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Introduction for stop and frisk
Criminal profiling as an investigative technique
Introduction for stop and frisk
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Effects of Systematic Profiling Ryberg (2011) has suggested that unintended and unforeseen consequences come with all methods of racial and religious profiling. He has theorized that profiling minority groups could cause those who are not targeted, specifically Whites, to commit more crime. Ryberg (2011) has theorized that more resources have been used to investigate individuals based on religion, race, ethnicity, and national origin, and less resources have been used to investigate criminals who are not connected to a minority group but are actually connected to a crime. Horowitz (2015) has shared a different theory of how the White population is affected by racial profiling by describing an experiment conducted by Amy Hackney of Georgia …show more content…
In 2016, The Washington Post reported that Black males were three times more likely to be shot by police in comparison to White males regardless of whether they were armed or not (Jan, 2017). This was the case in the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin. Martin was confronted by police officer George Zimmerman when he was walking late at night. The two got into an argument, and Zimmerman shot Martin, who was only seventeen years old. Zimmerman claimed that Martin had been acting suspiciously and that he was only defending himself, but Martin was found to have been unarmed at the time of his death (“George Zimmerman Found Not Guilty of Murder of Trayvon Martin,” 2013). Jan has revealed that some have suggested that more Black police officers could deter this type of behavior, but Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs has reported that Black officers are just as likely, if not more likely, to profile and become violent with Black citizens. Black officers have been shown to be tougher on the Black community in an effort to make those communities safer (Jan, 2017). While several effects of racial profiling have been negative, not all of them have been. In fact, when the New York Police Department began implementing the stop and frisk policy, New York’s crime rate fell dramatically. While it has been argued that crime rates all over United States fell during the same time that the New York Police Department began using the stop and frisk method, New York’s crime rate dropped much more dramatically than in other locations (Rosen,
In 1990, there was a total of 2,245 murders in New York, but over the past nine years, this total has been less than 600 (NYCLU). However, there has not been evident proof that the stop-and-frisk procedure is the reason of the declination of the crime rate. Indeed, stop-and-frisk contributes to some downturn of crime but the number is not high enough for the citizen and police to rely on. Specifically, only 3% of 2.4 million stops result in conviction. Some 2% of those arrests – or 0.1% of all stops – led to a conviction for a violent crime. Only 2% of arrests led to a conviction for possession of a weapon (Gabatt, A., 2013). In other words, the decrease in crime due to stop-and-frisk is mostly due to the discovery of possessed of weapons. Therefore, stop-and- frisk is not an effective procedure to use because it does not represent a huge impact in people’s safety (Gabatt, A., 2013). The author has done research about how police base their initiation towards the procedure of stop-and-frisk. Researchers have found that stop-and-frisk is a crime prevention strategy that gives a police officer the permission to stop a person based on “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity and frisk based on “reasonable suspicion” that the person is armed and dangerous. This controversy is mainly because of racial profiling. “Reasonable suspicion” was described by the court as “common sense” (Avdija, A., 2013). Although, the
While the stop and frisk program ultimately seems like a great idea and that it will help residents of New York City feel safer while on the streets, there has been much controversy with this program. The issue of racial profiling is largely discussed when talking about NYPD’s stop and frisk program. Besides police officers targeting lower income neighborhoods, more stops are of African Americans or Latinos than of whites. These stops often end up with a higher arrest rate. Of the 685,784 stopped last year, 92% were male and 87% were African American or Latino (Devereaux, 2012).
Racial profiling is the tactic of stopping someone because of the color of his or her skin and a fleeting suspicion that the person is engaging in criminal behavior (Meeks, p. 4-5). This practice can be conducted with routine traffic stops, or can be completely random based on the car that is driven, the number of people in the car and the race of the driver and passengers. The practice of racial profiling may seem more prevalent in today’s society, but in reality has been a part of American culture since the days of slavery. According to Tracey Maclin, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, racial profiling is an old concept. The historical roots “can be traced to a time in early American society when court officials permitted constables and ordinary citizens the right to ‘take up’ all black persons seen ‘gadding abroad’ without their master’s permission” (Meeks, p. 5). Although slavery is long since gone, the frequency in which racial profiling takes place remains the same. However, because of our advanced electronic media, this issue has been brought to the American public’s attention.
“From 2005 to mid-2008, approximately eighty percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise twenty-five percent and twenty-eight percent of New York City’s total population, respectively. During this same time period, only about ten percent of stops were of Whites, who comprise forty-four percent of the city’s population” (“Restoring a National Consensus”). Ray Kelly, appointed Police Commissioner by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York in 2013, has not only accepted stop-and-frisk, a program that allows law enforcers to stop individuals and search them, but has multiplied its use. Kelly argued that New Yorkers of color, who have been unevenly targeted un...
With the society that most individuals are offered today, the world of crime has been constantly transforming. This can influence the typical individual to question if there are too many laws that one should follow, including the penalties that are to be expected. The word crime can insinuate many thoughts of apprehension, segregation, and security when applying the law in accordance to criminal acts being prosecuted. In order for penalties to apply to a particular individual, law enforcement must first be able to track and identify suspects of various crimes. Numerous approaches can be offered for this process, but profiling is a common tactic that has aided law enforcement in seeking justice for both suspects and victims. Although viewed negatively at times, law enforcement profiling is an effective tool for police officers that should not be abandoned due to infrequent and negligible invasions into an innocent person’s personal privacy. Suspect profiling has diverse backgrounds, intentions, and classifications that are demonstrated in various forms and allows law enforcement to evaluate and distinguish any probable evidence. With the following paragraphs I will provide detailed information on what ‘profiling suspects’ means in a law enforcement setting, the pros and cons of profiling, and the reasons why profiling should be used in law enforcement.
"The Reality of Racial Profiling." CivilRights.org. The Leadership Conference, 22 08 2012. Web. 4 Mar. 2014. .
The stop-and-frisk program, devised on the basis of the broken windows theory, seems to be a great solution to preventing and addressing crime in New York City. The broken windows theory is based on the concept that if one can detect and monitor smaller crimes, then larger, more serious crimes will be prevented (Hopkin). So why has this program with a goal of preventing larger scale crimes and promoting proactive policing caused so many controversial issues leading to lawsuits? By law and protected under the Fourth Amendment, in order to stop and search someone, the officer is required to have “reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime” (Rosenthal). However, many searches have begun with no reasonable suspicion and have ended with the officers coming up with a reason at a later time (Rosenthal). The main issue here, though, is not in the fact that they are searching people without reasonable suspicion as much as it is the type of person, specifically, that is being searched. After watching the documentary, The Scars of Stop-and-Frisk, which follows the story of an 18-year-old boy named Tyquan Brehon, I realized a major fault in this program. Many officers are structuring the basis of their search more on the color of one’s skin than having actual reasonable suspicion. Through examining racial profiling and the reasoning behind determining the perfect suspect, I will argue whether the stop-and-frisk program is creating its desired effects.
Looking back in history, crime has always been an ongoing issue for big states, as well as small communities. Law enforcement official have tried to implement several different approaches throughout time in order to try and deter crime. Recently a notable tactic that has come under a lot of scrutiny is referred to as ‘the stop-and-frisk Law.’ Under this policy, police officers have the right to stop, and if needed frisk, a suspect and ask him or her questions with reasonable cause. This policy was meant to prevent crime and criminals from reaching a level of being incarcerated or doing harm to others. Stop-and-frisk has been a method used in both big and small cities with high crime rates. With good intentions and safety of the community in mind, these methods seemed to be beneficial to communities. However, this process often turns out to be a failure. It has created uproar, especially in minority-stricken communities. Civilians are angry and feel targeted and discriminated. The use of stop-and-frisk is not an affected way to lower crime rates due to multiple reasons such as, but is not limited to discrimination, community and police relationship, and effectiveness.
Despite the fact racism has been around for hundreds of years, upcoming generations are becoming more open minded and less likely to publicly berate minorities; racial profiling, however, is the one loophole of racism America overlooks. Police officials often use the practices of racial profiling to discretely single out minority races. A common approach to this is through traffic patrols. According to a statistic based in San Jose, CA, nearly 100,000 drivers were stopped; during the year ending in June 2000; and of these drivers less than 32% were white, the remaining 68% of drivers were a...
The stop and frisk policy have been controversial because they promoted many evils including racism and police brutality. The policy may have worked to prevent terrorism but it may not have had significant impact on other crimes in the last two decades. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the stop and risk policy was used extensively in New York. However, the habit of intensive screening of Middle Eastern males was for all the States; it encouraged racial profiling and retribution. I agree with the argument that the policy has been utilized differently in New York depending on who occupies the Mayor’s office.
Criminal Minds inaccurately dramatizes crimes and criminal profiles compared to what happens in the real world. As a result, society’s connotation of the criminal justice system, concerning criminal profiling, becomes negatively shaped. People who watch Criminal Minds may think to themselves, “Criminal profilers don’t categorize perpetrators in a just manner,” causing them to perceive criminal profilers as something they are not. The episode, “Fear and Loathing (Gordan, 2007),” expresses negative first responses of criminal profilers. In the episode, four deaths take place, all being African-American girls, and as a result, the criminal profilers automatically put a white man on the top of the suspect list without thinking twice about it, and
Black people are often stereotyped as violent, dangerous, criminal, drug dealers and gang members (Wortley, 2013). For example, in the well-known case of neighbourhood watch captain Mr. Zimmerman who shot a Black unarmed boy, Trayvon Martin (Ralph&Chance, 2014). The media tried to justify the shooting by trying to find evidence of the victim being involved in drugs and other illegal activities to make him look like less of a victim and more of an offender. According to the stories covered by the media, the boy was looking and acting suspicious before he was shot by Zimmerman (Ralph&Chance, 2014). In fact, in most cases of racial profiling, the police officers and those involved will claim that the victim was acting suspicious when in fact they had no basis to stop, question or search them, besides their skin color (Ralph&Chance, 2014). The media is reluctant to show the Black and people of ethnic backgrounds as the victims and the police as the bad guys; and often cover the news in ways consistent with racial stereotypes (Manning,
“People, including police officers, hold strong implicit associations between blacks, and probably Hispanics, and weapons, crime and aggression," said Jack Glaser. Police brutality statistics show that African Americans are three times more likely to be murdered by cops than any other race. Racial disparity in the United States is a coherent reason for the increase of criminal injustice in the United States. Whenever you hear about an African American being killed by the United States police, you never see All Lives Matter supporters protesting.
The use of profiling as an investigative technique has been used for many years. Profiling is a prominent tool used in the field of criminal justice and criminology to better understand behavior, personality characteristics, and certain types of criminals. Using such characteristics as religion, race and sex have always been frowned upon but sometimes are needed to better categorize certain types of crimes and offenders. The three major goals of profiling are to provide a social and psychological assessment of the offender, to provide a psychological evaluation of belongings in possession by the offender, and to provide interviewing suggestions and strategies when captured. (Oconnor, 2011) By achieving each of these goals when profiling different offenders, links between certain characteristics of offe...
So if profiles are consistently found to be incorrect in at least some aspects, police will quickly lose faith in their worth. Additionally, severe criminal profiling can lead to implications towards some groups of the society as they will be labelled by the law enforcements such as the police. In conclusion, it seems that offender profiling has taken a life of its own, as it is especially popular in the media, through shows that involve police investigations. It has moved considerably since we measured the size of the heads.