There is an abundance of rhetorical situations in society today. One very relevant situation is police brutality. Police brutality is when a cop or police man uses an extra amount of unnecessary force against someone. This usually leads to serious injuries and death. This issue appears a lot between cops and young African American males. Cops killing young unarmed African American males have been all over American news and social media recently with a lot of coverage but very little change. Some articles that speak on this issue are, “Vox Sentences: Shot by a cop in his own apartment,” by Jennie Neufeld, “What videos can’t show: Black lives & police violence,” by Gary Gutting, “Police killings, brutality damaging mental health of black community,” by Lisa Thurau, and “A protracted war for order: Police violence in the twentieth century United States,” by David Ponton.

The article “Vox Sentences: Shot by a cop in his own apartment,” by Jennie Neufeld, describes the case of Botham Jean, an African American male, who was shot by Dallas police officer Amber Guyger in his own home. The police officer mistook the apartment for her own and shot Jean. The genre of this article is a news report obtained by Vox and was written on September 11,2018. The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the incident that occurred. This is because the article doesn’t show any real opinion at all on the case. It only states facts and details about what happened and the charges she will face. The audience of this article are young people in American. This is because majority of Vox’s readers are young people. Also, the audience could be the African American community in Dallas because of how the case was handled. The text states, “The ways the Texas Rangers, the state’s head law enforcement agency, have handled the case so far have sparked concerns about how Guyger will be treated and prosecuted. It took a “spirited debate” with Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson for the Rangers to arrest Guyger, who was then allowed to turn herself in at a rural jail far from Dallas.” This shows that the African American community had to intervene into the case which would lead to a debate that would get her arrested. This group played a big part of how the case ended which is why they are the audience, and it shows the young audience a way to make change. The author’s stance is neutral. She doesn’t give any personal opinion on the topic and uses information gathered from CNN, CBS Dallas, and HuffPost. Everything stated in the text strictly states the events that occurred during this case. Overall, showing no stance on the matter of police brutality.

Additionally, the article, “What videos can’t show: Black lives & police violence,” by Gary Gutting, speaks about how videos of police violence shapes the way we view the police in a negative way. He states, “The videos are used to support two quite different claims: that police officers use unnecessary violence, and that this unnecessary violence shows racial bias against minorities, especially blacks.” He also says how these videos don’t show objective facts for these claims. He states, “The videos are important, but reactions to them, pro and con, have very often expressed ideological commitments and emotions rather than objective assessments of the facts.” This article is a Magazine article written on November 11, 2016. The purpose of this article is to argue that videos of police violence shouldn’t be used as the main evidence for police racial biased against minorities and police officers use unnecessary violence. Instead facts and statistics should be used instead. This is shown when the author states, “Supporting the claim of bias requires not only evidence that blacks were killed unjustly but also evidence that blacks were killed at a rate higher than their percentage of the total population. We can’t determine a higher rate of unjust killings by looking at a small sample of videos. We need statistical evidence about the ratio of unjust killings overall.” The audience of this article are the young people on social media who posts videos of police hurting young unarmed African American males, and the people whose beliefs are being influenced by those videos. This is because he says that the only way to prove claims of police brutality and to make changes is by getting cold hard evidence with number and statistics rather than videos which spreads incorrect ideas of police brutality. Also, he uses the word “we” a lot when referring to people making arguments. For example, “But the claim that the galvanizing examples of unjustified police violence caught on camera are evidence of racial bias is incorrect. This issue is still unresolved, and our efforts to settle it through fruitless frame-by-frame analyses of videos does nothing but exacerbate our disagreements, which quickly degenerate into exchanges of epithets.” The authors stance on police brutality is that its real however it isn’t what everyone thinks it is. He belives it doesn’t have to do with racism but it occurs too much and needs end by creating change.

Thirdly, the article, “Police killings, brutality damaging mental health of black community,” by Lisa Thurau, describes recent events of a police officers killing a young African American male, and a study by Boston University’s School of Health and the University of Pennsylvania which found that unarmed African Americans being killed by cops causes more incidents of depression and other mental health issues among African Americans. The genre of this text is a newspaper feature story by USA Today and was written September 14, 2018. It is a newspaper feature story because it contains a lot of opinion on police brutality while also giving facts on the study of how it affects mental health.  The purpose of this article is to inform people about the study of how the mental health of young African Americans are being negatively affected by police brutality and ways to create change. The audience of this article law enforcement officials because they are the ones that can change this effect on young African Americans. The article states, “Using a public health perspective would mean more than the prosecution of a single police officer. These deaths indict an entire system of recruiting, hiring, training and evaluating police officers. It would mean that no police officer should leave the academy without training on the effects of trauma, violence and poverty on behaviors — including responses to law enforcement. And all officers should leave the academy understanding how biases — implicit and explicit — directly affect actions, particularly when under stress.” This shows a step that law enforcement officials can take in order to prevent police violence. The author’s stance on the subject of police brutality is that it is a problem in our society that leads to more problems and needs to be destroyed by the source.

Also, the article, “A protracted war for order: Police violence in the twentieth century United States,” by David Ponton, speaks about the form function and consequence of police violence. The genre of this text is a Scholarly article written in June 2018. This is a scholarly article because it contains the article refers to studies and books written by countless other historians. The purpose of this article is to inform people about police brutality and the history of it in America. He gives many examples in history of protests, the way people react to this, and agave examples of how it worked in the past. For example, he states, “Police violence against Black New Orleanians compelled Black organizing that “transcended class divisions,” since race, not class, operated as the master status that determined a person’s vulnerability to police brutality.” Also in the text he give a reason for police violence. He states, “elision of concerns about whether police violence has been motivated by class or race—the two are co‐constitutive, after all– and whether ethnic antagonisms are rooted in class or not, racial biases find lives of their own beyond the moral panics that may birth them.” This shows that police violence is caused by racism. The audience are the young people of modern American society, so they can get an understanding of police brutality in the past and to know how to approach and change so our future. The author’s stance on police brutality is that it is real and that is has been occurring in the United States of America for generations.

Lastly, all of these articles are similar because they all show that police brutality exists and is a problem in modern American society. The articles, “Vox Sentences: Shot by a cop in his own apartment,” and “Police killings, brutality damaging mental health of black community” talk about the case of Botham Jean, but the first article goes in depth on the case and the second article focuses in the effects of mental health caused by cases like these. Additionally, the article, “What videos can’t show: Black lives & police violence,” shows that statistical evidence is needed to help make changes in order to prevent incidents, like the ones in the previous articles, from occurring. Finally, the article, “A protracted war for order: Police violence in the twentieth century United States,” gives historical evidence as to why these events occurred and the motive behind police violence.  The main audience of these articles are young people in American society because they are the ones who can create change in order to stop police violence.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Gutting, Gary. “What videos can’t show: Black lives & police violence.” Commonweal, 11 Nov.

2016, p. 12+. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A469650564/OVIC?u=cuny_ccny&sid=OVIC&xid=9de63296. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018.

 

Neufeld, Jennie. “Vox Sentences: Shot by a Cop in His Own Apartment.” Vox, Vox, 12 Sept.

2018, www.vox.com/vox-sentences/2018/9/11/17848030/vox-sentences-botham-jean-dallas-shooting.

 

Ponton, David. “A protracted war for order: Police violence in the twentieth century United

States.” History Compass, vol. 16, no. 6, 2018, p. n/a+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541335199/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=396e025f. Accessed 9 Oct. 2018.

 

Thurau, Lisa H., and Johanna Wald. “Police Killings, Brutality Damaging Mental Health of

Black Community.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 15 Sept. 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/2018/09/14/police-brutality-damaging-black-communitys-mental-health/1218566002/.