Students who wish to speak can have their names added to the list by raising their hands, and names are added to the bottom of the list to maintain the order in which students volunteer to speak. When you have this sort of mentality, excessive brutality and improper actions are more likely to occur. And the line between law enforcement that is aptly forceful and law enforcement that is unduly brutal or abusive can be thin indeed. Those sorts of instructions, however, call for judgments that are bound to be imperfect. When you rely on hunches, you rely on prejudices, and the people most likely to be stopped are black or Hispanic.
Students find a newspaper or magazine article that discusses police brutality.
Then, in a one to two-page response, students summarize the article and compare it to the featured article, focusing on how ideas are presented differently between news and editorial writings. Students will be evaluated based on written journal response, participation in class discussions, and article analysis and comparison. Research laws that deal with the rights of individuals in relation to the police. For each law, investigate specific examples of how that law has been enacted in the United States. Imagine that you are the police commissioner in your town, and write a speech to present to the graduates of your police academy discussing your hopes for their performance as police officers.