Ramyaa Megginson
10/22/2020
3rd period
Discussion Board 3
Police and the justice system play a major role in our everyday lives. As citizens, we have set
laws we are expected to abide by. Failure to do so would result in conflict with the enforcers of
law, or the police. Since the idea of a government was introduced, there have always been issues
between citizens and the government for numerous reasons.
To start, I believe that police officers do have an obligation to the citizenry because their
purpose is to protect and serve the citizens. They do this by enforcing law. As a police officer, a
major part of the job is to protect the people when they can not protect themselves. With this,
sometimes choices and actions are made on behalf of the officers that are deemed unfair or
wrong to the citizens. The media plays an important role in this as well. I do believe that in some
cases, police officers are unfairly blamed for social problems. For example, around early June, to
late August, Black Lives Matter, and civil rights movements were very present. With this, came
loads of hatred and anger towards police officers and the justice system as a whole. Although the
sole purpose behind the civil rights movement and black lives matter was the justice system’s
failure on behalf of black lives, police officers began to become generalized and ended up
leading to good cops being seen as equal to the small amount of bad cops that exist.
The police- public relationship is so complex because of the amount of cases of police
misconduct. It becomes difficult to feel protected by the justice system when the media makes it
appear as if police are AGAINST us. One thing that plays a major part in this is racial profiling.
There have been too many cases where innocent black men, women, and children, are killed due
to false assumptions made from police officers. It’s so bad to the point where many people of
color automatically feel uneasy when seeing a police officer, although they are fully aware they
Ramyaa Megginson
10/22/2020
3rd period
have done nothing wrong. Another thing that plays a major role in the complexity of policepublic relations is the failure of the justice system to incarcerate police officers that obviously
were in wrongdoing. Breonna Taylor, a young black woman that was shot in her own home,
while she was SLEEPING, due to a policer walking into the wrong house and assuming she had
broken in, was murdered over a year ago. Her killers are still free, living a normal life, while her
boyfriend was arrested in an attempt to protect him and his girlfriend. Although he was released,
the fact that the officer that killed an INNOCENT black woman has not faced jail time is
sickening, and puts a lot of fear into black people, and people of color’s hearts. The only way
that I could think of for police officers to better the relationship between the people is to simply
do better. Police officers behavior is often generalized because although there are good cops, it is
rarely seen that they stand up to “bad cops”.
Since the idea of government was introduced, the citizens, and the government have
always bumped heads. Both sides are to blame for this. The people for not wanting to abide by
certain laws, and the government, specifically the justice systems, failure to correctly enforce
laws and partake in their duty to protect and serve. This has placed a major fear factor in the
citizens if the government.