Police brutality is one of our country's most serious problems

On the afternoon of August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, a 17-year-old black male who was not armed and had no prior criminal record, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis where two-thirds of the population is black, but the vast majority of the local police officers are white.

As a result of the senseless shooting of Brown, the FBI has opened a federal civil rights violation into the matter, and violent protests have taken place in Ferguson. While I believe that rioting and vandalism is the wrong thing for people to do, police crossed the line once again when they arrested Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post, two journalists who were simply providing media coverage of the protests, for no valid reason.

Despite the fact that few elected officials in this country have made any attempt to address the issue of police brutality, police brutality is one of the most serious problems in our country.

Less than a month earlier, Eric Garner, a 43-year-old resident of New York City, was put in a chokehold by New York Police Department (NYPD) officer Daniel Pantaleo in violation of the NYPD's own protocol, and Garner died due of neck compression suffered as a result of being placed in a chokehold by a police officer. Additionally, there have been numerous incidents of police brutality in this country in the past few decades, most notably the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) beating of Rodney King in the early 1990's.

The culture of police brutality is absolutely rampant in this country, and there needs to be a large-scale effort to get rid of the culture of law enforcement officers beating, shooting, choking, and killing people when such force is not necessary. I have five ideas to end the rampant police brutality culture in this country:

• Establish police review boards that have the power to review instances of police brutality and, with due process, fire law enforcement officers who use excessive force across the country
• Train police officers on how much and what kind of force they can use in various situations
• Ensure that hiring discrimination based on race, gender, etc. by law enforcement agencies is prohibited
• Hire more minority police officers where whites make up a large part of the police force in areas with significant minority populations
• Make instances in which a law enforcement officer uses excessive force that results in the death of one or more individuals punishable by manslaughter or murder charges

It's time to end the police brutality culture in this country.