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COPS: RULE BREAKING

Lately in the news there have been article after article about an Americans

falsely killed by the people who are supposed to be protecting us from criminals.

It makes me wonder if i'm going to see someone who is close to me be the next

face on the ten o'clock news, maybe even myself. In most cases the police would

kill a fellow American and not even get punished for it. From 2005-2015 only

about 13 officers were arrested for murder/manslaughter(. This shows in a way

how the police force is corrupt. The Cops should be investigated by Sheriff's, not

protected, the police also seem to be against body cameras because they know

they will be reprimanded for doing something they shouldn’t be. The cops should

be held to higher standards not lower ones.

The police force is often being protected by Sheriffs, Sheriffs often won’t

release information about what happened the cop. In the case of the school resource

officer who beat picked up a girl and threw her across the floor, the FBI chief defended

the police saying that they don't feel right being confronted with an excessive amount of

cameras. This shows that cops are scared to be filmed by people because they know that

they will be punished for committing a crime and getting caught. Body Cams help this by

keeping the police under control realizing that they will most definitely get caught

because they are recording themselves. Cops are very anti body cams because they know

they will be reprimanded for doing sleazy things like hiding behind tree to catch people

speeding or driving recklessly. The fact that even the government doesn’t want to show
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what these cops are doing is appalling. Both the government and the police department

are hiding information that should be used to either convict a cop for misdeed or save the

cops from false accusation. The cops are being protected by both the government and the

department they work in. So even though the people finally got the government to start

investing in body cams, they won't even show the footage to the public. This is

information that needs to be known to the public if they want trust to be put back into the

police.

Cops enforce the law to protect the citizens, not to harass them with

unnecessary tickets that would only just make the tension between cops and

civilians higher. Since cops are the law enforcers they should know rights more

than the average civilian, they should be striving to protect that right not

forcefully avoiding those rights just to give another ticket. In most cases cop

training is only 6 months, which is way too little time to perfect all the rules and

regulations that you need as an officer of the law.

Cops are supposed to be an image of justice but as of late they come off as

self absorbed greedy abusers of power. They kill realizing they won’t be punished

for doing it as it is extremely rare for a cop to be indicted for murder. The cops

are like a spoiled child, if you don’t keep your eye on them they will get out of

control. People in support of police aggressiveness will often make claims stating

things such as “They are under a lot of stress” or “The Majority of the police isn’t

like that”, everyone knows there are good cops and bad cops, just the bad cops do

so much that it hides the good cops. Cops deserve to be held to a standard where

they get punished harder than a civilian, that should be a risk of joining the police
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force. These are ways that police force can be kept on their “tippy toes.” The

police training on average is only about 5 months in total, this is absurdly short to

memorize every law that is needed on a day to day schedule. The police academy

should release police a minimum of 8 months into training. The amount can end

up showing who lives and who dies in a situation. Methods should be used to

make sure the police know their rules and jurisdiction. In most cases the police

will get flustered in a high alert scenario, they may end shooting and even killing

people that didn’t deserve to die. The issue is that the police can say it was an

accident and get off free. It shows that these “private investigations” don't really

hold up much. Cops should be punished harder than a civilian, cops get trained to

follow and enforce laws, so they should be reprimanded worse for breaking those

laws. Like how sometimes the older kid gets punished because they know what is

right from wrong whilst the younger kid gets off with a warning. Why is the cop

the younger kid in this scenario, they are the ones who get paid an average 50k a

year. Civilians should still be punished for committing crimes but cops can’t just

be let off with a minor scolding. Again, they should held to higher standards than

a civilian, not a lower one.

On average around 1,100 cops are arrested for committing crimes each

year. About 3 each day. This is extraordinarily high for the people who enlisted to

protect us, yet if they included murder that number would increase exponentially

due to the amount of freedom that comes around taking a life as an officer of the

law. In most cases you will never see true justice for the family that look the loss

due to realizing they up against the police and police force, they know they cannot
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win and accept that they won't make much justice for the loved one. All of this

large distrust comes straight from the government hiding what the cops are doing

and in most cases they only release the stuff that incriminates either the person

that was affected or the family of said person. This has been going on for the

longest time but only now is the media not keeping their mouth shut. They are

finding the videos of cop’s beating or using extra force in unnecessary situations.

There was situation where a cop did not need to use any force whatsoever, then

proceeds to shoot the man’s foot while he still has it on the gas. This man

proceeds to drive right into a tree, he died three days later due to complications at

the hospital.

The graph here shows in what way that police are arrested for

committing crimes. It shows things like gender ratio and how police got

arrested each year. This would have tripled if we included things like the

average amount of abuse done by police when apprehending a criminal. It

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is a 60/40 ratio for police arrested off duty. That is a high number if you

think that all these officers went through, whether minor or not, some sort

of training. This shows that the police really need to keep an eye on

themselves.

This essay isn’t meant to hate on the police, it is more to evaluate

what the cops are doing and why they chose to do things that they do so

aggressively rather than think through with caution. People who defend

cops will use arguments like “they’re under pressure.” This argument

makes no sense since they should be trained to be under constant pressure,

and if they can’t do that they shouldn’t not choose this profession. The

pressure and intensity is something they need to be aware of when they

apply for this job. The police should be put in check by all authorities

above it. They shouldn’t be pardoned for mistreatments just because it was

labeled as an accident. Manslaughter is pardoned, so why is cop killing

pardoned. These are the things that shows how the police force is given a

minor punishment. The police force are often allowed to do whatever they

want when it comes to aggression, especially on a minority, if they go too

far they can just label it as an accident and they get off with a stern

“talking to” or something minor. The good cops have rules and regulations

they follow. They aren’t the horrible corrupted police who ask for

identification then proceed to shoot when the “suspect” pulls out a wallet

and get shot. The cop involved in that incident did not get charged, even

though he acted irrationally and immediately fired a gun at the Air Force
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Veteran. The police need to handle high pressure situations with much

more care than they do currently. This situation is similar to the one that

happened in South Carolina. The highway Patrol trooper shot an unarmed

black man when he reached into his car after being asked for license and

registration. This was one of the only situation where that same cop was

fired for doing what he did. All in all these show that the police need

better training and need to know that they shouldn't be scared that

someone is filming them, if they don’t do anything wrong, they shouldn’t

be worried. The police, sheriffs, and the government shouldn't be trying to

hide the cops wrongdoing. They should actively be trying to fix it. The

police force as a whole should realize their mistakes and help bring the

community and them together.

Citations

Sasburn, Josh. "Police Body Camera Footage: Why It's Not Always Released." Time.
Time, July-Aug. 2016. Web. 05 Apr. 2017.

Jackman, Tom. "Study Finds Police Officers Arrested 1,100 times per Year, or 3 per
Day, Nationwide." The Washington Post. WP Company, 22 June 2016. Web. 06 Apr.
2017.
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Ferner, Matt, and Nick Wing. "Here's How Many Cops Got Convicted Of Murder For
On-Duty Shootings." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 13 Jan. 2016.
Web. 06 Apr. 2017.

Hanna, Jason. "South Carolina Trooper Shot Unarmed Man, Police Say." CNN. Cable
News Network, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 06 Apr. 2017