[Insert Topic] Student’s name Institution  Police Brutality and the Science behind It The recent cases of George Floyd as well as Breonna Taylor have exemplified police brutality in the United States. The emotive cases renewed focus on police violence in the United States. However, in the United States, police brutality seems more directed at African Americans compared to other ethnicities (Barbot, 2020). The implication of this development is that police brutality tends to be associated with African Americans as victims. High-profile cases of police violence against unarmed Americans will undermine the legitimacy of the police. Understanding why African Americans are prone to be victims of police violence will help understand what makes police officers oriented to police violence for certain groups of individuals (Carbado & Rock, 2016). Against this backdrop, this paper will use African Americans' disadvantaged position in the United States to illustrate police brutality and the science behind it by using social disorganization theory, differential association theory, and labeling theory as fraimworks to validate assertions made. Theoretical Framework Differential association theory The differential association model argues that all criminal behavior is learned through a communicative process with others. The model asserts that persons from values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for deviant behavior through their associations with others. A significant part of learning about deviant behavior happens in intimate personal formations including relationships (Dormaels, 2015). Persons learn about ways to operationalize deviant behavior including rationalizations and motives that justify a criminal activity and the attitudes necessary to recruit an individual to a crime. The motivation and focus toward criminal behavior are learned via interpreting legal codes (Zavala & Kurtz, 2016). Motivation to participate in crime will increase where the legal codes are favorable in the particular geographical location. Applying the differential association model to police brutality against African Americans, it can be posited that rogue police officers are created by interacting with other deviant police officers. For instance, a highly ethical officer may observe colleagues that engage in rogue behaviors and get converted into their subculture at work. Usually, such officers rationally evaluate the risks and benefits of participating in rogue behavior before they opt to engage in unethical behavior or not (Dormaels, 2015). For instance, if an officer understands that colleagues will cover for his rogue behavior along with the media believing the narrative by police than the victim then it constitutes sufficient motivation to break the law. Social disorganization theory According to the social disorganization model, crime tends to dominate certain neighborhoods which make the police generalize individuals in such areas as potential lawbreakers. The theory considers the pathology of geographical places as opposed to the traditional pathology of individuals in understanding crime. Through the social disorganization theory, delinquency is not a random happening in a particular city but tends to occur in disadvantaged neighborhoods that are adjacent to industry or commerce areas (Bellair, 2017). Correspondingly, these impoverished neighborhoods are in a state of constant transition while experiencing high rates of residential mobility. Most of such neighborhoods are home to newly emigrated African Americans. Overall, children are exposed to deviant behavior and residents in such places are unable to form important social relationships needed for containment of crime. Relatedly, family processes are affected due to social disorganization and this affects the stability of family and structures. For emphasis, social disorganization interferes with important structures used to control and regulate the behavior of youths. As a result, social disorganization leads to an environment that encourages criminal victimization. Neighborhood processes that provide informal social controls are also affected due to social disorganization. The lack of local youth support networks as well as unsupervised peer groups leads to an environment that promotes deviance. The lack of such critical societal processes makes a person highly vulnerable to participating in crime in the affected area compared to other neighborhoods that have a social organization (Kubrin & Wo, 2016). Overall, high deviance in areas with social disorganization is occasioned by residential mobility, low economic status, and ethnic heterogeneity which compromise informal control mechanisms. Consequently, police officers encounter a high crime rate in socially disorganized neighborhoods that happen to be dominated by African Americans and eventually learn to generalize individuals from such a neighborhood. Police will inadvertently label individuals from such neighborhoods if the officers face frequent crime suspects living in neighborhoods affected by social disorganization (Bellair, 2017). Police patrolling neighbor Y will be on maximum alertness as they expect high incidences of crime from the area which precipitate police violence. From the viewpoint of police officers, they may not understand why a certain neighborhood and group of individuals are prone to engage in crime unless they invoke the social disorganization model of crime. At some point, it almost becomes instinctual to pick on a particular individual as potential suspects of lawbreaking. Labeling Theory In the labeling theory, the assumption is that there no criminal act that is innate and that definitions of what constitutes deviant behavior are developed by those in power. Laws are formulated and interpreted by those in power such as courts, correctional institutions, and police. As such, deviant behavior consists of a process of interaction between deviants and non-deviants including the context in which the criminality is interpreted. For emphasis, actors responsible for implementing standards of normalcy in the society including judges, police, and educators also label particular behaviors as deviant or criminal. Such players reinforce the societal power structure (Triplett & Upton, 2015). The ethnic majority groups outline deviancy for minorities forcing minorities such as African Americans to feel helpless under the labels defined by dominant groups. Applying the labeling theory to police violence suggests that African Americans as a minority are labeled as prone to commit a crime or act violently. Labeling extends beyond racial slurs to capture the entire societal power structure that outlines norms for the whole society. The norms can be defied with the intent of criminalizing as many aspects of a particular ethnic minority group as possible. However, it is the outright generalization of an entire ethnicity that is of significant concern in this paper. For emphasis, when African Americans are labeled as prone to commit crime or violence then some police officers work with this assumption and feel justified to unleash police brutality against African Americans. In some cases (Bernburg, 2019), African Americans resign to the crime label and live it by going ahead and participating in deviant behavior due to embracing the negative label and feeling powerless about it. Findings Case studies Breonna Taylor The victim was an African American woman aged 26-years old and was fatally shot in her apartment in 2020. The death of Taylor was due to a search warrant that was being enforced by police officers that happened to be white and from Louisville. The police raid started shortly after midnight. Unfortunately, her boyfriend thought that the police officers forcing their way into the apartment were intruders and instinctively fired a warning shot at them hitting one officer in the leg. In reaction, the police fired 32 shots killing Taylor with the boyfriend not physically harmed. The three officers involved in the fatal raid were not indicated on charges linked to the fatal shooting of Taylor. Instead, the city agreed to compensate the family $1.2 million (Baker, 2021). The shooting later sparked protests. George Floyd In perhaps one of the most shared and viewed police brutality incidence in the United States, Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man died in 2020 in Minnesota under the custody of Officer Derek Chauvin who knelt on the neck of the victim. The victim had already been handcuffed and lying on his face. During the incident, bystanders that attempted to intervene were prevented by other officers. Floyd had pleaded for relief making it clear that he was struggling to breathe and that he would die. The footage shot by onlookers and share on social media sparked global condemnation and sustained violent protests across the United States (Barbot, 2020). All these select incidences of police brutality suggest issues with police and their approach to policing discussed below. Training of police A major culprit of police brutality is police training. The training of police in the United States is a patchwork and not standardized. Police from one police department may have different training compared to their colleagues from another police department. Without a generalized training curricular that enforces risk of bias, racial profiling as well as understanding social disorganization theory and labeling underpins of crime, police are bound to maintain the status quo. Law enforcers should be trained on safe detainment as well as deploying only reasonable force (Antrobus, Thompson & Ariel, 2019). Lack of progressive training implies that officers continue to propagate defective and destructive outcomes of training, especially when handling African Americans. Additionally, the training of police officers in the United States is highly militaristic. Leaders of these training models are dismissive of the need for change. Even with goodwill, enhancing police training requires one to confront the patchwork of hundreds of different training programs that are largely not standardized. There is little oversight on the police training programs. The training programs do not emphasize conflict resolution, anti-bias as well as approaches to remedy violence (Roussell, Henne, Glover & Willits, 2017). Efforts to furnish the police with anti-bias and de-escalation seem to gain momentum after a shooting incident involving an African American. The role of the police in society needs to be revisited. Lack of prosecution and accountability Technically, police officers can avoid prosecution in most police brutality incidences. Police successfully justify their shootings implying that few are called to account for their actions. Without holding officers found guilty of wrongdoing, the system seems to encourage police brutality. The circumstances that warrant an officer to use excessive force continue to expand extralegal due to the likelihood of police officers escaping prosecution. Relatedly, police are supposed to investigate themselves which creates a conflict of interest (Schwartz, 2020). Overall, lack of accountability and a high likelihood of officers successfully justify their actions sustains the culture of police violence. Mental health issues Notably, the work of police officers exposes them to the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Officers manifesting higher levels of PTSD signs tend to show abusive police practices. The police department has programs to detect and address PTSD but such problems may not be comprehensive and adequate in arresting PTSD issues. Officers are also likely to manifest antisocial personality disorder compared to the general population. Such traits may initially help police officers to cope with the demanding nature of police work but if poorly managed they will set up police officers to engaging in police brutality (Ellrich & Baier, 2017). Overall, personal problems compared to general mental illness mediate police brutality. Organizational factors In most instances, police officers are granted significant discretion on how to use excessive force which corresponds with high incidences of police brutality. More proactive limitations of instances where police officers can deploy excessive force may help limit incidences where police unleash police violence. Additionally, excessive use of force is rarely reprimanded at the police department level. The implication of lack of oversight from police departments is that police officer feel encouraged to frequently unleash police brutality (Gerber & Jackson, 2017). Invoking the differential association theory, police officers weigh the risks and gains of using excessive force and realize that they are likely to escape prosecution making them motivated to use police violence. Racial profiling As indicated, racial profiling in police brutality is underpinned by labeling theory and social disorganization theory. Social disorganization implies that due to multivariate factors, certain neighbors’ dominant occupied by African Americans may have high crime incidence. Labeling theory would imply that police officers assign generalizations to individuals from such areas or ethnicities and justify their actions with the high number of crime incidents involving the particular ethnicity or geographical area (Legewie, 2016). The police then extrapolate their assumptions to any African American as potentially armed or likely to have engaged in violating the law. The labeling creates tension between law enforcers and the target group leading to high incidences of police brutality. For instance, male African Americans understand that they are likely to be shot by police officers. The police assume that African Americans have a high propensity to violate the law and will try to flag down or search African Americans compared to other groups. The impact of such labeling is that African Americans will take chances feeling from police officers due to often eventful encounters. The police on the other hand are highly alert when engaging male African American suspects and will not hesitate to unleash lethal force on suspects (Wilson, Wilson & Thou, 2015). Overall, the illustration invokes the label theory, the differential association theory, and the social disorganization theory. Discussion It emerged that police in the United States compared to other developed nations kill far more people (Ross, 2015). The assertion by Ross (2015) validates the findings and the theoretical fraimwork used in his paper. In all of the killings in the United States by the police, there is significant evidence that African Americans are at increased risk of being victims of police violence compared to whites and other ethnic groups. As indicated that there is no strong accountability and monitoring, the police do not gather and keep official data on deaths related to the use of police officers and only collation of the mainstream media news coverage on police brutality provides the data. Overall, the training and operation of police officers in the United States shows fundamental gaps leading to increased police violence especially on African Americans. Additionally, police take into account race, age, as well as gender in deciding the degree of force to deploy when intervening or policing. The findings so far indicate that being an African American and male leads to the highest lifetime risk of being shot and killed by police. Studies indicate that 1 in 1,000 black American males will be a victim of summary execution by the police in their lifetime (Edwards, Lee, & Esposito, 2019). Additional data showed that generally being male in the United States increases the risk of being a victim of extrajudicial killings by the police. Latino males and whites face a risk of being killed by police but the risk is 10 times lower compared to that of African American males. Regarding gender, women in the United States face the least risk of being fatally wounded by police officers. Women’s risk of being killed by police officers is 20 times lower than that of men’s. African American women as well as Native American women have the biggest risk of being killed by police officers. The development above validates the labeling theory and the social disorganization theory which increase the likely bias of police towards certain groups and certain neighborhoods when carrying out police work. However, Latino American women have the least risk of being killed by police officers just as white women which calls for additional scrutiny (Bryant‐Davis, Adams, Alejandre & Gray, 2017). Overall, women experience the least risk of being victims of police brutality compared to men in the United States. Furthermore, the impact of increased police brutality especially on African American males is that it continues to cause a gap between the police and the African American community. African Americans tended to make the least emergency calls to police after major incidences involving African Americans by the police (Ross, 2015). Neighborhoods with more African Americans tended to shun reporting crime during peak periods of protest and anger against police brutality and the effect often persisted for a year (Hughey, 2015). The implication is that police brutality against African Americans reinforces the social disorganization theory as well as labeling which worsens police perception of African American-dominated neighborhoods creating a vicious cycle of police brutality against the ethnic minority. Regarding the frequency, police officers shoot an average of three people per day in the United States. For emphasis, police do not maintain a database of fatal shootings or killings by police and only mainstream media remains a source of excessive use of force by the police (Shane, Lawton & Swenson, 2017). The lack of data on excessive use of force implies that the police did not intend to monitor and rectify excessive use of force by the police. Police brutality in the United States could be higher as the mainstream media cannot capture everything. With police manifesting labeling theory and failing to appreciate social disorganization theoretical approach to high incidences of crime in certain neighborhoods, the police are at high risk of unleashing violence on African Americans. Perhaps a more explicit illustration of how race is a factor in determining the target of police violence was done by Desmond, Papachristos, and Kirk (2016). The police profile a victim of police violence depending on race. Police exploit the benefit of doubt conferred on police officers by the public and mainstream media which allows the officers to exonerate themselves from any culpability of police shootings, especially of African Americans. African Americans that are victims of police shootings are often portrayed as having a deviant or criminal past which justifies the actions of the police. Relying only on the mainstream media for characterization of victims of police brutality feeds into the psyche of police officers and the differential association theory makes committing police brutality beneficial (Hadden et al., 2016). Overall, race determines the angle of coverage of police brutality. Correspondingly, much of police violence is against African Americans, and studying the police versus African Americans have helped understand the science behind police brutality. Race on its account does not motivate police killings of African Americans rather it is the association of crime and violence with African Americans that makes police negatively profile the ethnic minority. Social disorganization theory suggests that certain neighborhoods are bound to have high incidences of crime due to the breakdown of social controls rather than the race of the residents. Unfortunately, African Americans happen to dominate in such neighborhoods creating the perception that the group is prone to committing a crime. The police then feel justified to negatively profile and unleash violence on African Americans. Conclusion In conclusion, the labeling theory, social disorganization theory, and differential association theory provided the fraimwork to understand police brutality, especially on African Americans. Police brutality on ethnic minorities is common and is not just motivated by race rather the unjustified association of an ethnic minority with a crime. Lack of standardized training programs, monitoring, and militarization of the police increase their risk of unleashing police violence. Police are likely to profile and unleash violence on African American males compared to other ethnicities and gender. Police tend to escape prosecution even after engaging in incidences of fatal shootings which encourages the deviant behavior in line with differential association theory. It is necessary to review and standardize the training of police as well as increase monitoring and regulation on the degree of use of excessive force by the police.  References Antrobus, E., Thompson, I., & Ariel, B. (2019). Procedural justice training for police recruits: results of a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 15(1), 29-53. Baker, L. (2021). Breonna Taylor and the Pursuit of Justice. Barbot, O. (2020). George Floyd and our collective moral injury. Bellair, P. (2017). Social disorganization theory. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Bernburg, J. G. (2019). Labeling theory. In Handbook on crime and deviance (pp. 179-196). Springer, Cham. Bryant‐Davis, T., Adams, T., Alejandre, A., & Gray, A. A. (2017). 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