Dear Mr. or Mrs. President,

Today I am writing to you about police brutality, a big and growing problem in the United States. According to Google, police brutality is the use of excessive force, usually physical, but it could also could be in form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation by a police officer. Police brutality is caused by police officers taking advantage of or abusing their power by intimidation and threatening the suspect. We need a third party organization that watches over how the police go about their jobs and how they treat people. In the same way that the President of the United States has Congress to watch over him and makes sure he doesn’t abuse his power, police departments need an independent organization to watch how they do their business.

Some people think that police brutality isn't a problem and ask why it's “just now starting.” Police brutality has been happening for a really long time, but back then we didn’t have social media and all they stuff we have now to tell us about it. We only had the news then and we only saw what the news wanted us to see; they didn’t “promote” that kind of stuff. This year alone 924 people were killed by police. There are many cases where the police have used excessive force. For example the Rodney King case, a man who was beaten for minutes on end without the police officers trying to restrain him. Or take the case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun who was shot within seconds of the officer getting out of the patrol car. The boy had no warning or could not prove the accusations made about him wrong. If there was a third party organization in place there would be more training with dealing with people with “guns”.

There are some ways that we can help prevent these incidences. We could enforce more police training, for example dealing with “heated” situations and or with people who have mental illnesses. We could also have tests to see how officers act and respond to being under pressure. This still might not solve the whole problem with corrupted officers, but it could help decrease it.

We need a way to monitor how officers do their jobs, since body cameras are not going to do the whole job. Are we seeing a rise of police brutality or has it been going on for a long time, and we are just now seeing it through uncensored media?

-Anonymous