Violations Of Americans

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Violations Of Americans’ Civil Essay, Research Paper Violations of Americans’ Civil Rights By Law Enforcement The Constitution of the United States regulates our everyday lives as American citizens. Because of the Constitution, everyone has legal rights “in Order to form a more perfect Union , establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity (The Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America).” Specifically, what we as Americans deal with everyday are the first ten Amendments of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. These Amendments guarantee our peoples’ safety against our own American government. However, these guarantees

are not absolute as the powers given to us by the Bill of Rights are given to interpretation by the judicial system. These interpretations are made by humans and therefore have led to mistakes that violate our civil rights, including police brutality and unreasonable searches and seizures. Violations of the American peoples’ civil rights happen everyday, typically when dealing with law enforcement. Everyday millions of law enforcement officers patrol our streets trying to protect us. With this responsibility comes the need to make split second decisions. This often means that regular, average, everyday, working class men and women are left to interpret the Constitution in a moments notice. A lot of times this leads to misjudgements and bad decisions on the part of the officer.

Sometimes this is accidental, yet numerous other times the police officer is reacting due to some sort of prejudice or stereotype. “Ask civil rights groups or minority residents in many of the nation’s cities, and they’ll say the cops are out of control; that police routinely use excessive force against blacks and Hispanics. “What you get is Jim Crow justice,”says Ira Glasser, head of the American Civil Liberties Union. (Cannon 35)” This has caused “even good kids to see police as the enemy. They shun cops (Lacayo 65).” These cops turn on the people that they are supposed to protect because “hassled cops often retreat into a bipolar outlook: us vs. them (Lacayo 65).” This in turn, is one cause of police brutality that violates a citizen’s rights,

specifically, the Amendments dealing with the judicial process, Amendments IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and XIV. One of the most notorious examples of a violation against a person’s civil rights is the Rodney King story. On March 3, 1991 King led the LAPD in a chase at speeds over a hundred miles an hour. After he was caught, the cops “used nightsticks like baseball bats, and the Los Angeles cops beat him relentlessly as he lay on the ground feebly trying to crawl away, he was kicked or clubbed 30 times. (Buchanan 60)” It was so horrible that “the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) compares the LAPD to the Crips and the Bloods: “A man was jumped and beaten Sunday night beaten by a gang not unlike many of the other gangs which terrorize our city. This gang has colors,

has a tough-talking leader, carries guns and clubs and has the force of the law on its side. (Buchanan 60)” This terrible scene would have probably been swept quietly under the rug if it had not been captured on videotape by a passing photographer. The tape was replayed repeatedly on national television. This evidence was taken to court where King won $3.8 million in damages … from the City of Los Angeles. (People Weekly 232)” Luckily, Rodney King had videotaped evidence to prove his case. However in the thousands of random traffic stops everyday, minorities and teenagers are repeatedly violated. In fact, it’s alarming how many incidences occur where minorities and teens are pulled over for speeding and their cars get searched for no reason. Our own United States Supreme