Police Use of Force

As Robert Cover established in his essay, Violence and the Word, violence is an integral aspect of legal practices. From the arresting officer’s use of force, to the sentence a judge passes down, to the actual implementation of the sentence, the legal process is riddled with violent acts and interpretations. In this essay, I will argue that if the use of violence by police officers is primarily a racial issue. I will also show …

…police work. The relationship between the two, no matter how ingrained, does have room for improvement. Society must proceed to look for the underlying causes of excessive force, and ways to combat them. This ongoing struggle to improve our police system is summed up by Thomas Repetto of The Blue Parade: “Police administration is not applied mechanics, but a living, breathing organism shaped by the political, social, and economic trends of time and place” (Skolnick 172).