End police brutality
Thirty-eight year old Sheldon Haleck died on March 16 after struggling with Honolulu police. After tasering the intoxicated man multiple times and pepper spraying him, officers handcuffed him while forcing him to the ground. He was unresponsive and pronounced dead that night, although the results from the autopsy were just obtained by Civil Beat earlier this week.
What’s wrong with this video goes far beyond excessive violence. It shows the harmful and unjustified actions of a person of authority — who is supposed to ensure security — on an unarmed civilian.
Excessive force in paradise
Instances of police brutality in the United States have recently caused a growing uproar from the public. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner are names you’ve probably heard of, and while these incidents struck places far from Hawai‘i, therecurring theme of unjustifiable police attacks has not overlooked O‘ahu. HPD officer Vincent Morre was recorded on security video Sept. 5 last year assaulting two bystanders after failing to find a suspect at a game room near Ala Moana. Morre throws a chair at one of the victims and kicks the other in the face.
*In May, Ka Leo published an op-ed calling for body cameras for officers. We can also lessen police brutality by encouraging the public to be adamant with their own video and photo coverage. It is a First Amendment right for citizens to record the police. Journalists and witnesses still run into the difficulty of being apprehended despite this right. However, we need to be resilient.
Incessant police violence should inspire and enrage both fellow officers and citizens. Under surveillance or not, officers should be people to run to, not from. What will we do in the face of danger if we’re more afraid of the cops than we are of the situation that called for their intervention?"
http://www.kaleo.org/opinion/end-police-brutality/article_97ed8dfc-2d09-11e5-8af2-6b48ab3bc836.html
