Week 9

Intro to Police I

This is the final week of this term, we did not have any assignments this week. We wrapped up our discussion of community policing and took the final exam.

We also discussed why repeat victimization occurs so frequently, and what can be done to change that. We watched this video as part of our topic.





Intro to Criminal Justice I


In this week's discussion we talked about police brutality, particularly in this video from Reagan International Airport. The description of the video is cleverly written to put outrage into the viewers. "Police beat up a girl at Reagan National Airport, throwing her across the room into a person and a metal chair. Then they picked her up and threw her against a table. After that, they bashed her head into that metal table, giving her a concussion. Then they twisted her arm so hard that it was about to break. "

I did not however see any sign of brutality in this video other than the fact that the TSA agent grabbed the woman and threw her backwards into a chair, that was pretty excessive. As far as the rest of it goes when they picked her up and "placed" her against the table, in my opinion, I did not see anything that was not routine arrest procedure. No bashing of heads or twisting of arms, the woman seemed a little agitated, and rightfully so, and may have been resisting arrest at this point.

Only one other student agreed with me, so I don't know maybe I'm missing something here, but it just did not seem nearly as brutal as I expected from the description. The camera angle is kind of hard to see,no audio, and I have no idea what the problem was, so I have to assume something in the woman's bag led to the incident. There was certainly some excessive force used, but I wouldn't call it "brutality." It was the TSA, not the police who were involved in throwing the woman to the ground anyway.

For the assignment we had to write a report on the history of police corruption within the LAPD,and most recently from the Rampart division gang unit scandal that occurred there.

In the journal entry I summed up what I've learned through the course from the careers in criminal justice workbook and all my previous journal entries. I finished out the course by taking the final exam.