Cover Letter

Payton Vaughn
Humanities
11/13/19

When it comes to Police brutality and thus racism I have an interesting but also a
somewhat agreeable standing point. Police try to do their jobs to the best of their ability but
their training causes them to make harsh and rash decisions from time to time. I personally
believe that this is ok, but not always. Police are taught to take care of #1 (themselves). Now
this can be very good for them, but in the case of most police on black violence that’s what gets
them. Being scared or fearful of someone or something can drive your mind to make bad
decisions as your amygdala is what takes over your body. Kirsten Weir states, “when an
individual encounters a potential threat, the body engages in a series of automatic physiological
processes in response to the threat. During a physiological stress response, the sympathetic
nervous system (SNS) is activated, and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS),
responsible for calming and stabilizing the body, is withdrawn.” When I first read this part in the
article it opened my eyes to some parts and reasons why police and many others act like they
do when under constant stress.
My main question exploded to the forefront of my mind, Why are police seemingly
always under constant stress/pressure/fear? I almost instantly knew the answer, the media,
dehumanization, and more. Many media platforms takes these shootings and just blame the
officer, sometimes disregarding the true information of the encounter. This builds upon itself and
just makes people more and more against police. Now I personally am not advocating for some
of these actual police to be set free of their crimes. There are some police that are actually
racist and need to be in jail for what they have done to people of our community. But that
doesn’t mean we should put everyone under that bus too, some people are actually there to
protect and serve.
In an interview with an anonymous officer he stated “American police officers are among
the best-trained in the world, but what they’re trained to do is part of the problem.” In the
beginning of this Cover letter I believe I hit this note, but I would like to expand it further. Police
In training are told to look out for #1, and then further normal procedures. These include:
Firearm training, Laws and regulations of their state, use of force, physical, mental, and a whole
lot more. Now one thing that they are not trained well on is ethics and morality for others. They
are taught this for themselves and to look out for themselves, but what about whom their dealing
with? Recently some states have begun to incorporate these drills into training and re-training
some officers. They even held a study about this and officers were more likely to shoot a black
man with a harmless object than an white dude with a harmful object. With further training they
are able to narrow that number down, but not to 0.
Now where does my philosophy fit into this? I am a firm believer in choice, most notably
known as a libertarian. But I am also heavily authoritarian, Which also means I was a very big
advocate for Police. Was is the key word there, because when I did more and more research I
saw the wrongdoings, the violence, the unneeded deaths. I was not happy that people in
positions of power are allowed to do these things, and as much as I loved them for doing their
job and protecting them I believe most parts of the government, such as police and state patrol
have overstepped their boundaries and by a good margin. I do think we still need police and
patrol, they just need to be set right by what they can and cannot do to someone. We need
protection that is a fair assessment, and Police need to be the ones who do it but we would
need a new curriculum and classes and assessments for them to take to pass. Regulation, let's
pull the reins back on the government, and thus all of its sticky fingers.
Weir, Kirsten. “Policing in Black and White .” Monitor on Psychology, American
Psychological Association, 2016, www.apa.org/monitor/2016/12/cover-policing.