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Group Four: Police Brutality
Instructor Sara Alvarez
English 102-10
08 April 2015
Police Brutality Digital Project Proposal
INTRODUCTION
Over the past 2 years there have been 2 major, nationwide cases of police brutality. An
officer uses excessive force or does not follow the trained procedure, the victim dies, the officer
is brought to trail and not convicted of the crime, and there is conflict full of protest and hate
between the people of the city and the law enforcement. It seems like a pattern and it is almost
now one you do not even have to follow because you already know what the end is. The officers
are never sent to jail or even have to go to trail sometimes because there are two sides to every
story and one side of this story happens to be dead. Who can disagree unless there was a third
party or proof to say otherwise? They say camera footage holds up the strongest in court so what
if there was a camera, with the best view in the house?
Our group has decided to do one, one minute commercial. Our commercial idea is to start
off with a montage of a normal day for a police officer wearing a body camera. Eventually the
Officer encounters a robber, the robber turns around and gets ready to pull a gun but the Officer
shoots first. We will have an opposite view from a citizen that makes it seem like the Officer just
shot him for no reason, and then we will have the “body camera” video that proves the robber
made the first move. This will be explained more later in the paper.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
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Our target audience will be specific for the police officers of Louisville, and will be
focused and geared towards white males, ages 30-50. This seems to be the demographic for the
Louisville area. Using the Louisville police officers as our target audience makes it more
personal, and honestly a bit easier to focus in on since this is home, and these are our police
officers. For example, Doctor Reed, a Criminal Justice Professor at the University of Louisville
served on the Louisville Metro police force until he retired, before retirement he was in the age
range of 40-50, Dr. Reed is also a white male. When I interviewed Dr. Reed earlier this semester
he made it very obvious that the demographics of the officers did not represent the diversity of
the Louisville area, and later compared this as the biggest issue of the Ferguson, Missouri case.
(Reed).
CURRENT EVENTS AND CONCERNS:
Across the nation several police stations have adopted the new trend of “body cameras”.
A body camera is a small video recorder that officers must wear on the front of their uniform so
the camera can see everything the officer can see. This camera could be the solution for both
sides of the law. The camera could be used in the case of a police brutality victim to show that
the officer did use excessive force and should be indicted. Then the cameras could be used in the
case of the police officer. Just as many cases of police brutality there are, lies twice as many false
complaints of police brutality. The officers could use the cameras to prove that there was no
excessive force used and they followed the proper procedure.
Why is this trend not flying across the world? I am sure every protestor would vote yes
for it. Who could possibly be against it? Articles have been released of studies following the use
of body cameras and the numbers show that 85 percent of respondents believe that body-worn
cameras reduce false claims of police misconduct, and reduce the likelihood of litigation against
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the agency according to Doug Wyllie, PoliceOne Editor in Chief. I think this is the best solution
for any proposal made toward stopping police brutality. Concerns we have specifically for
creating this commercial is creating the montage of specific places of Louisville so we can
appeal to the Police Officers of Louisville. Also concerned with editing the final video-as none
of us are particularly tech savvy.
ADVERTISING APPEAL AND RHETORICAL ANALYSIS:
For our commercial, as stated previously, we plan on having a montage of events, an
Officer doing ordinary things throughout a day such as signing paperwork, going to the store,
driving around, etc. with some happy music playing, at the end of the day, with the music
immediately stopping, out of nowhere, a robber comes running out of a store. The cop begins to
chase after her. The robber turns around and begins to pull out a gun, but the cop is able to fire
first. From the viewpoint of the body camera, it is clear that the cop acted in self-defense;
however, a video recorded on a phone by a citizen shows that the cop shot the defenseless,
unarmed robber. We will want to implement the natural sound of the recording, in order to make
it feel like the viewer is the one going about the day and to set a very intense, emotional
atmosphere. The events unfolding towards the end of the commercial will be vital. It will prove
the point to police officers that they need this form of protection nowadays. It is a serious issue
and occurs regularly; once people see the footage of the Officers body camera, they will
immediately be curious.
We will try to implement a scholarly article by Zachary Shaefer titled Secretly Recording
the Police, which talks about how the use of video recording on mobile devices has become
outlawed in some states and has caused quite a stir in the police brutality conflict, both positively
and negatively. Also, we will be implementing a scholarly source by Jesse Harlan Alderman
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titled Filming the Police, which talks about illegality of recording, both visual and audio, of
police officers in public. The article gives an example of a woman being arrested for filming an
incident on her phone and talks about the pros and cons of public recording of police officers on
duty.
Rhetorically: We feel as though using the right kind of music and background noise will
create an emotional appeal that will pull the audience in more. We feel as though using Vince, an
African American male as our police officer and Sydney, a Caucasian female as our robber will
really open up individuals eyes to the fact that not all police officers are white and not all
criminals are of color or are males-thus creating a need to eliminate the race issue associated
with police brutality. For the purpose of the commercial, we will be implementing a recording of
the final incident from the body camera and a citizen’s point of view. The purpose of doing this
is to show how diverse the point-of-views could be and that only having one of the recordings
can determine the outcome an officer’s career and someone’s life.
MEDIA STRATEGY
Our commercial could be aired on a variety of TV, radio stations, and websites that are
local and national. Locally we could use WDRB, PLG-13, and WLKY because we are focusing
on Louisville police. However, nationally we could use a very well-known show such as COPS.
This TV show is all about cop chases and different cases the cops deal with so this commercial
would fit perfectly to show on this show. Also our commercial could be seen on a few TV
stations that are also very popular like A&E, BET, MTV, E, CNN, FOX and more other highly
watched shows about current events, and worldwide news. The commercial could tag along with
BET and MTV because of the police brutality situations also connecting with racism.
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Since we are dealing with a commercial, magazines are completely out of the subject.
When dealing with websites, our commercial could be found all over the internet. According to,
the website, Sundays Best, “Billions are spent on internet advertising every year. Online
advertising is an easy way for companies to quickly reach a large audience of people.” Although
my group and I are not considered a company, we could still use the internet as the biggest way
to get our views through to people. The article, Sunday Best, also says to use contextual methods
to get people to view the ad or commercial. Contextual methods involve what the person is
searching. With that being said, the commercial could be aired on any website dealing with
current new, police brutality, and anything to do with the police force. A few with similar topics
on their pages are CNN, The New York Times, and also local current news websites from each
state in America.
Also, the commercial could be “shared” through popular social media like, Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram. Commercials online could be publicized even more once they get bigger
with people sending them to others through email. Our commercial would use each of these
strategies to get our view across the world to persuade cops about the pros of using body
cameras, even though we are focusing on local forces in our commercial we feel as though
thinking nationally would help the cause as well.
CONCLUSION
This one minute commercial will focus on the pros of using body cameras. The two
different perspectives; one from a Police Officers’ and the other from a bystander’s perspective
will demonstrate how body cameras can help police officers, or the victim/perpetrator. In our
commercial, a situation will go down involving a cop and a victim. Our targeted audience is 3050 year-old males of the Louisville police force, because this is our targeted audience we will
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focus mostly on putting our commercial on local T.V stations. However, we think it is essential
to have a goal of potentially becoming national so the group agreed that our commercial should
be shown on media that male police officers tend to look at. We will go about holding the
viewers’ attention through emotional appeal. Our group is going to create intense suspense
through the music and noises used throughout the video, because this entire situation is a very
emotional subject, it will be very easy to appeal to the viewer’s emotions.
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Works Cited
Alderman, Jesse Harlan. "Filming Police: Wiretapping Laws and The Collision Of The First
And Fourth Amendments." Public Lawyer 20.2 (2012): 2-20. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
Best, Sunday. "Types of Online Advertising Techniques." HubPages. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.
Reed, John. Personal Interview. 05 February 2015.
Schaefer, Zachary A. "Secretly Recording the Police: The Confluence of Communication,
Culture, and Technology in the Public Sphere." ERIC. Web. 8 Apr. 2015.
Wyllie, Doug. "Survey: Police Officers Want Body-worn Cameras." PoliceOne. 23 Oct.
2012. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.