Police brutality has been a very prominent issue over the past year. It seems as if every month there’s a new #BlackLivesMatter protest, demonstration or even riots happening, making it feel as if this issue will never go away.

When a big incident involving police mistreatment happens, it takes over social media. The recent incident in McKinney, Texas, did just that. 

On June 6, a video of a cop showing excessive force was uploaded to Twitter. It caused a lot of uproar. The video showed several students leaving a pool party in McKinney and a police officer screaming profanity at the kids.

It’s awful to see how these young people are being treated. If this happened to me at their age, I would dislike police officers. Many wonder why people of color distrust law enforcement. These types of incidents are why.

Although there seemed to be people of all colors, only black children were the ones being harassed. 

The part of the video that caught the most attention was the way the officer forcefully handled a young girl in a bikini. He dragged her as well as hovered over her with his knee dug into her back. It broke my heart to watch. From what the video showed, no attack was made toward the officer. He was just very upset.

The more cases that arise will bring more divide between people of color. It’s as if the cops are purposely attacking people of color because they are likely to not be held accountable. I’m glad the video of the McKinney incident was posted because people are more willing to fight for the unjust treatment of children. These innocent children didn’t deserve to go through this. They were just having fun and enjoying a pool party like normal people their age.

I hope that these things get better. Otherwise, a divide between the people and law enforcement will remain. The people will never understand or agree with the system. 

kperki4@dailyillini.com