Letter to a Government Represenative

In my first unit if Policy at GCE, I learned about the Legislative branch of the United States Government. In the Internal Investigation, I learned about the representatives that make up congress and what the process is of making a bill into a law. For the Action Project, I was asked to choose a bill that is currently in the process of becoming a law and write to a legislator that has the power to vote on that bill. For my project, I chose an Illinois state bill called the Reasonable Use of Force Act and decided to write to my local representative Sara Feigenholtz.

---

LS
GCE Lab School
1535 N Dayton St.
Chicago, IL 60642

April 30, 2017

Representative Sara Feigenholtz
3223 N Sheffield Ave
Chicago, IL 60657

Everyday people across the world get abused by the power of the police force. We see it it the news what must feel like every other week. In order to prevent this brutality, we cannot just simply ask the world to stop. In order to fix this widespread issue, we have to start small and then push for larger action. I write to you today asking for your support of the Reasonable Use of Force Act. If this act is passed, we can take a step towards a future where police action is more regulated and in turn, the safety of the lives of those who are being policed increases.

As you may already know, the Reasonable Use of Force Act does many things to ensure that people being handled by an officer are done so more cautiously and appropriately. According to the Illinois General Assembly website, the act covers the following points:

• Peace officers shall only used the amount of force that is absolutely necessary to perform a lawful task, successfully perform an arrest, overcome resistance, control a subject, or protect themselves or others from harm

• Prohibits the officer from preventing a subject from breathing 

• Limits an officer's ability to place a subject on their stomach unless necessary for the safety of the officer or others 

• Prohibits the use of a choke hold unless deadly force has been authorized 

• States that officers must monitor and seek medical attention for an arrestee after control has been obtained

One of the most well known instances of excessive use of force by Illinois police officers was the brutal killing of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. According to CNN, during this incident, McDonald was shot 16 times while walking away from officers and not posing any severe threat. It should have been obvious here that using deadly force on a person who is not threatening the lives of any living thing around him would have been the wrong way to handle the situation. Maybe if the Reasonable Use of Force Act had been in place at that time, officers may have thought more about how to handle the situation before exerting force. According to Daily News, in another instance in 2014, 43 year old Eric Garner was killed after an altercation with police which he ended up in a choke hold. In the video evidence provided, it it clear that Eric Garner was no threat to the officer nor anybody around him. While arguing with one officer, another jumped from behind him and placed him in a choke hold to wrestle him to the ground. During this time, Garner repeatedly exclaimed that he could not breathe. After a while, officers let him go to see he was unconscious and later proclaimed dead. With the amount of officers surrounding Garner and the fact that he was posing no threat to any officer or person on street, there was no reason that the officer should have 1) put Garner in a choke hold and stopped his breathing 2) wrestled Garner to the ground and forced him on his stomach. Neither of these actions were warranted and both are prohibited in the Reasonable Use of Force Act. In order to prevent things like this from happening in the future, this Act needs to be passed.

Since I do live in Chicago, I’ve bared witness to many arrests and police encounters all over the city. However, one particular situation that I saw many years ago still sits sharp in my memory as if I had seen it minutes ago. At a park somewhere within the city my friends and I witnessed 2 men fiercely arguing. Some passerby must have called the police because within a few minutes they had arrived. Even though the men had not shown a distinct desire to physically hurt one another, the officers that arrived there thought it would be appropriate to use physical force on these people to force them away from each other. One of the officers practically tackled one of the men to the ground and began arresting him. The other officer, seemingly a bit more sensible, only pushed the other man away and held him at bay. While the situation wasn’t necessarily a violent one, as a smaller kid it really made me scared of the police. How could they so easily exert physical force upon people who didn’t seem to be doing anything wrong in the first place? Why were the people who were supposed to be keeping peace, so keen on inciting violence? Again, if this Act is passed in Illinois, these situations will have smaller chance of occurring.

Some people like President of the Fraternal Order of Police Kevin Graham, might say that this Act being proposed is just another way the public can criticize the Chicago police force or that this law would just be a way to take necessary power away from the police. According to Chicago Reader, Graham has said “In the past, the media has often not portrayed the Chicago Police in a good light. We want to make certain that our members and the citizens of Chicago realize that we are the good guys." and "We will no longer be victimized by a biased anti-Police media." It seems to me that people like Graham try to rally around trying to brighten the image of the police in the face of the public rather than reflecting upon their mistakes and trying to better themselves in the future. At this point in time, the way the public sees the police does not matter as much as how the police are are treating the public and keeping them safe. Instead of worrying about how people see his police force, Graham should be backing legislation like the Reasonable Use of Force Act and pushing for more ways to keep altercations between the police and the public fair and law abiding.

Overall, the ways that the police treat the public is still a massive problem all over the country. However, I write to you specifically because the Reasonable Use of Force Act is still an active bill in the Illinois General Assembly. I hope that after reading this letter, you have felt my passion for this issue and can empathize with me. Furthermore, I hope that as a woman with a seat at the General Assembly, you can take a stand with your power and push this bill through the process and into a law.