Can someone help me give my essay a unique tone so it doesn’t seem as consistent and bland?
Major concerns about the proper place of law enforcement in local communities have been raised in the wake of high-profile officer-involved shootings of unarmed minorities. These incidents make up a small portion of the approximately 1,000 officer-involved killings that take place in the US each year. There is mounting evidence that police brutality may have detrimental effects on academic performance, school attendance, and crime reporting in the neighborhoods where it occurs. These effects may extend well beyond the individuals who commit the crimes and their immediate families.
Compared to white men, black men have a nearly 2.5-times higher risk of dying at the hands of law officers. The sixth biggest cause of death for young Black men is police brutality, which puts them at particularly high danger (behind accidents, suicides, other homicides, heart disease and cancer). Lethal gunshots, however, make up a very small percentage of total use of force instances. In 2015, for example, almost a million people encountered nonfatal threats or the use of force when interacting with the police.
In almost all instances, police officers who killed people were not charged. Law enforcement agents have a lot of leeway under judicial precedent to use force against citizens, and departmental policies for addressing and reporting these occurrences are sometimes far from complete. One event out of more than 600 I studied in one large urban county led to police being charged with a crime. Between 2005 and 2011, researchers nationwide discovered 31 instances in which police personnel were detained on suspicion of murder or nonnegligent manslaughter. This represents 0.5 percent of all officer-involved deaths during that time.
The effects of police brutality may not only affect the immediate victims but even adjacent high school students. According to estimates, high school graduates and college enrollees from the same community who live closer to a police shooting are 2.5% and 2% less likely, respectively, to graduate from high school and enroll in college, respectively. I examined comprehensive data for more than 600 officer-involved shootings and more than 700,000 public high school students in a sizable, urban county to assess these effects. I am able to evaluate how accomplishment changes after a killing for students who lived close to the incident relative to students in the same neighborhood who lived a little farther away since the data contains home addresses and tracks student performance through time. I’ve discovered that kids who live within half a mile of a murder are more likely to skip class the next day and suffer severe GPA drops that linger for several semesters. It’s possible that the fact that more than 80% of incidents were unreported in local newspapers contributed to the very localized effect. According to estimates, nearby pupils are twice as likely to feel insecure in their neighborhood and are 15% more likely to be diagnosed with emotional disturbance, a chronic learning deficit linked to PTSD and depression.
My analysis’s findings indicate that police brutality affects minority communities in ways that go beyond just the individuals who are directly impacted. I calculate that, on average, three students of color dropped out of high school as a result of each police killing in the sample. This probably underestimates the overall educational effects of aggressive police because lethal shootings only make up a small portion of the greater panorama of use of force occurrences. These findings have significant ramifications for educational equity on the basis of race. According to recent studies, the outcomes of the lives of black and white children who grew up in the same neighborhood and socioeconomic class are highly different. The findings presented here imply that a key factor in explaining this phenomena may be the negative effects of law enforcement on minority schooling.
Training for police officers must go beyond defensive maneuvers and the use of weapons. Instead, it ought to stress ways for identifying and defusing potentially violent situations as well as communication skills. Some academies do instruct cops in de-escalation techniques, but not always and not frequently enough once the officer has been sworn in. The instruction of officers on how to prevent interactions from escalating in the first place is a crucial component of this training. It will be easier for them to fight crime and establish a safer environment for them to patrol if recruits are taught how to build relationships with the community. Regular training is also necessary for seasoned police. In most departments, officers are required to periodically reevaluate their gun competency and take proficiency exams. Police departments do not, however, push officers to continually learn new techniques for identifying non-violent situations and defusing potentially violent ones. Training programs will need to address the widely held belief among police officers that no outsider has any credibility and understands their daily struggles. If police departments select officers who have empathy and de-escalation abilities and use such officers to serve as peer trainers, training will be effective. Police agencies must have the authority to demote, suspend, transfer, and, in some cases, dismiss officers who are no longer serving their communities. Charges for overuse of force by the police as well as for officers who observe the incident without intervening should be included in state and federal criminal codes. For example, Minnesota’s statute mandating that other officers step in if a fellow officer is using excessive force was never approved. It will take tenacity on the part of both political parties to ensure that the authority of police unions does not dictate departments’ policy. Currently, even when they are accused of the most heinous and well-documented acts of violence, police officers are motivated to defend their professions. This is because of the cost. The golden handcuffs refers to the fact that the majority of police officers are allowed to retire at a young age and with sizable pensions. If the early retirement model undermines efforts to improve police departments, it might need to be reevaluated. These changes ought to focus on rewarding outstanding officers as well as punishing bad ones. Rewards and incentives for cops who successfully defuse violent altercations must also be included in the list of consequences. Like any other reform initiative, good officers should be supported in their career advancement, chosen to serve as instructors, and given special recognition by their departments.
Police reforms have frequently been designed by those who have not encountered the same difficulties as officers on the street. For this reason, reformers are frequently regarded as outsiders. Police agencies that were determined to have committed systemic violations have been placed under receivership, effectively putting them on probation and subject to the Department of Justice’s inspection. According to police officials in departments that are in receivership, they are waiting till these authorities are gone. The inference is that after the receivers depart and the surveillance of their department ceases, police departments will resume operations as usual. Receivership, however, is not a long-term fix for the issue. Reforms are impossible without specific law that permits funding to be withheld from police departments for noncompliance.