Police Racial Profiling

Police Brutality and Racial Profiling

Black people who were unarmed were killed more than whites by police last year. “Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people (BBC Podcast, 2015).” Although the extent of police racial bias and their previous abusive behavior is unknown (if any), there are other issues that are known. The purpose of this paper is to argue that race and ethnicity, social class, and bias are reasons that lead to police atrocity among African Americans. In this paper, seven articles will be used in attempt to support the specifics of each argument: (a) racial discrimination, (b) the majority vs. minority situations, (c) types of contact with police, and (d) police

As much as this term has been defined and discussed, it’s a common trend that police seem to not grasp the definition of or distinguish between right and wrong, especially when dealing with African Americans. There are more cases reported or seen that involve racial discrimination among blacks than whites (Bledsoe et. al., 1997, p. 780). Based on their study, Bledsoe, Combs, Sigelman, and Welch (1997) reported that the perceptions of discrimination were different between black and whites. During their interviews for study 1, whites, on average, agreed with less than one of the five questions about discrimination against blacks, blacks agreed with almost four. In Study 2, they concluded that whites saw no discrimination or racists acts with the way police used force to handle situations that involved African Americans; whereas, blacks thought the opposite. Police treat and give better service to whites than blacks, while whites believe they’re treated equally. Tuch and Weitzer (2005) reported that the majority of blacks (75%) believe that police in their city treat whites better than blacks. The majority of whites (75%-77%) believe that police in their city treat whites and the two minority groups "equally." Not only do whites have different perceptions of racial discrimination or profiling, but the attitudes they express between black and whites show that they think their opinions are the

African Americans experiences with police are more violent and unfair compared to whites. The series of analyses that Schuck and Rosenbaum (2005) designed were to investigate the relations among type and quality of police contact and residents' attitudes toward the police. People who had negative contact with police reported negative feed back and people who had non-negative contact reported good feedback. For whites, their perception of police may be influenced more by media while blacks would be influenced more by their type of neighborhood. The reason for this is because blacks come in contact more with the police than whites. Once again, racial discrimination and profiling, the minority vs. majority context and the different types of contact that African Americans have with police all tie together. Whites distinguish racial discrimination differently compared to blacks which leads to aggressive force used because in their opinion they’re doing their job and blacks from low class black minorities are commonly targeted because of racial profiling. Race, ethnicity, and social class are all issues that result in police