Patricia Mendoza

Mrs. Thomas

UWRT 1103-1004

Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated Bibliography 3

Hudson, Redditt. "Being a Cop Showed Me Just How Racist and Violent the Police Are. There's

Only One Fix." The Washington Post. N.p., 6 Dec. 2014. Web. 7 Apr. 2017.

In this article, Redditt Hudson, a former police officer for the St. Louis Police

Department, describes his personal experiences with the job and illustrates how corrupt the

criminal justice system is. Hudson begins by describing the encounters that he, his family, and

friends faced with the police while he was a child, admittingly stating that he hated the police

because of their maltreatment towards citizens but also states that of course, not all cops are

corrupt, and because of this, he decided to join the force in 1994. Soon afterwards, he claimed, I

quickly realized how naive Id been. Hudson took notice that many of his peers were deeply

racist and were very open with each other about it, stating that a couple of officers ran a website

called St. Louis Coptalk, in which cops were able to post about their daily experiences on the job

but that for the most part, the website was used as a platform for racist rants, that eventually

escalated so much that at one point it had to be shut down.

Hudson then begins to recall some events in which hed accompanied his fellow officers

to calls and describes the disturbing manner the officers handled each situation. On one occasion,

Hudson accompanied another officer to a house where a teenage boy answered the door and

when the cop accused him of harboring a robbery suspect, he demanded that the boy open the
door and when he refused to do so, the officer yanked him to the porch by the throat and began

punching him. When another officer arrived at the scene, he told the boy to stand up but the boy

claimed he could not walk, in return the officer slammed him against the wall, cuffed him and

then proceeded to grab him by the ankles and drag him to the car. It turned out the reason the boy

could not walk was because he was on crutches when hed answered the door.

When Hudson tried to report these incidents to his sergeant, he was ignored and told to

get back to work. Hudson explains that a major flaw in police departments is that cops are not

held accountable for their actions, and they know it. They continue to violate rights because they

know they will not get in trouble for it and if they are caught, they know they will be investigated

by their own peers (who commit the same violations) and will be put on a paid leave, what they

refer to as a free vacation rather than a punishment for their wrongdoings. Hudson claims that

police need to learn how to mediate a situation rather than escalating it more by the second.

Eventually, Hudson quit the force and has been working with the Missouri ACLU (American

Civil Liberties Union) and other organizations, where he speaks on police abuse, racial justice,

and criminal justice reforms. Lastly, Hudson claims that a special attorney should be appointed in

dealing with excessive force cases so that cops cannot continue to violate the rights of citizens

and be able to walk away with only a slap on the wrist, if not less.

Other quotes:

The number of people in uniform who will knowingly and maliciously violate

your human rights is huge. At the Ferguson protests, people are chanting, The whole

damn system is guilty as hell. I agree, and we have a lot of work to do.
But more and more, I felt like I couldnt do the work I set out to do. I was

participating in a profoundly corrupt criminal justice system. I could not, in good

 conscience, participate in a system that was so intentionally unfair and racist. So after

five years on the job, I quit.

I, too, have faced mortal danger. Ive been shot at and attacked. But I know its

almost always possible to defuse a situation.

Analysis:

I am very glad that I was able to find this article. I wanted to include the voice of an actual cop in

my paper to add another perspective into it rather than just having the voices and opinions of

civilians. The article was an easy read and although it was not that long, it definitely had lots of

great content in it. The author was very clear and used personal examples but not only did he

speak of what was wrong with the criminal justice system and provided his own opinion but also

provided ways that the criminal justice system and our police departments can change for the

better. This is my favorite annotated bibliography that I have done so far and I am thinking of

almost adding the entire summary in my paper just because I think it flows very well.