The Police are here to protect and serve.

The Police are here to protect and serve. This is what we are always told, but that’s not always the case. In low income areas across the country there are many cases of police brutality.

The police are here to protect and serve. How is that 100 percent true after a policeman shot Tamir Rice and ended his life, after a policeman mistook Michael Brown for a robber and killed him, after Trayvon Martin was fatally shot for walking in an upper class neighborhood at night. After all of this, how can we trust that the police will protect us.

The Police are here to protect and serve. Tamir Rice was a twelve year old boy from Cleveland. One day he was outside playing with a toy gun in a park. All of a sudden a police car comes barreling at him, and within two seconds he was shot and killed. How is that protecting? How is it protecting when the officers responsible didn’t follow proper protocol? The initial 911 call said that the person with the gun was a juvenile, and that the gun was probably fake. However, that information failed to make it to the officers. Even so, the officers were not supposed to pull up so close and were not supposed to fire so quickly. How can that be protection, when an innocent little boy lost his life to the people who are supposed to protect us?

The Police are here to protect and serve. Following a robbery at a convenience store in St. Louis, Michael Brown was named a suspect. A policeman saw him a few blocks away from the crime and ended up shooting and killing him. The entire altercation lasted only three minutes before Brown was killed. How is that protection? How can a policeman go through all that is necessary in three minutes? Michael was an 18 year old boy at the time. He had so much of his life left before it was taken from him.

The justice system is here to protect us. In Florida a 17 year old boy named Trayvon Martin was staying with family in a gated upper class neighborhood. He was walking alone at night, when a watchman saw him and they got into an altercation. Trayvon, who was doing nothing wrong, ended up being shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was charged for the murder of Trayvon Martin, but later was acquitted by claiming it was self defense. How is that protecting? How can Zimmerman get away with murder and claim self defense when all Trayvon did was walk at night?

The Police are here to protect and serve. Most of the time this is true. The police do make most places safer, and the justice system does put criminals away most of the time. They try their best to make their communities as safe as possible. The problem is, this isn’t always the case. There are still many acts of police brutality that go on all the time, with little to no punishment for the police officers. There are still innocent people put in jail and guilty men who go free. That’s what needs to change. We expect the system to protect us.

The Police are here to protect and serve.