Recently there has been a plethora of cases of police officers using excessive force that result in either severe injury or death, and nothing has really changed. There have been two major changes such as bans on chokeholds and no knock warrants, but is that enough? With each day it seems more and more people are dying at the hands of our officers because they lack the ability to control their emotions or let their personal beliefs get in the way. Other than these two major laws being put in place nothing else has changed, instead of making changes all that is really done is a very weak and non convincing apology given out by the department and the officer being fired, getting put on leave or on administrative leave.

  However there are multiple ways to bring the number of cases of police brutality down. One way to do this is to train officers in different fields, for example they could have people specialize in mental health disabilities. This could play a major role in helping bring the number of victims of excessive force down, in that most officers aren’t really taught about how to help someone with a mental illness so having someone who can understand and help them better could have a major impact on helping to bring case numbers down.

   Another thing that could be done is to teach officers how to calm themselves down in a stressful situation, tactics such as taking deep breaths and trying to use more peaceful methods that don’t put a suspect or victim of a crime in stress. Instead of trying to deescalate a situation with guns drawn and shouting, trying to get a suspect calm and instead of yelling and screaming try to teach talking in calm, but firm tone.

  Police are here to protect us not to make us feel uncomfortable and unsafe, however all these people dying for unjust reasons has really made people question the intentions of police and whether they are really here to protect us or to enforce their beliefs. People should be asking for officers’ badge numbers and names to compliment them not to report them for excessive use of force on someone who has already been detained. The idea of the police has good intentions, but has been tainted by so many bad officers and unfair rules, trials and bias ideas. However, it is not too late to clear their name — with hard work and dedication the police can really live up to their motto “to protect and serve”.