmate.

The police brutality falls into two facets namely physical and emotional torture. In physical torture, it primarily involves excessive force through inflicting bodily harm and subjecting the victim into environments and circumstances that aims at inflicting discomfort and causing bodily pain.

In psychological torture, the process involves denial of basic needs, abuse, and subjection to processes that are emotionally destabilizing. Through physical damage results in mental suffering and systematically alters the comfort of the victim1. During the periods of the slave trade, the great force and physical execution of the slaves heralded the eternal evil of police brutality. The continuous attempts to champion a police brutality-free society is proving hard since it is a tradition rooted in humiliation, subjugation, and belittling of other races and religions perceived as ‘social misfits’ or ‘lessor’ persons in the society.

Notably, the transition of the slave society into enlightenment and glamor for equality, freedom and democratic rights to vote in the 19th and 20th century ushered in another systemic and tragic emergence of systemized and legally enforced police brutality against the civilians. The police acted under expressed orders in most cases during the civil rights movement era, and these resulted in thousands of unarmed civilians falling to the brutal torture of the police. During the civil rights movement, the police brutality was a routine practice as a way of suppressing the demonstrators. Despite the massive campaign against the constant torture and execution of the innocent civilians, the system of brutality increased and became more comprehensively evil.

Worthy to underscore is that police brutality was and is never meant for the weak and the local civilians but rather anyone going against the government/system during the movement era. Majority of the leaders of the movement were continuous victims of the brutality and fell under the impact of the pain, and some ended up assassinated in the process. Perhaps the period of civil rights movement is the defining moment of police brutality in the United States and the foundational mistake that instituted the use of force and profiling as the basis of silencing the descending voices.

Police brutality is famously known as ‘savage cruelty’ against the innocent civilians continually receives condemnation across the country, and much legislation and governmental departments established to combat the vice. Despite the efforts and the myriads of police to protect the civilians, the rogue officers act under orders or their own volition still engages in the act of brutalizing and terrorizing their victims. Rogue police officers perpetrate the act of brutality under the color of law and when cornered by the same law maneuvered the system and cover-up their criminal activities.

Research Question

Black Lives Matter campaign is the rebirth of civil rights movement in America. The state of political, economic and social injustices the black society feel subjected has crossed the red light in the conscience of the black community. The state of police brutality deeply rooted in the United States of America bakes the question: what are the triggering factors of police brutality, what are the legislative frameworks that seek to protect the civilians from this savage cruelty and what is the statistical evidence of the situation in the country within the last four years?

Methodology/hypothetical approach to answering the research

To successfully answer the research question, application of qualitative and quantitative assessment of the situation is necessary. The application of the two methods of research analysis is to create a more evidence and data to increase the support for my argument. The strength of this double approach is that, the models will systematically exhaust all the evidences that are quantifiable and at the same time show the decree of the situation in the country. The only downside of the dual-approach to research question analysis is the inability exhaustively consolidate all the pieces of evidence and harmonize the cases to create the needed.

Research on police brutality is an exciting yet convicting discourse since it seeks to descriptively lay bare the state of the long-hidden effects of racism and create a harmonized views and ideas that as a country we can act upon to entirely eradicate the vice.

Expected Answer to Research Question Based On Previous Researches

After a critical appraisal of the previously similar researches surrounding police brutality, the answers converge to one point: there is little or no goodwill among the ruling class, the judicial system and the police force to wholly combat the vice. The state and level of negligence especially by the political class gives the other arms of governance the room to relax and overlook the excesses of police brutality. Additionally, the answers seems to continually point an accusing finger to other dominant races in the country for failing to stand-in for the minority races and demand justices for the victims.

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