Because the police are willing to devote themselves to ordinary citizens to make them live in a safer environment, they are usually perceived as “guardian angels” for the public. However, since, nowadays, in the United States, the public has serious trust issues towards the police due to all the scandals, low efficiency, police brutality, etc. Therefore, I tried to understand what the causes of this circumstance are and what can help solve this problem from a different perspective. It's not an in-depth research paper, but it will give you a general idea of the mutual trust problem. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First of all, racial disparity could be an essential factor in the trust problem. Research shows that “racial minorities made up approximately 37.4% of the general population in the United States and 46.6% of armed and unarmed victims, but made up 62.7% of unarmed people killed by police.” We can see that the percentage of unarmed minorities killed by police is almost double that of white victims. This statistic shows that the police have much less trust in minorities. It's systematic discrimination in the police department. Now we can understand why the minority might show less mutual trust with the police. Furthermore, this type of biased treatment also occurred towards children at school. According to statistics from the PBS organization, it states that “In Virginia, black students make up 39% of public school enrollment with at least one arrest, but 75% of school arrests.” At school, black students still have a higher rate of arrests for vandalism or conflict with other students than white students. These minority kids will have a strong subconscious and emotion of distrust towards the police and will think that they are only here to punish them rather than support them, especially if they were innocent. These kids may even refuse to accept help from the police and be affected for the rest of their lives. Second, unnecessary behavior in the law enforcement process could be a major part that disgraces the police department and causes a sense of distrust. We all have situations or needs to call the police at some point in our lives, but we may not get the kind of help we imagine. Based on the USA TODAY Network study, it is noted that “at least 85,000 law enforcement officers in the United States have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade.” It includes drug charges, sexual harassment, abuse of the power of the police badge, etc. According to the USA TODAY Network, it states that “The agency's data includes 22,924 investigations of officers using excessive force, 3,145 allegations of rape, child molestation and other sexual misconduct, and 2,307 cases of domestic violence by officers. ” It seems that these statistics have given the public enough reason and evidence to distrust the policies. The police have abused their power to break the law for their own benefit. My position on this issue is that the public still needs to do their best and trust the police department. As an IU O'Neil student, the incident of a former student threatening the school that occurred last week actually explains a lot to me because I didn't receive any notification until a week later .I thought the police would deal with accidents and report any kind of danger in the city. However, they actually don't report everything and just pick and choose..
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