The Growing Need for Justice
We all remember the incident of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, getting fatally shot by a white police officer named Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. The reason why the officer shot this young man still remains a mystery but from public witnesses the incident is a brutal act of discrimination. Thus, the racial tension in America continues to grow across the nation. Voices calling for proper punishment of Darren Wilson are on the rise and civil unrests have begun to occur as well. However, the response of the local police has worsened the situation. The protestors are doing things simply to seek justice but the law enforcement engaged with militarized weaponries such as heavy artillery, tanks, etc. have drove the protestors angry. As a result, the tension got to its peak leading the protest to get severe cause of fatal losses on both sides.
Considering how the excessively rough response of the police has led to an all-out clash, President Obama has been pushing for a renovation in the American policy. Recently, the Obama administration have moved to prohibit federal agencies from supplying local cops with military equipment such as grenade launchers, high-caliber weapons and bayonets in order to deal with the controversy over the ‘militarized’ police.
“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like there’s an occupying force as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” President Obama said. “It can alienate and intimidate local residents and send the wrong message.”
In December 2014, President Obama signed an Executive Order to create a Task Force on the 21st Century Policy to develop ways to strengthen the trust and relationships between local law enforcement and civilian communities. On May 18th, 2015, the Task Force submitted its final report with an outline for law enforcement and communities to utilize including methods of forming trust. One of the main points is to ban a list of military weapons from being supplied to the police. Also, other points such as making police embrace “a guardian- rather than a warrior” mindset, updating technology that allows for greater transparency of police data, expanding the use of police body cameras (for surveillance on both civilians and police) are included as well.
On Monday 18th of May, 2015, the President visited Camden, New Jersey, one of the most dangerous cities in America, in order to highlight crime reduction the city has experienced after the city’s constant efforts to fix the relationship between the locals and the police department. The resulting outcomes are such that violent crime is down 24%, murder is down 47%, open air drug markets have been cut by 65% and the response time for 911 calls plummeted from an hour to five minutes. This result made the administration believe that once such efforts are applied, they could bring great changes to the American society, and thus make Camden a model for all other cities to follow in the future.
“We are, without a doubt, sitting at a defining moment in American policing,” Ronald L. Davis, the director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, told reporters in a conference call to discuss the White House’s latest efforts. “We have a unique opportunity to redefine policing in our democracy, to ensure that public safety becomes more than the absence of crime, but it must also include a presence for justice.”
Sources:
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/
TheWaffles • Mar 28, 2017 at 10:59 pm
Interesting article. Just to clarify, I do believe we need an update to this article, even though right now, it’s very old. Just to help clarify some errors you made within your article. Although it was not clear when this article was published. It is clear now, with witness testimonies that Michael Brown, the unarmed African-American teenager who towered over the white police officer, charged the officer and attempted to obtain the officer’s firearm. It is true that the majority of the protestors did protest to seek justice, but as the media continued to push the narrative, more violence escalated, caused by not only the police officers but also the citizens. Protests aiming at social change should not further into arson and vandalism, and malicious intentions.
Secondly, it is true the American police are militarized but you wrongfully pushed the narrative of this subject. The first critical point you have wrongfully made is about “heavy artillery”. There is no evidence at all of police forces, even the SWAT teams in the US possessing heavy artillery, pieces or mobile vehicles. This error also extends to your use of the world “tanks”. Tanks are armoured vehicles used by the military armed with high-calibre explosive and usually armour-piercing ammunition. Both these types of vehicles are registered for only military use by all of the Western Nations and many other non-Western nations. It is easy for many people to mistake armoured vehicles used by the police forces as tanks due to civilian’s usually limited vocabulary on military styled vehicles. Police forces in the US had troop transports and APCs (that have been repurposed for civilian use) donated to them or bought from the military and have no military capacity that can deal fatal harm, besides roadkill.
Thirdly, it is true that some police forces have been equipped with grenade launchers but they have been limited to tear gas and smoke grenades ONLY. And as for bayonets, the police DO NOT use bayonets as it is a fatal weapon that cannot serve a proper civilian purpose. People see weapons and easily get scared because normally, only the military have those weapons, such examples are like the Uzi, MP7 and M4-A variants. All of these weapons are military grade weapons and are not accessible by any civilian body, which includes police forces, even SWAT teams if you have not guessed yet. Before military weapons are given to or produced for civilian bodies, there go through a civilianization process. The most notable civilian variant is call the AR-15 (AR stands for Armalite Rifles, manufacturing company, not Assault Rifle), which is a variant of the popular M4 rifles.
Furthermore, the majority of civilian weapons are only semi-automatic (for those who don’t know, this means that it fires one bullet for everytime you pull the trigger, trust me, the majority of people don’t know this simple basic fact) weapons, and the purchase of fully-automatic weapons are heavily scrutinized. As well as that, the USA has a high crime rate that contains projectile weapons (weapons that shoot things). And this civilianization of weapons doesn’t only stay with personal weapons but also vehicles. Previous APC vehicles are converted to use a watergun as a dispersal tool in riots.
It is true that the US needs extensive reforms to their policing force, but more than that, there needs to be large social reforms as well. The aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting, the riots, the protests, are undeniably horrid. People need to have discussions, call for discussions instead of burning down towns.
Make peace not war, and don’t shutdown someone because of your feelings. The universe doesn’t care.