This summer vacation I went on a trip to Europe with my family. When we came back to America, the news was full of information about the Missouri shooting. This tragic incident made me think of the contrast between police in Spain and England, the two countries we visited, and police here in America.

When I was in Madrid Spain, I watched the way the police behave. There were many men on the streets selling things like sunglasses and knockoff handbags. It’s illegal to sell anything on the street without a license. These men definitely didn’t have a license and the police knew that. They would patrol around in the cars driving up to the men and then driving away, merely as a means of scaring them. Everywhere jails are overrun. So instead of arresting these poor men, who don’t have any other way to support themselves, the police merely scare them to let them know what they’re doing is wrong. It was like a game of “cat and mouse” between the police and the men. If this had happened in America, the police would have arrested them instantly. The police in Europe appear to take a softer approach because there’s not a whole lot of crime and criminals are less likely to be violent.

In England, most of the police don’t carry any weapons at all, only batons. In Spain too, the police were lightly armed. In most of the world, gun ownership is highly regulated by the government. This means that most criminals don’t have easy access to guns. This allows the police force to be lightly armed and less likely for incidents like in Missouri to happen. Lately we have come to know that the police in many American cities are using weapons and equipment handed down from the US military. The police are equipped like soldiers going to battle. There is also a racist divide between people in Missouri. Most of the police are white, and many people still think along the lines of racial stereotypes.

There are many reasons why incidents like the Missouri shootings happen more often in America. The police being heavily armed is just one of the reasons. The other big reason is because we live in a society that still has racial discrimination. Thirdly, we have easy availability of guns. We all need to learn from this incident and talk about what needs to change to prevent more such tragedies in America.