Author: Christian Hermonstyne (Page 1 of 3)

The research I did in Unit 2 was about police reform and ways we can go about it I wanted to choose police reform because I think it is a problem that needs addressing and I believe that it causes some problems in America, and I think people of all ages can understand the need of police reform specifically people in their late teen’s early twenties and the genre that I think that will best suit the audience is nonfiction.

Artist statement

The reason I chose police reform is because I believe it is saying that we the people can change and it is something I believe in, I believe in it because  when you see on Tv the system not working the way it should and government officials who made those laws not do anything to the people that they gave power to you get a bit frustrated and a bit sad about it, even though the solution to police reform may not be easy I believe it can be done now I am not saying get rid of all the cops but their needs to be some accountability done to make sure the people are protected because we are not protected as much as we should be and that is frustrating.

The reason I chose the genre I did is because it is happening in our daily lives more then we think we do not hear a lot of the misuse of power that is not recorded the only reason why people are just now waking up is because it is now being recorded it was not recorded before like the way it is now people all have camera’s and can record everything on their phones. The reason chose late teens to early twenties for the audience is because, I believe they can cause the most change if I were to choose people younger they wouldn’t understand or care if I chose older they would something to the effects of it’s always been like that you can’t change it I’ve seen a video like that on the internet where some girl is crying to her parents and the parents are saying “you can’t change anything it’s always been like that what are you going to do” and I think’s it’s that mindset that kept us stagnate and it the same place the last few years many people think just because we had a black president many things would change well newsflash many things stayed the same both political parties are not doing anything the democrats still take the minorities they have for granted and promise them all these things and never fulfill on them and the republicans don’t do anything either they always say support us but when you support them they have no plan either. the reason I chose to talk about this aspect is because I believe it is not talked about enough how the youth really are the future if we have misguided youth, we have no future really. The purpose of this piece is to inform people of the power they have and way we can all go about police reform.

If I change anything in my research, I will add more examples like for examples the way people went about change in the past and compare that to police reform like how Rosa parks sat down on the bus and how MLK marched and things like that to compare it to today and the protest today about how people want to “defund” the police and people want to change things.

Christian Hermonstyne

English 1101 -OL10

Unit 2 Project

Reflective Annotated Bibliography

Why do people have a negative connotation of police? It’s because of police brutality it’s that lack of trust which gives them and the people and if nobody does anything about the police, Police brutality will continue to happen my Reflective annotated bibliography is on Police reform.

Taub, Amanda. “Police the Public, or Protect It? For a U.S. in Crisis, Hard Lessons From Other Countries.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/world/police-brutality-protests.html.

The main points of the article I think is to give a history of how police brutality affects everyone, and it also talks about how American police have become more threatening and how some people just shrug it off as just being a few bad apples one of the other main points is that our police might be like an Authoritarian enclave. The most important parts of the Article are the section on How not to police it talks about Ireland and south Africa and what went wrong in the way they policed and why it was bad.

The article to me gives a full synopsis on not only the history of what police brutality is and what it has been in America but also in other places and how those compare to America and it also puts the fault on our government leaders and they are complicit and how they are now paying attention to the issue and the issues they let happen.

And a quote to sum up the problem that was used in the article was “A few bad apples spoil the barrel”

“The Change We Need: 5 Issues That Should Be Part of Efforts to Reform Policing in Local Communities.” Advancement Project, 3 Nov. 2017, advancementproject.org/the-change-we-need-5-issues-that-should-be-part-of-efforts-to-reform-policing-in-local-communities/.

In the Article it talks about issues that should be corrected in police reform the first one is Accountability and Transparency, the police should be held to a higher standard, and the transparency means that their needs to more public data on the police stat’s the second one is Excessive use of force which is basically saying improve the training on excessive use of force, the third one is discriminatory stop and frisk practices which is saying how people are being targeted over stop and frisk, the fourth one talks about Broken windows Policing, and it talks about the broken window theory, and the fifth and last one is inadequate training and it talks about how the training the police do is not good enough. The most important part of the article for me is accountability is part I think if we had better accountability everything else would be better like better training because there is a higher standard.

For the accountability and transparency if that doesn’t really happen then all of the other issues can’t be resolved because there would be no accountability and that means there would be nobody checking to see if anyone is using excessive force like in the military if you mess up and don’t obey orders you get court martial and that’s supposed to a scary experience and they go to war, police don’t really have to worry about that because if they mess up the get paid leave and just go to another police station and do the same thing that they were doing all over again, they are simply above the law and many officers know that it’s only now that the needle is beginning to move because people are a bit more aware with the use of camera phones.

Henderson, Howard. “Meaningful Police Reform Requires Accountability and Cultural Sensitivity.” Brookings, Brookings, 4 Sept. 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/meaningful-police-reform-requires-accountability-and-cultural-sensitivity/.

In the Article about Meaningful Police reform by Henderson Howard he talks about how policy makers have responded to police brutality and it gives a bit of stats on police.

my reaction to reading the Article is the same as before we still need accountability for police if we do not have accountability then nothing will change and if we have accountability then everything will fall into place.

Bazelon, Emily. “Police Reform Is Necessary. But How Do We Do It?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/13/magazine/police-reform.html.

The summary of is Article is asking questions about how we go about Police reform how we actually accomplish the goal to reform the police and it’s back and forth questioning talking about many things like police unions the use of deadly forces where should funding go and etc.

My reaction to the article is again the same answer if we have no responsibility and accountability then we have no foundation to build on.

In conclusion I believe in order for police reform to work we have to hold the Police accountable and to do that we need more transparency and not just letting people off the hook accountability is the foundation of police reform if we look at the Elijah McClain case the cops killed him laughed at him and then reenacted his death in a photo and they were all smiling with not a care in the world and sure they got fired but if all i have to worry about is getting fired if I kill someone then I don’t have a care in the world then I don’t need to do anything it’s also on government officials to make change as well and not just sit back and make a statement when something happens make a statement and make a change before something happens the reason why police have this power in the first place is because the government gave them this power in the first place they refuse to reclaim when they abuse it so when they do that the police thinks it’s ok to keep doing it and when they get caught and they still get off the hook they continue to do it, it’s like in school when you have the teacher, the bully and then you, the teacher is the government, the bully is the police and then you’re  so the bully is bullying you for the whole school year and you finally punch him and knock him out and when you do that the teacher gets mad at you for hurting them and you asked them for help but they never helped until someone else got hurt and that is I’m passionate about police reform.

Works cited

Bazelon, Emily. “Police Reform Is Necessary. But How Do We Do It?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/13/magazine/police-reform.html.

Henderson, Howard. “Meaningful Police Reform Requires Accountability and Cultural Sensitivity.” Brookings, Brookings, 4 Sept. 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/07/08/meaningful-police-reform-requires-accountability-and-cultural-sensitivity/.

“The Change We Need: 5 Issues That Should Be Part of Efforts to Reform Policing in Local Communities.” Advancement Project, 3 Nov. 2017, advancementproject.org/the-change-we-need-5-issues-that-should-be-part-of-efforts-to-reform-policing-in-local-communities/.

Taub, Amanda. “Police the Public, or Protect It? For a U.S. in Crisis, Hard Lessons From Other Countries.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/world/police-brutality-protests.html.