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Police Brutality And Racial Profiling

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Police Brutality and Racial Profiling This paper will aim to show how racial imbalance continues to play a central role in police brutality in the United States. Minorities have alleged human rights violations by police more often than white residents. To prove this I will be discussing how African Americans are more likely to be stopped out of unjustifiable suspicion by analyzing a study of 1.3 million stops made over 12 years by the Charlotte- Mecklenburg Police Department. This leads to confrontations and the outcome is frisks, searches and tickets which could have been avoided. When minorities do not cooperate out of their anger from being victimized, the police do not respond well and end up using excessive force. They are getting disproportionally …show more content…

Events that took place like the enslavement of Black people have society believing that since it is a part of the country’s history, it can continue to shape social relations today. The problem is no one acknowledges the racial inequality for the reason that it is seen as a normative. Studies show that even 5 in 10 white Americans acknowledge the racial imbalance of our system (Hill 2015). However not many speak out on it because racism is so deeply rooted into society. After many of these police shootings, researchers concluded that when white police officers approach black men out of suspicion based on their biased opinion, they are not approaching these men from a place of intentional racism or differential treatment. They may genuinely aim to to treat everyone the same. However, since the psychology of racism is deeply embedded within all our minds, police officers read people of colour as criminals without knowing they are. When looking at police brutality and race cases, it is often impossible to know the police officer had racial intentions for sure. Regardless, the actions they decided to take are borne out of racism. When these fatal shootings emerge in courts where white police officers are charged with shooting unarmed African Americans, these officers are often freed under the pressure of white supremacy. The fear …show more content…

The study about police stops that was conducted by Frank Baumgartner thoroughly showed how real discrimination is. Traffic stops should be completely fair and police officers should have a reason for why they demand a search and not use their biased opinion about a black driver passing by. However, this is not the case and that is a problem. Stopping black drivers randomly upsets them and creates frisks that could have been ignored if police officers simply did not target the black community. Frisks unfortunately lead to the use of force and police officers are proven to use force more than twice as often against black drivers and passengers as whites (Gordon 2015). Case such as the murder of Michael Brown gives communities further reason to be afraid of police. Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers last year and a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers has been recorded for this year already (Swaine 2016). When multiple incidents of police misconduct and use of more than necessary force that results in the death of an innocent victim, society being anti-cop is understandable. The notion of innocent until proven guilty is what society believes in and when that is unclear in these cases it is hard to put trust into

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The authors suggest that interventions aimed at reducing implicit biases and racial anxiety may be effective in reducing the incidence of police use of force against minority groups. They also emphasize the importance of addressing the connections of race and other social identities in understanding police behavior. As the article that was previously mentioned research has discovered that people of color tend to be “stopped, searched, arrested, and convicted of crimes, even when controlling for factors such as crime rates and other demographic characteristics” more than white individuals (Spencer). This goes on to show the logical reasoning behind the existence and impact of racial profiling and discrimination in the criminal justice system. Much of this information is gathered from academic resources provided on the school library website or from other educational institutes.

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Researchers and Black people are not the only ones who recognize that racial profiling is a problem — even some government organizations do. A page on the National Institute of Justice’s website admits, “people of color are more often stopped than whites” (National Institute of Justice). Clearly, racial profiling by police officers is an existing issue and something must be done to put an end to this horrible practice. Fortunately, there are several methods for how police departments can reduce racial profiling against Black

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People have accused officers of shooting arbitrarily, or unjustifiably, and most frequently of exhibiting racism in such situations. These accusations have been supported by numerous empirical studies showing that police officers kill African-Americans at a disproportionately higher rate than whites (Tennenbaum,

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As a result police officers have become a major key in the arrests of many people of color. Alexander explains how police will stop and search people of color who are “suspected” of containing drugs or who look “suspicions.” Police officers are actually encouraged in their training to use racial profiling and when a person files a complaint the Courts always take the side of the police officer. As stated by Alexander, “The dirty little secret of policing is that the Supreme Court has actually granted the police license to discriminate” (130). Many would argue that police officers and the justice system are fair and that they don’t discriminate and that one does have a fair trial in court from all the lies the media and television shows feeds the people about the justice system and police force.

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We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

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Throughout history, the failure of the government to protect black people from ruthless enforcement officers, forced blacks to act in their own interests. During the 1930s, the National Negro Congress organized massive rallies against police brutality, the Black Panther was created to stem the tide of police abuse, and in the 1970s the Congress of African Peoples sponsored the “Stop Killer Cops” Campaigns (Fitzgerald, 2007). The list goes on and on of groups and campaigns that African Americans formed to protect themselves from white supremacy and most importantly police brutality. Although some observers claim that racial profiling doesn’t exist, there are an abundance of stories and statistics that document the

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Intro According to USA Today, on average there were 96 cases of a white police officer killing a black person each year between 2006 and 2012(citation). Some might argue that because these victims were black, police officers targeted them. Americans need to dismiss from their minds that race is a determining factor of violence or threats. The media is the main catalyst for implanting race as an issue in Americans minds. The news media is solely responsible for blacks thinking that they are targeted by white police officers.

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As police brutality against African Americans is increasing, it is very much reminding us of the civil rights movement. Black leaders risked their lives to ensure that all African Americans would live an equal life as white Americans. The racism and discrimination had been unapparent until recent events such as Donald Trump’s campaign being successful and the police brutality against African Americans. “Every 7 hours cops kill an American citizen”. Many times African Americans are targeted.

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Primarily, it is in opposition to the liberty of United States citizens, because it hinders our freedom in many ways. This method is enforced extremely unequally between the different racial groups. The specific communities that are targeted are often due to racial bias, thus threatening their freedom to express themselves in the street for fear of being seen as a risk for simply the way they dress or walk. At the height of it’s enforcement, in 2011, New York cops stopped over 680,000 people a year, 89% of whom were of ethnic background in a city that was predominantly white (Taibbi 8). According to professor Thorpe’s lecture on April 18th, 2017, between the years of 2004-2012 there was a census conducted in which they calculated the amount of people were stopped before there was actually a seizure of illegal possessions and the findings were as such; of the black population on average there were 143 stops before a seizure, versus the white population which took only around 27 stops before a seizure occurred.

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According to some charts mainly African American, latino and other minority races are the most common to be stopped by officers because of stereotypes. The Constitution, through the fourth amendment, protects people from unreasonable search and seizure by the

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However, research demonstrates that often times men of color are treated harshly which leads to negative perceptions of police officers. Police brutality is a crime that is has been surfacing in the news recently. Some people are just starting to realize that these injustices against the black community really occur, while others are well aware. The recent shootings, different run-ins with officers being filmed while doing such harmful actions against African American men is an example of police brutality and, that reminds us that as a society work needs to be done to improve police and community relations. A black male cannot even walk down the street on a cold night because he might be a suspect from something or he may be of danger to the people around.

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Sure, there are surveys and statistics all over the internet, are these really true? “Not so fast” says the Manhattan Institute, “the charge is police have ‘too many’ interactions with minorities, but this leaves the questions’ too many’ compared to what”? This is exactly the problem we are facing against the opposing opinion. An officer only does a “stop and frisk” if they see something that looks suspicious. This also leads an officer to suspicion by behavioral tensions such as nervousness, threatening behavior, and of course absence of license plate.

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According to “The Washington Post”, Last year 963 African Americans were shot and killed by police. Ever since the 1960s Africans has been fighting for equality; in the Eric Garner case and Michael Brown, it demonstrated how White police officers abuse and misuse their power towards African Americans. Since the increase of police brutality communities has had marches, rallies, and even the Black Lives Matters movements as a response to show that Polices’ abuse of power is unacceptable. The Black Lives Matter movement was created after radical discrimination it is a political movement to inform and protect Black Lives. (Wesley Lowery.

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Throughout history, disputes and tensions between law enforcement officials and communities of minorities have endured hostility and violence between each other. Racial profiling has become a “hot topic” for researchers as well as for politicians and by now it is likely that most citizens are at least aware of the common accusations of racial bias pitted against law enforcement (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Communities of color are being discriminated against and racially profiled by white police officers for any suspicion of criminal activities. It has been widely assumed by policy makers and citizens alike that allegations of racial profiling are mostly associated with the policing practices of white officers and their treatment of racial and ethnic minorities (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Also, individuals of minority descent will certainly recognize that they are being racially profiled during a stop that is being conducted by a white police officer.

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An occurrence observed by the population of Los Angeles, California conveys the existence of racism and police brutality. According to The Polls-Trends: Racial Differences in Attitudes Toward the Police, “…three quarters of blacks, but only 38 percent of whites, continued to view police brutality as a common occurrence” (Tuch and Weitzer

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