Police Brutality in the U.S.

Today some people see "Police brutality" as being a very serious violation of civil rights. Others see the extent of "Police Brutality" as being exaggerated. Police Brutality is classified by the use of excessive force, illegal search or seizure, suppressed free speech or participation in other violating acts against civil rights by police officers. According to Police Brutality, "Most citizens agree that police must have the authority to use force, but most citizens do not want police to use physical force in all situations" (2). The police officers are relatively different from the military. The military is trained to destroy an enemy while the police are trained to maintain order in society and protect and serve their citizens. The use of force is necessary, but to a certain extent. The police should not see the citizens as their enemies, even though some people can be aggressive and violent sometimes ("Police Brutality" 2).

The establishment of the first police organization in the U.S happened during the 19th century. Big cities such as New York were having large increases in criminality so the government decided to establish a police force. From the very beginning, the use of force was a necessary factor to maintain order and to capture and imprison criminals ("Police Brutality" 2). Throughout the years, as the power and quantity of the police force has grown, the cases of police brutality have increased as well. A huge problem is the documentation of these cases. Brutality in general is difficult to document. "When brutal police behavior does occur, it is rarely in front of witnesses. As a rule, only the accused and the accuser are present" ("Police Brutality" 2). Police departments and other federal agencies do not organize their documents based on brutality cases, making it hard doing research on police brutality and coming up with actual statistics and concrete information.

During the Civil Rights era of the 1950's and 60's, there were a high number of police brutality cases during marches by Civil Rights activists. The violent collisions between the police and the marching people were evident due to the recordings by the media ("Violations of Civil Rights", 1).

The "Human Rights Watch" is an international organization dealing with all kinds of brutality cases. They state that "Police Brutality" is a serious issue in the U.S and want to increase investigations by local, federal and international authorities to prevent police officers from committing violations against citizens, regardless the situation.(Human Rights Watch 19) Because the police have a dangerous job and are exposed to high-risk situations on a daily basis, they are inclined to make mistakes. "Because police officers can make mistakes, or allow personal bias or emotion to enter into policing-and because they are allowed, as a last resort, to use potentially lethal force to subdue individuals they apprehend-police must be subject to intense scrutiny" (Human Rights Watch 26).

On the other hand, Arch Puddington, vice president for research at Freedom House, an organization that values democracy and opposes dictatorship, opposes the "Human Rights Watch's" viewpoints. He states that even though there are no statistical data on police brutality, it is gradually disappearing and the situation improving. He also argues that charges of brutality based on race are unjust and should not be given as much focus as they gets today. According to Puddington, the fact that the majority of all police officers in big citied belong to minority groups contradicts with that allegation (Puddington 32).

There are always two sides of an issue and it is clearly apparent in dealing with police brutality as well. Some say more focus should be put on police brutality and some think it is exaggerated and needs to be toned down. However, by knowing all this information about the issue, we can come to the conclusion that a problem does exist and that it needs to be tackled for the benefit of our society.