Staff Writer, DL Mullan
Community Interest / Police
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In an article on BenSwann.com, Innocent Man Sues After Cops Beat Him & Pepper-spray The Wounds, it appears that this growing trend of brutality in the peace officer ranks may be linked to the militarization of police departments around the country.
How else do you explain this negative behavior?
Here are some Law Enforcement Misconduct Statistics:
These statistics are for a five month period in 2009, but we have seen more brutality cases in the news than numbers from four years ago.
Let's make a quick list:
Cop Breaks 84 Year Old’s Neck For Touching Him
Cop Breaks 84 Year Old’s Neck For Touching Him
and the list goes on...
As well as articles about police shooting people's dogs are on the rise, which is despicable.
What is happening? Are too many war veterans coming home without proper mental healthcare and being unleashed on an unsuspecting public? Or are police more concerned about filling private prisons and their quota of corporate revenue? Or perhaps it is the shiny new tanks given to police departments by the government?
You tell me.
In another, Police Brutality Statistics article on CopBlock shows a nineteen month period as well as some good responses from the public like this one:
According to the FBI website, there were about 13,000 murder victims in 2009 (2010 data not available yet it seems). There are about 250,000,000 people in the US. Assuming there was one murderer per victim, the murder rate of all Americans is 0.0052 percent.
Now compare that to police. The chart above indicates 13% were fatality-type misconduct. That comes out to be about 330 misconduct-fatalities. There are 415,000 officers. That’s almost a 0.08% murder rate compared with 0.0052 of the general population (including police officers). That would indicate police are 16 times more likely to murder.
Or, of you add the police killings (330 people) to the 13,000 murders, police account for 2.4 percent of the murders, whereas they account only for 0.2 percent of the population.
So the question remains: are police officers here to serve and protect or cause the crimes they are supposed to stop?
But there are more crimes to report on:
Not Using Turn Signal Results in Strip Search
Wareham, MA Police Officer and Police Sargent Run Law-Abiding Citizen Out of Town
Illegal Stop by Lakewood Sheriff’s Deputy, Civil Rights Denied
Nocona, Texas Police Abuse and Arrest Bellevue Man Attending Basketball Game
Toms River, NJ Police Extremely Unproffessional, Unnecessarily Strike Groin
Allegations of Police Brutality in Troy, NY
Texas Cop Accused of Handcuffing and Raping Teen at Traffic Stop
Attorney Stephen Stubbs Arrested for Refusing to Leave His Client’s Side
What was this article's complaint about militarizing the local police: U.S. Police Agencies Receive 165 MRAP Vehicles Cost-Free in 2012.
If you are a police officer and are quite upset with these facts, then return to your captain and lieutenants and begin to clean up this corruption from within.
If any officer is afraid of public filming of their duties, then that officer needs training in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. No officer on the streets should be doing anything against the law. Officers are supposed to be the epitome of good citizenry.
Any of type of police behavior that is contrary to our laws, values, and morals should be punished and the conducted eliminated from service.
Source: see links above.
aw Enforcement Misconduct Statistics
Law Enforcement Misconduct Statistics
