Dear Mr.President or Ms.President,

As a minority in the United States, I am most likely to be shot by the police than a white person. Therefore, I would like to take a few moments to bring up these very important issues for the people of the United States.

When it comes to racism I would like to bring up a few numbers. The Washington Post has been released a few articles about the killings of unarmed people For example, in the article “Study finds police fatally shoot unarmed black men at disproportionate rates, “ author Wesley Lowery states, “In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found ” (Washington Post). This shows that unarmed people of color who could have mental illnesses are more likely to be shot for no reason at all, Is this really what we want for our country? To have normal and innocent civilians die in the hands of the law. A civilized person would look at the numbers and notice that this is not right at all.

In addition, we need to speak about mental illnesses. Some examples of mental illnesses would be depression, panic disorder, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. A lot of people who have been shot by the police have had mental illnesses. We need to consider mental illnesses as important as physical illnesses. We push and outcast people away just because of their mental illnesses. We think of them as broken and corrupted. I know this from experience. I know that many are not considered ill because of their mental illnesses. A very first step to create a change would be to consider mental illnesses as important as physical illnesses.

To try and fix these problems, we need to train the police officers to speak to the person. We need to communicate with the person in order to find out what is happening. There are many other ways to fix the problem other than shooting. A way to fix the situation with mental illnesses would be to consider them important.

I would like to thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jessica Hernandez