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.