No matter how you cut it, police brutality exists and it is wrong.
Yes, there are times where force is required, but more and more it looks like police feel like it’s always required.
There has developed some sort of mentality among some police officers where they get a power complex and if whoever they’re talking to doesn’t do what they say when they say it, all hell is going to break loose.
This isn’t how we treat people and it leads to bad situations. I mean really, imagine that you’re trying to talk someone down from a bridge who is about to jump. Do you ignore what they’re saying and rush to them immediately without giving them time to think? No, of course not. So why do they do it for other everyday situations?
Karen Garner, a 73-year-old woman was the recipient of serious manhandling by law enforcement after shoplifting $13 worth of goods. However, this is no ordinary case.
This is the kind of crap that I mean where we need some changed to our police force, we can’t have everything being an excuse to use force. For goodness sakes, this is a 73-year-old woman who was visibly confused, plus we’re talking about $13 worth of groceries…which were recovered before she left the store! They didn’t lose any money.
Police found the woman walking alongside the road picking flowers and headed home when one officer confronts her and throws her to the ground. The woman kept repeating, “I’m going home. I’m going home.” It was as clear as day that this lady may not be quite right.
Garner is only 80 pounds and suffers from dementia. Garner sustained a fractured elbow and a dislocated arm.
A civil rights lawsuit was filed by attorney Sarah Schielke nearly one year after the incident. A group of Colorado prosecutors opened a criminal investigation centered on the officers/police department after the video was released on social media.
To add insult to injury, an additional video was released showing the officers fist-bumping each other after their assault of Garner.
They ended up leaving this woman alone for two hours with no medical care even though she was bleeding and had her shoulder dislocated, and the officers involved just laughed and cut up about it. Just watch the way they talk about it below.
We’ve got to do better than this, people. We’ve got to stop some of this police violence while at the same time combating this unwillingness to cooperate with police when they’ve being asked to.