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The effects of racial profiling
Police in contemporary society
Police in contemporary society
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Over the past centuries, Black community in Toronto have encountered and persisted violence and discriminations in many different ways. Racial profiling and carding are the two major roots of police brutality. Police officers often have biased perceptions and negative feelings about certain races. Carding can be defined as random police checks that target young African-Canadian men. Police might detain a driver for driving a specific type of vehicle or driving in certain areas that they have assumptions about. “This practice was a systematic violation of the rights of people in our communities, especially of racialized youth” (CBC ABC National, June 1, 2015). Carding results in police abusing their power which leads to assaults, shootings and death. However, police have said …show more content…
New Ontario rule banning carding by police takes effect January 2017. Regardless under the present circumstances, carding still exists and must completely end. Racial profiling and carding should be prohibited as they violate Equality Rights, section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Police justify carding as a general investigation to locate suspects and help people fight crime. Toronto Police Service says that “It does not purposefully target individuals because of their race” (SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN, Nov 24 2016). However that being said, racialized communities testify that they are being targeted for their race and ethnicity. The new rule doesn’t fully end the controversial practice and carding remains a major concern for the minority community. Sandy Hudson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto says “the new rule doesn’t make any great change” (Muriel Draaisma, Jan 02, 2017). “Where these rules apply- and where they don’t- doesn’t change anything about carding”, she also said “A police officer can always say they are
In addition to this Rankine addresses the issues of regular ‘Stop and Frisk’ of the black people by the police. She mentions that because of their color, they always remain as the prime suspect in the eyes of law agencies. She writes that, “…guy who is always the guy fitting the description” (Rankine
This relation believes that the “law shapes --and is shaped by-- the society in which it operates (Elizabeth Comack,2014) As people our interactions and experiences are administered by our social positioning in society, and that social location is conditioned by three key elements: our race, class, and gender. These three elements have been used to divide, separate and categorize society. (Comeck,2014) . Racial profiling is something that I believe is extremely evident in Canada. Racial profiling is defined as targeting individuals for law enforcement based on the colour of their skin, which can lead to practices like carding. (Chan, 2007). Carding is a police practice that involves stopping, questioning and documenting people in mostly non-criminal encounters. (Chan, 2007) Stopping people on the street for no reason to ask them who they are, and what they are up to is outrageous and can have fatal consequences. On September 24, 2014, at 10:00pm Jermaine Carby was sitting in the passenger seat of his friend’s car while out for a drive. They were pulled over for a traffic stop in Brampton by a Peel police officer. This police officer went around to the passenger’s side and asked Carby for his identity so he could card him. When conducting this street check the officer discovered the Vancouver had a warrant for his arrest. Allegedly, this is when Carby started threatening officers with a large knife. A knife that witnesses nor
One might define the relations between police and community relations in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto to be very discriminating. The start of the film already gives some insight on the issue which the film is trying to portray. A coloured man’s is being harassed because the police do not think that he has ownership for the van to which he claimed he owned. The police were violating his rights and treating him in an impolite manner simply because of the standard that has been set, claiming that all coloured individuals are violent and dangerous. This is also the case because the film has been recorded in the Jane and Finch area; where people are looked down upon and regarded as dangerous, violent and unemployed.
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 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
...between them and the “Others,” though after 9/11 this “innocences” of living in an harmonious world was no longer due to the actions of the ‘terrorists’ (Street, 2003). The inquiry report on racial profiling from OHRC was serving a purpose to demonstrate anti-hegemony which delineates as the refusal to give permission to all that is wrong, encourage the knowledge of different cultures, and oppose to a single powerful group from ruling the system (Stand, 2014). Informing Canadian’s on racial profiling is a great start to raising consciousness, however knowledge is not everything. Knowledge without answers is only awareness and in order to change racial profiling individuals need direction. Perhaps OHRC could present a new report with answers to end racial profiling or at least where to begin, because with proper guidance racial profiling can be modified and destroyed.
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...
In the article “Point: Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement is Unjust”, Adele Cassola determines that racial profiling is an extensive problem in policing across Canada. She identifies that racial profiling is based on stereotypes of race, ethnicity, and cultural background with African-Canadians, Arab-Canadians, and Aboriginal Canadians being targeted most frequently. Racial profiling is not unique to law enforcement and immigration, Cassola asserts, “it is a wide spread problem within other institutions and establishments as well” (2009). She discovered a survey that showed Toronto's African-Canadian secondary school students were stopped four times more frequently and searched six times more frequently than their non-black classmates. In an article from the Toronto Star newspaper in 2002, Cassola notes that African-Canadians were subject...
Racial profiling is the most idiotic and arrogant thing you can ever do as a person. Usually the people who are affected by racial profiling are minorities, however, any person can be a victim of racial profiling. Some may think that racial profiling is non-existent, however, I would like to bring the situation into focus and show that it is still in existence and has been observed in the past and now in the current year. Although, more than fifty percent of the time racial profiling is conducted it is against a man or woman of color; an African-American in other words. There are instances where a white person can be a victim as well. Trying not to say that there isn't any person out there that is exempted from racial profiling, because there isn't a single person who is just exempted from this cruel method of decision making. In my essay I will talk about racial profiling and what it is, however, you can't forget about where it happens and of course why. Several resolutions will be discussed in this essay to alleviate this problem.
Comack, E. (2012). Racialized policing: Aboriginal people's encounters with the police. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.
Racial profiling does indeed exist in America. This practice is especially damaging to African Americans, who are frequently shamed by society as criminals, drug addicts, or welfare abusers. This societal flaw is evidenced by recent injustices to both Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin. Years of abuse of power have brought this issue blazing to the forefront of hot topics in America.
Have you ever been followed by store officials or security while shopping in a department store? At first, all of the attention can be flattering but quickly becomes insulting once you realize they’re not following you to offer any assistance. Instead because of how you look you fit a certain profile that causes store officials to think you’ve come to their store to steal. This type of behavior is called racial profiling. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, racial profiling refers to the discrimination practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. Citizens need to be more aware of racial profiling and make laws that racial profiling should be illegal. Racial profiling is carried out by law enforcement airport security, and other security personnel that look to profile the minorities for no reason. Heather Sally Newton Driscoll ebscohost.com stated “The practice of profiling is rooted in centuries of discrimination and is based on stereotypes that have long been disproved. Profiling holds on entire population accountable for the committed by a small minority”.