Police Brutality and The Copycat Connection

Over the past 3 months, I have written about many American and global conflict causing events. Each event discussed has caused quite a bit of talk among the American public, politicians, and government leaders. For this blog post, I would like to “hit home” with an issue that has been in the Americans eyes since anyone can remember, police brutality.

There was recently a video of released that showed a San Antonio school police officer body-slamming a 12 year-old female student. Why was this necessary? Isn’t another means of discipline more effective? The San Antonio Independent School District spokeswoman spoke out about the incident, “And while we want details, I want people to know that excessive force will not be tolerated in this district.” This leads to another question, shouldn’t have the rule of not using excessive force on school students have been an unspoken rule?

The article including this video states that this isn’t the first time excessive force has been used in school districts by police. Back in October 2015, a student in a South Carolina school district was violently arrested in school and a video caught the action in progress. The police officer was fired after the video circulated on social media outlets and later news outlets. This school district also made a similar statement to the San Antonio district. The superintendent of the South Carolina school district stated, “The district will not tolerate any actions that jeopardize the safety of our students”.

Here we have two incidents occurring in less than a year of each other. After each incident occurs a school representative later stating that the district does everything its power to insure the safety of its students and does not condone excessive force. This brings into question, shouldn’t the school district outline the type of discipline and the probable incidents a police officer can use these types of discipline in the contract before the police officer is hired?

With the microscope being on police, their interactions with people, and their probable brutality, you would think specific contract negotiations would be at the forefront of school districts minds.

Are we giving to much attention to police brutality and police officers’ interaction with people in general? Wouldn’t the best way to get rid of the idea of brutality as a method of discipline be to stop giving media and nationwide attention to it?

For instance, I am a firm believer that much of the terroristic crime and racial issues we have in the world, would be decreased if we ceased to talk about and ceased to hear about it daily. There are many copycats in this world and this would be a way to decrease the copycats of not only police, but also students acting out against police.  Humans learn by what they are surrounded by in their environment. If they see the news saying police officer’s brutal force is bad and should be banned when a person acts out against police. Doesn’t that indirectly reinforce the behavior of acting out because people know punishment won’t go any further?

I also remember my parents telling me stories of when they were in school. They said teachers would spank student’s behinds on a daily basis. Would this have been seen as brutality? Probably. I am one to believe that many people wear too much sensitivity on their sleeves. Why was spanking “ok” in the 1970s and 1980s, but it is not “ok” to use today to keep students in line? Is it better to rule in fear of a rather painful experience occurring, then to just get a “stern talk”?

I would like to stick with my copycat theory rather then the sensitivity to punishment idea. An idea the could counteract the copycat movement, if a young person is influenced by media to act out against police, would be media showing friendly interactions between the public and police. Not all people the do something unlawful act against the police. Many people, once arrested, confess their guilt and peacefully accept the punishment.

This idea of not publicizing so many negatively driven events ties into all my discussions of events in this blog. In Korea, if we would not publicize the event, maybe we could take action quicker to eliminate the missile threat. In San Berandino, publicizing the event may have already led to many similar terrorists using the same methods to conceal data. For the immigrants, maybe the striking worry of being deported not being publicized would encourage more policy to allow them to become citizens.

That’s all for now.

Restricted Access

Imagine this, you wake up in the morning and you cannot access any sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and most information on Google, which you once previously could. Only after many weeks, do you find out that your country’s government blocked the satellite signals for news spreading sites.

This discussion continues to be surrounded by tension with many world powers facing many tough decisions; therefore, continuing with this blogs theme of discussing many controversial issues, which have arose throughout the past few weeks. As a follow up to my last civic issue blog post on the North Korean test missile launched a few weeks ago, I will talk about the controversy surrounding the new advancement in the North Korean missile scares.

As of 3:18 AM Eastern Time according to an article publishedby ABC News, North Korea has officially announced that it has blocked Facebook, Twitter, and South Korean websites “in a move underscoring its concern for the spread of online information. 

According to another ABC News article, “North Korea fired a short-range missile into the sea and tried to jam GPS navigation signals in South Korea on Friday (April 1^st)”. This was only “hours after U.S South Korean and Japanese leaders pledged to work closer together to prevent North Korea from advancing its nuclear and missile programs”.

Many North Koreans do not have the luxury of Internet Access. Usually when North Koreans use the “Internet”, they use is a “sealed-off, government-sanctioned intranet”. However, “foreigners had previously been able to surf the Web with almost no overt restriction, though most likely with behind-the-scenes monitoring of their Internet activities”.

The missile launch and consequent web-jamming would make it more difficult and albeit impossible for “foreign residents in North Korea to post real-time information about the country to the outside world, and will further limit the ability of North Koreans with Internet access to view information about their country posted elsewhere”.

Last blog post, the potential that a block signal could happen was mentioned. However, at that time, we did not know if any further missile action would be taken and if there were action, what type of consequence that action would hold. 

Now, we know that North Korean leadership (Kim Jong Un) wants to exercise their power in increasing shows of force. 

However, is North Korea really the only bad guy, when playing around with Internet censorship?

The ABC News article referred to above mentions that North Korea’s now new restrictions mirror the restrictions of the Beijing area of China, and some restrictions mirror South Korea.

South Korea is deep within the Internet web and interests, yet they ban North Korean websites and government-deemed adult content.

We must keep in mind that while the control of what we see and what we can use on the Internet may be appalling because we are United States citizens [and dwellers] and have the right to this content, the rest of the world does not have rights in place that keep them from losing their privilege of seeing internet content. What is our right truly is their privilege. 

I think what is most striking in the fact that there are already so many restrictions on North Koreans, unlike their South Korean counterparts, that the implementation of these now new and stricter standards is well past excessive.

In one of my passion blog posts, I mentioned the sociocultural divide, Air Force Lt. General Weinstein mentioned in his speech to Air Force ROTC cadets, that North Korea and South Korea have been experiencing. He said that back in the 1970s and 80s many South Koreans still had hope that North Korea would join them into one country again. Now, the General mentioned, South Korea is very patriotic for their side of Korea and does not see the rejoining of the countries in the future.

The general mentioned that with this divide and the suppression of the North Koreans by Kim Jong Un, there have been language changes and their have been extensive cultural changes.

My question is do you think that the greater restriction of the Internet will create a greater divide of culture and understanding for the North Koreans in the future?