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What Is Racial Profiling Necessary?

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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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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Racial Profiling can be useful sometimes and sometimes it can hurt other people’s feelings. It can be useful to the police because it can give the police an idea of who or what kind of person committed a crime. You can’t always rely on racial profiling to help find the criminal. There is no guarantee that you will find the criminal by using racial profiling. It can hurt other people because you are judging the person by their looks and actions.

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In the United States, law enforcement continues to reform. Criticism is escalating to the belief that “policing [is] not [adapting] to best fulfill its duties to the public (Gale, part of Cengage Group).” Police reform is addressing issues through “gradual and radical methods (Gale, part of Cengage Group).” As a result, police and other law enforcement continue to experience retaliation with Black Lives Matter protests, including “Defunding the Police” and concerns with racial injustices. With notable police brutality, law enforcement is being placed under public scrutiny.

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The use of racial profiling has caused major issues and has had a huge impact among our nation. This has influenced a lot of hate and killing towards different type of race, religion, etc. groups. Law enforcement has become ineffective due to racial profiling. Statistics have shown some situations of racial profiling.

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One historic example of racial bias in the police force is Dr.King 's march from Selma. In Marion, Alabama on February 18, a group of peaceful demonstrators were attacked by white segregationists. During this attack one of the younger demonstrators, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was killed by a state trooper. In response, Dr Martin Luther King led a 54 mile march early in 1965 in Montgomery, Alabama from Selma that lasted five days to the capital where many oppressed black citizens had been campaigning for voting rights including, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On Sunday, March 7, 1965 protesters got ready to go to Montgomery but Alabama state police officers with weapons

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Racial profiling has been going on for hundreds of years now by everyday citizens and law enforcement. “Racial profiling happens everyday,in cities and towns across the country”(ACLU).When will this humiliating profiling stop?Often people have walks and boycotts just to show how serious they want their equal living. “Racial profiling is a longstanding and deeply troubling national problem despite claims that the United States has entered a “post-racial era”(ACLU). Racial profiling is when law enforcement target individuals based off their race ,ethnic or religion as harm to the society.

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Being racially profiled is a part of day to day life as a black male, or maybe racial profiling happens way more of than it should, between black males and the police. Being judgmental most often gives the police tunnel vision to only see the fancy cars and the nice jewelry being worn by black males, and they automatically assume he is a drug dealer. The outward appearance often gives the police a preconceived notation about black males, due to the sagging pants and gold teeth, which in Police eyes marks them as less than a working-class citizen. Police often encounter African American males by traffic stops when driving, often times without probable cause, and executing illegal searches of that individual property. In today’s society, black males are more likely to be racially profiled by Police than any other male ethnicity, creating barriers, hatred, and distrust between black males and the police.

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Names like Dontre Hamilton, Michael Brown Jr., Tamir Rice and Walter Scott are plastered on headlines and passionately spoken about on every major news station around the country. They are the names that paved way for the national discussion of police brutality against African Americans. And while these victims of horrific actions deserved much better outcomes than they got, the violence demonstrated by police officers is clearly a product of the social environment in which they parole and the racial stereotypes and discrimination that are deeply embedded in our culture. Police officers have an obligation to maintain order and protect us: the citizens of society.

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Racial profiling has become a national issue starting in 2015 (“Racial”). Judging someone for their race has been a problem ever since a minority group has been noticed. Racial profiling has spread over all over the world. Racial profiling has been a problem through the years, if the human race can learn what racial profiling is, advantages of the profiling, and the disadvantages.

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Racial Profiling refers to the discriminatory practice, especially by law enforcement officials which targets individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Racial profiling has been and is still an issue today in almost every part of the United States. It is seen in different situations whereby people are treated very unfairly or branded criminals and suspects without any form of evidence. The problem has been a serious issue in Baltimore whose Statistics in an ACLU lawsuit uncovered police data indicating that while 73 percent of suspects pulled over on I-95 be-tween 1995 and 1997 were black and were no more likely to actually have drugs or illegal weapons in their cars than white

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According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, departments that serve less than 2,500 people are 84.4% white and departments that serve millions are 53.4% white (as cited in Fifield, 2016). Notably, Over the years, a lack of diversity within law enforcement has become a pertinent issue. Notably, the underrepresentation of minorities within law enforcement influences the relationship between communities and law enforcement by engendering distrust with law enforcement. To say nothing of, underrepresentation of minorities have had many people question whether departments mirror a diverse community. Nevertheless, with that being said, underrepresentation of minorities have generated tension and distrust between communities and law enforcement and many believe that police department need to mirror the race composition within their cities.

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Racial profiling is a very important issue that individuals in society face every day. This problem occurs in low income or poverty-stricken areas throughout cities and communities across the nation. Hundreds of anecdotal testimonials allege that law enforcement officials at all levels of government are infringing upon the constitutional rights and civil liberties of racial and ethnic minorities through a practice called “racial profiling” (Ward, 2002). So what is racial profiling? According to the National Institute of Justice, racial profiling by law enforcement is commonly defined as a practice that targets people for suspicion of crime based on their race, ethnicity, religion or national origin (National Institute of Justice, 2013).

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The media makes the severity of the situation much worse. In some instances, a situation is represented in way that conveys a case as deceptive. Police misconduct, in this situation, is preposterously distorted. For example, the scene one sees on television may be completely inaccurate. In the article Unpacking Public Attitudes to the Police: Contrasting Perceptions of Misconduct with Traditional Measures of Satisfaction, Miller states, “…research found that people's fear of crime was related to crime content in the newspapers they read…”( 6).

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Random sample surveys were conducted in Seattle, Washington by telephone, which asked citizen’s various questions concerning their feelings towards police. These questions included their level of happiness in regards to police problem-solving, their views on police hassling citizens, and if they had ever experienced, or perceived to experience racial profiling or bias by law enforcement (Wu, 2014). Of all the citizens that took part in the survey, 64% of African Americans felt that racial profiling was a problem inside their neighborhoods, 28% of Asians, 20% of whites, and 34% of Hispanics agreed (Wu,

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