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Respect and the Police

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Our views about police authority and conduct are shaped by our experience of them. And for high school student Alexiz Buenrostro those views were formed at an early age.

Imagine a 5-year-old boy, watching the police going through his home, crushing everything in their way - flipping couches, beds, going through each drawer, and throwing everything out.

Now picture a 5-year-old boy seeing his parents handcuffed all because the police assumed they were concealing drugs and weapons. To make matters worse, his mother struggles speaking English which made everything harder for her.

I was that 5 year-old-boy who witnessed his parents get handcuffed and his home being raided by the police. At this age, I had no other siblings to comfort me. That was the first time that I have ever seen my dad cry. The police had hit him with a baton after he resisted. He was scared he was going to lose his wife and his son. I was scared I was going to lose my father. The last thing I ever wanted to see was my father ride away in a police car.

My father was arrested because of a false identification. They believed that he fit the description of another man that lived in our apartment building. Instead of actually identifying my father, they falsely accused him due to his ethnicity.

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This event determined how I view the police. The police are there to protect us and provide safety to the community they serve. However, due to my encounters with the police and the police misconduct I’ve seen on social media, I strongly believe that police are cruel to people like me.

I find myself struggling to respect the police. I don’t want to show them blatant disrespect. However, I do not believe they fulfill their duty in serving our community without discrimination and racism towards certain groups. I believe there needs to be a moral standard that police are held to. No one should ever judge someone’s personal life based on their race, stereotypes, or their physical appearance.

With a Perspective, I’m Alexiz Buenrostro.

Alexiz Buenrostro attends Frement High School in Sunnyvale.

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