Policing involves the police’s enforcement of the law onto the people; it sounds great on practice, but there are many problems with it. One of which I am going to discuss is police discrimination. According to a research proposal by Cynthia Najdowski, a social psychologist, at University of Illinois at Chicago, African Americans reported that police officers exercised force and often questioned them more than white suspects. This is supported by the frequent questioning and stalking by the police on black youths shortly departing convenience stores. The stereotype that black youths are more crime-prone usually implicated unfair treatment by the police force. A clear example of the presented problem is when Charles Belk, a television producer with 51 years of clean background, was arrested simply because he was near the crime scene. The police accused Belk of being an accessory to an armed bank robbery with the bail placed to $100,000. If I took his place, I would have no way gathering that much money in an instance and would have to stay in the precinct over night. According to Belk’s statements, he was also denied many rights such as: a phone call, explanation of charges, and many others.
Another problem that is relevant today is the brutality of the police force. A popular, recent example of this problem is the case of Michael Brown. Brown, unarmed, was walking down a street with his friend and was ultimately shot for no reason. Witnesses claimed that the officer confronted them with vulgar language followed with gunshots. They also testified that Brown held his hands up defining a surrender signal, but he proceeded to take several more gunshots to his back. In addition to this case, the case of Eric Garner is another evidence of police brutality. This case was made popular on the social media with the video evidence of the actually brutality. Police brutality along with discrimination is often exercised together and it was evident in these two cases.
With the case of Michael Brown still in mind again, studies after the incident has shown that shooting behaviors are discriminating against African Americans (problem 1). This research concluded that blacks are four times more likely to die after an encounter with law enforcing officers than whites. This study defines the unconscious stereotyping can offer social and racial inequality that causes police brutality.
The next problem is about the way the policing administration handles civilian complaints. Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) was created in 1992 as an agency to investigate complaints of police misconduct. The number of complaints filed with CCRB increased from 2000 to 2006, and the numbers remained in the 7000s in the following years. Most of the complaints were indicating police officers to be using excessive force (problem 2) and there was a significant rise between the 6 years as well. The CCRB either closed the complaint cases with no regards or the police department would reject the CCRB’s evidences. This is a significant problem, because CCRB is supposed to help us dissipate police brutality and help the complainers. With more than half the cases gone, the CCRB is shown to be useless and cannot affect the policing positively which allows those police officers continue to behave wrongly.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/charles-belk-beverly-hills-police_n_5716897.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leland-ware/michael-brown-stereotypes_b_5685712.html
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Eric-Garner-Death-Chokehold-Investigation-272043511.html
http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/civilian-complaint-procedures
Police brutality is a major problem being discussed in news sources in recent memory. I agree that overall police do discriminate in terms of race. They hand out harder punishments to African-Americans and generally accuse them more of crime. The stereotype can’t simply be removed from the current generation of police officers, the next generation must be educated to enforce fairly and justly. Police brutality on the other hand can be stopped. Police aren’t really punished for actions unless they are widely publicized in the media. This also leads to the fact that many police killings aren’t actually made public or aren’t recorded.
The best way to solve this would be body cameras on all police officers; this solves all the issues of accountability as everything is recorded on camera. It is the best solution for both parties as it addresses their concerns. Police have to work on not being seen as enemies, improving public image is crucial to the police force functioning effectively. All the recent news of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have only separated the divide that was already very large between the police and the people they are entrusted to protect. Ultimately the police force must reform itself to fix the many issues they are currently facing.
You bring up good points. What do you think would be a good way of dealing with the problem? On one hand, punishing the police more for excessive force won’t make them any less biased towards certain races; it will only make them more cautious. In addition, people that actually are committing crimes may try to use racial profiling as an excuse to avoid getting arrested. Another option might be to create a better relationship between police and the community, but considering how much damage has already been done, it seems like a very difficult task. A third problem is that sometimes using a bit less force or suspicion can be the difference between life and death for an officer. I’m guessing a combination of using less force and cooperating with the community would be a good solution, but the question is how to balance both. Do you think that stationing officers in communities that consist primarily of their own race might decrease bias, or just increase the discrimination against the few people of other races living in those communities? Do you think it might be better to diversify groups of officers as much as possible?