Min Aung Zaw (he)

Assignments/Research Draft/Researched Essay

Assignment#3 Researched Essay

Posted by Min Aung Zaw (he) on

Police Brutality Reform

Imagine being knelt on the neck by a pair of legs on the side of a road for nine minutes. Is it brutal or not? Discrimination has been around us in the United States all the time. One of the most concerning issues is inequality for black people, and the most recent cases are related to police brutality and unequal treatment of black people. There are many cases of police brutality against black people, such as the beating of Rodney King, the deadly shooting of Michael Brown, and the most recent kneeling on George Floyd. Additionally, black people are “3.23 times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police”. (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) These incidents often occur, making black people feel insecure, angering many people, causing protesting on the streets, and bringing up hate toward the police. Therefore, to solve and improve the issue that has been struggling all of us in history and will be a big issue in the future, police training should be reformed, removing the warrior mindset, and reducing mass incarnation in police to prevent racial discrimination.

First, reforming the police’s training program is essential because “In 2015, 224 unarmed Americans lost their lives at the hands of the police, of which 57 percent were African American or Latino”. (Guitierrez ) The death of George Floyd also shows how callous the brutality of officers toward black people is. Although George Floyd was already on the ground, police officer Chauvin put his knees on Floyd’s neck, causing Floyd to be unable to breathe for almost nine minutes, and suffer to death. George Floyd told the officer “I can’t breathe” over 20 times (Singh), begging for his life, and leaving his death sentences, “Tell my kids I love them. I’m dead.” and “Mama, I love you. I can’t do anything”. (Singh) It is a very tragic event for George and his family. This statistic and situation show how unprofessional the officers are and their unequal treatment of African Americans and Latinos. Therefore, police training should be reformed to prevent such tragedies in the future.

One of the changes is increasing training time for taser guns. Police only train “8 hours of training for Tasers, which is only 25 percent of the necessary training required”. (Gutierrez) This information is vital because police focus most of their time on firearms, not tasers, which will not kill one person. According to the Police Execution Research Foundation (PERF), “Use of TASER Civil Expeditionary Workforce(CEWs) was associated with a 76% reduction in the chances of an officer being injured compared to agencies that do not use CEWs, and the odds of a suspect being injured were reduced by more than 40% in TASER CEW agencies compared to non-CEW agencies”. (PERF) It is beneficial for both the officer and suspect to use taser guns because officers will have less risk when arresting a suspect, and the suspect will be less likely to be injured. It is a win-win solution. Therefore, police officers must be using taser guns. 

  Another change that police should consider is increasing mediation training time. Most of the time, police use force on the suspects because they are not good at resolving problems. According to Guitierrez, a rising senior in social studies from Harvard stated, “Police departments only offer an average of eight hours in mediation skills.”(Guitierrez) By training more in de-escalation skills, police will be more professional at calming the suspect, reducing the frequency of using force. In sum, police should increase their training time for taser and problem-solving skills.

Essentially, to reduce less racial discrimination and police use of force, police officers should consider themselves neighbors to the citizens, not warriors. According to David Gutierrez, a senior in Harvard, “warrior mentality obscures an important part of policing: the interaction between police officers and the community. People care more about how they are treated by the police than about falling crime rates The image of a warrior mindset gives police nobility, making them feel justified in their actions.” (Gutierrez 7) The warrior mindset causes police officers to forget that they serve the citizens, provide security, protect them from violent attacks, and treat people equally and kindly. Hence, the warrior mindset should be removed. By enhancing the neighbor’s perspective, the community will feel the care and love of the officer, leaving a reliable hero-like figure.

In addition to changing the police, courts must be reformed as well. According to the sentencing project, “African Americans incarcerated in local jails at a rate 3.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites in 2016”. (Walsh 12)The rate of black Americans is 3.5 times higher because officers target poor minority communities where most African Americans live. The officers only focuses on black community, causing an assumption that African Americans are the ones causing problems. More than that, “Seventy percent of pretrial releases require money bond, an especially high hurdle for low-income defendants.” (Walsh) This causes unfairness because many black Americans and Hispano are poor and unable to pay the fee. They are stacking up many black Americans in prison, and police are using force on black prisoners. The solution for this issue is “stop prosecuting a range of misdemeanor crimes such as resisting arrest, loitering, trespassing, and drug possession.”(Walsh) Doing this will be fairer for the black Americans suffering from poverty, reducing cases concerning minority black communities, and fewer black Americans will be imprisoned.

In conclusion, every life matters. There should be no hate and bias toward people of other races. Humans are humans. All of us want to be respected, loved, and equally treated. Therefore, racism should be eradicated. Start supporting black lives matter movements, and reform the police training, the court policies, and the police’s warrior mindset to protect our fellow African American friends. By doing so, there will be fewer deaths caused by police use of force, and our police will be more reliable. Moreover, one day, our communities will be safe, and may the day come. Start supporting the BLM movement!

Works Cited

Gutierrez, David. “Why police training must be reformed.” The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. , from iop.harvard.edu/get-involved/harvard-political-review/why-police-training-must-be-reformed 

Interactive. “Report to the United Nations on racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system.” The Sentencing Project. 2 Nov. 2022, www.sentencingproject.org/reports/report-to-the-united-nations-on-racial-disparities-in-the-u-s-criminal-justice-system/

Singh,et al. “George Floyd Told Officers ‘I Can’t Breathe’ More than 20 Times, Transcripts Show.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9 July 2020, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd-police-killing-transcript-i-cant-breathe

Walsh, Colleen. “Solving racial disparities in policing.” Harvard Gazette, 24 Feb. 2021, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/solving-racial-disparities-in-policing/

Assignments/Digital Receipt #7

Assignment#2

Posted by Min Aung Zaw (he) on

Every advertisement uses Rhetoric methods (ethos, pathos and logos) to make people interested in it. For this assignment I will analyze the advertisement from Gatorade (One of the large power energy drink companies). They always invite the biggest superstar in any kind of sport. For example, in this advertisement, they invited Michael Jordan to endorse their drink. From this example we can know that they use logos and ethos to make people connect thinking that all professional basketball players might drink Gatorade and show that their energy drink is very effective. They also used the influence of Michael Jordan to make their brand well-known. Most of their customers are people who play any kind of sport, which is why they always invite superstars from sports like Michael Jordan and Usain Bolt and they always sponsor a lot of sports competitions.

They put “WORKS 30% FASTER THAN WATER” beside Michael Jordan, as like he is talking this sentence to the customers. Because of ethos methods, people might believe that this energy drink works 30% faster than water. They compare water with their drink because we drink water every day and we can’t service without water especially people who play sports they need more water than normal people. This example is only a little part of Gatorade’s advertisement. They always sign new famous superstars from sports to endorse their brand to make them always relative with professional sports.  

Week #2 Response/Digital Receipt #2/Digital Receipt #2/Week #2 Response

Digital Receipt #2

Posted by Min Aung Zaw (he) on

This document “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps: toward Rhetorical Analysis” by Laura Bolin Carroll is about how people like to make tough decisions and conclude on everything based on visuals, actions and auditory sense, another word called Rhetorical Analysis and it mentioned making Rhetorical Analysis on media is necessary and useful because on media there is tons of information and we constantly have a time to buy something, act in some way, believe something to be true, by applying Rhetorical Analysis we can quickly eliminate all the information that unrelated with the goal that we want to achieve. Making rhetorical analysis is very important for daily life too, people can only use information that they are informed to analyze and understand situations quickly and effectively. I used a lot of rhetorical analysis when I was searching for everything that I needed on the internet. As I mentioned before there is a ton of information on the internet. If I spend time investigating every single piece of information, I will never achieve the goal that I want, so in this situation Rhetorical Analysis is necessary, useful and effective. Especially when you try to buy things online which you never know how the thing is. So, I need to read the product comment and how buyers react to the product to analyze and make a decision to buy or not.   

Digital Receipt #4/WLLN/WLLN Draft/Digital Receipt #4/WLLN/WLLN Draft

WLLN Draft Assignment

Posted by Min Aung Zaw (he) on

 Life is the journey of learning. We are learning every single day that you are alive the same as me. We always need to face issues on the way of learning, sometimes they can be solved in a minute, sometimes you need to spend a day, a week, a month to finally figure out the solution for the issues or problems. But I pretty enjoy the time spent trying to find the answer for the issue and how this answer really works for this specific issue. The most interesting thing that I learn in my life is computer hardware. When I was a middle school student in my home country, I started to be in touch with the most successful human invention product ever, Computer. The thing that contains a world that is ten times, hundred times, thousand times bigger than our real world. This new world not only shocks me about the intelligence of the human, but also makes me have a huge interest in how this computer is created and how they put thousands, millions of electric currents in the small litter metal box. Because of the passion of hunting for the answer for how the computer can understand the orders that humans give and how the computer completes the orders, I began the learning trip about studying computer languages and computer hardwares. 

At the beginning, I learned most of my knowledge about computers from the internet via videos and websites. I took my first computer class at my high school. I still remember I learn C++ language in this class and that was the first time I learned about C++. My teacher is very patient, he always clearly explains how every single command and function loop works in the program. I still remember spending a bunch of time understanding the logic in the programming language and learning the way to think for solving the questions. I always read the question first and break down the question in many steps. By solving all the single steps and combining them together into the big step to reach out the final intention.  

 He always lets us play with these commands and functions to create the thing that we want to do. Because of this class I started to know that only learning one computer language is not enough to be a computer engineer and let me recognize that I have a lot of things needed to learn to be a professional computer engineer. One more thing that very interests me is the way that they build the computer hardwares especially the CPU (Central Processing Unit). One of my passions is creating the new powerful and effective CPU. It can advance not only for the computer system but also can approve all the fields that rely on the capacity of computers’ solving and calculation ability like finance, entertainment, environmental protection and medical etc….

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