My name is Siani Romero and I am a junior at Olney Charter high school. I live in North Philadelphia. I am going to be talking about police brutality. Police brutality is important to me because I had a friend go through something with the police. Also these families don't deserve to be treated with disrespect by the police and they should get justice for their families killing. I will be talking about data and facts, my friends incident with the police, a former officer’s experience, and a hypothetical situation.

Let me tell you about my friend that had a problem with police brutality. My friend is a drug dealer so he runs into many different issues with people. One day these people that he sold drugs too ran into some problems with him. These people ran in his house and attacked him. The police were called and instead of helping like they’re supposed to they just made it worse. In all the commotion my friend got shot by the police, he was rushed to the hospital and was in critical condition. My friend did live but for the simple fact that he almost died just shows why police brutality needs to stop. This is one reason you as the next president should stop the police brutality.

My friend is not the only person experiencing these problems, in fact another reason why police brutality should stop is because the facts and data shows how many people police have killed. In the first 6 months of 2016 police have killed 532 people, 488 of those people were shot and killed. The data base shows Blacks and Hispanics are the highest killing rate. Also data shows that in February and March the police had the most killings throughout the year. Most of the killings were done by guns but there were some knife assaults and people that were unarmed. 124 of those killed were known to have a mental illness. As of 2015 there was a higher rating of police brutality. You as the next president should definitely decrease those numbers in police brutality.

Whether or not race plays a role in who is harmed by police, we can’t deny that police brutality disproportionately affects people of color. A former cop Reddit Hudson speaks on his experience of being a police officer. He joined St. Louis police department in 1994 he say’s “many peers were deeply racist”. His peers made a website where they talk about their experiences and it became an online racist rant. He says most of his peers saw Black men/teens as a target. There were incidents when cops did bad things to black people and he tried to report it but the manager just said to leave it alone.This clearly shows you need to start saving lives by doing something about police brutality.

The statistics surrounding the facts represent the real people that suffer because of police brutality. In your head police are suppose to be the good guys right ? Those are supposed to be the people we as a country can trust. If everyday you're watching the news hearing that police are killing people then you’re going to feel like they are untrustworthy. If this country can’t have a trustful police department then there will be big problems. Imagine one day you’re watching the news and all of a sudden you see your dad or brother on the news and they're talking about they got shot because they got into an argument with the police and now they might be in critical condition or even dead. You know the government isn't going to do anything to the police & your case might get thrown out the window. So you have no justice or closure for your family.

As I hope I showed you that there is a big problem with police brutality. This is important to me because as I’ve mentioned my friend had an incident with police. People should care about this issue because police are supposed to put their lives on the line for us not the other way around. You as the next president should make it known that any active violence will leave them jobless and in jail. Maybe you can find a solution for all this police brutality. Ending this problem will make our countries future way more better then it is right now.