Insidious Disease: Police Brutality Essay

Insidious Disease: Police Brutality  
            Knock, Knock. The police are going door to door, looking for a rape suspect. They knock on the door next to yours: a quiet, legal African American immigrant’s home. He answers, and reaches into his jacket to retrieve his wallet to show his identification to the officers. At the moment, the four policemen open fire forty-one times on the man, and he drops dead. How do you feel about what you just saw? None of the officers were found guilty in court, either. The mayor of New York City even saw it “silly” to try the officers (Commonweal “Radical Politics,” par. 3). Now how does that make you feel? How is it that they got away with murder? The victim’s name was Amadou Diallo. His encounter was an extremity of countless police brutality cases. This happens a lot more than you would think, but why, and why isn’t something being done about it?
            There have been plenty of other cases all over the United States (and the world) similar to, and worse than Diallo’s exemplar. In my opinion, the worst confirmed instance was the 1997 torture of Abner Louima, in the same city as Amadou Diallo, New York. The police were called in for crowd control in front of a popular nightclub. Two men got in a fight, both fleeing the scene. Descriptions were distributed, and the cops were on the lookout. They spotted Abner, who fit the description of an African American male wearing a vest. Without confirming him, or questioning him, they took him into custody, and put him in the car. In the car, he was assaulted by an officer until they reached the precinct. Once there, two officers brought him into the men’s restroom. One held Louima down, while the other penetrated his rectum with the end of a wooden plunger, perforating his colon and rupturing his bladder, and then forcing the object into his mouth, chipping a few teeth. In the end, the four officers involved all received prison time, and Louima gained $8.75 million in civil law...