“It’s bad!”, said eleventh grader Shameelah Abdullah. In Abdullah’s experience as a Black South student, she hasn’t had any altercations with the police. However, her cousin has, “My cousin got into a thing with the police officer because he was riding the bus and the police officer told him to get off the bus for no reason, so they got into an altercation and my cousin got arrested.” Said Abdullah, recalling what her family member told her

As a young woman growing up in a Black majority neighborhood I see and hear of abuse by police officers first-hand. My grandfather, Officer Sanders, is a police officer for the Boston Police Department. He is different from a lot of other officers in his department: he has never shot anyone, he works with the youth in Boston, and he is looked upon as a model for the system. But not everyone is like him. He works with stereotypical “bad cops” who don’t abide by the rules and who many people hate. He often steps in and saves the victim. He once saved a teenager from getting shot by one if his partners for stealing. “We aren’t all bad. I can only speak for myself though. We just need to change the system to make a better society,” said Sanders.

Dating back to the Civil Rights era involving hanging, hosing down, tear gassing, and dog bites, all the way up to the present cases of murdered and beaten black youth there is this critical need for America to stop just listening and watching but to actually dig deep into the reality of police brutality. The fact is that the race of the person is still the deciding factor of how that person is treated in the hands of authority. An article from NewsOne titled “Killers Behind The Badge” stated “Black men in the United States of America are murdered, beaten, and violated by officers of the law sworn to ‘protect and serve’ them.” Men like Timothy Thomas, Lorenzo Collins, Jeffrey Irons, and Roger Owensby were lynched for the color of their skin. Other teenagers like Kendrec McDade, Ramarley Graham, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown who were shot to death or killed by police out of the hatred of blacks.

Myles Bilbro, a mixed race junior here at South, has had an altercation with the police recently. “I was outside with a couple of my friends during this summer and the police came up and approached us while we were standing by my friend’s basketball court. They came out of four police cars with weapons drawn – tasers drawn – and pointed them at us and told us to freeze and put our hands behind our backs and they came up to us and patted us down.”

Now, I have not personally had and altercations with the police but this seems kind of crazy.  Myles is 16 years old and was playing basketball with some friends, what’s suspicious about that?  In my eyes the police should have handled that completely differently from how they did. They could have talked to them without the weapons.

Some people have pointed out that police brutality is a major problem and that there needs to be a change in the system, but others still think that it’s the people who should change.

“I feel like, police are getting out of hand and doing whatever they feel like because they think they have the power, and nobody’s stopping it [because] police can do what they want, and get away with it.” Junior Nate Mamo said. “I’ve seen many stories, videos, and articles about people that are innocent and have gotten beaten to death or suffocated to death. I feel really bad about the situation… there should be an end to it, but nobody is stepping up and making a change,” A lot of people feel the same way, and that’s good. They should be saying something and getting people to change the system. I know that there are activists out there, and because of them minorities have the rights that they have today but these activists need help. They need back up, and it all starts with us, the people.

On the other hand, sophomore Gunner Flynn thinks a little different. He told me,  “I think it’s good to be strict with people but at the same time I think police can get out of hand with their rules…if I could I’d just change things because they have good rules just some are too harsh.” . I don’t think police officers act based only off their rules I think they act based off of instinct. At times they take it to the extreme. People don’t wrongfully get killed because the officer was following his or hers rules,  they get killed because of instinct.

Officer’s instincts can come from race, gender or sexuality. Mohamed Omar,  a Somali sophomore, said, “Race shouldn’t be a thing that they look at first, but it’s just human instinct I guess”.

Police do look at race as a factor in how a person will be treated. “If you’re African-American you’re watched over. If there’s a situation they treat you way harsher than they would with a Caucasian person. Or I feel like, if you’re Somali you’re definitely treated worse than a Caucasian person. In general if you have any color to you, rather that be African-American, Somali, Spanish, Native, Asian,  you’re treated a lot worse than Caucasians.”, said Abdullah after being asked if there is any difference in police treatment upon races.

After all of this we need to stick together and fight for a change in the system. Police officers need to be held accountable for their is treatments of innocent people. And we are the only ones who can put an end to Police Brutality.