Occurrence of Police Brutality in America

A general and overall answer towards the first sub question, are there psychological effects that are projected because of police brutality? Is yes. From analysing 4 different sources and 4 annotations I can understand that there are indeed psychological effects that can be conducted from police brutality. Not in every case are the psychological effects towards the victims of police brutality but to their peers, friends, family and loved ones. There are many different reports and cases of Americans feeling stressed, anxious, scared, disgusted and many more, towards the police department themselves but also social to those who aren’t the same race as them or if they know people who are involved with the police department, not also adults but children whose parents are police officers. Often African Americans are discriminated and therefore they are the general population that is being disgraced, however people who aren’t African American can be treated unjustly by African Americans who have an opinion on police brutality and racial abuse.

A lot of the sources I found were unreliable and were written by those who don’t have credibility or authority. When researching and selecting recourses I had to try and make sure they were written by credible authors. Not all the sources were credible and majority of them were objective or bias, however I found one source that I found to be the most credible and provided the right information for me to analyse. The source I choose was the BTN: The link between police shootings and mental health, this source has a credible author and the study was also conducted with currency and correlates with the time period of the whole research project question. I found this recourse on a news agency website and majority of the time not all news agency articles are reliable, however in this article I found a study that was done on another website by a credible author by the name of Dr. Atheendar Venkataraman in his study he researched how police officers kill over 300 black Americans a year in which a quarter of them have been unarmed and not committed a crime. He discussed how police officers abuse their authority and this leads to killing of innocent black Americans because of the opinion they have developed for them. He also discussed how there is a spillover effect for those who aren’t directly involved and the psychological effects it has on them, whether it is the opinion or viewpoint they create for police officers or the scarcity and discomfort they portray when being involved with anything to do with police officers.

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Overall from researching my first sub question I have learnt that police brutality is a common problem and there are psychological affects that not only effect those involved but others around them, I also found it can affect those socially and change their perception and views on certain ethnicities and certain groups of people, not because of personal experience but also because of hearing events and stories about people they know or in the community.

Sub question 2 is a very touchy and precise question to answer, sub question 2 looks at the factors that may encourage police officers to commit police violence because of variables such as ethnicity, age, race and personal appearance. The question what are some ways we can prevent and re-shape contributing factors police brutality and or shootings? Doesn’t have an exact answer, however there are many ways we can analyse this and begin to brainstorm solutions to these problems. When having a good look at the question it is very broad and not every factor may be a contributor in each case, in some cases are the factors or variables that effect any police shootings/ violence. In Donuts video he tends to ask the community their opinion on the shootings and the opinion of a community can have a big effect on consequences and or solutions to many problems. While having a community opinion their voice isn’t always heard and in which is why police officers can get threats and or behavioural issues when trying to deal with while doing their job.

Race and communities therefore can be targeted because of the disrespect and issues that they create for police officers who are trying to do their job. While not all communities are attacking the police, it can anger and change the emotions towards certain communities when police officers encounter them. This is where the targeting and racial abuse can take part in policing, because of a certain groups actions towards a police officer any person with the same ethnicity as that group can be targeted even if they haven’t participated in any of the commotion. This can be a general however broad answer towards why racial targeting/ abuse is looked into and possible a reality, therefore from my personal opinion I can say that depending on the police officer and type of people they are dealing with the outcome can be positive or negative, depending on their mood and the behaviour the victim has with them is also a factor, many factors need to be taken into account which is why it is hard to conduct and answer.

Overall from researching my second sub question I have learnt that there are many factors that need to be considered when analysing a police brutality situation, however there is proof and examples of racial targeting in police violence however this can be changed by many factors on the day and type of situation. This means it needs to be known to both sides the ways to prevent situations such as these from happening again with the right training and teaching/ preaching.

My sub-question 3 is a great sub question to research, I found that this sub-question was a relief from reading sources upon sources of bad events and bias reports against police officers and the horrible psychological effects people go through and how their children carry that. This sub-question however focuses on making a step in the right direction to really put an end to police brutality, this is being done by riots and people standing up for their rights, children being informed by their parents how to approach the situation and the appropriate things to do, police officers interacting and socialising with young children to show they aren’t all bad and schools having guest police officers and giving the children a good way to create an opinion on police officers. This sub question overall was a good break while also being insightful and show that there is hope and that police brutality is a problem being solved however one step at a time.

This source also talks about psychological effects on kids and as seen in the YouTube videos the emotion that the kids have when talking to their parents sharing experiences that they have faced in their life, it is understood that this is actually a bigger problem than I would’ve ever realised. This sub question is a good way to really make a positive impact on the future of police brutality but furthermore racism and social targeting. The more that is being done will mean the more that will be done to prevent police brutality and give police officers a better reputation than they already have and the behaviours they must deal with because of it.

Overall the main thing that I got from sub-question 3 was being able to open up my opinion and look at the situations from many more sides and viewpoints than a police officer killed an innocent ‘black’ person. This sub question has created more emotion for me when analysing the information as I not only have to think about how I would feel being the police officer or the victim but also the children and how they will cope with the situation, who is going to tell them, how are they going to react and what needs to be done to prevent any psychological harm which will affect them and their behaviour in the future.