The article that will be reviewed in this paper is “Beyond “police brutality”: Racist state violence and the University of California” by Dylan Rodríguez. I chose this reading due to the rapidly increased relevance of this topic in the past few years, especially in the wake of recent protests from people of color. This paper will summarize the article and describe two vital issues that the author described in his work.
The article highlights the issues with police attitudes toward the application of seemingly extreme measures to non-violent perpetrators. Rodríguez (2012) argues that “police used caustic “nonlethal” spray on those student protestors because they could” (p. 306). The author describes many tactics employed by the police in similar incidents as utterly unnecessary and poses a question about the necessity to continue using them (Rodríguez, 2012). The author concludes that if the students, who were mostly white, received such harsh treatment, it will be much worse for people of color if they are to protest.
I believe that the most significant part of this paper is the call from the author to examine and eradicate the roots of this behavior from the police. Rodríguez highlights that the man behind the police actions is known for his racial biases that somehow did not guarantee his forced retirement from the forces. Moreover, Rodríguez (2012) calls for the identification of “the mentally unstable, corrupt, or evil individual police officers who must be individually punished” and their removal from the force (p. 313). These two measures that the author proposed in 2012 could have prevented the current protests.
In conclusion, the article reviews a fundamental problem within society, which is not a self-contained issue, but a major flaw in the system. Alas, American people continue to experience events similar to the incident described in the article. As the circumstances nowadays show that such tactics are not off the table for the police, there is a definite need for reform to change the situation for the better.
Reference
Rodríguez, D. (2012). Beyond “police brutality”: Racist state violence and the University of California. American Quarterly 64(2), 301-313. Web.