Understanding Police Brutality Sociological Perspe
- Sociology
- 7 pages
- Shared June 2025
Police brutality—excessive or unjust force by law enforcement—violates human rights and undermines public trust. From a structural functionalist view, it disrupts the police's role in maintaining order, safety, and social stability.
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Police Brutality and Its Three Sociological Perspectives Structural Functionalism Application Various police human rights violations have been referred to as "police brutality 1 at times. This could involve unjustified executions, torture, or the indiscriminate deployment of riot control measures during protests. The worst-case scenario is the denial of a person's right to life due to the improper use of force by law enforcement. It may also be deemed torture or another type of abuse if the police are using excessive or unwanted force The use of unlawful force by law enforcement can affect the rights to liberty, security, and equal protection under the law. It is the police's responsibility to support peaceful protests, and not the other way around, in terms of their overall objective, which is to serve, calm, and protect society. They are accountable for preserving stability and order. We can guarantee long-term peace and development by preventing, detecting, and investigating crime, protecting persons and property, and maintaining public order and safety. I'll use instances from Missouri, our state, to illustrate how certain organizations combat police brutality nationwide. An extension of Hands Up United, The Books & Breakfast strives to provide a venue that encourages conversation about social justice and the improvement of education in African-American communities. Dedicated to reducing injustice, Hands Up United promotes more political and economic education for people of color. Local NAACP Chapters are a wonderful source for staying up to date on current affairs and learning how to continue taking part in the fight to eradicate the scourge of police brutality that terrorizes the Black community, to provide one national example. Another national example is Black Youth Project 100, whose primary objectives are to improve leadership development, direct action organizing and education in order to secure justice and freedom for all Black people, ’You've been outraged. You've been saddened. You've been frustrated. Now get involved" (Davis, 2020)
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Police violence causes emotional trauma unlike that brought on by other sorts of violence, which has disastrous results for the populations most affected. According to the survey, Black, Latino, Indigenous, and sexual minority communities are more likely to have specific mental health conditions and are also at a higher risk of dying at the hands of police. What distinguishes police brutality in America from most other forms of violence is the history of state-enforced practices that permitted cruel, unusual, and inhumane punishment of those thought to be from so-called "dangerous classes," particularly Blacks. The use of excessive and fatal force against members of these communities was previously permitted under laws that discriminated against people of color and LGBT people, such as sodomy and Jim Crow laws. Conflict Theory Application Conflict theorists think that use of force or the prospect of use of force is the primary force holding unequal society together. The gap between social classes and the volume of violent crime in a quickly developing area are two elements linked to police brutality. (D. Jacobs and D. Britt). The killing of George Floyd is a part of a pattern of brutality and misbehavior on the part of the police that all too frequently results in homicide. Sociologists look into the relationships between inequality, class, race, and the issue of police brutality. Numerous investigations on police interactions with residents have shown that there are regional tendencies in how police behave. Poorer communities are more likely than ■ wealthier ones to deploy punitive policing. "Michael Brown's death, along with the social unrest following the recent killings of Blacks at the hands of the police, have driven issues of race, justice, and policing to the forefront of the American conscience." (Gabbing et al, 2019). Even though academics have explored a range of ideas to account for Blacks' perceptions of and interactions with the police, there are still substantial gaps in our understanding of race, gender, and policing. First, there has been a greater focus on how race, class gender, and criminality intersect. Numerous studies on the plight of Black men and how
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the police treat them have demonstrated that minority children who reside in underserved metropolitan areas are vulnerable to aggressive policing techniques. Although Black men report more dissatisfaction with the discriminatory treatment by police than Whites and minority females, it is assumed that young Black men are the main targets of unfavorable police contacts. Black women also have negative experiences with the police and are not immune from harmful police encounters. Black women's experiences may negatively affect how they respond to unjustified police stops. Despite the fact that research indicates that impoverished communities of color are disproportionately subject to stops and searches, disrespectful acts, and the use of excessive force, less is known about how gender affects reactions to contacts ■ with the police that are unwelcome. Police contacts with the public are ecologically structured, according to study, because they vary between middle-class and affluent neighborhoods and poor regions, aggressive enforcement methods are disproportionately used against impoverished Black people in poor neighborhoods. (Cobbinaetal., 2019) Influences on the public's perception of African Americans and the police include victimization incidents. According to research (Hanson et al., 2010), victims of crime and victims of citizens being systematically used as tools of repression, abuse, and/or harassment. Still considering the pcrwer relations that lead to police brutality. All the stories I've read have one thing in common: one group always exerts pressure on the other (either physically or psychologically, using techniques like inverted psychology). In this particular instance, the police frequently have an impact on people of various racial, gender, and socioeconomic backgrounds. A power dynamic need not always be bad or unfavorable. Hoover, it can be used to demonstrate the superiority of some groups over others, and the weaker ones are powerless to overcome the stronger ones. This indicates that there is an imbalance of power, demonstrating that the police have power over the general public. People who have had a negative experience with the police may become less trusting of other institutions. This decreased willingness to seek out mental health services and other types
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