Dear Future President,

As you may know in the past couple of months police brutality has been rising through the roof, and it needs to stop. These officers have been causing thousands of deaths of black citizens. What does this tell us? That the officers today clearly need more training, discipline, and a sense of human equality.

Studies have shown that the death of a citizen by a police officer is more frequent than an officer being killed by another citizen. For example, a recent event took place in Atlanta, in which an officer that was off duty shot and killed a black male in the head, because he suspected the victim was breaking into and stealing cars. The victim was announced dead at the hospital and the police never did find evidence of car break-ins at the scene. Sadly the officer never got charges pressed against him but fortunately was fired. If this victim had been white, would that had happen, would he have died?

Statistics also show that black citizens are three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people, also 30% of black citizens killed by the police were unarmed, while only 19% of white citizens killed by the police were unarmed. How do we fix this? More severe training, I believe it should be much more difficult to become a police officer. So tell me, how come the police are able to assume that the person that they may potentially arrest or even shoot is armed and dangerous? They don’t unless they check them. But present day the police seem to think that the ‘dangerous’ person is armed and just shoot without gathering information about the scene. Yes, in some situations it is very clear is a person is armed and dangerous, and the police are trying to protect others and may have to shoot. But that isn’t always true, the person may seem dangerous as they might be on drugs or drunk or even mental. So the right thing to do would to try and get the situation under control then proceed to arrest and get that person help. If the police would inspect the person, and confirm if he/she is dangerous or not, then there would definitely be less homicides by the police.

As our next president, please help restore the trust that has been broken between the citizens and police. The countless deaths that have taken place unnecessarily by police officers that are racist and uncaring needs to stop. Our humanity depends on it.

A Concerned Citizen,

Taylor J.