Day: March 12, 2017

Racial and ethnic profiling have been around for centuries, and no matter how outdated it is, profiling persists today. As the CQ discusses, racial profiling exists in the police force. Racial and ethnic profiling had been fought before, but the “Black Lives Matter” movement really shed light on the situation to people that didn’t notice or care to notice before. And it’s a shame people, specifically minority men and women, had to die in order for the broader public to open their eyes and realize how their fellow Americans are treated.

Mac Donald said the aggressive stop-and-frisk policies in NYC lead to crime to decline in the 1990s. She adds that minorities benefited from the tactics, and it is important to bring safety to poor neighborhoods. Others say stop-and-frisk is over-enforcing and driving a wedge between law enforcement and the general population. I agree with the latter. Personally, if I saw more cops in my neighborhood I would take my business elsewhere. High crime neighborhoods have an over abundant amount of officers conducting stop-and-frisk procedures on Americans. Instead of focusing on the number of officers in an area, new strategies should be devised to improve the quality of stop-and-frisk, as the Police Executive Research Forum report suggested. The CQ provides the wedge between law enforcement and the public by stating 73% of blacks say they are treated less fairly and 54% Hispanics say they are treated less fairly as well.

At the end of the chapter, Obama said, “when any part of the American family does not feel like it is being treated fairly, that’s a problem for all of us,” means us Americans as a whole need to combat any obstacle one of us faces, together. I know I won’t understand how it feels to be racially or ethnically profiled, but it affects many Americans today and new law enforcement techniques and strategies must be established.

Disclaimer: I truly believe that I will never understand what racial profiling is. Since I will not experience it myself, I will never be able to fully comprehend how it effects others who do experience it on a daily basis. As with everything in life, it is difficult to wrap our minds around things that we will not experience first hand.

Reading through this chapter in the CQ reader, I could not stop gasping aloud. I was raised in a very conservative household, and this chapter truly opened my eyes to points of view and information that I had not been previously exposed to. Reading “Black Lives Matter: A Growing Movement”, I was shocked by the way in which these black men were treated. I do not understand how it was necessary for police to shoot Laquan McDonald 16 times. It absolutely boggles my mind.

We live in a country that prides itself on safety and security, meanwhile there is a portion of our population that does not feel safe. It is a scary thought that there are people in this country who do not have someone to call when they feel that they are in harms way. Furthermore, the people they are supposed to call to help them are the very people they fear will hurt them.

I appreciated the At Issue section of this chapter which discussed the question: “Is racial profiling by police a serious problem in the United Stated?” Both sides of this argument were strong and enlightening. Parker discussed how African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to be stopped than whites and the laws surrounding this reality. He concluded with a very powerful quote, “The idea of basing law enforcement on actions rather than on race, ethnicity or religion is long overdue.” In 2017, our society should be very past discriminating based upon race, ethnicity and religion. Mac Donald, on the other hand, had some strong arguments as well. She made a very interesting point regarding the shooting per capita rate in Brownville versus Bay Ridge. It makes sense that in areas with higher rate of gangs and violence there would be more police officers, which would lead to more action and ultimately unfortunately more shootings. She claims proactive policing is what keeps areas safer.

Both Parker and Mac Donald made excellent points. When it comes to issues such as racial profiling, I do not have an answer. I simply just have questions. How can we protect our citizens without causing any physical or emotional harm to them? How can we live in a society where community members do not feel that they are being protected by those that are supposed to be protecting them? Lastly, what methods and techniques can our police officers use to keep our greater communities safe while allowing community members to feel safe as well?

Kenneth Jost’s article takes a practical, historical, and cultural approach towards understanding the debate regarding racial profiling and excessive police force. The primary function of a police force is to maintain the safety of the community for which it works. There is a responsibility to protect the average citizen, the criminal, and the police officer himself. This becomes an issue of balance. How does the police officer protect the citizen without bringing harm to himself or to the criminal? In what situations is it permissible to use force? The potential criminal, the innocent bystander, and the policeman, who himself is a member of a community with a family that wants to be protected, all have equal rights. This article has made me realize that not only are the split-second decisions that have to be made to protect everyone difficult, but even long-term policy decision-making issues are not so straightforward to rule on and enforce.

This article brings up several different issues which tend to blend into one. There are the legalities and local debates regarding racial profiling, and there are the issues of how to handle, without too much force, criminals without unnecessarily hurting or killing them. These are two separate issues, each of which this article reviews. The concept of racial profiling is a policy that needs to be addressed by the courts, and it has been. The rulings of the court prohibiting the targeting of possible criminal suspects based on their race, have already occurred. The rulings can be questioned, reviewed in court, or argued in court, but until there is a change in ruling, this policy, based on much thought, statistics, and rights of each citizen in the US, needs to be followed. There are those who argue that the philosophy underlying racial profiling is to protect the citizen, and that by selecting minority groups to profile, police officers are merely profiling based on criminal statistics. However, the courts have ruled this practice to be prejudicial; why should an entire race or minority group be targeted for inspection, even though they may have a somewhat higher criminal percentage rate? Every person needs to be judged on his own, as an individual, not as a member of a race. The courts have so ruled, however, the ruling is not always followed. There have been local police chiefs who have chosen to ignore court rulings that prohibit racial profiling. The government has just begun to ensure that there is enforcement of these issues through the recording policemen at work. This in itself may seem a violation of individual rights; nevertheless, it ensures that policy is followed. Police chiefs who have ignored court rulings and taken the law into their own hands have recently been indicted themselves.

The second aspect of the problem that needs to be addressed is that of excessive police force. This is a difficult policy to enforce, as there are many human factors involved. Much of the recent rage against the police has been triggered by the police forces’ tendency to use excessive violence, sometimes ending in the death of the alleged criminal. The deaths of some criminals who have recently been targeted include a higher number of minority citizens, leading to the creation of the movement “Black Lives Matter.” The key to understanding how to react to the potentially violent criminal, without excessive violence, is education. Policemen have to face their own fears when threatened with a weapon, but also have to be made to realize that many criminals who appear to be threatening may be living in a moment of panic and fear. It is up to the police and government to set up programs to teach young policemen and policewomen how to de-escalate rather than fuel tense, dangerous situations. There are special tactics that can be used with the mentally ill to calm them down. In contrast, the tactics used to capture a terrorist on a shooting rage are quite different. The policemen on the street need to learn that there are many reasons for criminal behavior, and depending on the etiology, they can play a major role in ensuring the calming of the players and reduction of the tenseness of the situation. Thus, government by way of the court systems should ensure equal treatment for all people, and should also work through the educational system to teach policemen to act as members of the community and learn to calm rather than escalate tense situations. Such an approach can play a significant role in reducing the unfair practice of preselecting criminals and reducing the harm to police and to the criminal when both are in a dangerous situation.

The issue of racial profiling has been a deeply debated issue for many years, and its prevalence in American society has only grown stronger. Although there are instances where the use of force by law enforcement is warranted, that power can be and is misused, which can lead to very dangerous and fatal circumstances. There have been too many cases of police brutality against minorities, particularly black Americans, in the past few years for this issue to be overlooked and for the perpetrators of this racial profiling to be let off the hook.

Furthermore, there is a pressing situation of ethnic profiling at hand with the introduction of Trump’s travel ban. The mass rejection of Muslim people by the United States is entirely based on their religion and countries of origin, which is about as specific as a case of ethnic profiling can get. The fact that Trump was able to put his law into action in the first place is a mystery to me, considering that Korematsu v. United States established the principle that “race-based restrictions in the law are ‘immediately suspect’. ” One would think the government learned its lesson after the unjust internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but that is clearly not the case, as Muslim Americans are being blamed for the actions of ISIS.

I have a family member who is a cop in New York City, so I have heard arguments pertaining to racial profiling and stop-and-frisk at family gatherings. He feels that all cops are being blamed for doing their job simply because some cops are going about their job the wrong way, and he has experienced a lot of animosity between law enforcement and everyday people due to these “bad cops”. However, he does feel that if a person has committed a crime or is fighting back against the officer, some force is warranted or the situation will escalate even more. I don’t agree with his stance on some of the cases mentioned in the CQ reader, but in general, I understand his concern about the damaged relationship between cops and the people they serve.