Megan Jordan
Smith
English 3 Honors
2 December 2014
Police Brutality: The Real Cause
Every year new officers are commissioned and put out on the streets to protect and care for the citizens of the United States of America. They are trained in many tactics to deploy when making an arrest or restraining subjects. However, many of these tactics are not practice and lead to misuse by officers. These tactics involve many of the tools included on a standard police belt although these tools are often not used in the appropriate way. Police tactics and training are in dire need to be revised in order to avoid fatal shots and unnecessary deaths. Some of these brutal scenes that show how the training of police departments is needing to be revised, are the cases of Michael Brown in Missouri and Rodney King in Los Angeles.
The most recent death by an officer is the murder of Michael Brown, a resident of
Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was shot in the back three to eight times by Officer Darren Wilson after Wilson had abused Brown and almost hit Brown with the police car he was driving at the time. This brutal killing of Brown begins when Officer Wilson rolls down his window and says to Brown and another man, Johnson, “Get the f*** out of the street.” The boys then respond that they will be both get out of the middle of the street in a few minutes, as they were just a few blocks from their destination and Wilson pulls off only to put the car in reverse and crash into

Brown. As witness Johnson states, Officer Wilson attempted to open the driver’s door, hitting the two men. As he is unsuccessful, Wilson closes the door, rolls the window down, Wilson begins to pull Brown into the car physically assaulting him, all while saying “I am going to shoot you. Brown somehow manages to escape the injuring grip that Wilson had on him and began to run down the street while his friend, Johnson, hid in an alley­way, viewing the whole incident.
Johnson stated that Brown was shot a few times in the back, after which he kneeled on the ground, putting his hands up behind his head, but the officer just kept shooting until Brown’s head hit the pavement lifelessly.
Officer Wilson had many opportunities to change the outcome for deceased Brown.
Wilson could have used another tool on his belt such as a baton, mace or a taser. However,
Officer Darren Wilson did not even touch those items before turning to deadly force. Wilson also did not use any proper holds, or language to say the least, towards the two men and Brown ended up bleeding out on the asphalt. This whole incident could have been entirely avoided if police tactics were treated with more respect and enforced within the department with heavier charges if there is any unreasonable arrest, death or even traffic stop.