Police brutality is a serious issue that is being discussed by many New Yorkers. Common forms of police brutality were repeated kicks or punches by officers using fists, guns and police radios, sometimes while the person was already handcuffed or restrained in another way. Mostly racial minorities are brutally beaten by the police officers. How and what causes police brutality? Who’s fault is it? Since police has the authority, are they all right? Who protects the victims? How do citizens feel about police brutality? That can be answered, there is public opinion.
Public opinion is “the collected attitudes of citizens concerning a given issue or question.” There are many types of collecting public opinion. One form of public opinion is “opinion polling, which involves interviewing a sample of citizens to estimate public opinion as a whole.” In a democracy government public opinion is very important. Democracy which means “a system of government in which, in theory, the people rile, either directly or indirectly.” Since most people believe in a democratic society it is important to have public opinion.
Police brutality and public and public opinion has been reviewed. How are they connected? Recently, there have been many cases of police brutality. One recent case was Abner Louima. He was a 30 year old Haitian immigrant who worked night security. He was beaten and sexually assaulted by New York City police. While the police was beating Louima, they said, “This is Guiliani time, not Dinkins time.” This is a total racial slur. Police officers are supposed to protect the citizens, that is why they have the authority over many people. In this case, police officers are using authorities that are given to them to harm citizens. One Haitian-American said, “If I am alone, I will never call the police. We loose faith. They take advantage of us because we are Haitian. We came here to get away from the torture, and they do this to us.” This is the kind of feedback many people are getting and feeling about police brutality. Who can we trust?
Many citizens feel that Guiliani is not much of a help on this issue. Since he has been in office, police brutality has gone up and crime has gone down. What is good? Police brutality being higher or crime being lower? One quote by a person said, “Guiliani represents the rich. The mayoral election is just a few months away and he wants to convince the people that he doesn’t support this kind of police brutality. What a pretender he is. He needs to get elected, but we don’t need him. He claims that he reduced crime, but he doesn’t include the crimes the police conduct against the people.” This person feels that Guiliani is not doing much to help the New Yorkers, but instead is protecting the police officers. The mayor and the police officers are supposed to be protecting the citizens so why is all this happening? We should be glad that crime has gone down but we are very unhappy with the fact that police brutality has gone up. Citizens feel that Guiliani is defending the police. If all evidence is there that police has beaten innocent victims why should Guiliani protect the police officers? If Guiliani was a police officer, would he do the same? Or is a racist like the police officers who assaulted Abner Louima?
Most citizens feel that Guiliani is not protecting us. From this public opinion, many citizens have questions that have not been answered. What can be done to help and stop this police brutality in New York City. Will people feel better if crime has gone up and police brutality has gone down? Is it hard for police officers to keep their guns and police weapons aside when dealing with innocent victims or criminals? Hopefully, we can have less police brutality and less crime in New York City.
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