Is This The Age Of Equality?


​My You and the World Project,  was Police Brutality finding what was the cause of this problem currently plaguing America to see my earlier post on the issue click the following links https://scienceleadership.org/blog/one_side_of_a_story and https://scienceleadership.org/blog/the_punishment_of_the_people . I found a lot of things during my research, what I found most interesting is in 2017, 457 White Americans, 223 African Americans, and 179 Hispanic Americans were victims of police brutality. I think what some people fail to realise is in the words of 44th President Barack Obama. Obama said. “And it is incumbent upon all of us as Americans, regardless of race, region, faith, that we recognize this is an American problem and not just a black problem or a brown problem or a native American problem, this is an American problem, when anybody in this country is not being treated under the law that’s a problem and it’s my job as president to help solve it.” Misconception creates biases and stereotypes that divide society instead of unifying it.

Image result for Police Brutality race statistics

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

For my You & The World Agent of change I chose to make a documentary interview like video(Which is not that good) to create a way to get the issue out there and to make our community aware of the situation. I gathered interviews from African American History teacher, Mr.Symonds and Science Leadership Academy Principal Mr. Leahman. From their heartfelt interviews, I saw the care for the people in the community and also the fear that the issue of Police Brutality could affect any of us. Something that stuck out to me while interviewing Mr.Symonds was when we all say good-bye to one another instead of saying “good-bye” or “see you later” we tend to say “stay safe” is this the America we really want to live in? This was the most eye opening part to me doing this interview because I never really paid attention to that. While reading the LA Progressive Newsletter  I found an article called 25 Ways to Stop Police Brutality and I found this ( List Below )

#1: Radically diversify America’s Police Departments


#2: Require American Police to have more training than cosmetologists


#3: Police must be routinely and randomly tested for steroids and other illegal drugs


#4: Bad Apples MUST Be Fired – they are toxic and dangerous


#5: Police must be required to earn 4 year degrees – it changes everything


#6: Policing for profit must become a banned practice. A profit motive must never undergird law enforcement.


#7: We must overhaul 911 – particularly for calls made about the mentally ill. It is the rotary phone of emergency services.


#8: Take women from 12% of police to 50% of police – they are more professional, less brutal, and just as effective


#9: Require cops to live in or near the areas they police. It’s too easy to mistreat strangers.


#10: Communities of color actually need less policing. Start by decriminalizing addiction and petty offenses.

#11: American Police must be regularly tested for racial bias


#12: American Police must be regularly tested and treated for PTSD


#13: Why we must take bad laws on policing all the way to the Supreme Court


#14: Good police officers must actually speak out on bad cops


#15: We must decriminalize mental illness


#16: We need to unleash the full power of body cameras


#17: Police departments must create and enforce reasonable new use of force standards

#19: Police must be banned from using violence based on their imagination of a threat

#20: Every city and state in America must ban racial profiling

#21: Police must be immediately filmed making a statement after each use of force incident

#22: Independent review boards must oversee investigations of police misconduct

#23: Police misconduct cases must be tried by special/independent prosecutors

#24: Police departments which fail to obey the Death in Custody Reporting Act should be cut off from all federal funding.

#25: We must focus our fight against police brutality on the local and state level


After reading this I was given hope, hope that if the justice system tries to effectively use these steps or at least one we can make a change for the betterment of society and societies future. When I first began this project I thought I could never make a change for my topic, but I later found that I was somewhat right and wrong, because it’s one thing to start a change, but if you build a movement off of your belief of change then you have made a change. I learned that I and everyone else around me have a hope or dream of change, but we can’t do it by ourselves we as a society and as a people must find that we are all important and that we all need a change and hopefully with the help of one another we can strive for a change. I feel I could’ve tried to make a better Agent of Change to really make a change, but we live and learn from the choices we make and I’ve learned from mine. Lastly I think if we all are implanted with the knowledge of Police Brutality and ways to avoid we could prevent the rise in numbers, but we must also find a way to inform our government of ways we can create a change for the betterment of us all. It has been an absolute privilege to be given the opportunity to study Police Brutality, but to also try to make a change I thank you all for reading and would like you all to walk away with the question, “Is this really the age of equality?” If you all do that then I was effective in making a change even if it may have been a small one.

 

Annotated Bilbiography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13wTzYcJCdMGtSsozTe1VAUYwjLW3z1r577zruis1Vrw/edit?usp=sharing

 

Link to Video: https://youtu.be/Yoap3LIGv3g


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