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The causes and effects of racial profiling in law enforcement
Racial profiling in the United States
Racial profiling in the United States
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Chynna Wren
Hann
English
01 March 2017 Police Brutality Against Minorities According to to the New York Civil Liberties Union, African Americans and Hispanics are unjustifiably targeted for “stop and frisk” checks by eighty four percent from 2002 to 2016. Stop and Frisk is a non consensual detainment and pat down on someone who appears to be armed or dangerous without arrest (Henderson). Research shows that police brutality against a select group of minorities of African Americans and Hispanics has escalated noticeably since the 1990s. Although the police has a sworn duty to protect, defend, and uphold the law, a surge in police brutality is a growing problem in society because of racial bias, racial profiling, and politics.
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Recent observations were made with African Americans and Hispanics implying they have little to no confidence in law enforcement (Wihbey). Individuals polled in this study believe law enforcement professionals will use unnecessary force against them (Wihbey). Minorities within the above mentioned communities exercise poor judgement by taking matters in their own hands instead of properly alerting law enforcement. “In a number of closely watched cases involving the deaths of young black men police have been acquitted, generating uproar and concerns about justice for all” (Wihbey). When individuals feel they are disenfranchised, their response to racial bias, racial profiling, and politics is impaired. Ultimately, racial bias has a major impact on police brutality against minorities because of the swayed results of how people view a specific
The Stop and Frisk program, set by Terry vs. Ohio, is presently being implemented by the New York Police Department. It grants police officers the ability to stop a person, ask them questions and frisk if necessary. The ruling has been a NYPD instrument for a long time. However, recently it has produced a lot of controversy regarding the exasperating rate in which minorities, who regularly fall under assault and are irritated by the police. The Stop, Question and Frisk ruling should be implemented correctly by following Terry’s vs. Ohio guidelines which include: reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to be committed, identifying himself as a police officer, and making reasonable inquiries.
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
The judicial system in America has always endured much skepticism as to whether or not there is racial profiling amongst arrests. The stop and frisk policy of the NYPD has caused much controversy and publicity since being applied because of the clear racial disparity in stops. Now the question remains; Are cops being racially biased when choosing whom to stop or are they just targeting “high crime” neighborhoods, thus choosing minorities by default? This paper will examine the history behind stop and frisk policies. Along with referenced facts about the Stop and Frisk Policy, this paper will include and discuss methods and findings of my own personal field research.
...ack and Latino communities remain to be the overwhelming aim of these procedures. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own reports. Linking police stops to violent crime suspects is a bad calculation. Only 11 percent of stops in 2011 were founded to be on an account of a felony suspect and from 2002 to 2011, black and Latino citizens made up close to 90 percent of individuals stopped, and about 88 percent of stops, more than 3 million, were innocent New Yorkers. Even in areas that are mostly white, black and Latino New Yorkers face the inconsistent burden. For instance, in 2011, African American citizens and Latino New Yorkers made up over 24 percent of the residents of Park Slope, but they also made up 79 percent of all the stops made by the NYPD. Making Stop-and-Frisk clearly discriminatory.
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).
“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...
One discriminating practice used by police officers is racial profiling. This is the police practice of stopping, questioning, and searching potential criminal suspects in vehicles or on the street based solely on their racial appearance (Human Rights Watch, 2000). This type of profiling has contributed to racially disproportionate drug arrests, as well as, arrests for other crimes. It makes sense that the more individuals police stop, question and search, the more people they will find with reason for arrest. So, if the majority of these types of stop and frisk searches are done on a certain race then it makes sense that tha...
Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. Since there is a mass incarceration of African Americans, it is believed that African Americans are the cause of the severe increase of crimes. This belief has been sent out implicitly by the ruling class through the media. The media send out coded messages that are framed in abstract neutral language that play on white resentment that targets minorities. Disproportionate arrest is the result of racial disparities in the criminal justice system rather than disproportion in offenders. The disparities in the sentencing procedure are ascribed to racial discrimination. Because police officers are also biased, people of color are more likely to be investigated than whites. Police officers practice racial profiling to arrest African Americans under situations when they would not arrest white suspects, and they are more likely to stop African Americans and see them as suspicious (Alexander 150-176). In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and her comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. Fine believes it is critical to draw attention to the reality in why African Americans are being arrested at a much higher rate. This article reflects the ongoing racial issue by focusing on the injustice in treatment by police officers and the youth of color who are victims. This article is successful in being persuasive about the ongoing racial iss...
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...
In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
Most African Americans and Hispanics in certain part of the United States have been subject to some form of stop and frisk. Some stop and frisks are racially related and other are legit. For the ones that are not legit it seems that there is a particular ethic group that is the main focus of these stop and frisks, and they tend to be the African Americans. When we are stopped the term used with some LEOs and even non LEOs (regular citizens) is driving while black, especially if they are stopped on the highway (e.g., Lundman and Kaufman 2003 and Weitzer, 2000, Harris, 2002). Within this discussion, we will focus on stop and frisk, the distinction between the stop and the frisk, Terry v. Ohio, one or two examples where a stop and frisk would be justified, the length of time of the detention, could the subject be handcuffed during this stop, and the level of force that could be used to enforce the stop and frisk.
Police brutality is one of the most serious human rights violations in the United States and it occurs everywhere. The reason why I chose this topic is because police brutality happens all the time in the United States and still remains unrecognized by many. Additionally, the public should be knowledgeable about this topic because of how serious this crime can be and the serious outcomes that police brutality can have on other police officers and the public. The job of police officers is to maintain public order, prevent, and detect crimes. They are involved in very dangerous and stressful occupations that can involve violent situations that must be stopped and controlled by any means. In many confrontations with people, police may find it necessary to use excessive force to take control of a certain situation. Sometimes this makes an officer fight with a suspect who resists being arrested. Not all cops in communities are great cops. At least once a year, the news covers a story about a person being beat by an officer. The article “Minority Threat and Police Brutality: Determinants of Civil Rights Criminal Complaints in U.S. Municipalities” by Malcolm D. Holmes from the University of Wyoming, uses the conflict theory to explain why officers go after minorities sometimes causing police brutality. It explains the police’s tension with African American and Latino males. Those minorities are the ones that retaliate more against police officers which causes the officer to use violent force to defend themselves.
Police brutality is an act that often goes unnoticed by the vast majority of white Americans. This is the intentional use of “excessive force by an authority figure, which oftentimes ends with bruises, broken bones, bloodshed, and sometimes even death” (Harmon). While law-abiding citizens worry about protecting themselves from criminals, it has now been revealed that they must also keep an eye on those who are supposed to protect and serve.