Two Police Officers Are Arraigned on Charges of Raping Drunken Woman.

When you hear the words police brutality what do you think of? I think of an officer using excessive force to detain an individual. Throughout the above blog posts I have discussed different stories that talk about the use of excessive force. This particular story about two officers who are charged with raping drunken women is out of the ordinary. You don’t hear much about this type of thing happening.

The officers, Kenneth Moreno, 41, and Franklin L. Mata, 27, were arraigned Tuesday on charges of rape, burglary and official misconduct in connection with the woman’s accusation that she was assaulted in her East Village apartment in December by officers who had helped her home while she was intoxicated. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/nyregion/29cops.html
People need to be able to trust the police. When incidents like this happen it can cause people not to trust law enforcement. If we cannot trust law enforcement when we are in vulnerable states then who can we trust? These officers have been stripped of the badges, guns, and have been suspended. Likely they will not be in law enforcement ever again.

As we know this type of activity is not as common as it seems. These are just two officers that made poor decisions, but that doesn’t mean that all officers who take advantage of situations like this in the future. I myself wanted to become a CHP officer, I cannot imagine acting out and brutalizing the public for no reason. I would sure hope that anything that is going to happen in the future will be justified.

Police brutality is occurring all over the world not just the United States.

According to BBC news a police sergeant is seen in a video during a G20 protest in London hitting a women has been suspended. In the video it shows the officer hitting the women across the face and the leg. They are worried that the officers in London have been hiding their badge numbers to avoid being identified by the public. Just the day before there was a mad Ian Tomlinson who was pushed down and later that day died. That is also under investigation. The day after his death this happened to the women, they now know that Ian Tomlinson was not an isolated incident. They now realize that there is a systematic problem here with the officers hiding their badge numbers and attacking the public during protests. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7999277.stm

This story proves that police brutality is happening all over the world. We only hear of the cases in the United States. It’s an old practice for a officer to hide their badge number from citizens, that was going on in the United States during segregation and Civil Rights. To hear that it is still happening this day in age and in other countries shows that people are still using the same practices and they know that what they are doing is wrong so they are trying to cover it up.

This incident sheds light on what can happen in other countries involving the police and the public. In London just like the United States put their officers off duty for further investigation to find out what happened and why they reacted the way they did. The police have a small fuse when it comes to situations that they can’t handle, that is when they blow up and do things they know they shouldn’t to these protestors. For it to be two days in a row when there was an incident of excessive for in London they need to take care of that issue.

How often does it really happen? What types of complaints to citizens have?

From what we view in the media about police brutality some may feel that it happens often. In reality it is not as common as we think it is. It is difficult to find statistics’ on how often it actually happens. I found a website policeabuse.com and it is where victims of police misconduct can file reports in order have them investigated. On this website there is a link to the statistics of how many complaints there have been during certain quarters of the year. Here is gives a good idea how many complaints are being put in, in a period of time. All in all severe police brutality happens I’d say less than 1% of the time.

The type of brutalism that we often here of is if there is a shooting or if someone is tased illegally. Police brutality is not always just physical it can be verbal as well. There are a variety of things that citizens can file complaints about for example if an officer made an insulting or sexual remark to a citizen, conducting an illegal search, using racial slurs, hitting a citizen with a baton, falsely arresting a citizen, striking a citizen with fist or feet, and even misuse of a police dog. I am sure that citizens make all sorts of complaints other than these. All of these are types of police brutality against citizens. Citizens can file complaints on just about anything that they feel is necessary to get their point accross about the activity of a police officer.

Consequences of police discretion.

Police officers have a lot of discretion when it comes to who to pull over, and who to cite. It is a great thing that they have this discretion because if they didn’t and had to go by the book and give everyone they pulled over a ticket, no one would get a break. It’s up to the officer to give a warning or to cite the person.

On the night of March 18th 2009 a Dallas police officer pulled over a car that ran a red light. It was Ryan Moats who plays for Houston Texans as a running back. He and his wife were in a hurry on their way to the hospital where Moats mother in law was dying. When he was pulled over he tried to explain the situation that was going on in the hospital, but the officer had no compassion and threatened that if he did not cooperate then he could be taken to jail for running a red light. The officer went even as far as to pull his gun out at the beginning of the stop. By the time the officer wrote the ticket 13 min had passed and his mother in law had already passed away. This is a type of situation where the officer should have made a different decision based on the circumstances. http://www.newser.com/article/d9764ag85/dallas-police-officer-on-leave-for-delaying-nfl-player-as-he-tried-to-visit-dying-relative.html

The department was apologetic to the incident. The officer had even come on the news to say his apologies about how he handled the situation. He admitted that he was scared for his job. Later he resigned. It is not clear that if he was forced to resign because it was better than being fired. Losing a job is a reality to police who show signs of making poor decisions out in the field. When an incident occurs we hear that the officer is placed on administrative leave until further investigation. If the officer is a fault the department will tell them that they should resign or they will be fired. This all depends on the situation whether it be an officer that shoots a suspect who is detained already to the incident explained above.

Police Brutality and Racism

Many of the stories that are portrayed by the media of police brutality are of minorities. It leads people to think that the police brutality happens often and only to minorities. We all know the story of Rodney King and when the officers were acquitted for their acts that caused the big LA riots. Another case a 22 year old unarmed immigrant from Guinea, Armadou Diallo was shot 41 times by New York police officers. The only thing he had on him was his wallet which the police thought was a weapon. Two of the four officers emptied their weapons on him which was not necessary. The police role is to protect the people and do it in a manner that is fair to everyone.

According to an article from Socialism Today, “Police brutality is an everyday occurrence in cities especially where large communities of colour are concerned. Black, Latino and Asian youth are harassed, assaulted and killed on a daily basis.” In New York the immigrants and young teens are an easy target to assume that they are involved in illegal activity and it gives the chance to the officers who feel that they can terrorize anyone that they want to without anything happening to them. This is not to say that In New York all the officers are into using excessive force, but it is more likely for them to target the minorities according to the article. http://www.socialismtoday.org/38/nypd38.html.

What is shown on the television leads me to believe that when brutality happens it is against mostly minorities. There are those other cases when it is a homeless person or a young teenager. The most infamous stories of police brutality are of minorities. In order to try and get away from the racism some say that more minority officer’s need to be hired. To have a more diverse police department can show that no one is being left out and they are trying to make a stronger department. This is just a little taste of how the public views police brutality and the type of people that are targeted.

The police are being watched.

It is rare to see police brutality on a 15 year old girl, but it happened. The video is shocking because of how much force the officer used. It was obviously excessive force. It should not take that much to detain a 15 year old. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7917295.stm. This is the type of brutality the media shows when they get their hands on it, and the public views the officer that did this as a monster. It is good that he is being charged with a crime in this instance, it may help another officer avoid an event like this to happen to them.

The police should know that anything they do will be seen, police cars have their video cameras and almost everyone has a cell phone and they are able to record anything they want at anytime. It should deter the officers to use excessive force, but it does not. What will deter an officer from committing a crime on the job? We can only hope that officers that see another officer charged with a crime for his/her actions will deter them from doing the same thing. The fact that the police are in the public’s eyes and on the media’s radar should also help to deter this kind of violence.

Is police subculture to blame?

All careers, no matter what they are, have a type of culture that the employees are a part of or learn to be apart of. It is no different for the police. People who become police officers are made different by the culture of the job. The police culture is a way of understanding or thinking about things. In the police culture, every officer deals with the different situations the way they know how. To the public they are being insensitive but it is just how the officer handles it. The police culture is learned through socialization, this is a process where they gather the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes of policing.

When the police are out on patrol they protect one another. In an article written by Christopher Cooper, Entrenched Subculture Is at Root of Police Brutality and Bias Cases, he explains that the police are taught that if a citizen runs from them they are to be beat severely. If a citizen was to hurt them they are to hurt that citizen even more before they bring them to the station. They are also taught if a citizen kills a cop the citizen shouldn't make it back to the station alive.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/072100-105.htm. A lot of times we see this in the media, there have been a few times in the last couple years when the police were on man hunts for citizens who have shot and killed officers. No matter what agency they were from all of the police agency’s get together to search for the killer. This shows that they are there to protect each other.

Knowing this kind of information and understanding it helps to see what the officers are thinking. It doesn’t justify their actions when they beat a citizen who is already detained. The police are there to protect each other and from this article they will do just about anything to do so.