Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement. It is an extreme form of police misconduct or violence and is a civil rights violation. It also refers to a situation where officers exercise undue or excessive force against a person. Police violence includes but is not limited to physical or verbal harassment, physical or mental injury, property damage, the inaction of police officers, and in some cases, death. In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal doctrine used to protect officers from litigation after incidents of police violence. This law was issued by the Supreme Court in 1982. In recent years, particularly since the fatal shooting
… Read more of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, police brutality has become a hot-button issue in the United States. Police officers in America are killing around 1,000 people every single year.
The Black Lives Matter Movement, formed in 2013, has been a vocal part of the movement against police brutality in the U.S. by organizing “die-ins”, marches, and demonstrations in response to the killings of black men and women by police.
While Black Lives Matter has become a controversial movement within the U.S., it has brought more attention to the number and frequency of police shootings of civilians.
Police accountability involves holding both individual police officers, as well as law enforcement agencies responsible for police brutality, misbehavior, racial profiling, as well as other laws relating to equal employment, sexual harassment, etc. Research has shown that the public prefers independent review of complaints against law enforcement, rather than relying on police departments to conduct internal investigations. There is a suggestion that such oversight would improve the public's view on the way in which police officers are held accountable.
Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens (with the exception of the Proles). The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan "Big Brother is watching you": a maxim that is ubiquitously on display. In modern culture, the term "Big Brother" has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to
… Read more civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.