Violence
Towards Police
Having
several police officers in the family, it is sad to see the how attitudes of
law enforcement officials have become negative, overall. The mistakes of few
have impacted the overall outlook on law enforcement negatively and have had an
effect on the capabilities of officers to do their jobs. Officer Randolph
Holder of the New York Police Department was one of four killed in the line of
duty in the city in the past 11 months. Nationwide, thirty police officers have
been killed in the line of duty so far this year. Police officers around the
country have been ridiculed and extorted for several instances of police
violence in the United States, so much in fact that multiple civil movement
groups have been created. The most prominent movement is Black Lives Matter,
which began in the
wake of the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting death of
African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Are police in the United States under siege?
Demonstrators
who marched to the gates of the Minnesota State Fair last weekend marched
holding a banner reading “Black Lives Matter” and chanting, “Pigs in a blanket!
Fry ‘em like bacon!” Another example is Deputy Darren H. Goforth, who was gunned down last week
near Houston, a slaying that Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson
contends signals open warfare on law enforcement.
How
did police officers go from being honored public servants to villains? The
mistakes, where present, have led to a movement that has sparked action across
the nation in multitudes. If I were in the position of police officers across
the country during this time of distrust, I would feel as they do now, as if
they are under siege in wake of a string of deadly attacks on police. Now, the
increase in attacks on police officers can also be linked to the increase in national
rhetoric on the issue. Because of the amount of response that police violence
brought about, it It's become part of a heated political debate over police
and community relations with critics of the
Obama administration’s responses and their anti-police rhetoric.
From my
point of view, the combination of increased anti-police rhetoric in
response to various acts of police
violence and the creation and movements of the Black Lives Matter movement has
created a mistrust of law enforcement in the United States. I believe these
factors have severely influenced the targeting of police officers for attacks.
In order to resolve this conflict a number of things must occur. The qualifier
of “Black Lives Matter” must be dropped in order to resolve inequality while
also lowering the amount of anti-police rhetoric released to the public.
Millions of people watch the president speak every time he appears on
television. When the subject of his appearance becomes the belittling and
disgracing of police as a whole, it becomes an influencer on how people see,
react to, and feel about law enforcement.
The
issue of police violence against the African-American community has had a
long-standing history. From what I have seen, it seems as if the increasing
amount of instances of police violence, and therefore the reaction to it, stems
from an increasing amount of video footage, as more and more people are in
possession of cell-phones capable of video recording. Concluding, due to the
fact that anti-police rhetoric is regularly being released and the movements
that have brought to light many instances of police violence, police officers
must slowly re-establish trust within the communities they serve. Chandler Olah
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