On Wednesday, May 11 a man took the police on a chase from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. This chase was around an hour. The man running away had a warrant out for his arrest on charges of assault and larceny.
The end of the chase is the most interesting of the sequence. At the end of the chase the man stopped in a suburban neighborhood. The policemen surrounded his truck and he got out, got on his knees and then laid face first on the ground.
When the man was laying on the ground, the policemen proceeded to apprehend him but while doing so they beat him. The man was submissive and giving himself up and the police just had to put handcuffs on him and take him away but some of them punched and kneed the man on the ground.
This incident is one of many. Over the past couple of years more and more cases of unnecessary and harsh police violence have occurred and the media has played an important role in showing that to the public. Often times the most emphasized incidents are involving race.
In today’s society black men and women who are treated unfairly tend to be emphasized more than others. I think that they should be emphasized more because I believe that racism is still alive and strong in American society and it shouldn’t be. But it is. In many occasions a perfect example of racism comes with watching a video clip of a police officer doing terrible things to a man or women of color. In this case, race is a not a main factor. The victim was a white man and the policemen were mostly white.
In this situation there is a not a good argument for why the police did this. Yes, the man was wanted, and yes he ran away from the police. But, he stopped, he laid down and then a few policemen decided to take matters into their own hands and beat the man.
He was defenseless. The job of the police is not to beat defenseless people. The police enforce the law but they shouldn’t harm people that are giving themselves up.
No matter what race or who the person is, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a crime the person committed, it is not ethically right for a person to beaten if they are giving themselves up. It is simply not in their job description. If it was, then this would not be a problem. I fully support action being taken against the police officers that committed this horrible act.
American society is too good for these kinds of actions. Police, and the rest of the community, should do their best to abide by the rules. I am aware that the man running away from the police was not following the law, but that does not mean that the police shouldn’t follow the law either.
