Police Officer Targeting Minorities

When a police officer uses force it is put out into the media and people argue back and forth about if the police officer was in the right or wrong with how much force was used. Some people seem to think that the police would rather use force than to resolve the problem peacefully. More people believe that the police are targeting minorities and are using excessive force on minorities. The police do not like using force to apprehend a suspect; the police are not racial profiling the suspects. The police are taught to use force when the suspect is a threat to the officer or others around the area. The officer has to be one level above the suspect in order to keep as many people as possible safe. Police officers do not get a chance to say why

the amount of force was used in that certain case, before the media gets a hold of it and blows it out of proportion. It is important to realize that the majority of police officers only use force when it is needed and not before especially around minorities. Police officers have to deal with the media saying that the amount of force used was unnecessary, interactions with minorities that think and believe are being racial profiled, and people believing that police officers just want to use force around minorities because of the amount of police in the areas minorities live.
To begin with, the media portrays police officers in a harsh way when use force is involved in a case unless it is on a crime reality show. In crime reality shows the police are allowed to use force and violate a person’s rights (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011). In these shows, the police officer might get in trouble for a while, but then will be free to go to work again. The problem with this is that people might start to think that this is how police officer acts. The people who always have force used on in the crime reality shows are minorities, and people might start to think that the police actually target and violate minorities’ rights. The media might not be necessarily trying to say that police officers are targeting minorities, but that is what citizens think the police are doing. The reason that the media has such a massive impact on the public’s view is that the public does not interact with the police very much. The media has the power to convince people into thinking certain ways, “The media has a profound effect on public opinion of crime in general and more specifically, the job of the police. Disregarding a few outliers, most individuals have very little direct contact with the police. Instead, much of public opinion is shaped by indirect contact or, in many cases, media exposure” (Jefferis, Butcher, & Hanley, 2011). The media can tell people what to think of the police when a police officer uses force by just showing what will make the most money. If the media says that the amount of force the police officers uses is wrong, then the public will agree since the public does not know how much force the police should use or normally uses. The media can also tell people that the police use force all of the time, if the media only show police officers using force the public will also think that the police use force as much as possible. There is also the other side of this that with the media showing the police using force the public will start to think that it is okay for the police to use excessive force. “Thus, consumption of these formats may increase confidence in the police as well as acceptance of excessive force and unfair practices as necessary means in the fight against crime” (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011). The public might expect the police to use more force than needed to apprehend a suspect. This might cause the police officers to go against the department’s policies and use more force than necessary. If the community is basing how police officers act off the media the public might pressure the police into breaking the policies. Most officer will not break policies in order to please the community, but the police officer might believe that the policies can be broke like on the television shows. If the community is basing how officer act off crime reality television shows the community might believe that the police are targeting minorities.
Therefore, the community might believe that police officer are targeting minorities, and the minorities might be feeling racially profiled.

Some people think that the police are targeting minorities, because there is more police activity around minorities; however, police officers are not targeting minorities. Accordingly, one reason people might think minorities might be being targeted are because of the color different races of the individual and the police officer. Based off recent events the public believes that if the police officer and the suspect have different color of skin, the officer is targeting that suspect. However; the literature does not agree, “In addition, officers’ race and racial interaction effects between officers’ being white and arrestees’ being non-white did not produce a significant relationship” (Lee Jang, Yun, Lim, & Tushaus 2010). The police are not looking at the suspect’s skin color before the officer justifies the arrest, police judge the arrest justified if there is probable cause that the suspect broke the law. Police officers look for criminal activity, and people who match the description of a criminal, but the police do not just go after people of an opposite race. Additionally, people believe that the police use more force around people of color because those individuals are being targeted. “Police officers use deadly force when they believe they have no choice in order to preserve human life, their own or that of other citizens… Police officers characteristically restrain their use of force with citizens, sometimes at the cost of their own safety. However, certain types of attitudes, personalities, and job experiences may make some officers more prone to use force in police-citizen” the types of attitudes are common in minorities (Miller, 2015). This is not true though, police officers are not targeting minorities. Minorities might be more aggressive because many might think the police are racially profiling. Police officers do

not want to use force while working if at all possible. Sometimes the circumstances call for the police to use force, but the police do not go out and seek every opportunity to use force. Police officer do not use race as a factor when choosing how much force to use, “the current research found that race does not play an important role in predicting levels of police force at both individual and aggregate levels” (Lee et al., 2010). Minorities need to understand the police officers are not using race when deciding how much force to apply, if the suspect is resisting the officer there will be more force applied. The amount of force the officer uses is based off the situation, and not off race. The police are not racially profiling minorities, there is just more criminal activity around where the majority of minorities live It is true that police can be seen in the areas minorities live more often, but that is because there is more criminal activity there.