Police Brutality: Why We Should Stop It in America

May 25th of this year George Floyd walked into a convenience store and attempted to pay with a counterfeit bill, these are the events that happened next in chronological order. Police were called onto the scene and 17 minutes later he was pinned under three officers, growing unconscious. Officers took advantage of their power and used an unnecessary use of force by kneeling on his neck for 8 straight minutes while he cried out “I can’t breathe!”. The ignoble use of force was needless because George was already in restraints and in no way a threat to the officer’s safety. George was taken to the hospital and later died of asphyxiation. The definition of asphyxiate is to kill (someone) by depriving them of air. George Floyd was not the first case of police brutality and it surely was not the last. After his death was dissected and spread all over the news, it lit a fire in people's hearts, a levee had broken, and waves of protesters flooded every city throughout America. People hold an indictment over the officers heads and will not back down until they believe justice is served. I want police brutality to come to an end for the innocent lives that are being taken, for the families that are terrified for their safety, and to fortify the county by uniting it as one.

June 2nd, near the brink of the plague we call Covid-19, I attended a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Houston over the death of George Floyd. I watched the video of his death play on the news and became engulfed in a state of shock. It felt like the edifice of America was crumbling down. Completely devoid of unity. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach deep down that I couldn’t shake. Anger was the next thing that I felt but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then late in the night on june 1st, I saw a post made by the family of George about a protest downtown in Discovery Green park. I shared it with my friends because activism was shaking throughout my whole body. We made the decision out of passion to join the protest that was in less than 9 hours. I woke up way too early for my own good, packed and left without breathing a word to my mom. I knew she would have some thoughts about my last minute idea and I didn’t want anything stopping the fighter brewing inside of me. As we pulled up I began to see vast amounts of people oscillating through the streets. “George Floyd!” bounced off the buildings and rang in my ears as 70,000 people screamed his name. It was beautiful to hear and relieving to know that all these people felt the same emotions I had. In that swarm of people I saw unity, strangers helping each other in every way possible whether it was helping one another park and find their way around, or going on expenditures for wagons filled with water and wallowing around providing it to anyone who needed hydration, and every single person was wearing a mask out of respect for each other's safety. As the protest died down, I was navigating through the crowds and stumbled upon these women. I watched them cry, and shout with their perforated hearts, “Stop killing our sons!, Stop killing our sons!”. I was aghast after seeing this happen right in front of me. I hate that they were terrified for their family’s safety and that it is something they are forced to worry about every second of their lives, even when they are just trying to purchase items from a convenience store. I think about those women a lot and the resilience they live with. Watching them sob into each other's arms was very eye-opening, and a helpful way at understanding only the mote of the surface the black community feels in those hard times.

The movement is not entirely based around George Floyd, it is so much more than that. Did you know 1 in 1000 black men are expected to be killed by a police officer every year? When I read that statistic for the first time it shocked me. Now after I have looked into it and accessed the situation further it makes sense with the current police budget being $115 Billion dollars. A lot of police agencies use that money to hoard military weapons. Police do not need those types of weapons to get their jobs done so there's no reason why they should spend millions of dollars a year on them. 10.3 million arrests are made yearly and only 5 percent are for more serious and violent crimes, which means on the daily police officers are dealing with minor incidents that do not need to escalate into violence, that further proves the point that there is not a clear reason in why they spend their budget on serious deadly weapons. A chant that often sufficed the rally was “Defund the Police”. As powerful as that was at the time I didn't really grasp what “defund the police” actually meant. People do not want to get rid of the police, they simply want to take the billion dollar funds that police are giving and redistribute them to other social services, for example, education, housing, employment, and mental health care, which would benefit the public more by giving them additional opportunities and help keep families safer by taking the deadly weapons away.

I want police brutality to end and defund the police for the sake of America. We are divided more than ever right now and crave unity as a nation. Families deserve to live in peace, and mothers should not live in fear. As well as innocent lives should not be taken by the ones they are supposed to trust the most to keep them safe.