Dear Next President,

My last name is Diallo. People usually think I’m related to Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black African American, who was shot 41 times by four white cops in the Bronx in 1999 (Raphael, John, 2/5/1999). One day I went to my internship and one coworker asked me, “Is Amadou Diallo a member of your family?” My answer was, I don't know Amadou Diallo. When I returned home I was eager to find out who this person was. I was shocked when I saw the news, and then I started asking myself, what if he was my brother? What would be her reaction? Does it matter if I’m related to him or not? The only real answer is that he died and he was killed by the cops, people that are supposed to protect us, and the next president of the U.S. should stand up and fight against police brutality.

I'm an African female and it hurts me to think once that every day there are innocent black African American being shot and the perpetrators get away with it. It’s unfair how the police treat African- American so badly. Because of this, so many people have a lack of trust toward police, and this brings hate and more crime in the country. For example, with the stop and frisks, most of the people that are being arrested are African American or Latino. During this program, there were 54.2 % of black that were stopped and they only take up 22.8% of the total population (Jones, n.d.). Stop and frisk was meant to be reducing crime but this brings more controversy and more conflict. Additionally, racial profiling is “leading to increased scrutiny of Muslims in the U.S. and across the world” and it “ targeted innocent minorities” (Jones, n.d.). This has resulted in a lack of trust toward the police, and has led to other shootings like the shooting of the 5 uniformed police officers. This happened three days after the police were involved in shooting during the Black Lives Matter protest. Another tragic event occurred in less than 2 days in Minnesota, where a police officer shot a school cook several times. Shooting each other is not the solution (7/11/2016). The police are spreading stereotypes. Some people believe that all cops are bad even if there are many good cops, and this is serious. I have brothers and I want to be assured that they have full rights just like other white people on the street. That they can go out and come back home safely.

Police brutality is a huge problem and it is destroying the country. In order to stop this, I respectfully urge you, the next president of the U.S., to help fix the problem by having more diversity in the police department and we also should have the cops interact more with the community they are serving. I believe this is a problem and all problem can be fixed. I hope you will do something to make the U.S. a safe place for all the people.

Sincerely,

Yiya Diallo

References

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/unarmed-amadou-diallo-shot-killed-police-1999-article-1.2095255

https://newsela.com/articles/overview-racial-profiling/id/21198/

https://newsela.com/articles/shootings-dallas-minnesota-louisiana/id/19344/

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-involved-1999-shooting-death-set-promoted-article-1.2467811