Dear Future President,

There seems to be a huge problem that occurs all over the United States. People are being judged by race, arrested for no reason, and in some cases people been shot and killed. All of this is being done by police. The very same police who swore an oath to protect us and keep people safe. This is police brutality.

Police brutality can happen to almost anyone, but in many cases it seems a specific race is targeted. Although there are people of all races who look “dangerous” or “bad” that also get targeted, black people are the main people to fall victim to police brutality. For instance, police killed 102 unarmed black people in 2015; that's twice each week someone of black descent being killed, yet African Americans only make up about 12% of the American population. Police are killing many unarmed people, and most without having to face charges. According to mappingpoliceviolence.org, “only 10 of 102 of the cases in 2015 where an unarmed black person was killed by police resulted in an officer being charged with a crime.” This shows that black lives don't hold the same weight as white lives, in the eyes of the police and courts. This has continued to happen again and again throughout history. If we don’t stop this now, going into a new term of presidency, it will not only endanger our lives but our children too.

Of course we’ve noticed this issue and tried to resolve it. After the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed black man who was killed by an officer, an effort to aid the situation was made. The Baltimore Police Department spent 11.6 million to equip their officers with body cameras. This way they won’t be able to lie about these situations. The body camera basically makes police be mindful about the amount of force they use against unarmed citizens. But even with the body cameras, there are still problems. For example, a Chicago police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man after fleeing from a stolen car. The problem was that during the shooting, the officer’s body camera was not operating, so those pivotal moments went unrecorded. Which means that body cameras aren’t enough. So I say that the only way to fix this is to either upgrade the cameras, or give the police offices better, much needed training.

So what do we do about this situation? We should give police officers better body cameras and give police officers better training. We should be extremely concerned about this problem and give the officers better training to keep them from acting irrational about their situations.

Sincerely,

Jean and Michael

Anderson, Jessica. "$11.6 Million Baltimore Police Body Camera Program Launches May 1." Baltimoresun.com. N.p., 10 Mar. 2016. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.

"Chicago Tribune." : Chicago Breaking News, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Weather and Traffic -. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.

"Police Killed More than 100 Unarmed Black People in 2015." Mapping Police Violence. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.