Police Injustice

Police Injustice

The social issue that i want to talk about is Police Injustice. This social issue is important to me because many police officers are guilty to assaulting innocent people and easily get away with it. Policemen are not above the law, justice must be served to them and people should be aware of this issue.

Action

I plan to approach people and inform them about the past events of police brutality. This will cause awareness and knowledge towards the problem as well as show how unjust the police force is legally.

Research

There has been many cases that has shown characteristics of police brutality. One of the cases that stuck out to me most is the case of Walter William Deleon. Walter is a 48 year-old man and a father of two children. He was casually going out for a power walk in the middle of the day as he usually does as an everyday routine. Walter was walking down Los Feliz boulevard with a gray towel in his hand and a water bottle in the other. From a distance police officers in their patrol car spot him and assume that Walter is holding a gun. The two officers tell Walter to put down the gun, although Walter is confused as he is not armed with any weapon. Walter then walks towards the officer when the officers then shoot him in the head as self defense. As Walter is on the ground the two officers handcuff him and search him as they do not find a gun, but instead a gray towel.

The officer's mindset of shooting this innocent man is, "should I let him shoot me and then I shoot back in self defense or should I shoot him first?" The police commission unanimously determined officer Cairo Palacios was justified for shooting Walter because he truly assumed the 48 year old was truly holding a gun under his towel. Now Walter has gone through 10 surgeries and has lost one quarter of his skull, one eye, most of his vision and hearing, and even his ability to walk. The Deleon family are severely hurt and are trying to sue because they know that Walter was an innocent man and did not deserve this.

Officer Cairo Palacios is still employed in the workforce til this day. Is this fair or right that nothing happened to Palacios? If this was an ordinary man who shot Walter, wouldn't he be in jail? What makes Palacios any different? Police officers are not above the law, justice must be served to police officers as well. Not only justice but the legal system and the application of force must be changed. Officers shouldn't be allowed to ruin lives or even families and simply get away with it because they are a cop. I plan to show awareness of this unjust system that America calls justice.

Walter Deleon source:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-police-commission-lapd-shooting-20160419-story.html

• More than a third of people shot by LAPD in 2015 were mentally ill.
• Over 21% of people shot by LAPD in 2015 were African Americans when African Americans only make up 9% of the Los Angles population.
• LAPD kills at least 1 person every week since the year 2000

Source:

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/30/lapd-s30.html

Personal

This social issue affects me in many ways. Every time I see a cop I feel more fear than I feel safe. Officers can basically do what ever they want because they have more power than a normal person does. Officers are aware of this and they abuse it. Ways they abuse their power can involve acts like running red lights or even shooting someone in argument of self defense. I decided to choose this issue because I wanted to make sure that people were aware of this issue. I wanted people to really open their eyes and question an officer's use of force and aggression. 

Gathering Evidence

This is Alonzo, he is a homeless African American man in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. I thought approaching him was a good idea because he seemed very friendly and because he is homeless then maybe he might have experienced many things with officers. Alonzo was a very interesting person indeed. 

"Policemen are not always friendly. I've been searched and patted down many many times and I don't ever have anything. They think just because I'm homeless that I also do drugs or sell them. I'm just trying to survive. Officers harass me even if I'm just sitting eating a sandwich that I bought with my own money." 

This is Alexis who I met in Little Tokyo in downtown in the same day I met Alonzo. He seemed very friendly, as we talked he told me about how loves skateboarding but at times police officers harass him because of the negative stereotypes against skateboarders. 

"Sometimes officers just stare at me or come up to me and ask me things like what am I doing here, and ask me if I do graffiti or tag. At some cities you cant even skate on the sidewalks which I find is really dumb. But yeah usually when I see a cop they are rarely ever friendly towards me or my friends and usually just trying to kick us out of places and stuff."

This is Fernando, I met him at a park in Downey CA. He was very nice to let me put his picture on my blog. He didn't have any words to give but he said that overall he believes that officers should remember that their number 1 goal is protect the community. I completely agree with him, I feel that officers forget this as they harass homeless men or any citizen in general.