Police Brutality And The Law Enforcement - 1925 Words

Police Brutality The duties of law enforcement involve looking after the American people. As the Los Angeles Police Department puts it, it is the police’s duty to â€Å"Protect and Serve† the community. As Americans, we should expect to be able to rely on local police to solve our problems and bring peace and stability to society. Yet, as current events have shown, these promises are not always fulfilled. Since the late 1960s, America has begun to grow from a racially segregated nation, into one of unity and equality. Today there is no doubt that immense progress has been made, however events involving our law enforcement and minorities has seemed to halt such progress. Police brutality continues to be a major issue nationwide with the†¦show more content†¦Recently, the public has begun to once again rise up against such heinous crimes that seem to hail from an era before civil rights. Police brutality notoriously rose during the 1990s. The most guilty of this was the Los Angeles Police Department. After the introduction of crack cocaine plagued the streets of American cities, Los Angeles took the initiative of upgrading its CRASH Unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums). By April 1988, nearly 1,567 minorities were arrested on just one weekend, yet about 10% of these arrests actually led to felony convictions. By 1998, the CRASH unit was embroiled once again in a scandal known as the Rampart Scandal. More than seventy officers assigned to the Rampart Division were accused of strong police misconduct. These officers were accused of targeting minorities and planting evidence on these victims, framing them to higher their positions in the LAPD. (Source #3) In the middle of all this, one case would implant the image of police brutality to all Americans for years to come. On March 4, 1991, an African-American man named Rodney King had been drinking earlier in the night and was on his way home, speeding on the highway which brought attention to an officer stationed there and proceed to pursue King. After attempting to outrun police, King was eventually cornered by police. What would be expected to be a quick arrest after being pulled over quickly turned brutal. As King exited