I do not believe that the level of police brutality in the United States has increased. What has increased is the coverage of police brutality, mainly fueled by the internet, social media and 24/7 news channels.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, if a police officer in Chicago shot and killed someone for not stopping at a “Red” light, only a few people who were actually there at the time of the shooting would know it happened. There might be a one or two paragraph news item in the newspaper the following day, but that would be the extent of the coverage.
If the same thing happened in September of 2016, three or more passersby would have made videos of the shooting with their smart phones and posted it to Facebook or some other Internet site before the blood had dried. Within an hour or less, there would be stories about the shooting on Fox-”News” and CNN and it would be picked up by the Associated Press and Reuters. By the next morning there were be articles about the shooting in the newspapers in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Beijing.
In most of the United States and other countries, the frequent use of police dogs to attack peaceful protestors and others was not believed to occur by many until they saw the pictures in magazines like Time, Newsweek or Life in 1963.
Up until then, it wasn’t even discussed because it was covered up and only the police K-9 officer and the victim knew about it.
A picture or a cellphone video can say a thousand words.
Read other answers by Richard White on Quora:
- Why do US police always defend their fellow police, even when the other police are obviously guilty of wrongdoing (blue wall of silence)?
- Why do police officers continue to be aggressive when there's a chance they're being recorded?
- Why are U.S. police forces now being militarized?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2dQpxr6
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