Feminism Is...

Police brutality is when excessive force is used by a police officer during an encounter with a citizen—it is a problem that disproportionately affects people of color. Excessive force can be either emotional or physical, or both. A few infamous examples of police brutality are the instances with Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. In 2015, Gray was arrested and transported by a police van, and when he arrived at the police station, paramedics treated him, and within an hour of his arrest he was in a coma. One report found that “blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.”