Dear Next President,

My name is Diamond, I am 17 years old, and I currently live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am African American and the conflicts that have occurred involving innocent African Americans and the police force are too controversial to ignore. There has been multiple situations especially in the past couple of months, where police have been responsible for the deaths of innocent people and not just within the African American community. My intention is not to bandwagon on the Black Lives Matter Movement but it is the African American community that has been affected the most lately and if not, I want you to be responsible for making people aware of the lives lost of people belonging to other races and cultural backgrounds.

The purpose of a police officer is to protect people and their rights, as well as property, not to take the lives of innocent people. If police officers are supposed to protect us, then why are they killing us? It doesn’t make sense for a police officer to be the person in charge of protecting citizens within a community, to be the same person responsible for their lives being lost. People such as Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner were people who were killed because the cops misjudged a situation or because they acted out of anger or for whatever reason. Many people believe that the U.S. and it’s justice system is built off of racism and when cops, specifically white, get off the hook for murdering an innocent black person, it gives people more of a reason to believe that it is true. When it is broadcasted across the United States time after time that another young black man was killed by a white cop while unarmed, it’s raises havoc because the police officers aren’t receiving any actual fair punishments from the state.

No, I do not believe that every incident involving a cop killing a black man or woman has to do with race but I believe that some incidents do and the outcomes of the situation allow me to think so. You may feel that I believe that African Americans are the only ones targeted but, I don’t believe this to be true. An innocent life taken can’t be justified in anyway but we don’t hear about many people killed by the cops unless they are black, why is that? How would you feel if your family member’s life or even your own life was put in danger because of the color of your skin? It’s a terrifying thing to think of but I speak for majority of the African American community when I say we feel as though we are targeted because of our skin color. Would you want to be held at gunpoint for simply being pulled over at a traffic light? No we can’t stop any of these things from happening but , I strongly believe that the justice system can serve harsher punishments for murder carried out by a police officer. Murder is murder, and whether you have a badge pinned to your shirt or not should not determine whether you are convicted.

It does not look good on your part if you are supposed to be the representative of the United States as a whole but you allow police to commit murder without the proper repercussions. It’s not just for a police officer to be found not guilty for taking the life of an innocent person because they made an action without thinking about it. In my family alone, the males have faced a heap of unwanted interactions with the law force. My brother was once assaulted by a police officer just for being in the car with other young black African Americans. It seems that there has been an uprising conflict between the African American community and the police force. No, every African American is not innocent and they must suffer the consequences. Police officers should be held to the same expectations. If they are responsible for killing an innocent person, they should serve jail time or be held accountable on their records. You cannot possibly let a man get away with murder when it is on camera. There is no one in authority standing up to these conflicts and it’s not fair to people who are losing their loved ones.

View this letter as a cry out for help from the African American community. Take the responsibility of the murders committed by police officers within the states that you represent. We will no longer accept the thoughtless actions of police that leave us with bodies to bury. Everyone gets tired at one point when they feel that they have been walked over for long enough. When the people who are meant to protect people and their rights start to fail, it is you that has to take the ownership and make not only the fair decisions, but the right ones. At what point do you think taking ownership is the right the thing to do?

Sincerely,

Diamond H.