Police Need To Be Held Accountable

Dear Illyanna,

First and foremost thank you so much for writing about such an important topic that unfortunately our country is failing to acknowledge properly. In the last few years so many reports about police abusing their power, especially when dealing with the African American community, and getting little to no punishment have come up. It’s big news for a few weeks but then dies back down when, like you mentioned, the federal court system deems it as a local issue that needs to be dealt with by their local justice system. What I wish you could have talked about a bit more is how when it becomes a local matter the police in question are usually at the mercy of their colleagues that they see on a daily basis. This is important because this could be linked to why these police that have committed murder and horrible acts of brutality are let off with either suspensions or firings but almost never convicted of the felony level crimes they have technically committed.

I don’t think that it is right or just that the police are being tried by their colleagues. This is favoritism at its finest. This does need to be a federal matter because these people have gone over the line of duty and committed heinous acts that they are not getting criminally charged for. Being able to walk away when you've committed murder of an innocent is beyond unacceptable. I also agree with you that this is an occurrence that happens predominantly to Black men but we cannot discount other races. Hispanics also have a large victim pool of police shootings and brutality. As much as I agree this is a race issue we need to present it wholly as a police abusing their power issue if we have any chance of getting any action taken from the federal justice system. Again thank you so much for talking about this. It’s so important.