Resolved: on balance, police are more responsible than protesters for recent civil unrest in the United States
Download 0.9 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Aff Case 6
Aff Case 5Outline: Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. Michael Slager. What do all these people have in common? They were all wrongly killed by police officers, and all of these incidents sparked events of civil unrest across the U.S. “On Staten Island, N.Y., the July 2014 death of Eric Garner because of the apparent use of a ‘chokehold’ by an officer sparked outrage. A month later in Ferguson, Mo., the fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson ignited protests, and a grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson triggered further unrest. In November, Tamir Rice was shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio. He was 12 years old and playing with a toy pistol. On April 4, 2015, Walter L. Scott was shot by a police officer after a routine traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C. The same month, Freddie Gray died while in police custody in Baltimore, setting off widespread unrest. The policeman in the South Carolina case, Michael T. Slager, was charged with murder based on a cellphone video. In Baltimore, the driver of the police van in which Gray died, Caesar Goodson, was charged with second-degree murder, with lesser charges for five other officers. There have been no indictments in the earlier cases.” John Wihbey and Leighton Walter Kille, July 1st, 2015 My partner and I firmly support the resolution that “Resolved:On balance, police are more responsible than protesters for recent civil unrest in the United States.” We define “civil unrest” with the definition given by Sternheimer in 2012, which is that “Civil unrest involves a disruption of the typical social order; it can involve a strike or protest, and it can be peaceful or involve violence.” We define “responsible” as being “Liable to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent”. We classify recent events of civil unrest as those which have occurred within the last year to limit our discussion to events which are still relevant to this debate.
Who is causing these recent major events of civil unrest? What are the protesters protesting? Police. Police cause these protests, and even if our opponent can prove that protesters worsen and lengthen civil unrest more than police, they wouldn’t have had any unrest to lengthen or worsen without the actions of the police. Keeping in mind our definition of “responsible”, the police are obviously the primary cause of civil unrest, and therefore the party most responsible for it. Subpoint A: The protesters wouldn’t have done what they did if the police didn’t do what they did in the first place. In the cases of Baltimore, New York City, and in Ferguson, among others, the original protests started due to what the police officers had done beforehand. Darren Wilson, in the case of Ferguson, killed Michael Brown, and protests started August 9, 2014, which caused police to respond with the usage of weapons including tear gas, rubber bullets, and beanbag rounds which only perpetuates the unrest and contributed to the riots that included the burning down of QuikTrip that was responded to with more unjust police action. Subpoint B: Contention Two: The police aren’t reacting in an appropriate way to handle protests, and causing the protests and civil unrest last longer. According to Ryan J. Reilly, who, it is interesting to note, was wrongly arrested by police during the Ferguson unrest, of the Huffington Post, said that “The aggressive tactics with which various law enforcement agencies greeted protesters in the St. Louis region last August following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, were deeply flawed and oppressive of citizens exercising their constitutional rights, according to a forthcoming report commissioned by the Justice Department” (Ryan J. Reilly, Huffington Post, July 1, 2015). It is the job of the police to end civil unrest, so when they fail to do so, or when their actions make the unrest even worse, it makes them all the more responsible for civil unrest. Subpoint A: The militarization of police isn’t an appropriate action and the resources that are given to the police aren’t being used correctly with the protests. During the riots in Ferguson a picture was taken of an officer with a military grade rifle pointed at a group of people with his finger on the trigger. According to an article which was titled “The Fundamentals of Firearm Safety”, which was posted online by the University of Oregon, you must “Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.” The fact that this officer had his finger on the trigger indicates that he was ready to use a military-grade rifle on protesters, and that he was prepared to cause damage to a community and bring on more civil unrest. In the article from Oregon it also specifies that “positively identify your target and the threat it poses.” This officer definitely wasn’t correctly identifying anything about the protesters because these protesters were peaceful and causing little to no harm to the community. “Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot...Positively identify your target and the threat it poses before firing at it.” University of Oregon Subpoint B: Inappropriate actions by police incite even more anger and provide more reasons to protest. Robert Patrick reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on August 2, 2014, that a police officer named Ray Albers, who was present at the Ferguson unrest, threatened protesters by pointing his gun at them and saying “I will [expletive] kill you”. He was asked to identify himself, to which he responded “Go [expletive] yourself”. He was unnecessarily increasing tensions and anger among the protesters and he was making the unrest even worse. “Albers pointed the gun at a peaceful protester after a ‘verbal exchange,’ Members of that crowd verbally confront the officer, who appears to say, ‘I will (expletive) kill you. Get back.’ Asked his name, he responded, ‘Go (expletive) yourself.’” Robert Patrick, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 2, 2014 Aff Case 6AFF Resolved: On balance, police are more responsible than protestors for recent civil unrest in the Unites States Definitions: Civil unrest- “can range from simple, nonviolent protests that address specific issues, to events that turn into full scale riots” - Johnson 14 Contention 1: Police force and militarization is the escalating factor in the recent civil unrest.
First, due to this increase of militarization, police are now trained to look at civilians as the enemy, instead of people they are protecting. According to a Washington Post article from August of 2014 it states Protests against police brutality turned contentious early Monday evening, leading to a standoff between several dozen local residents and dozens of officers in full riot gear just blocks from where Brown was gunned down. In an attempt to disperse the crowd, officers made their way down West Florissant, a main street in Ferguson. When some residents, chant[ed] “Don’t shoot, my hands are up,” refused to leave, officers began deploying tear gas. A report done from the Department of Justice states that The consequences of distrust between law enforcement and the communities they serve can be devastating. Where people perceive the criminal justice system to be arbitrary, biased and unfair, they are less likely to cooperate with law enforcement, making us all less safe. The distrust and alienation experienced in some communities can build into a powder keg of resentment, ready to be ignited by a single tragic incident. We have seen this over and over—in Watts in 1965, in Los Angeles in 1992 and most recently, in Ferguson in 2014. This proves that, not only are the police officers not doing their job because they aren’t keeping us safe and in fact they make us less safe but also the militarization process shouldn’t have been allowed because the only two instances should have been to fight drugs and terror which protestors are none of those. Contention 2: Police have racial bias According to an article from the Daily Kos written in May of 2015 states that Freddie Gray was taken on a 40 minute rough ride. New evidence suggests that Freddie Gray received a catastrophic spinal injury in the back of the van just 14 minutes into the ride. As well as Relatives of Dondi Johnson Sr., who was left a paraplegic after a 2005 police van ride, won a $7.4 million verdict against police officers. A year earlier, Jeffrey Alston was awarded $39 million by a jury after he became paralyzed from the neck down as the result of a van ride. Others have also received payouts after filing lawsuits. [...] These rough rides, though, have a deep and ugly history in Baltimore and beyond. Philadelphia also has a deep and ugly history of rough rides. There they call them nickel rides. An Inquirer investigation documented injuries to 20 people tossed around in wagons in recent years. Thompson was one of three who suffered spinal injuries, and one of two permanently paralyzed. According to a Time article clarifying the prejudice of the police department, it states In 88 percent of the cases in which the department used force, it was against African Americans. In all of the 14 canine-bite incidents for which racial information was available, the person bitten was African American. In Ferguson court cases, African Americans are 68 percent less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by a municipal judge, according to the Justice review. In 2013, African Americans accounted for 92 percent of cases in which an arrest warrant was issued. ProPublica, for example, reports that from 2010 to 2012, police shot and killed 1,217 people in the United States. Among these, young black males were 21 times more likely to be killed than their white counterparts. For many years, however, episodes such as the one in Ferguson have not raised major public outcries. So what is it that makes this one different' For starters, in contrast to other cases, where public uproar quickly died down, the demonstrations that started in August continued for months and flared up again with the decision last month not to bring criminal charges against Mr Wilson. The makeup of the protesters has been noteworthy. Local African Americans have been in the lead, but whites and other racial and ethnic groups have consistently shown up and continued to speak out. Groups from other regions have joined in the protest, travelling to Ferguson or organising demonstrations in other cities. These facts suggest that the protests in Ferguson may be about something larger than the death of a particular black man. Specifically, they point to a "tipping point" in America's debate over race and civil rights. Social scientists describe tipping points as sudden, unanticipated changes in attitudes and social behaviour such as those that can be found in fashion, the unexpected rise of an obscure book to be a bestseller, or an abrupt switch in public acceptance of cigarette smoking. The hope is that through public participation, a democratic society such as the United States will be on a self-improved course that will, in turn, lead to a refined form of democracy: liberty, equality, and fraternity (Sung, 2006). The recent Middle Eastern civil uprisings in Egypt and Libya clearly show the importance of public participation in politics; otherwise, social unrest can certainly occur. The police remain the central public focus among government agencies given that they are the most visible representatives who are empowered to maintain order, security, and public trust even if force is necessary (Bell, 1979). Traditionally, the role of police was labeled as an "anomaly" in a democratic society because sometimes police had to arrest, search, detain, and even use deadly force (Goldstein, 1977). Consequently, there continues to be an inherited role conflict regarding the nature of police work in American society. According to Zhao et al. (2011), the issue of race has truly been divided in American society. Unfortunately, racial bias has been found to be a primary source of civil unrest (Weitzer & Tuch, 2006) ever since racial turmoil took place across the country when it comes to police(e.g., Los Angeles) in the late 1990s. As discussed in Chapter II, the perceptions of police were very low in neighborhoods that were inhabited primarily by African Americans. The first model of public attitudes toward the police concerned demographics as determinants of police performance. As such, the literature consistently revealed that the most important factor of the demographic model was race/ethnicity (Weitzer & Tuch, 2006). This finding was confirmed in my study and revealed that African Americans rated both general attitudes and specific attitudes toward the police lower than White and Hispanic groups. Notably, race has continued to be the most robust predictor of public attitudes toward the police for more than 40 years following the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice's initial findings (1967a). Lawrence Thomas wrote in his 2009 book, "Contemporary Debates in Social Philosophy" that individuals "have a responsibility to protest injustice" (p. 304) and that the inaction is tantamount to "evil cooperation with racial injustice." Essentially, when injustice has reached a tipping point then there is nothing that we can do but protest as we have a moral obligation to rejection racial injustice. Finally, the impact to this argument is that if we are attempting to determine causation, then the police using racial bias is responsible for recent civil unrest. If it weren't for the police implementing and reifying a system of racial injustice that killed Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Darrien Hunt, then civil unrest would not have occurred or have been needed. Directory: documents -> 2015 camp evidence documents -> Concept stage documents -> The international correspondence chess federation documents -> Republic of Côte d'Ivoire Urbanization Review documents -> Report No: aus11011 Central America documents -> Technical writer directory documents -> Report No. 94474-pk fiscal Disaster Risk Assessment Options for Consideration documents -> Environmental and Social Management Framework for the Costa Rica Telecommunications Sector Modernization Project documents -> Environment Impact Assessment For Jiangxi Shangrao Sanqingshan Airport Beijing Guohuantiandi Environmental Technology Development Center. Ltd. Oct. 2012 Content documents -> Growth through Innovation An Industrial Strategy for Shanghai By Shahid Yusuf Kaoru Nabeshima April 22nd, 2009 2015 camp evidence -> Obs. 1 Status Quo 4 Thus the Plan: 8 Download 0.9 Mb. Share with your friends:
|