Dear Future President:

Many incidents have occurred where a police officer’s first instinct to handle a situation is to handle their gun first to solve a problem, to shoot first and ask questions later. Police brutality has grown to be a much bigger problem each day. People in the community have developed a fear for the police and that is very wrong. We shouldn’t fear the people that are supposed to protect us; we should have a sense of comfort and safety. We don’t want children to look at police officers as these monsters living under their bed.  They should look up to them and see them as heroes who will do anything to stop the bad guys.

In order for that to happen, police training should have more training on hand-to-hand combat than gun handling, and they should learn more ways to handle a situation without using their guns or just carry  tasers. According to BBC News,  [For] "inhabitants of the UK… officers do not carry guns.” This means that they rely mostly on their hand-to-hand combat and their taser, instead of shooting people with a deadly gun.

Police officers shouldn’t use a gun when they feel unsafe. They should use it when we, the civilians, are being threatened. A police officer’s job is to put our lives as a priority over theirs, so that we can be protected, but I don’t see that going on much. We should stop this useless violence some police use against citizens.  Police should use their guns for much bigger threats like shootings and terrorist attacks.  Only then can we stop this fear of police officers once and for all for that peaceful future we always dream of. 

Sincerely,

Angel Ramirez Santana