Change is Coming: Racial Injustices in our Police Forces

You are probably aware of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in the city of Minneapolis. Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill and was brutally murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin with three other officers standing by. Derek Chauvin elected himself to be the officer, judge, jury, and executioner all within a short 9 minutes. I remember stumbling across the video of Floyd’s murder and sitting there in utter shock. I asked myself: How could someone responsible for keeping the people protected commit such an immoral and disgusting act? In a country that heavily prides itself on our ideals of freedom and justice, this should be terrifying. This has caused a massive uproar of non-peaceful and peaceful protests, begging for a change that could bring us closer to racial equality. The Black Lives Matter movement, which has grown resurged due to the event, has allowed me to better educate myself about the racial disparities and discrimination within society, specifically in my community. As a result of protests, my eyes have been opened to the old and ongoing racial prejudices that are rooted in our police force and all around us in everyday life.

The police in America have always favored white people over people of color. What started out as a watchman group in colonial America grew into what became our first police force, also known as slave patrol, when an increasing number of enslaved people were brought to the US. The slave patrol was set up to hunt enslaved people who had run away or rebelled from their masters. They were set up to protect white wealth and prosperity rather than the well being and safety of all people. African Americans were still heavily policed despite the passing of the 13th Amendment, through Jim Crow and “black codes”, laws that restricted the freedom of African Americans and kept them as cheap labor to prominent white plantation owners. These laws, passed following the Civil War were kept in place for a number of decades. In 1971, the Nixon administration announced the War on Drugs, which has continued to the present day, which heavily impacted the African American community. Police were given the right to raid black homes and harm black families, all on the suspicion of drugs that were not present. These events in Modern American history have contributed to how our police force operates on systemic racism. Police brutality was a threat and continues to be a threat to black lives all across the country. Mapping Police Violence states that African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a white person. This highlights the clear racial disparity in those being shot by the cops, and we must make a change to ensure 13% of the population is not making up the majority of police killings.

Many people argue that the majority of cops are not bad and ask how we could possibly conduct daily life without the police force. The problem with this is that these officers work for an extremely corrupt system; which is supposed to make all civilians feel safe in their communities but has become the biggest fear for people of color. “Defund the Police” is a term used by advocates and politicians who want to reform our police force or reinvest in varying community programs. Today, the U.S. collectively spends $100 billion a year on policing, and that is excluding outside resources and federal grants. To put that into perspective, New York spends $6 billion dollars on police which is more than they spend on the Department of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development, and Youth and Community development combined. A 2015 report from the University of Pennsylvania Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education found that 13 Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia) were responsible for 55% of the 1.2 million suspensions involving black students nationwide. If we were to reinvest police funding into education and school programs, we could help youth develop before a negative route in life takes hold. We would not have a reason for predominantly black neighborhoods to be over-policed, which results in higher rates of police misconduct if these people were taken care of through economic development, community programs, and increases in public school funding. For example, Ontario, Canada has a program called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), they work to prevent crime through the space in which they live. They have found that the cleaner and more open space an area is, the much more difficult it is to commit a crime. To make sure that minority communities are protected, we must invest in them, to ensure every person of color, particularly African-Americans and Hispanics, in the United States have equal opportunity to succeed in society.

The issues we face with police are caused by many things. First could be the lack of training and education that goes into becoming a police officer. An individual must be physically capable, have a GED, and be in training for 13-19 weeks to enforce the law but to practice law; you must go to school for a minimum of 7 years. Second is the lack of accountability. There is a need for independent accountability, meaning someone needs to hold an officer responsible for abusing their power. Some suggest having a state board to license police officers similar to the way there is a state board for nurses and hairdressers. The state board should be capable of revoking an officer’s license after ruling that they have done something wrong or that they have been found abusing their power. It would also be very beneficial to prevent cops with histories of misconduct to have a national database, which is a provision of the Democratic-passed House bill Justice in Policing Act of 2020. The bill also requires the Department of Justice to investigate departments with histories of misconduct, which will ensure we keep untrained cops off the streets, as well as one’s who have abused their duty. We are starting to scratch the surface of the systemic issues in our police department, but we still have a very long way to go to reach true equality among all people.

As Americans, we need to realize that while the police are working for members of the majority, they are not working for people of color; mainly African-Americans. The only way to stop the epidemic of police brutality is by reinvesting that money into the well being of our people. We must protect the civil rights and liberties of our American people, making sure that no one is treated unequally; every individual in our country should be able to live freely.

Edited by: Austen Wyche and Khushi Patel

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