The Destruction Of Racial Profiling In Society

When different ethnic groups have encounters with police some insist that the police racially discriminated against them. The question becomes do the police use racial discrimination or do they criminally profile suspects? Officers use criminal profiling to help them predict the characteristics of suspects. In the textbook

Throughout history, disputes and tensions between law enforcement officials and communities of minorities have endured hostility and violence between each other. Racial profiling has become a “hot topic” for researchers as well as for politicians and by now it is likely that most citizens are at least aware of the common accusations of racial bias pitted against law enforcement (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Communities of color are being discriminated against and racially profiled by white police officers for any suspicion of criminal activities. It has been widely assumed by policy makers and citizens alike that allegations of racial profiling are mostly associated with the policing practices of white officers and their treatment of racial and ethnic minorities (Cochran & Warren, 2013). Also, individuals of minority descent will certainly recognize that they are being racially profiled during a stop that is being conducted by a white police officer.

Racial profiling is the strategy of stopping somebody because of the color of his or her skin and fleeting suspicion that the person is engaging in criminal behavior. This practice can be directed with routine traffic stops, or can be completely random based on the car that is driven, or the quantity of people in the car and the race of the driver and the passengers. Racial profiling has been a part of the criminal justice system for quite a while now, and is nothing new. The main reason behind why you hear significantly more about this topic is because the use of media has brought this very controversial topic to the public’s attention a lot more than in the past. The New York City Police Department ("NYPD") launched an aggressive anti-gun campaign that resulted in the stopping and frisking of tens of thousands of young black and Hispanic men (Gross, 2002).

In some cases, police harassment simply meant people of African descent were more likely to be stopped and questioned by the police, while at the other extreme, they have suffered beatings, and even murder, at the hands of White police. Questions still arise today about the disproportionately high numbers of people of African descent killed, beaten, and arrested by police in major urban cities of America. Since the mid-1900s the words law enforcement and policing have been used interchangeably. In order to understand the present, one must understand the past relationships between law-enforcement and African-Americans. The Webster’s Unabridged Deluxe defines black as of the darkest color; opposite of white ; a Negro; dirty; evil; wicked; without hope.

Racial profiling has had great effects on African American communities all over the US. Victims of racial profiling incidents and people who have witnessed have begun to fear and hate the police when they should be trusting that they are there to keep them safe. Many incidents have occured in the US where unarmed black individuals have been brutally killed by the hands of white police or have been pulled over when driving because they have commited the crime of “driving while black”, which in today's world has become something that African Americans have to fear because of the likeliness of them being pulled over by police, because of their racial bias towards them. “Driving while black” is something that black families tell their kids to be careful of at a young age because of their own experiences with police. In between 2007-2010, people of colored skin accounted for 75 percent of the people stopped by Boston police and 65 percent of them were black in a city whose population was made up of 25 percent African Americans at that time.

At the end, the reader should understand the difference between the two distinct types of profiling, and acknowledge that specific circumstances may cause a violation to one amendment, without directly affecting another. Forensic psychologist Richard N. Kocsis indicates that criminal profiling can be defined as “…identifying, that is, predicting who is most likely to offend in given ways and who may be most at risk in terms of being a victim of crime” (Kocsis, 2007). It’s a method used by Law Enforcement to identify suspects that are more likely to commit certain crimes. Instead of basing suspects primarily due to the suspect’s race, ethnicity or religion as racial profiling generally does. In essence, it’s about making education guesses based on evidence presented.

For millions of Americans, the presents of a uniformed police officer bring comfort and assurance that order in being kept amongst our society. For others, the feeling of being stopped because they look or act a certain way bring frustration and fear amongst minorities. Criminal profiling is a high-profile issue facing law enforcement, due to criticisms about how profiling’s were carried out. Difference in police exists. Whether profiling is the exception or the rule, it is highly debated across the United States.

This article was written by Cody Ross and published in the Social Forum journal, a peer reviewed journal. It is reliable as it has already been peer reviewed and cites many other sources throughout it. In the article, it says that there is a racial disparity in police violence against white people and black people. It attempts to support how black people are unfairly the victims of police brutality as compared to white people. It brings up statistics as to how unarmed black people are much more likely to be shot than unarmed white people are when it comes to dealing with the police.

Anxieties of those who fear black liberation. Filled with fears about race, retaliation, reparations and revenge. Criminality and blackness became intertwined and stop and frisk was one of the best indicators of racial criminal profiling. Black people were disproportionately targeted and about 17x more likely to be stopped. It was a confirmation that white people associated crime with black people.

But today, police officers can justify their killing as proper law enforcements. They can explain they also kill white, Asian or Hispanic if there is fierce resistance from criminals or suspects. The stronger opposition against racism gets, the subtler racism becomes. People can experience racism from unknown online, with another reason or by an unacceptable standard as mentioned above. That is why people still try to exclude

Racial profiling can occur when law officials use race to as a basis to suspicion in non-specific investigations. Creating a profile about the different kinds of minorities who commit certain types of crimes may lead officers to focus more on a particular group and act according to the general stereotype rather than particular behavior. An example of racial profiling could be the use of race to regulate which pedestrians to search for illegal goods or the use of race to regulate which drivers to stop for traffic violations, stopping mostly black or brown colored minorities. Stopping black drivers, just to see what law enforcement might discover, has become so frequent in some places that it has it’s own name: driving while black. A year-long study conducted by the Domestic Human Rights Program of Amnesty International USA found that the unlawful use of race in police, immigration, and airport security procedures has expanded since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.

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

Although this type of profiling is not always considered fair, law enforcement officers consider it necessary to identify possible criminal activity before it occurs and causes injury to others. (Encyclopedia 2) One of the most heated issues in law enforcement is the profiling of individuals based solely upon the race, ethnicity, or national origin of the individual. Statistics show that African Americans are several times more likely to be arrested and put in jail than white Americans. As of 2000, fewer African American men were in college than were in prison. Moreover, black children were nine times as likely as white children to have at least one parent in

The statistic is shocking and a very powerful way to show that people are judged solely by their appearance. I researched a little more in depth about how people are stopped solely based on their image, more so their race. American Civil Liberties Union has an entire article on this subject. The article is titled Racial Profiling and addresses how certain races are stopped by police just based by their race. The article is very powerful and examines how racial profiling can be hazardous to your health because it can lead to death.

2005, An Analysis of the NYPD 's stop and frisk policy in the context of the claim of racial bias by Andrew Gelman, Jeffrey Fagan, Alex Kiss is about the NYPD records of indicated that they were stopping black and Hispanics more often that they were stopping whites. Minorities are stopped twice as often for violent crimes and a weapons offense. Lower "hit rates" for non-whites is suggested as the targeting of minorities while another suggests dynamics of racial stereotyping and a more passive form of racial preference. Racial Incongruity stops in high rates of minority stop in predominantly white precincts. Being out of place is often a reason for suspicion.