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Police Violence

Police Violence has been a current issue in our world today. Police Violence incidents
include, but are not limited to, beating or killing the civilians, and breaking the police code of
conduct. This topic can be found in two different genres: crime articles and gangster rap. Genres
are categories that are developed through a set of similar styles, grammar, and special vocabulary
(Dirk, 9). For instance, crime articles were created to let the general public know about crime
incidents that are occurring in the United States or other parts in the world. On the other hand,
gangster rap was created to expose struggles of low income communities and often speak about
police violence, usually written for people from these communities. Through these two genres,
crime articles and gangster rap, their authors communicate the message of police violence
towards minorities to their targeted audience. Crime articles attempt to share knowledge about
these incidents using factual information and non-opinionated choice of words while gangster
raps portrays the violence in urban communities using explicit language and the artist's own
experiences.
Crime articles revolve around situations that involve misconduct activities. In the article,
2 Cops Pulled Off Streets, Staten Island DA Looking into Mans Death after NYPD
chokehold, by Annie Karni, Rocco Parascandola, and Larry Mcshane, New York Daily News
authors, discuss a crime injustice incident that occurred on July 17th, 2014 in New York. The
incident dealt with police violence; police abusing their powers over the people and hurting,
often killing, a minority. Throughout the article, the writers only state factual information. For
instance, they state, A crisis over an unarmed man who died on a Staten Island street after a city
cop grabbed him in a prohibited chokehold forced Mayor de Blasio to delay his Italian vacation
Friday. The sentence only contains a description of the event without including their own

thoughts on it. It steers the audience, the general public because anyone has access to this
information, to the direction of understanding what is going on around them. Also, the authors
use factual information like who the victim was, the setting, and when it happened.
The authors of the crime article decided to use specific words that does not express their
opinions because it is only reporting all the facts and it is not a blog where the authors do include
their perspectives. The article stated, A video shot by a bystander captured Garners desperate
cries as one cop shoved his head into the sidewalk and three others pinned him down while a
fifth cuffed him. I cant breathe! he shouted in vain. In other words, this sentence gave you a
visual, but the authors opinion cannot be found. As mentioned in Writing with Pictures, words
can be powerful ally in the struggle to communicate (142). It is basically saying words help a
person exchange information and it has the power to change viewpoints.
Meanwhile, in gangster raps, focuses on being a source for people primarily those in low
income neighborhoods get their information from because the artists use the language used in
those communities. For instance, it uses explicit language, act of violence, because it contains
words they use in these urban areas. This style of gangster rap is straightforward because the
artists are sharing what they feel or would like to say because they represent their cities. In most
gangster raps, you can find words like fuck or nigga because these are words that are used among
the communities. The techniques the author is using here is to get their audience hooked on their
music by using informal language (Bunn, 51).
In gangster rap, the artists also inject their own experiences into their lyrics to show the
audience they are not better than them, but face the same struggles. This would cause their
audience to feel like someone is listening and addressing their problems. For instance, in the rap
song, Fuck the Police, Ice Cube raps, A young nigga got it bad cause I am brown and not the

other color so the police think they have the authority to kill a minority. He is talking about his
own thoughts about the police and how the people in his community are not alone. His strategy is
effective because he knows who his audience is and knows they are looking for someone to be
the voice for their communities (Rosenberg, 215).
In conclusion, each genre has their own special characteristics which are also known as
conventions. For instance, in crime articles, you will always find factual information on the
incidents as well as an informative tone without any intentions of getting the audience to feel a
certain way towards the topic. In gangster rap, the artists always use explicit language and own
experiences to get the audience to feel the same way as them. In others, as Ice Cube mentioned
his own experiences with police, the audience would feel drawn to his music. These two genres
address the topic of police violence, but both have their own purpose for writing them.

Works Cited:

Bunn, Mike. How to Read Like a Writer.

Cube, Ice, Easy E, and MC Ren. Fuck The Police. Niggas With Attitude. 1988.

Karni, Annie. "2 Cops Pulled off Streets, Staten Island DA Looking into Man's Death
after NYPD Chokehold." NY Daily News. New York Daily News, 19 July 2014. Web.

Kerry, Dirk. Navigating Genres.

McLoud. Writing with Pictures.

Rosenberg, Karen. Reading Games.

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