All to often, we hear the repetitive story regarding police brutality. While the concept of protecting and serving should be their focus, we find that, often times, this is not so. Instead, cases of young adults being gunned down, beat, and raped are the focus. Where did our law enforcement fail?  In this observational article, I will be discussing a few issues that I believe exists within the departments.

The first, and probably, the biggest problem is the military mindset. More and more, we are seeing our law enforcement transition from a mere badge to a group with armored trucks. Recently, the police have been given dozens of these military surplus vehicles, guns, and ammunition; of course, this is what we see. What we don’t see, is their military style training.

You take a group of power hungry drones, train them in various forms of weaponry, combat, etc., and put them on the streets, what will happen? The results are a 19 year old boy gets shot nearlyca hundred times, although he had no weapon. Another result is a woman anally raped on the hood of a squad car; A lovely picture begins to surface.

Before I began journalism, I supported the police. But hey, I thought they were looking out for us, than I woke up. The other problem I see, goes down to lack of mental exams. When a person is going to be trained in deadly force, weapons, and so on, they SHOULD be observed for mental stability. However, when we look at their actions upon innocent civilians, clearly this is not being done.

Mental exam are not only important, they are critical! You take a person who is violent, give him a badge, give him a gun, what is the end result? Simple: an innocent person dies. Now, we have already seen this exact situation in the news. Ferguson, for example, was a prime example. Still, the biggest problem is accountability…or lack thereof.

This is another serious problem. When it comes to internal investigations, it seems obvious that they will find the cops actions justified. The problem with this is in most cases, the actions were above what was justified and needed. One example, in my opinion, is the death of a six year old boy. Why did this happen? It happened because police blindly opened fire into a vehicle during a pursuit.

Now, I can already hear the defense for these actions. The car should have stopped being among them. With that said, consider this. Police are supposed to be trained to resolve an issue with tjecleast amount of force possible. This means only shooting their weapon as a last resort. Now, there are other problems, these are just a few. Until these are resolved, the problems will only grow. Sadly, this may cost more lives.