Excessive Use of Police Force: Saviours Became Abusers
INTRODUCTION:
Police are protectors of the people where any illegal act has been committed. People will have complete trust in the police as they were saviours of people. But now, we are witnessing police involvement in various types of corrupt practices and misconduct.
Especially in recent years, these issues are coming to light and people are losing trust in police departments because of their involvement in corrupt practices, police officers are not even getting respect from the citizens.
Corrupt practices include actions of police officials for their profits and misconduct includes the use of excessive physical force or actions that are unreasonable by the police.
EXCESSIVE USE OF POLICE POWER:
Excessive use of police force can be simply said as “POLICE BRUTALITY”, which means using force that is unreasonable. Physical brutality, use of powerful weapons such as tasers and pepper spray, verbal abuse, and following unproper procedures while
carrying out arrests etc are some forms of police brutality. Police corruption is also an important problem faced by citizens. Police use of force on a citizen is considered a seizure. While carrying out arrests, police officers are violating the proper procedures and they are considering and treating suspects as criminals which is out of their power and work.
While arresting, police have no right to judge the totality of the circumstances. And they also don’t have the right to give 3rd-degree treatment to suspects without certain official orders. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights marked the emergence of a worldwide trend of protection and guarantee of certain basic human rights stipulates in Article 5 that “No one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
In case, if any suspect is not cooperative to enquiry and arrest then tackling and tasing the suspect is reasonable. At this time also, police don’t have any right to use any degree of force. Police corruption is commonly seen everywhere. It became common to give bribes to police and escape from any type of crime from small to big.
Police brutality can be seen more in the US, especially in Canada. US police kill more people compared to any other country. US police kill around 1,100 people every year. Generally, minorities are the victims of police brutality. In the US, blacks were the victims of police brutality as they were considered minorities.
CASE STUDY:
- HATHRAS RAPE CASE:
A 19- year-old Dalit woman was raped by four upper-caste men in Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh. She went to the farm and there she was dragged with her dupatta around her neck and her spinal cord was injured in the process. She was raped brutally and later her tongue was also cut off. Her mother came after hearing screaming from her daughter and later she was taken to the police station.
Police officers didn’t accept their claims that it is rape and they didn’t even collect evidence from the victim’s body, instead, police officers humiliated their family. Later she was taken to hospital. This happened on 14 September 2020 but the complaint was filed on 20 September 2020. Police recorded three statements from the victim.
In three of the statements, it was clearly said that she was raped brutally by four people but nothing happened to those four as they belonged to the Thakur caste. And the victim was cremated on 29 September 2020 by police using petrol without informing to her family which was illegal. At that time her family were locked inside their house by the police which shows the cruelty of the police.
At first, police have no right to decide that whether it is rape or not because rape is moreover a legal term than a medical term. Only the court has the right to decide whether it is rape or not and here victim herself is claiming that she was raped but the police rejected it without enquiry.
And the first thing to do when a rape victim appears before police is to collect her blood, semen, and saliva samples as evidence. Here police failed to do this and instead, they didn’t even file a complaint against the accused.
And the ultimate thing that no one can imagine was the police cremating the victim’s body without the consent of her family. Later police officers blackmailed the victim’s family to step back from the protests. Here it clearly showed that the police instead of protecting, have done injustice to the victim and her family.
CONCLUSION:
It is hard to believe that our saviours became abusers. Minorities became victims of such atrocities by police departments which are influenced by politicians in many instances. The current situation is that people are not even feeling safe going to police stations, especially the poor and minorities. But for now, at least Judiciary is out of influence to serve justice to the poor and minorities.
REFERENCES:
https://jmarshlaw.com/excessive
force/#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20police%20use%20of%20force,excessive%20force%20aka%20Po lice%20Brutality
https://policebrutalitycenter.org/what-is-excessive-force/
https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/index.html
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/hathras-gang-rape-case-a-look-at-the-timeline-as-up-court-sets 3-accused-free-11677748908293.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-64820721
