Introduction

In the United States, various cases of police brutality have been observed that ruins the whole system of the Police department in the country. It has been permitted by the law to use appropriate force that is needed at each level of police operations. The operations like maintaining order, keeping the peace or arresting, all such kinds of operation requires adequate forces. The number of soldiers that could be used for various purposes could be justified or questioned. However the use of large number of soldiers for unimportant matter makes the police officer violating the law.

Discussion

The police brutality, as defined by the James Fyfe and Jerome Skolnick, is a deliberate or conscious action of a police officer for undertaking suspects that usually involves the group of socially powerless people. It has been observed that the cases of police brutality usually go unnoticed. Thus, for keeping the record of the police brutality cases, an interview of about 12,000 random citizens was carried out taking into account the individuals from various metropolitan areas of the United States. It has been found out that 13 percent of the citizens interviewed had remained the victims of the police brutality cases in the previous year.

However out of these 13 percent individuals, 30 percent of the individuals that acknowledged the case of police brutality had filed a formal complaint against it. Usually, the cases of police brutality has been directed against those individuals that belong to the socially powerless or minority groups. The police officers that are engaged in such cases of brutality rationalize their behavior by claiming that punishing such group of individuals engaged in threatening or disrupting the peaceful decorum of the society are meant to be punished. The occurrence of brutality due to the racism in the police departments cannot be underestimated. The attire, gesture and activities of the individuals belong to various group of minorities or socially powerless, are automatically taken as potential threat for the society that makes the police department taking action against them. The behavior of policemen that are working in various regions of the United States is translated into discriminatory or racially biased one due to the misunderstanding of their perception towards the citizens of minority groups.

Factors Contributing to Brutality

Although there are various factors that contributes to various cases of police brutality, however one of the main factors that largely contributes to such police brutality is the ill expectation of the policemen from minority or socially powerless individuals. The policeman usually thinks that such individuals would definitely defer to the authority of the policemen. When such behavior of the individuals is challenged by these minority and socially powerless individuals, policemen take such behavior as crime “contempt of cop” and thereby force such individuals for eliciting compliance. Moreover, the situational variables that is, the use of force by the suspects against the policemen is considered to be a good predictor of the usage of force by the policemen. Other than the ill expectation of the policemen from minority ...