cap proposal

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Megan Ackers
Alex Ngo
Mary Ibanez

Keep Oakland Safe

oakland police brutality

The problem we want to address is Oakland police brutality. Police brutality is when police use excessive force when dealing with citizens. Over the past twenty-two years there has been $74 million used to settle civil rights violation caused by police brutality related cases.

Police Brutality effects the victim, police, police departments, and community. True enough police have their protocols to go by, but they aren't treating citizens like human beings. Police officers are given a great deal of latitude in performing their duties. Because they are expected to protect the public and confront potentially threatening individuals, they can legally use physical, and even deadly force under certain circumstances. However, an officer who uses force when it is not called for, or who uses more force than is necessary to perform his or her job, may cross the line into police brutality. The effects of police brutality are physical and psychological. Citizens believe that police are unfaithful to their mission and distrust them, questioning their safety.

The Oakland Police Department’s mission is to provide an environment where residents can live, work , play, and thrive free from crime and the fear of crime. A police officer who commits an illegal assault is as culpable and liable for their actions as any civilian who commits assault. In fact, a law enforcement officer who willingly assaults another person in the line of duty can be held responsible for their actions, for in their role as a sworn peace officer they ought to know better.

We want to work on this problem because there are too many people getting hurt by police. We want to reduce the number of lawsuits being filed against the police department because this is costing taxpayers more money. This is important because we could be avoiding this problem altogether if police were not so cruel to some people. Our goal is to reduce the amount of police brutality cases in Oakland. We would like to achieve our goal by asking the police department to purchase go-pros in order to constantly monitor police activity while they are on duty. With these go-pros, police would be monitored the the nearly 24/7, which would provide evidence if there were to be a lawsuit filed. We would talk to police officers and see how they would feel about being constantly monitored and if they have a problem with that.

The first few things we would do are we would need to know how many lawsuits have been made during the past year, who is paying for the lawsuits, and how much money has been spent on lawsuits. In the document “National Criminal Justice Reference Service” it states the cause of police brutality are job-related stress, racism, aggressive prosecution, elitist police attitude towards civilians, and the need for self-defence. We will find the answers to our questions from John L. Burris ( a lawyer that has served in many police brutality cases) and Sean Whent ( Head of the Oakland Police Department).We would also like to call and email John L. Burris to schedule a meeting to find out what his beliefs are about police brutality and how we are able to reduce the amount of lawsuits caused by police brutality. In this meeting, we will bring up the idea of purchasing gopros. We want to take this action to not just have the internets knowledge about police brutality but actual evidence from someone who has dealt with cases like this and telling us information that we might not find on the internet. Also, we will be talking to Sean Whent to see the police side of the story by asking him why they do it and what are causes of police brutality.
The resources we have reviewed are:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/police-brutality.html
http://www.rlgfirm.com/policeassault.html

http://lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/crime/shocking-findings-about-police-conduct-in-oakland/
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/top-1000-cases-of-police-brutality-in-the-united-states/
http://www.insiderexclusive.com/justice-in-america/police-brutality-the-torry-smith-story
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/08/deadly_secrets_how_california_law_has_shielded_oakland_police_violence.html
http://oaklandpolicebeat.com/2014/04/oakland-spent-74-million-settling-417-police-brutality-lawsuits/
http://lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/crime/shocking-findings-about-police-conduct-in-oakland/
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/10/26/brutal-police-treatment-of-occupy-oakland-protesters-draws-response

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