Subject: Report submission on “Whether Police Brutality is as Bad as we Think”
Dear Sir/Madam,
The following is a write-up report of the topic chosen as per your instructions. The assignment is a completed report as a result of the information obtained from the course on the topic of writing long reports.
I am grateful for all the support I received from the people who were generous enough to point me to the necessary information sources and the advice they gave.
I would be happy if you would go through the report with a keen eye as my aim is to try and answer the research question as comprehensively as possible. I have the belief that the report has been done to the best of my ability and I perceive that the insights gained from it will go a long way in demystifying the matter of the research topic. Kindly contact me in case any assistance is needed for interpretation.
Thanking you.
Yours sincerely,
Name
Table of Contents
Abstract 5
Purpose. 6
Findings. 7
Conclusion. 9
Recommendation. 9
Figure 1. 7
Abstract
The premise of this research report based its focus on the experiences that both the Latino and African American community have with the law enforcement agencies and how these interactions impact on their healthiness, well-being, childrearing and the violence that occurs within communities of color. The emphasis of this report based its attention on an elementary school based in the South Bay of California. The source of the research states that the number of Latino parents who agreed to participate in the study were three and both lived within the locality and had children attendant the elementary school. Also, an African American male living in the San Francisco Bay also agreed to the study. The report shows how police brutality is a product of institutional racism and determines the state of health therefore the need to view police brutality as a public health problem despite it not being perceived that way.
Purpose
The purpose for researching this topic is to understand better the aspect of people in minority groups such as the Latino and African American and their experience with the law enforcement agencies and how these experiences impact on their lives and communities. More particularly, this research project aims to study how negative interactions of members of these communities with the police impact the state of their health, parenting, quality of life, and the matter of violence that occurs within the Latino and African American communities. The research question that this report will try at answering is how the brutal interactions of these persons with the police tend to show its adverse effects and why police brutality is in itself a harmful and destructive problem. It will also give recommendations on how the victims of this brutality can better prepare their children and protect them from unnecessary injury or death. Another essential aspect this report will also cover touches on the harmful impacts that police brutality imposes on the life of a child, peers or family members. Therefore, it becomes of paramount importance that this topic is studied so that the harmful effects of aggressive policing, discrimination and violence connected to police brutality impact destructively on the health of these individuals. In this case, the importance of studying police brutality cannot be understated since the results of such studies help to address and minimize the gaps that exist within the Latino and African American communities in the United States for many generations.
Introduction
To gain a better understanding of the research question and the premise of the study report, it becomes essential to understand how the Latino and African American youth go about their day to day lives as they mature and live within communities that typically exhibit heavy police presence. A study conducted by Solis and his colleagues (2009) performed an analysis of the perceptions of the Latino and Afro Caribbean youth detailing the experience they have had in the hands of the police in the city of New York. A technique that Solis and his colleagues used in the analysis of the research data involved the employment of the Latino critical race conceptual framework which is a concept that adds on to the critical race theory. As such, when this theory is then linked to the aspect of police brutality, the argument, in this case, suggests that the policing tactics that are used by law enforcement agencies tend to show dynamic characteristics which serve as tools for oppression with the result of increasing the levels of inequality that already exist. The research undertaken by Solis and his fellow researchers involved a total of thirty participants from New York City and had both Dominican and Puerto Rico origins. Also, the range of age of these research subjects varied between eighteen and nineteen years old. The interviews conducted on the participants of Solis’ study comprised of questions involving descriptions of how the youth’s interaction with the police in both positive and negative terms and offer recommendations on how to improve the relationship between the police and the community. The overall perception of the results suggested that the youths feel the police do not have any helpful feelings towards their community as much as they care about neighborhoods that have a predominantly white population. They also noted that the dehumanizing aspect of racial profiling exists and universal when they interact with the police with the same law enforcement agents using the matter of immigration status as leverage when it comes to how they treat the Latino youths. It is also important to understand that police interaction with the African American community is also the premise of this study thus critical to document the impact of their interactions with the police and how it has affected their way of life. A researcher named Nikki Jones conducted a study in which she tried to understand the routine encounters that African American men had with the law enforcement agents with the survey lasting for around three years (2014). The main aim of her conducting the study was to gain some understanding of how the African American youth encounters with the police force have a significant impact on their day to day lives. The theoretical framework she used in her study involving the patterns of mortification concept which she built and collected her research data using hand-written field notes, taking interviews of individuals as well as groups of African American youth who resided in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. The image below shows the extent of police brutality using different techniques;
FIGURE 1
One of the primary results she obtained from the study is that African American boys who have been brought up in neighborhoods that have a heavy police presence with Fillmore being the focus here, automatically know that the attention of the law enforcement structure is focused on them on a frequent basis. Another pivotal discovery from this research findings is that the number of body frisks conducted by police officers was frequent and typical in the neighborhood and by the time an African American boy had matured into their teens, they had already learned the ropes of how to behave like a professional suspect the officers tended to label them. The conclusions made by Jones in her study suggested that the aspect of frequent body searches by the police managed to indicate that the bodies of Black males depicted an image of it being a property of the state. As such, the experiencing of such encounters serves as a means to degrade and dehumanize this community, a problem that adolescents of African American origin tend to be most potentially vulnerable towards. Therefore, such treatment of the young in the African American community reinforces the high level of distrust that exists between the group and the police. The final aspect of Jones’ findings involved the fact that African American men had a higher chance of both voluntary and involuntary exchange with the police.
Findings
Since an understanding of how the interactions between the youths in the Latino and African American community and the police take place, it is essential to gain an understanding as to how these aspects of police brutality and discrimination based on someone’s race impact on the health and quality of life. As such, a study conducted based its premise on how the concept of racial discrimination has influenced the development and life activities of children of African American descent (Kathy Sanders-Phillips, 2009). The purpose of her study used four models as beacons to guide her findings which included: the accumulation of risk model, ecological concept, the phenomenon of racial inequality and social integration. She also presented the thinking behind her hypothetical frameworks, analyzed the levels of publicity children had towards racial discrimination and analyzed the impacts that racial discrimination had on the psychological state of the children. She also examined how discrimination based on race impacted on the parenting techniques of parents and the support structure within the community. A model with a general framework was thus developed from her data collected, and it emerged that the level at which children experience racial discrimination is at an institutional and individual level. As such, when a child is exposed to bouts of racial discrimination, they tend to develop a sense of fear, danger, persecution, low self-efficacy, low self-worth, and desperateness. The net effect of such feelings is depression, apprehension, and rage. Police brutality which is a product of aggressive policing methods used by law enforcement has been identified as one of the factors that contribute to the deterioration of the health of an individual. In another study conducted by Amanda and her colleagues (2014), she tried to understand the experience of the encounter that men had after interacting with the police and how it impacted on their mental health status. The study involved telephone surveys of close to one thousand two hundred and sixty-one individuals who belonged to the ethnic and racial minority of ages eighteen to twenty-six years. The telephone interview included questions about the number of times they had been approached by a law enforcement officer, the details of that encounter and the identification of any traumatic or apprehension they experienced. The analysis of the data obtained was done using a cross-sectional regression analysis with the findings revealing that the majority of men who reported that they had more police encounters, in most cases unfair and unwarranted, gave feedback of trauma and anxiety. The final aspect of this research report touches on the impact that police brutality has on the health and quality of life of the minority group focus of the study. From the information mentioned above, the concept of profiling individuals based on their race is not an uncommon occurrence when interactions with the police take place. As such, it proves pivotal to look at ways in which racial discrimination impacts on the behavior of an individual. A study was done which aimed at linking the phenomenon of racial discrimination and domestic violence between intimate partners, gang violence, and street fights amongst African American men were thus done. The type of measurement used to determine the level of experiences that racial discrimination and overall violence produced comprised the Everyday Discrimination Scale and the multivariate logistic model. The survey for the study was around twenty to twenty-five minutes long with the participants taken from community health centers, and two primary and urgent care clinics related to hospitals. The age of the subjects ranged from eighteen to sixty-five years old. The findings of the study indicated that persons who had experienced increased levels of discrimination had potentially more propensity to report cases of domestic abuse and street violence. On the other hand, she did not find any linkage between instances of gang and street violence and racial discrimination. Research indicates that there tends to be an increased risk for people to involve themselves in gang and street violence. Therefore, it should suffice as a significant worry since the interaction of a child or youth with such kinds of abuse can negatively affect not only their well-being but also the quality of life of the whole community. Another study also made use of the historical growth of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its diagnosis. The theories used to establish a link between the social stressors and support that exists for the war veterans and poor youth living in neglected neighborhoods. The approaches comprise the positivist paradigm, social theories, critical paradigm theory and constructivist paradigm. The study findings show that significant similarities do exist with regards to the type of environment and exposure they experience. As such, youths who reside in neighborhoods with heavy police presence and high violence rates suffered from PTSD as much as the war veterans.
Conclusion
Since most studies have focused on the effect of police brutality on the Latino and African American youth, this report aims at speaking to parents of both community groups by bridging the information gap. This report also focused on the parenting strategies that parents could use to better protect their children from any form of harm from gangs and police brutality. Also, the study report addressed the issues of the brutality of the law enforcement structure on the African American and Latino groups living in the Bay Area of San Francisco and South Bay. Also, the aspect of how the occurrences of police brutality on the health and well-being of Latinos was also addressed in the report. The final element of this report gave more insight on how police brutality might lead to an increase in the level of violence and turf wars in neighborhoods inhabited mostly by African Americans and Latinos.
Recommendation
More research needs to be done to establish a link between deteriorating health and increasing disparities in the quality of life and well-being due to police brutality. In such a case, police brutality needs to be seen as public health menace that needs solving. As such, the fight for Black lives and Brown lives should not only be seen through a one-dimensional view of police shooting these individuals but also as a way in which it destroys lives, traumatizes and dehumanizes a community and population.
References
Geller, A., Fagan, J., Tyler, T., " Link, B. G. (2014). Aggressive policing and the mental health of young urban men. American journal of public health, 104(12), 2321-2327.
Jones, N. (2014). “The regular routine”: Proactive policing and adolescent development among young, poor Black men. New directions for child and adolescent development, 2014(143), 33-54.
Sanders-Phillips, K. (2009). Racial discrimination: a continuum of violence exposure for children of color. Clinical child and family psychology review, 12(2), 174-195.
Solis, C., Portillos, E. L., " Brunson, R. K. (2009). Latino youths' experiences with and perceptions of involuntary police encounters. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 623(1), 39-51.
