User:Studenteditor03/Evaluate an Article

Police brutality is the repression by personnel affiliated with law enforcement when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by "corrections" personnel in municipal, state, and federal prison camps, including military prisons.

The term police brutality is usually applied in the context of causing physical harm to a person. It may also involve psychological harm through the use of intimidation tactics that often violate human rights. From the 18th-20th centuries, those who engaged in police brutality have acted with the implicit approval of the local legal system, such as during the Civil Rights Movement era. In the contemporary era, individuals who engage in police brutality may do so with the tacit approval of their superiors or they may be rogue officers. In either case, they may perpetrate their actions under color of law and, more often than not, the state apparatus engages in a subsequent cover-up of their repression.[citation needed]

In the 2000s, the federal government attempted tracking the number of people killed in interactions with US police, but the program was defunded. In 2006, a law was passed to require reporting of homicides at the hands of the police, but many police departments do not obey it. Some journalists and activists have provided estimates, limited to the data available to them. In 2019, 1,004 people were shot and killed by police according to The Washington Post, whereas the Mapping Police Violence project counted 1,098 killed.Statista claimed that in 2020, 1,021 people were killed by police, while the project Mapping Police Violence counted 1,126. From 1980 to 2018, more than 30,000 people have died by police violence in the United States, according to a 2021 article published in The Lancet.For 2022, Mapping Police Violence counted at least 1,176 individuals killed, making it the deadliest year on record. The US police has killed more people compared to any other industrialized democracy, with a disproportionate number of people shot being people of color. Since 2015, around 2,500 of those killed by police were fleeing.

Since the 20th century, there have been many public, private, and community efforts to combat police corruption and brutality. These efforts have identified various core issues that contribute to police brutality, including the insular culture of police departments (including the blue wall of silence), the aggressive defense of police officers and resistance to change in police unions, the broad legal protections granted to police officers (such as qualified immunity), the historic racism of police departments, the militarization of the police, the adoption of tactics that escalate tension (such as zero tolerance policing and stop-and-frisk), the inadequacies of police training and/or police academies, and the psychology of possessing police power. The US legal doctrine of qualified immunity has been widely criticized as "[having] become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights," as summarized in a 2020 Reuters report.

Regarding solutions, activists and advocates have taken different approaches. Those who advocate for police reform offer specific suggestions to combat police brutality, such as body cameras, civilian review boards, improved police training, demilitarization of police forces, and legislation aimed at reducing brutality (such as the Justice in Policing Act of 2020). Those who advocate to defund the police call for the full or partial diversion of funds allocated to police departments, which would be redirected toward community and social services. Those who advocate to dismantle the police call for police departments to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. Those who advocate to abolish police departments call for police departments to be disbanded entirely and to be replaced by other community and social services.

Body cameras
Main article: Body worn video (police equipment)

Many policies have been offered for how to prevent police brutality. One proposed solution is body worn cameras. The theory of using body cameras is that police officers will be less likely to commit misconduct if they understand that their actions are being recorded. The United States Department of Justice under Obama's administration supplied $20 million for body cameras to be implemented in police departments. During a case study attempting to test the effects that body cameras had on police actions, researchers found evidence that suggested that police used less force with civilians when they had body cameras.

Police are supposed to have the cameras on from the time they receive a call of an incident to when the entire encounter is over.However, there is controversy regarding police using the equipment properly. The issue regarding an officer's ability to turn on and off the record button is if the police officer is trustworthy. In 2017, Baltimore Police Officer Richard A. Pinheiro Jr. was caught planting evidence. The officer did not realize 30 seconds of footage was available even before switching the camera on. To solve this problem, it has been proposed to record police officers' entire shift and not allowing access for police officers to turn on and off the record button. This can cause technical and cost issues due to the large amount of data the camera would accumulate, for which various solutions have been proposed.

Another possible issue that can occur is the public's inability to access the body camera footage.

According to a survey done by Vocativ in 2014, "41 cities use body cams on some of their officers, 25 have plans to implement body cams and 30 cities do not use or plan to use cams at this time." There are other issues that can occur from the use of body cameras as well. This includes downloading and maintenance of the data which can be expensive. There is also some worry that if video testimony becomes more relied upon in court cases, not having video evidence from body cameras would decrease the likelihood that the court system believes credible testimony from police officers and witnesses

Which article are you evaluating?
Police brutality in the United States

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I recently wrote my annotated bibliography on the effects of social media on the exposure and advocation of police brutality African Americans face. I felt looking at an article that discusses police brutality, which includes history, examples, as well as how it has progressed in history would provide a different prospective then what I chose to write my paper on. This is an important topic because in recent years, we have seen that with an increase social media usage comes an increase in publication of peoples wrong-doings. This is particularly important when African American's are facing discrimination and violence that often gets covered up. Based on a quick glance of the article, it seems to be a decent length with tons of information broken into different headings and subheadings.

Evaluate the article

 * 1) Lead Section: The article begins with an introduction sentence that works to define the term police brutality, which the article is intended to speak about. The introduction seems to be a good length, mentioning lots of topics that will later be found in the reading, most of them highlighted. It also hyperlinks the key words to other articles if a greater back ground is need. After scrolling through, all the information mentioned in the introduction about the history, causes, and solutions seems to coincide with all the information present in the text. Despite all these good research, there is a lot of information and subheadings which makes it overwhelming as a reader.
 * 2) Content: Majority of the content is good background knowledge to me, however, it only really touches on body cameras for a small paragraph. There is no mention of social media, which is the premise of my work completed. Based on the revision history which goes back just one year to 2022, there have been edits made to ensure the information is factual and up to date. I feel there could be more included about recent murders of Black men and woman, not just George Floyd. They could also include a subsection about the influence of TikTok or Twitter and the exposure of brutality, which is something I could even add. I feel this defiantly covers the under represented population as a way of advocating for those who are at higher risk of police violence, African Americans.
 * 3) Tone: The article seems to be very neutral, only really discussing facts and providing statistics to back the claims being made. I don't feel the article takes a stance towards any group but in turn works to encourage and advocate change when thinking about how police brutality affects the African American community. It is more of a research article that works to give readers knowledge on a topic that they might not be the most knowledgable on.
 * 4) Sources and References: The article cites 217 other sources with in the article, including hyperlinks and numbers in which you can access to read more. It also includes a further reading page, which gives other article that could give people more knowledge on the topic. There is a mixture of scholarly sources and some from websites, however, the publisher took the time to look at many available sources. The links worked effective when I clicked on them, brining me exactly where it told me I was going to go.
 * 5) Organization: The article starts with an introduction section, briefly providing an overview of the whole article. It then goes into discuss the past, provides several subheading with direct information regarding the topic. It then goes into the causes, which also include other subheadings with information found through research. Finally, it wraps up with solutions to the issues of police brutality, with again, more subheadings and research on these. I feel this is the perfect organization for all of the information so you know what you are reading and how it relates to the topic of police brutality. I did not spot any grammatical errors in what I read.
 * 6) Pictures: The article includes several pictures, including historical pictures to reference what police brutality looked like years ago and more recent protests. The images provide a quick description of the picture. When clicked on, it sights the picture to ensure no copy-right issue. This provides even more information for readers. I feel they could have placed the pictures more spread out, some sections have 3 to 4 and then there are large gaps of no photography.
 * 7) Talk Page: The talk page does not really look to have conversations. It does mention the policies of Wikipedia, but no conversation between the author and others. There were a few changes made, by the commenting of something being ineligible and not citing properly. It references the important social injustice problems it is related to and that it is actually supported by foundations that are involved in advocating for African American and Black Lives Matter.
 * 8) Overall: The overall status of this article is very good. There are a lot of positives that can be found in the article. There is a wide variety of information, that covers past, causes, and solutions. There are a large variety of source that can be used for further research that are also being used to sight, knowing the information is coming from reliable accounts. It contains a neutral tone and statistics, helping to be a good start for more extensive research. There was very little on the talk page meaning everything seems to have been reviewed and deemed good. It is also funded by projects related to Black Lives Matter and the advocation against police brutality. I feel  the article can be improved by adding more pictures, there are large gaps of just writing which can become boring.