My audience for this paper would be anyone really, because I believe everyone can connect to this story with what they know or may have experience. I’d like to let my readers to know before reading this piece is that my biggest struggle with writing would be research papers. I always have trouble with expressing the work I looked up with literature I have so bear with me please! I want people to know that we can’t categorize all cops as white men, the play shows this by adding a latino man to play the cop. I do think they will be able to learn that because it’s mention in my writing piece and how one of Alex’s internal struggles had to be, being a minority fighting against his community. The unique perspective I give to my analysis that adds a great amount of value to my piece would be my aggressive point of view on how the system is failing us and our community. If we don’t train people right, we’ve failed them before they have even gotten a chance to work. I learned that with research you must build on and be pretty clear on how what you looked up relates to your piece of writing. The connection has to make sense because if not, you confuse the reader and the message loses it’s value. I still do not know for sure what the intention the playwriters had when making the cop (Alex) a hispanic man. I have ideas but for sure I do not know why they chose to do that. I would like to learn what research the actors and writers had to do and what would they do after Janelle’s death if they had the time to elaborate on that. Diego helped me understand what things I should explain more because he told me when I connected the article to the play the message was unclear and he struggled to understand what I was trying to get at. Professor Polish helped me a great amount with what things I should add to help me get out of my funk. I read her tips and it help me overall understand my topic way better. At first when reading the play I thought they were purposely going harder on Alex because he was hispanic but when doing my research I learned that it isn’t only Alex, all people entering the force have to go through intensive training which I found very interesting. If I had another week to work on my research paper I would like to also see if I could speak to people who have been pressed by the police to see how it is the other half feels during those situations. And also would ask them how it is the cop was questioning them. The last thing you want to tell your audience before diving into my paper would be to keep in mind I suck at research but tried my best to explain the message at hand and in all the reading and search I learned a lot as well and hope to expand my knowledge further in the future.
Worked with Diego and a little bit of John
Intersections sheds a light on issues most of us have but rarely speak on. An unjust system we know takes place but are slaves to… right? NO, the play Intersection helps show that by speaking on the issues that happen in everyday life. The way the students of Laguardia perfect the awareness of these topics is by adding their own lives within the story with also elaborating social problems.
The most powerful scene of the play involves Alex, Janelle and Mike, the reason for this has to do with police brutality and how its demonstrated throughout the play. We see Alex go through a intensive amount of training when trying to get into the force. Alex endures being pepper sprayed and having to recite “and the amount of force used was reasonable and effective… Sir” while being in a great amount of pain. He also has to preform the act of beating up a fake person with a baton while others cheer for him. You can see the emotional and physical tole this is taking on Alex but Officer Charles states “we push them as hard as we can because some people are not meant to be police officers.”Him being a latino male was a key element in the play and the reason for that was to make it more complex. If this play made the character a white man we would automatically get it and not even question why he did what he did because he is WHITE. We felt for Alex, we know Alex, we get his story, so why did he do this horrific act? Emotionally Alex is torn, and the reason for this being that he falls in the minority group. Cops aren’t seen as our “saviors.” Abuse of power is viewed on a daily within the minority communities and making a difference is hard. The physical tole Alex has is with the way it’s carried out as if they want him to have a disconnect and follow order of aggressor.
In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQqY-4MYwQc ) we see an example of the scene of Alex and Officer Charles. The video shows men struggle to say the words they are suppose to and see how they take out their frustrations on the dummy representing a person. The correlation between the play and video are fairly similar because of the intensive training these two go through. Is it really to see if they have what it takes, or is it really to teach these men how to block all emotion in order to do the job right. Maybe if emotional training was well carried out as intensive as the training already done police officers would have a better mindset when dealing with problems. By emotional training I mean not being so aggressive when teaching the men entering in the force, because when you do that you are blinding the person and justifying the wrong doing of ones actions since emotion and physical force are suppose to be separate. Emotional training should and can be conducted by knowing how to come about a situation at hand rather than automatically heading for the gun.
The last scene of Intersections, we see how the systems training failed Alex and now he is faced with a choice that will define him. He encounters Janelle and Mike but proceeds to Janelle to press her with commands. The audience can tell whats coming and its not pretty.
“Alex- HANDS UP NOW, HANDS UP
Janelle-MY HANDS ARE UP THEY’RE UP
Alex-I NEED TO SEE ID! DON’T REACH INTO YOUR POCKETS
Janelle- I’m just trying to show you my id” (Intersection 27).
Alex then proceeds to tell her that she needs to put her hands up where he can see them but then tells her she can’t talk back to him. Janelle confusingly questions him about his contradicting request and Alex (aggressively) tells her to back up and not turn around then shoots her. He becomes agitated and repeats “the amount of force used was reasonable and effective.” This just further analyzes that the intensive force used in training only makes it easier to justify actions by claiming protection was accomplished. We struggle with Alex because unlike most cases we hear about, he is a struggling latino man. The system trained him in a way to strip him from his emotions and to go the more aggressive route when dealing with individuals, and by that I mean forget about the community you were brought up in, disconnect yourself from the individual you know is struggling to accomplish the goal of handling the situation. The system failed Alex and Alex failed his community.
Karen Hopkins helps demonstrate this in her article Deadly Force REVISITED: TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR D.C. POLICE USE OF FORCE. by addressing “The series revealed that MPD officers fired their weapons more than twice as often as other major metropolitan area police departments.3 Eighty-five people were shot and killed by DC police between 1990 and 1998. The Post series discussed six deficiencies including incomplete reporting and tracking of police use of force, failure to properly train new and continuing officers, off-duty shootings and shooting at cars, failure to discipline officers guilty of misconduct, ineffective complaint investigations, and costly litigation” (Hopkin 130). The system is failing us, we fail to train our men and the result of that ends in tragedy. You can’t turn to a gun whenever someone doesn’t comply to your demands, the gun has to be the last result. When you teach men to be robots you teach men to feel no remorse and to never understand that the system they work for is hurting communities.
The play Intersections displays a great amount of awareness to social injustices. We connected with Alex in a sympathetic way and are torn when he does what he does. The play helps us understand that the way the police force carries themselves out is very problematic because of how minorities are treated. Training should be more educational. The play illustrate current America by demonstrating that change has to happen and Alex represents the system taking in and failing another individual. The students of Laguardia carried out social injustices by providing social and self experiences and by doing so we
Cited Sources
Hopkins, Karen. “Deadly Force” Revisited: Transparency and Accountability for D.C. Police Use of Force.” National Lawyers Guild Review, vol. 72, no. 3, Fall2015, pp. 129-160. EBSCOhost, mail.lagcc.cuny.edu/viplogin/default.aspx?redirect=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=112238803&site=ehost-live.
seattletimesdotcom. Police academy: Pepper spray, Youtube, july 17, 2013, may 1, 2017.