Racial Profiling Research

Over the course of numerous years, minority groups, specifically African Americans and Latinos, have been subjected to racial profiling. The United States built this country with slavery being normal. They treated colored people as animals. When slavery finally ended, a new era of segregation and discrimination came about. The colored people didn’t have the same privileges as Whites. Once segregation came to an end, discrimination still remained and racism became prominent. Ever since then, there have been unconstitutional encounters with the police. These events were mainly directed towards minority groups. Even today, there are still encounters that are categorized as police brutality. There have been a countless number of reports of police

There is data that has been collected from 2002 to 2015 that reveals how many Black, Latino, and White people in New York that were stopped and frisked. Throughout those 13 years, approximately 5 million were stopped and interrogated and about 9 out of every 10 stopped were innocent. Not only that, but Blacks accounted for roughly 50 percent of those stopped and Latinos made up approximately 30 percent, while Whites made up about 10 percent. (Stop-and-Frisk Data) Since this clearly demonstrates that stopping random people because of “suspicious activity” is ineffective, why keep doing it? Nearly everyone that they stop is innocent and is thus wasting the victim’s time and also the money that funds these stops. This also highlights that Blacks and Latinos are the main targets of these

For example, in a predominately White neighborhood, only 24 percent of the population in Park Slope was Latino and Black, yet they accounted for 79 percent of the stops. This demonstrates that these cops are racially profiling this group for reasons unknown. Another example is when Sergeant Rossano Gerald, an African American, and his son Gregory, also an African American, were headed to a family reunion in Oklahoma. The moment they crossed over into the state, they were almost immediately stopped by a highway patrol officer for driving too close to the cars in front of them. Soon after being released, another highway patrol officer pulled him over for changing lanes without signaling. The cop asked to search his car, but he refused. Gerald told the cop to call his commanding officer, but they refused his request. They then placed him and his son in a squad car. They then had dogs search his car, but when he observed the dogs, they never gave a signal that there were narcotics, but the officers claimed that they did. They proceeded with the search and took apart his car and still found nothing. At the end, they left their car and their belongings in a mess. (Harris, 1-3) Because of these actions, there is this mistrust that was formed between the police and the community. People today, do not worry about whether or not they are going to be mugged on the street, but if