Notebook Entry 4 Prompt 3b. English 2010 Feb.

14, 2014 Notebook Prompt

3b. Tell someone about your writing project. Or: imagine telling someone about your writing project. What are the most important parts of it? What order would you tell it in? What parts of your writing project would you leave out in this telling? Why?

I was talking to my little brother about my research. I began by telling him about some of the more extreme examples of police misconduct that I found. I need to do this, to keep his attention. I start by telling him about the many disturbing cases of the people, and animals, who have been killed by police during drug raids. On some occasions, during raids on the incorrect houses, and the victims were completely innocent. I then told him about some of the other types of police misconduct, such as bribes and extortion. This then lead to talking about my profile assignment, which is about Frank Serpico, a police officer that was the first to expose police corruption in New York City. The conversation then came one thing that I feel is one of the most important aspects of my topic. Which is, as to how much of these types of behavior that police get away with, and how when they are caught they receive reduced sentences, or do not face any consequences at all. That was about the extent of my little brothers attention span, so that is where the conversation ended. However, if he would have continued listening, I probably would not have mentioned some of the cases that I feel would help to justify the

police because if I am going to make my brother interested, I would have to demonize the police somewhat. Somethings I would not tell him to keep his attention would be such cases where the suspect was actually putting other people in danger, resisting arrest, and may have deserved a good whoopin, as some people do to learn their lesson but the cops obviously go out of line. For example, the Rodney King case. He tan from the police, and put people in danger. He did not need to get beaten as badly as he did, after he was under control by the arresting officers, but he was being dumb and he did need to go to jail and learn his lesson.