Police Brutality
As children we look up to police officers, but as adults, we fear them...
The first thing I remember wanting to be in life is a police officer. I was too young to watch the news and keep up with real world events like I do now, so I only had what I saw on cartoons to believe in. All my cartoons and TV shows depicted police officers as these real life super heroes who fought to serve and protect. Therefore In my mind I glorified police officers and I had a deep desire to become one. Unfortunately, what my childhood self thought of police officers was far from reality.
As I got older and less naive, I slowly started to realize the tragic truth. Yes, the police do serve and protect, but only for the right people. In fact, if you're the wrong people, police have be known to do the exact opposite of serve and protect. From May 2013 to April 2015, 464 blacks (the wrong people) were killed by police as opposed to 782 whites (the right people). I know those numbers sound like white people are more mistreated, but consider the fact that black people only make up 12.3 % of the US population, compared to whites making up 63.7% of the US population. These numbers show that blacks are a target for law enforcement, and I believe this is a serious problem for America.