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“1,000 outraged Houston residents came to a town hall meeting on Tuesday to demand an end to police brutality,” reports Reuters. For over two hours, residents publicly shared their complaints and experiences with the Houston police force.
Ironically, one woman, Janie Campos Torres was “younger sister of Jose Campos Torres, whose body was found in 1977 after police officers beat and handcuffed him.” That was thirty-five years ago.
While that incident ignited the Moody Park Riot on Cinco de Mayo the following year, what will these videos incite? Hopefully, a Justice Department investigation and much sterner discipline action taken against any police officers who are tried and found guilty will be incited. And on the productive side, there must be a transformation of the police institutions wherein law breaking will not be tolerated from any police officer by any police officer.
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For this nation to be a nation of laws, we must uphold the law, and especially those who are in a position of the public trust, namely police officers. Yet, police brutality is nothing new. In such a high intensity profession, high rates of suicide, homicide, domestic violence, and alcoholism are known to occur. Is it any wonder, then, that after spending years “chasing after bad guys” the human emotion of vengeance will unleash itself in outrageous and injurious ways?
The cry for justice by disciplining these police officers is truly just. But if our justice stops there it will fall short of true justice. Punishment will not deter others in the future; a whole new mindset needs to be engendered in our police institutions to combat and defuse police brutality. We need to intelligently address the very well-known reasons why aggression is prevalent among police officers. Theirs is a violent profession; theirs is a profession where they meet the underbelly of society, a psychological miasma where Kevlar vests and semi-automatics will not protect them.
If we do not address these issues then police brutality will continue as ever, and good men and women will fall into an abyss of frustration, impotence, and rage; that latter which will inflict great acute harm to individuals like Chad Holley and unceasing pain to communities.




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