Geoffrey P. Albert of the University of South Carolina, Griffith University focuses his essay, “Toward a National Database of Officer-Involved Shootings”, on the lack of a trustworthy database to keep track of such events like officer involved shootings. In regards to police involved shootings, an initial problem continues to be the fact that reporting these cases is optional for a department. With that being said, it is often that departments fail to formally report these shootings. Which then provides for inaccuracy when trying to determine an average number of shootings. His work is much needed in the police department society especially because they are in desperate need of an accurate and consistent way to record the data the erupts behind
Buehler, J. W. (2017). Racial/ethnic disparities in the use of lethal force by US police, 2010-2014. American Journal of Public Health, 107 (2), 295-297. In Buehler’s article, he attempts to disprove a study that found no racial disparities in killings that law enforcement were responsible for.
Content analysis of news articles, video’s, surveys, and interviews with the Chief of Police in Sherwood, North Little Rock, and Sheriff of Pulaski County is the methodology used in this research. I have read many articles online so far about police shootings on African Americans. My frame of study for my research is going to be the past 10 years. All of the articles that are used for my research analysis that the local police departments are racist and the shootings of African American males are race related. There will be roughly 200 articles that will be used for this study.
After conducting my research, I will analyze the officer involved shooting incident that occurred in Nashville a little over forty days ago between Officer Joshua Lippert and Jocques Clemmons (Cardenas, Alund, & Sawyer, 2017). On February 10, 2017 at approximately thirteen hundred hours Officer Joshua Lippert was involved in a shooting that took the life of Jocques Clemmons (Cardenas, Alund, & Sawyer, 2017). Initially we will examine the facts of the incident provided to the media followed by the public’s response. The initial circumstances released to the public regarding the incident were Officer Lippert initiated a traffic stop on Clemmons’ vehicle for failing to observe a posted stop sign (Cardenas, Alund, & Sawyer, 2017).
As a reporter, Lowery has been involved in the recent shootings of 2014. “After Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, several reporters and researchers at the Post decided to spend a year tracking every on-duty police shooting in the country” (Lowery 110). I believe the alarming frequency is what lead Lowery and his colleagues to track on-duty police shootings. How many people are killed by police officers and how many of them are unarmed black men?
This is not a racial issue, this is a social problem. By July of 2015, the number of police- related deaths extended to 664 making the country’s police force one of the deadliest in the USA. Out of the total of 644 deaths, 321 were Caucasian fatalities, 174 were African Americans, and 96 were Hispanics. According to the reports, 578 of these deaths were involved guns, others involved car
After the police brutality attacks that have become quite popular and common within the United States, the affirmative action, requiring all police to wear body cameras, see that this procedure will alleviate and hopefully eliminate all counts of police brutality. These body cameras will be instituted to protect both parties since “the arguments in favor of police body-cams are simple. The videos would offer an accurate and unbiased record of exactly what occurred in each officer’s shift,” (Klabin, 2015). In order to protect our citizens, police officers have been entrusted with the immense responsibility of having the authority to use force within certain circumstances. But we are not being protected.
The death toll among these police brutality victims is extremely alarming. Every year police in the United States kill hundreds of people—461 in 2013, according to incomplete FBI statistics based on self-reporting from local law enforcement agencies, and more than 1,000 in 2014 according to Champion, which combs through media reports. The fatal shooting in August of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in an interaction that began over jaywalking propelled the issue of police violence and excessive force into the national news cycle. The police response to subsequent protests similarly propelled the issue of militarized police into the national news cycle (Champion,
Police Brutality In today's society, it is not uncommon for police officer misconduct, including brutality, to gain everyone's attention. When one officer shoots and kills a suspect, that officer is investigated in order to ensure there was no intentions to harm anyone but to try and keep the peace. Intentional harm to citizens is considered police brutality and can escalate into something more serious such as riots and protests. The kind of misconduct that some police take when arresting a suspect cannot be taken lightly to prevent any sort of riots or protests such as those after Rodney King as 50 people were killed and hundreds more were injured (Katel).
Police got a call of a possible fight breaking out on the platform of the Fruitvale Station by a crowded train coming from San Francisco. As police started to arrive to the scene two officers had already reprimanded him with his arms behind his back. He was motionless and then one of the officers by the name of Johannes Mehserle who was a 26-year-old white male pulled his pistol from his waist and shot Grant in the lung, which lead to his death later that night (Kirk, Papachristos, Desmond: 864, Additional Cases). The researchers chose this case and the case of Sean Bell because they wanted to see if non-local shootings affected the crime reporting in Milwaukee as well. What was interesting is that in the case of Sean Bell the amount of calls went down like the other three cases.
New open carry law will not make Texas college campuses safer Texas government recently passed a new law, Senate Bill 11, which would allow college campus faculty and students to carry a concealed handgun to license holders. Subsequently, this new law will increase the rates of gun related shootings and suicides (Watkins, Matthew, 2015). School shootings are being publicized more due to social media, but they are still very atypical in the United States. Suicide rates will also increase as young adults have more access to firearms. (Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, 2013).
Thorough studies examine that the distribution of less-lethal weapons have reduced issues such as assaults on specifically police officers, other studies examine that this is increasing the death and injuries of civilians rather than focusing primarily on the safety of officers employed for the police force. It is a growing problem in the United States with increasing health issues related to the cause of police use of force in incidents that occur regularly. It is important to consider whether these less-lethal weapons are associated with the like hood of injuries. The use of force can define a wide range of different variables of force; it is vital to assess the independent contribution of less-lethal weapons on the prevalence and incidence of injury to the suspects and officers involved. Less- lethal weapons have increased the odds of injury to suspects that may be life threatening, it is most likely essential for these officers to stick to less-lethal weapons which can be classified as OC sprays or CEDs.
Proponents of the militarization of police argue that such tactics can provide important benefits in high-risk situations. One key advantage is the enhanced tactical capabilities that militarized police units possess, which can allow them to effectively address situations with significant potential risk to officers or the public. Examples include superior weaponry in comparison to any criminal element they face, personal armor and safety equipment, as well as enhanced vehicles to transport more officers or secure thoroughfares. Unfortunately, these situations have become more common in recent years, with a drastic rise in mass shootings and terrorist attacks (). These kinds of attacks are precisely why proponents of militarizing the police insist on its importance.
An occurrence observed by the population of Los Angeles, California conveys the existence of racism and police brutality. According to The Polls-Trends: Racial Differences in Attitudes Toward the Police, “…three quarters of blacks, but only 38 percent of whites, continued to view police brutality as a common occurrence” (Tuch and Weitzer
As a result, there is a drastic increase of violent outburst between both sides. For the last years, it was reported that 51.5 percent of black were killed by police officers (ibtimes.com). On the other hand, there have been 51,548 assaults against law enforcement and it resulted in 14,453 injuries in 2015 alone (nleomf.org). In the United States, recently, police brutality has been a popular subject all over the news and social media.
Earlier work by Gelman et al. (2007) presented concern that the arrest outcome of “hit rate analysis” may be an issue. They stated that a perfect outcome of the analysis would be a measure of officer productivity which the officer aims to maximise, this objective is impartial to racially bias behaviour and cannot be influenced by police officer bias of black individuals. The arrest outcome may not be impartial to officer bias because arrests are subject to the police officers decision and thus could be subject to racial bias. This matter of interest could invalidate “hit rate analysis”.