September 28, 2016

Dear President:

The word “police” is now being feared across the nation. There has been an increased number of cases where officers have used unnecessary violence towards the citizens of this country. As a matter of a fact, social media has grabbed the attention of people by displaying harmful videos about police officers. Users of social media have been posting clear evidence of the police using violence towards people. According to Identities.Mic. there is a way to help the citizens of America and potentially law enforcement as well.

First off, states need to focus on violent crimes instead of creating new laws that monopolize law enforcement time. For instance, Michigan has 3,102 laws while New York has 10,000. Most of these are addressing nonviolent crimes; for example, one can’t stay in a park after hours or one cannot sleep on a subway. Police officers spend about 90% of their time on crimes like these and only 10% on violent ones. Equally important is who the law enforcement arrest and embed into prison. Drug addicts and the mentally ill should receive medical attention for the problems they have;they should not be put into confinement. According to pbs.org, 73 percent of women and 55 percent of men who were thrown into jail have a mental illness. 70 percent of prisoners have a drug addiction as reported by drugabuse.gov. Furthermore to this topic, police body cameras should be an identified feature of state budgets states; they should not be part of local police budget. These cameras could serve as evidence for the police or the victim. Also, they should be securely strapped on to ensure they do not accidentally falling off.

Police shootings seem more occurrent than before. These officers take an oath to protect and serve the community that they are apart of. Police who are supposed to be protecting us, yet they have killed at least 790 people in 2016 as stated in Thinkprogress.org. The majority of these victims were mentally ill, people of color, or unarmed. Police brutality needs to come to an end in order to make America great again.