African American Law Enforcement

The intention of my research is to expose the racist tactics in the criminal justice system that have been camouflaged. I am prepared to explain how racism contributes to the vast number of incarcerated African Americans, and other minorities. The criminal justice system has created and perpetuated racial hierarchy in the United States, and has done so throughout history. I propose the question: Are minorities being targeted within the Criminal Justice System? African Americans are criminalized and targeted because of their skin color, and it is not fair. This argument connects to the theory of Law in the Book vs. Law in Action, and relates to how this type of discrimination from the law affects society. In particular, the way the Law is written in codes, statutes, judicial opinions that supposedly support the righteousness of justice, is a far cry from the way the Law actually operates. Despite substantial progress in recent years, racial discrimination remains a significant problem in the United States. I will prove this argument with the help of various peer-reviewed articles, and non-scholarly article that examine this unequal behavior.

Assurance in equal justice remains as an overwhelming political principle of American culture. Yet withstanding unbelief exists among numerous racial and ethnic minorities. Their doubt comes as no surprise, given a past filled with differential treatment in the arrangement of criminal equity, an issue particularly clear in police misconduct. Researchers have investigated police responses to racial and ethnic minorities for quite some time, offering sufficient confirmation of minority burden on account of police. These examinations raise doubt about different police techniques of coercive control, maybe none more so than police brutality. Its use exemplifies the pressures between police and minorities that exist in America today.

Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154). Society is the one who chooses who is criminal. In this case society is stripping off the rights of people of color. As Barack Obama say in “The War on Cops”, “blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are

There are numerous issues that deal with the American criminal justice system, but the two I found most prominant that occur on a daily basis is the abuse from police officers and clear racism shown by the American criminal justice system. To begin, racism as we know is a prejudice directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. In the criminal justice system African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a higher more aggressive way, than say someone who is caucasian and committed the same exact crime. Racism is more often than not, the motive for official misconduct. There are examples of racism from every known region in the United States, spanning across centuries from slavery to

“Slangin’ Rocks” by Robin D.G. Kelley, is an opinion essay about the treatment of “people of color” by United States law enforcement, in a historical and modern sense. The purpose of the essay is to persuade the reader to agree with the belief of the author, that U.S law enforcement treats “people of color” unfairly, and that the system itself needs to be changed. The essay begins with the author describing his own experience with law enforcement, which provides him with credibility on the topic and provides insight into why the essay was written (Kelley 21-23). The author’s personal story provides the reader with a specific example of how “people of color” are treated unfairly by law enforcement, and that

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. Although some people may challenge that diversifying police officers will not make a difference in the relationship with communities, police departments mirroring the diversity of communities may mend tension.

The issue of race within the police force dates back to the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, which considered the lack of minority officers one of the central problems in policing at that time. Almost 50 years later and

Shootings of African Americans by police in the USA is inflating. Officers involved in shootings are being discharged from trials. While people who advocate officers seem to be convinced with guiltless conclusions, victims’ families and others who defend them, call the trails as “implicit bias” against minorities. The three trails of the officers Jeronimo Yanez, Ray Tensing and Dominique Heaggan- Brown support such situation. Officer Ray Tensing’s trial ended in a mistrial and other two were found not guilty. Three prominent media channels like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN presented their standpoint on these trails. All the channels have the same intentions in mind,

We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

One of the greatest challenges law enforcement are facing is providing effective policing for minority communities. Some factors that prevent minorities from gaining access to justice or being taken advantage of certain criminal justice services are language barriers, racial stereotyping, and cultural differences. Since the 30 's and 40 's, and even during the 60 's, civil rights activists damaged the police-minority relations in the United States, believing that police only interest are protecting white communities. A big explanation of why there 's a poor police-minority relations in the United States is racism on the part of the individual officers. Many minorities in the United States have continued to complain about being treated more harshly than whites and the Department of Justice believes that racial profiling and police discrimination will continue to be a big problem. Critics of policing say that police officers discriminate against minorities because they see them as second-class citizens, stating that many officers are white and drawn from some conservative section of the community. Predisposition, preformed opinions about groups of individuals that may lead to racist attitudes within the police, and socialization are major roles in the formation of racist attitudes within policing. Socialization is the influences of parents, families, peers, and the community in training individuals about the norms, rules, and customs of a locality with an aim to compel

The police power ought to be an impression of the community. Thus, if a community has a substantial amount of African Americans, there ought to be a proportionate number of African Americans on the police force. Be that as it may, cops of any race soon wind up plainly bored on the off chance that they work in high crime rate areas. The police typically just interact with the most noticeably bad looking of the community, the general population they capture. What's more they are presented to some terrible occasions murder, assault, and kid manhandle. They don't regularly have an opportunity to associate with the general population they ensure aside from when they meet the casualties of wrongdoings submitted in the

America is a national melting pot. However, the nation is haunted by its evil history of the oppression of an entire race of people, known as American slavery. Even though this systematical form of oppression through slavery has been ridden, racial tensions in the nation are still prominent. Systematic oppression is apparent today through the police force, whose actions at times exhibits racial bias and targeting. Instances of racial hate crimes have occurred on multiple accounts throughout history. The shooting of Michael Brown raised many questions relating to the integrity of the police system. The jury’s decision to not indict the police who shot Brown with murder further ignited the issue of racial injustice in America.

Racial tension between the police and the Americans citizens, especially the minority is something that has long existed. The racist actions have mainly been perpetrated by the white police against the African-Americans. African-Americans across the various states in the US have endured the racial injustices at the hands of the white police since the days of Jim Crow. Racial tension between the police and the citizens, especially the African-American still continue. The state of North Carolina has in the recent years been the hotbed of all issues related to the racial tension. The use of excessive force by the North Carolina police department has continued to raise a lot of eyebrows which has in turn fueled the tension. The police have been

Community organizing doesn’t seem like an accessible task to undertake, but Saul Alinsky made his movements seem effortless and possible for the common person to initiate. One of his tactics that I truly admired was his ability to blend in with the crowd. Alinsky grew up in the an underprivileged neighborhood and was fortunate to finish his graduate degree in criminal justice. All his graduate research was valuable, but his real education came from his work with the mob in the streets known as “back of the yards”. His tactic was to ingratiate leaders on the streets because they would know more about the habitat than he would. This is a great tactic because not only did he study criminal justice from the outside perspective, he had the opportunity

The relations between police officers and black Americans will never improve until officers stop using excessive force and black Americans start complying with officers. The reason why I say that officers should stop be using excessive force is because in the cases of Eric Garner, who died after being held in a choke hold for too long, and Freddie Gray, who died from a spinal cord injury after cops were careless, could have been prevented if cops would have resorted to talking rather than jumping the gun. Black Americans also need to start complying with officers because it is the officers job to defuse the situation no matter the cost and it is also the citizens job to listen to the officers and abide by the law. For example,