Police brutality is a serious problem in America. However, it is not only the civilians that are suffering, and the police are also not the only ones doing the shooting. With new advancement in technology, many police officers are aggressively shot with video cameras. Eric Garner and Walter Scott are perfect examples. Once the cameras start rolling, the police start underperforming. It is not the police that are at fault for their conduct. It is the civilian’s fault for filming the police, resisting arrest, and refusing to cooperate. It is from these circumstances that confrontations arise. My solution is simple. Just stop. Civilians just need to stop doing those things. If they do not film, resist arrest, or refuse to cooperate, then there will be no confrontation.

Filming the police obviously adds stress to their jobs. This causes the police to become agitated. Once they are agitated, they start to underperform, and then civilians deem that underperformance as “corruption.” They panic and resort to “excessive” force like bullets. All this could have been avoided if the civilian was not filming the police. The fact that there are so many videos of the police underperforming proves this. When the police are filmed, they have no choice but to resort to the chokeholds, asset forfeitures, and bullets because of the added stress. Furthermore, there is no need to film them because the police are moral people and would never mistreat minorities. For example, one statistic from the Bureau of Justice Statistics says that “about 1 in 4 officers were members of a racial or ethnic minority in 2007, compared to 1 in 6 officers in 1987” (“Local Police” par. 6). Now that is an astounding eight percent increase in twenty years! Statistically speaking, thirty years from now, 1 in 1 officers will be members of racial or ethnic minority. Nevermind peacefully protesting or raising awareness of the issues with the police force, just wait for change, and it will surely come, as promised in my mathematically sound estimation.

Not only do civilians record the police, but they also resist arrest. Again, they just need to stop. If they stopped resisting arrest, the police would not need to pull out their guns or put them in a chokehold to restrain them. What is worse is when one civilian is resisting arrest, while another civilian films them. The stress from both these factors are too great that the police may accidentally pull the trigger or choke them too hard. The Shooting of Walter Scott is a good example. Walter Scott was running, another civilian was recording, and all that stress made the officer mistakenly shoot him eight times in the back. Some said that the officer could have just used a taser gun to restrain him, and that would have been enough force to put him on the ground and put him in handcuffs. That would take more time though. It would require a finesse and awareness from the officer that only comes with months of training. When some cops are hired without this standard, the stress causes them to shoot first and ask questions later. The worst part is that there is usually no accountability after confrontations like this. For example, in Eric Garner’s case, a police officer used a chokehold to restrain him, an illegal but necessary use of force in cases of inexperienced cops, and a civilian happened to catch it on camera. The officer was not indicted, but what is worse is that the civilian was never held accountable! While the officer was adding a lot of stress to Eric Garner’s air supply, the civilian was obviously adding much more stress through filming. However, this is not the only way civilians add stress to the situation.

Refusing to cooperate with the police is also another mistake civilians make. When the police are trying to protect the people by finding criminals, they could ask questions to their informants, but that is not as fun or as easy to do as no knock raids. No knock raids are when the police have to enter people’s houses without prior notification, so criminals do not have a chance to destroy the evidence. Then, the police can protect the people from the monsters who sell marijuana and other narcotics. The success can be seen in this statistic: “36 percent of the SWAT raids found no contraband of any kind was found — and that this rate may be as high as 65 percent because of the incomplete reports of police” (Turley par. 3). That means that these raids have a 35-64 percent chance of working, which is a pretty big difference in estimation, but it also has a 50 percent chance of being 65 percent effective 100 percent of the time. Personally, I do not believe there are any “incomplete reports.” This source is exaggerating and not credible. The police are just stressed from the situation and may forget a few facts. At the end of the day, they get the job done. With a possible over-half success rate of these raids, there are no reasons to stop them.

The world is full of rowdy civilians, and the police have to deal with them everyday. Because of the nature of the job, the police should not have to live up to a standard of accountability. It is a high-stress job and mistakes will happen. It does not matter how severe the mistakes are. They do not need to be rectified. As long as the police have some sort of success in their work, all will be well. The civilians should just stop making the police make mistakes.

Works Cited

"Local Police." Bjs.gov. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 17 Feb. 2015. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.

Turley, Jonathan. "ACLU: 62 Percent of SWAT Team Raids Were Searches For Drugs." Jonathanturley.org. N.p., 26 June 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.