What Is Racial Profiling Necessary?

Abstract

Police departments face increasing criticism from protesters, the media, and the federal government. Many negative personal encounters and officer-involved shootings have stimulated arguments about American law enforcement. These officer involved shootings have caused racial issues across the country. Is reform necessary? With approximately 18,000 police agencies operating in the United States, is reform even possible? I conducted a survey with both black and white respondents. The survey includes demographic information and a few questions that ties together the respondents demographic information and their thoughts of the police. In addition, I will discuss innovative strategies to improve the relationship between police and people

Racial profiling can cause multiple problems. Several law enforcement agencies have gone through expensive litigation over civil rights concerns. Police-citizen relations in those communities have been strained, making policing all the more challenging. Most importantly, racial profiling is unlikely to be an effective policing strategy as criminals can simply shift their activities outside the profile (e.g., if racial profiling begins with police stopping black males in their teens and twenties. The "cumulative impact of racial discrimination accounts for the special, way that blacks have of looking at and evaluating" their experiences in public encounters (Feagin, 1991:115). For example, descriptions of black citizens ' mistreatment by the police are abundant in some African-American communities. Regardless of their accuracy, the dissemination of these narratives increases the likelihood that neighborhood residents will come to view local policing strategies as racially biased (Weitzer, 2002). Feagin 's (1991) examination of racial discrimination highlights the importance of understanding the impact of accumulated discriminatory experiences. One of the most reliable findings in research on attitudes toward police is that citizen distrust is more widespread among African-Americans than whites. Residents of disadvantaged communities have a considerable risk of experiencing direct and indirect contact with police

According to my survey, a 14 to 1 ratio attests the impact social media has on people’s attitudes and thoughts of the police. The media has a limited amount of information with which to generate a story. Invariably much of that information comes from the angry and grieving relatives of the deceased so the story that is told for many months, as the department’s legal and internal review processes continue, is very much one-sided, almost always casting the police in a negative light. As a person that uses social media daily, I would have to agree. There are always videos and articles posted on social media highlighting unjust actions policemen take toward black people. Police have never been under more scrutiny than they are now in the age of social media when everyone carries a video camera in their