Dear Mr.President

“The rights of a man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”- John F. Kennedy. There has been a recent spike in the amount of police killings in America and they have been involving mostly minorities. It is an extreme human rights violation and it must be stopped. Officers should not be so quick to pull a gun on somebody, the way they’re trained needs to be changed, and teenagers need to stop believing that they are above the law.

It is understandable how stressful a situation can be for them, however, they should still keep their cool. It is wrong for an officer to let his or her feelings get the best of them and cause them to make rash decisions. When an officer lets his or her feelings get the best of them people can die and no one wants that to happen and that is also why the way officers are trained should be changed as well.

The way police officers are trained is obviously messed up in some way because of all the shootings. Some shootings, however, are from straight racism and that is something this country needs no more of. The way the departments train their officers to respond to stressful situations needs to be changed because officers are losing their cool too easily and lives are being lost left and right. It’s

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understandable how emotions can flare when officers apprehend teenagers because a lot of teenagers feel that they are above the law and can just do whatever they want.

This is another factor that leads to teens being shot. There are still a lot of cases however where teens are really doing nothing and the officer is using unnecessary force on them. However, in other cases the teens are talking to the officers any kind of way that they see fit. Some of them also resist arrest and or ignore simple commands, which can lead to an officer using force. There are plenty of videos of officers giving out simple commands such as “sit down” or “get on the ground” and the suspects are seen just making a complete scene and ignoring the officer's commands and even getting in their faces, and then wondering why the are being thrown to the ground.

In conclusion, I feel that in the end both sides are just wrong. Officers should not be so quick to pull a gun on somebody, the way they’re trained needs to be changed, and teenagers need to stop believing that they are above the law. If these things were to change there is no telling to how many lives would be spared. There would also be a lot more peace in the community. No life should be wasted over something that is not even that serious. It doesn't matter if you’re Black, White, Latino, Asian, or even an officer, your life; matters.