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In the article “Racial Profiling” by Kenneth Jost, he talks about the issue of Racial Profiling and brings to light the two major sides of this issue and the major points each of them use to support their position. First, Jost talks about how the side that believes minorities aren’t unfairly targeted by police; they believe that police are targeting areas with high rate of crime, which happens to have a high concentration of minorities. To counter that Jost talks about how their maybe a larger crime rate in areas with a large minority groups, but “Of 4.4 million stops logged from 2004 to 2012, 53 percent involved African-Americans and 32 percent Hispanics. The city’s overall population is only 26 percent African-American and 29 percent Hispanic.” Finally, Jost states Police use stop, question and frisk negatively against minority groups. He supports this by using the story of a young man that has been stopped multiple times by law enforcement for "walking while black", and he believed that he was a victim of police using excessive force. After these encounters, this young man was released with no charges, leaving him to believe that he was only stopped because he was African American. Law enforcement officials justify this by stating that the Stop and frisk policy lowers the crime rate, so it ultimately saves lives. In this article Jost informs his concerns of the racial profiling issue in the U. S, seemingly he believes that minorities are unfairly targeted by police because of the large amount of supporting details in this Allegations of being pulled over by the police for simply being of a minority are seen as propitious because they believe that “it’s absurd to look at who’s being stopped without looking at who’s speeding” (Donald, P1010). These individuals also believe that Benchmarks are inaccurate and unreliable, showing that it would be unclear how often police pull over a certain minority group. They also believe that some department stores “may have employees that racially profile there customers but it isn’t the way that our security are trained to seek out those attempting to shoplift” (Smith, P1) Also, they believe that crime rates in high crime areas have lowered because of the stop and frisk policy. “Our crime strategies and tools – have made New York City the safest big city in America”. This shows that this side of the racial profiling argument believes that racial profiling
In the United States of America today, racial profiling is a deeply troubling national problem. Many people, usually minorities, experience it every day, as they suffer the humiliation of being stopped by police while driving, flying, or even walking for no other reason than their color, religion, or ethnicity. Racial profiling is a law enforcement practice steeped in racial stereotypes and different assumptions about the inclination of African-American, Latino, Asian, Native American or Arab people to commit particular types of crimes. The idea that people stay silent because they live in fear of being judged based on their race, allows racial profiling to live on.
The justice system is in place in America to protect its citizens, however in the case of blacks and some other minorities there are some practices that promote unfairness or wrongful doing towards these groups. Racial profiling is amongst these practices. In cases such as drug trafficking and other criminal acts, minorities have been picked out as the main culprits based off of skin color. In the article “Counterpoint: The Case Against Profiling” it recognizes racial profiling as a problem in America and states, “[In order to maintain national security] law-enforcement officers have detained members of minority groups in vehicles more than whites”…. “these officers assume that minorities commit more drug offenses, which is not the case” (Fauchon). In relationship to law enforcement there has also been many cases of police brutality leaving young blacks brutally injured, and even dead in recent years, cases such as Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddy Gray just to name a few. Many of these young men were unarmed, and the police involved had no good justification for such excess force. They were seen as threats primarily because of their skin color. Despite the fact this nation is trying to attain security, inversely they are weakening bonds between many of its
Opponents will argue that racial profiling is based on suspicious behavior and not on race. They feel as though racial profiling can potentially stop certain crimes befor...
The factor of racial profiling comes into play as federal grant programs award police for rounding up as many people as possible. This very tactic was demonstrated by the CompStat system in New York City and further expounded by Victor M. Rios’s analysis of the themes over-policing and under-policing. These themes focus on how officers, police certain kinds of deviance and crime such as, loitering, or disturbing the peace, while neglecting other instances when their help is needed . Rios also stresses how the accumulation of minor citations like the ones previously mentioned, play a crucial role in pipelining Black and Latino young males deeper into the criminal justice system. Rios implies that in order to decrease the chances with police interaction one must not physically appear in a way that catches the attention of a police or do anything behavior wise that would lead to someone labeling you as deviant . Unfortunately, over-policing has made it difficult even for those who actually do abide by social norms because even then, they have been victims of criminalization . However, since structural incentives like those that mimic CompStat are in place, police simply ignore constitutional rules and are able to get away with racial profiling, and thus interrogate, and search whomever they please. Since these targeted minorities acknowledge the fact that the police are not always present to enforce the law, they in turn learn strategies in order to protect themselves from violence that surrounds them. Young African American Americans and Latino youth thus become socialized in the “code of the street”, as the criminal justice system possesses no value in their
Stop and Frisk is a procedure put into use by the New York Police Department that allows an officer to stop and search a “suspicious character” if they consider her or him to be. The NYPD don’t need a warrant, or see you commit a crime. Officers solely need to regard you as “suspicious” to violate your fourth amendment rights without consequences. Since its Beginning, New York City’s stop and frisk program has brought in much controversy originating from the excessive rate of arrest. While the argument that Stop and Frisk violates an individual’s fourth amendment rights of protection from unreasonable search and seizure could definitely be said, that argument it’s similar to the argument of discrimination. An unfair number of Hispanics and
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...
One of the biggest reason stop-and-frisk should be abolished is in hopes to decrease such blatant racial profiling that has been going on under the name of “stop-and-frisk”. In 2007, 55% of the people stopped in New York were blacks and 30% were Hispanic (“Update: Crime and Race”). When checked again in 2011 a total of 685,000 people were stopped by the police of that 685,000, 52.9% were African Americans, 33.7% were Latino, and 9.3% were white (“Racial Profiling”). There is a story of an innocent victim of the stop-and-frisk policy, a man by the name of Robert Taylor. Police in Torrance stopped the elderly man and claimed he fit the description of a suspect that was linked to a robbery. But there was one simple problem; Taylor is a light complexioned, tall, 60 year-old man and the suspect was believed to be a short, dark complexioned, stocky man in his thirties; nothing like Taylor at all (Hutchinson). His shows that the police do not always stop people based on the right reasons, they tend to stop people based on the color of thei...
There is dispute regarding what defines racial profiling. Critics ask Is it racist, or is a necessary part of law enforcement. Racial profiling is identified by Adele Cassola in her article as unjust whereas Denyse Coles argues that racial profiling is necessary and is not considered racism. According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission “Racial profiling is based on stereotypical assumptions because of one’s race, colour, ethnicity, etc.” whereas criminal profiling “relies on actual behaviour or on information about suspected activity by someone who meets the description of a specific individual” (Facts Sheet, para 2). This definition is also shared by Casola but Coles considers them as the same. It is important to separate fact from feelings when discussing racial profiling; stereotypes are offensive, however identifying one’s race in a criminal profile does not make one racist.
Minorities and Policing: Unfairly Treated If we look at the past, we can see that there is no warm tradition of community cooperation between the African-American community and law enforcement. Minorities and Policing is an important topic because it deals with issues pertaining to how minorities are treated by the police. Racial profiling and social injustice are important areas when dealing with unfair treatment of minorities. 1.
The key to understanding racialized profiling is to understand what systemic discrimination and profiling mean. Systemic discrimination sometimes called systemic racism is defined as, “Patterns and practices… which, although they may not be intended to disadvantage any group, can have the effect of disadvantaging or permitting discrimination against… racial minorities” (Comack, 2012, p30). Profiling in policing is defined as,
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... ... middle of paper ... ...
Racial profiling has been one of the main causes of the tensions in communities with their police. The officers they believed they once trusted in a community, far from a white police officer and black victim crime, they are now skeptical and thinking, “If they attacked a black/white guy for no reason they’ll attack me.” This type of crime also brings up different combinations of racial tensions that were thought to be left behind in history. Racial profiling, as well as profiling based on religion, ethnicity and origin, continues to plague our nation despite the constitutional guarantee of equality. Evidence of widespread racial profiling, shows that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be stopped and searched by police, even though they’re less likely to be found with illegal possessions or crimes. “Critics argue that under the sole-factor definition, a hypothetical officer who routinely stops African-Americans for rolling stops or obscured license plates but does not stop Whites for the same infractions is not technically engaging in racial profiling because a reason other than race can be used to justify the stops” (Protecting Civil Rights 159). Profiling undermines public safety and thins the police and community trust. When law enforcement officers target citizens based on race or religion rather than behavior, community distrust of police seems to increase. Although the perpetrator just may happen to be a minority depending on the diversity of the population. Minority communities that had been unfairly targeted in the past continue to experience greater mistrust and fear of police officers. But, this problem can go both ways. There are white communities who would see a black cop and automatically feel fear due to others in his race, and vice versa. In order to put a stop to the problem of racial profiling of and by police officers there must be trust instilled
The U.S Census Bureau reports that over 13 percent of the total population were African American, 17 percent are Hispanic, and 61 percent are White. My report will center around police stops and searches. In recent years, the two common ways of police searching of citizens that were not involved in a crime are traffic stops and random searches known as Stop & Frisk. My reason for choosing this topic is to highlight facts that led to the inconsistencies in arrest rates among ethic groups demographically.