In the article, “Assessing the State of Police Reform” (2020) I learned police violence is almost the same as in the past. In support of their central idea, the author writes “The recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans have shown that the country’s pattern of police violence is as much a reality today as it was in the past.” This supports the central idea because it states that the present and the past has similar patterns or amount of police violence. The author also writes “Moreover, the new law forbids officers from using deadly force unless they face an imminent threat, and it prohibits deadly physical force to apprehend a person suspected only of a minor or nonviolent offense.” This supports their central idea because it shows that police officers use violence in order to control civilians in slight offense to the law. A final piece of evidence that supports their central idea is when the author writes “Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) implemented by executive order a set of reforms that bans chokeholds, mandates body and dashboard cameras,.” This supports the central idea because now that we are in a new age we can stop police violence using these reforms to make them stop using chokeholds and requiring them to use body cameras to hold them accountable so that we change the old pattern.
Although the central idea of the text is that police violence is high and is going to lower through police reform it also states that it is going to hurt our country. I thought this was interesting because it didn’t occur to me how lowering the police budget would affect schools. Some schools have no police presence because of the new budgets.
As I continue to read about police reforms, one question I still have is how the police feel about the new reforms.
