Police Brutality in the United States Against Minorities

My topic is on whether police officers use more excessive force on minorities than whites. I choose this topic because I feel like it has been a relevant discussion in the past, now, and for years to come. It has been very controversial in a sense that each police brutality case has a different background, and it is difficult to decide who is justified, the officer or the suspect? It may be the easy choice to choose the suspect as the innocent one because they are the ones who were brutally beaten, however sometimes that doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe the suspect has commited a serious crime, and being a police officer is a very unpredictable job. You never know what type of people you are dealing with, so depending on the case, sometimes the officer can be justified. I believe this topic can be important to anybody, but specifically, it can be more important to people who are socially aware with what is going on in the world, and activists. I also believe several minorities will find this topic important too because many of them believe that they may be automaticallly “targeted” as suspects by police due to racial profiling, stereotypes, and/or personal beliefs. The impact of police brutality is profound. Many can argue that it has done significant damage to our country in several different ways. It has increased racial tension, created fear in many cities, and it has had more of a frequent occurence in recent years. With that being said, I have developed several questions that I would like to research over the course of the semester. First off, I would like to go deeper on what would be classified as “excessive force,” and what crime, if any, the suspect has done to receive this. Also, this would help decide whether the police officer was actually justified or not. Another key factor is if the police officer racial profiles others or not. Some ways this can be answered is by researching the background of the police officer. Usually if they are from an extremely diverse city like San Francisco, they are less likely to judge others by race or color. If the police officer does racial profile, do they use their racial profiling beliefs to use more brute force against minorities because of racial stereotypes? How much training does a typical officer receive? Do they go by a specific scenario or protocol of when they use a firearm or taser gun? If so, what is it? Hopefully with these questions, and more, I will be able to collect sufficient information to do well with my research and my topic.