Police Brutality

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If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.'

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

Back when I was studying in high school, in the holidays before my final year, I was asked to read and analyse George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in order to be prepared for analyses of it in class when school began again. 

I looked at the cover - it was bleak, dark, and hard a chair on it. It made me feel weary and claustrophobic just looking at the cover, and I felt no desire to open the book and acknowledge its content. However, having forced myself to, I managed to get through it - barely. I simply could not connect to its storyline. I was politically passive, and had no opinions of my own because in my naivety, I was not affected by any of the problems that arose in the storyline. Thus, I completely disregarded it from my state of mind.

Until I graduated. When I graduated, the portals to the real world opened to me and I was exposed to the disgusting side of humanity, the side where authoritative figures have agency over other humans who sit below the government, governed by laws made up by other humans who sought to dictate the actions of others. I began to form my own opinions. I saw cases of maltreatment and began to feel a sense of angst that has, to this day, been burning bright. 

And now I realise that Orwell was right. All of the statements he implied in his novel are unfolding right before our very eyes. It is we who are dehumanising ourselves; most particularly, it is the figures of authority who are dehumanising others. The image below shows an officer, Edward Krawetz, kicking a handcuffed drunk woman in the head because she did not wish for him to penetrate her purse with his authoritative fingers. She attempted to protest by lifting her leg, failing to kick him, and so he retaliated by kicking her head so hard it smacked onto the kerb.

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Police brutality is rising. It is rising now more than ever, and it has evolved into something racially prejudiced. Numerous African-American males have been killed this year by members of the police force: Eric Garner, a sufferer of asthma was held in a chokehold position until he died because he intervened on a fight and stopped it, however allegedly he was selling untaxed cigarettes - whilst on the floor in the chokehold position, he repeatedly gasped, "I can't breathe! I can't breath!" and was ignored; John Crawford, shot dead inside a Walmart store whilst waving a BB gun in the air; Ezell Ford, lying on the ground, complying to officers' directions when they shot him in the back - dead; Dante Parker, tased to death because of being a suspect; Michael Brown, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Frank Jude, Johnathan Ferrell, Kathryn Johnston, Kendrec McDade, Timothy Standsbury Jr., Kenneth Chamberlain, Timothy Thomas, Robert Davis, Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, and many more.

'White officers kill a Black person, on average, 96 times per year.' I now regret having hated Nineteen Eighty-Four, for if I had not, I think I would have been in the law field, giving a voice to the voiceless, giving a chance to those who are without. 

References:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/3-unarmed-black-african-american-men-killed-police

http://northdallasgazette.com/2014/08/20/2-black-men-per-week-are-killed-by-a-cop-in-america/