Dear Future President,

I know you are probably preoccupied right now but I would really appreciate if you took the time to address a huge issue taking place rn in the U.S. which is police brutality. Me being a mixed girl I constantly worry about the men in my family. I fear that anything they do wrong they will be aggressively punished for. Every one of my uncles are black males, each one with their own set of children. Each one with a mother. Imagine if one day we got a call saying that one of them was dead. What about the children? What about the mothers? It would send devastation throughout the whole family and probably for something that wasn’t even a big deal which is the reason I worry. In the article “Black Mothers Matter" on the website Daily Beast the author writes about mothers of the victims and how they spoke out at conventions and were letting people know how they feel about the people they trust taking away the most important thing to them which also lead to protest which soon lead to the #BlueLivesMatter statement which completely distracts us from the main issue. According to http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ in 2015 alone police killed at least 346 black people and only 3% of those involved police being charged. Fewer than ⅓ of black people involved this year were allegedly armed or suspected of a violent crime. Police brutality is not okay nor is it acceptable. Black people have been the “lower race” for a while and I don’t believe that anything is being done to fix it. We are currently a part of modern day slavery and we all deserve to be free.

One way to fix this is to convict the officers performing these crimes. If you eliminate the source then there’s less of a chance for another issue. When hiring police officers pay a lot of attention and take extra precautions. Be careful who you hire because you never know. I don’t know how to put that in use as far as tests or anything but keep it in mind. I’ve heard the issue of there not being enough evidence to convict anyone but if you make all officers wear body cams and voice recorders then you’ll know exactly what’s going on at all times. If an officer covers their body cam or voice recorder they should be prosecuted because that means that there is probably an act of injustice in place. Police officers are in this country to make us feel safe but no one can feel safe when every week we see a new person getting killed for no apparent reason. And no matter how much we fight about it there’s still another innocent life that has been removed from this earth. A lot of police these days are abusing their power and they feel like since they are the authorities they are also above the law and that is not true. That’s what they need to understand. I appreciate you taking time to read my letter and I hope that there is actually something that can be done in regards to this issue. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Caalyn