As of recently, we have seen a spike in police brutality. Because of the Wall Street riots, police officers are obviously forced to be in more stress inducing situations when surrounded but such a large, unorganized, and emotional group. But, many of these stories go beyond being under pressure, and with some research I found that stories of extreme police brutality that have extended beyond normal events.
On March 7, 2006 Joseph Hamley, a mentally disabled man was shot to death by a state trooper while laying on the ground. The shot was given as a result of misidentification on the behalf of the trooper. The Hamely estate was given, from the state, a one million dollar legal statement.
On July 5, 2011 a schizophrenic homeless man named Kelly Thomas was on the streets when six officers from the Fullerton Police Department beat him to death with tasers and flashlights. Four of the officers were suspended and two were charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter
On April 18, 2008, Jaun Vasquez was running from the police. The officer yelled for him to stop or he would should him in the back. The officers then proceeded to throw his flashlight with such blunt force that it shattered on impact of hitting Vasquez. The officers began to beat him relentlessly while he was handcuffed and face down. Vasquez was then hospitalized with a lacerated liver, a ruptured spleen, and damage to both kidneys, and bruised or fractured ribs.
Obviously, this blog post is very biased in the sense that I focused only on examples of cases dealing with police brutality. This is in no way saying that Police Officers are corrupt and power hungry individuals, I think they do incredible things in protecting communities. What I am saying is that acts like these shouldn’t go ignored either. For some reason events such as these continue to go on. What do you think would be proper “punishment” for acts such as these? How should these situations be prevented? And also, how would you start, even at the beginning when hiring and giving the power to officers, weed out the good and the bad, if even possible to do so?
Part of the trouble with this can by seen in any physical conflict. What is the limit of "self-defense?" What can we classify as self-defense and when is a dispute taken too far and things become a bigger problem?
ReplyDeleteObviously, this isn't an component of the first two accounts with mentally ill men.
I think it's just crazy how many accounts there are NOW of police brutality with this Occupy __(insert town here)___ movement. I understand protesters can get unruly, stupid, and violent...but I thought we had moved past this whole "police beat protesters" business.
On a brighter note,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-economically-ravaged-vegas-occupy-movement-remains-peaceful-as-violence-spreads-elsewhere/2011/11/16/gIQAGHmHQN_story.html
Isn't it better when we all work together?
These are extreme cases, but unfortunately things like this do occur all over the place. These acts should never go ignored, and I think that the police officers that do these types of things are just extremely afraid of the people they attack, so they try and take advantage of the badge they wear. Their punishment should be a charge just like any other person would receive, if an officer goes overboard with power and seriously injures or kills someone, that's a problem.. they shouldn't be allowed to be an officer anymore. The sad thing is it's hard to know how to prevent these types of situations because you can't really tell who would take such extreme actions unless put into that situation.
ReplyDeleteLike Tiia said, these are very extreme cases. These Rodney King-esque situations are not common, but they point out that not everyone deserves to enforce the law. In some cases, brutality deserves termination of the officer, but in other cases, the whole story is not explained or examined. Many times, police officers attempt to be reasonable when dealing with someone, but lack of cooperation leads to events similar to the ones you listed. It is very difficult to find out from the beginning of an officer's career whether or not he/she would easily resort to violence, so unfortunately, I think things like this will always happen. The problem to me is that stories like these get much more publicity than stories of officers showing valor, bravery, and a care for the welfare of his/her community.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree with Tiia and Ravi about these being extreme cases, but any instance of police brutality is a problem. All accusations of police brutality should be fully investigated because if people can't trust the police then who can they trust to keep their communities safe and running as smoothly as possible.
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else said these are extreme cases, but in the case of the Occupy movement, there was a "town hall" meeting between mayors of major cities. This meeting was meant to decide the best ways to deal with the protesters. I'm sure that "be firm" was thrown around but surely not "attack them." The Occupy protesters may have been doing illegal things in some cases or not complying with police orders, but as we saw a few days ago in DC, police officers handled non-compliant protesters in a reasonable fashion. I have faith that these outbursts of police brutality are isolated incidents that are unfortunately spaced fairly close together.
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