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.