October 21, 2016

Dear Next President,

I thought that police were suppose to protect and serve , so why are they brutally hurting people because of their race? Many people are being brutally beaten by police officers because of their race or just because the officer wants to. Police officers are abusing their power and no one is stopping them. They are suppose to protect us but instead they are the ones killing, beating, and hurting us.

Nicki Lisa Cole the author of Five Facts About Police Killings and Race, explains that “Nearly a quarter of the people being killed are black, a third is white, 11% are hispanics/ latinos, 1.45% is Pacific Islanders and Asians.” The percentage of blacks who were killed by police in overall far surpasses the percentage of blacks in a general population. 24% of blacks were killed in general and there’s only 13% of blacks in a general population. Meanwhile white people compose about 78% of our nation’s population. Blacks are most likely to be killed by police, but Whites, Hispanics/ Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans are less likely to be killed. Most of the people killed by the police were unarmed. 44% of the people killed by the police had no weapons on them. 27% of the people were “allegedly” armed, but there was no documentation in the police report that supported the claim that there was a weapon. 27% of of the people possessed a weapon or a toy weapon that was mistaken for a real weapon. Only 13% had been identified as an active or suspected shooter before their death. No weapons were present in 40% of the cases where someone was killed by the police.

This is important to me because people are being killed by police officers and no one is stopping them. The reason there aren’t many black men around is because they are being killed by police or thrown in jail. Most people that are being killed are killed by police.

There aren’t any real solutions to this problem. People could just keep protesting until the police decide to stop. The police should just stop killing people because they are different. I want the president to stop police brutality. I want there to be less people being hurt and beaten by the police and more people being saved by the police. I want the police to protect the people not hurt or kill them. I want police brutality to end.

Sincerely,

Tayann Saunders

Sources

http://sociology.about.com/od/Current-Events-in-Sociological-Context/fl/Five-Facts-About-Police-Killings-and-Race.htm