Discrimination Against Police Officers

Discrimination and prejudice are widely known in United States history. In the 1960's the civil rights movement demanded legislation and passed laws, which banned discrimination. Five decades later, it still continues in our society. Discrimination and prejudice occur when a group of people feel they are superior to another, and can be based on a person's color, race, national origin, religion, sex and gay couples.

Discrimination is when someone has a bias opinion on a specific crowd of people due to their race, sex, religion, or order of rank. This basically goes hand in hand with the phrase judging a book by its cover meaning the person with the negative opinion will not give the other individual a fair chance for the reason being they are being stereotypical and not thinking of the other person’s talent, or character. A modern day example of discrimination would be if a male employer were to compensate a female employee a lower pay due to her gender. At some time in everyone’s life due to today society, we have all been victimized by discrimination. Whether it may be a dirty look from a random person, or the way you dress, talk, and even look.

What is racism? Racism is defined as discrimination toward someone’s race or religion etc. As we know today, this is a big issue, especially in United State. This is important to me because it does not matter what skin color you have or what religion you believe in. All that matters are that a person follows the law. Police officers, for example, they are supposed to use the power that they have for the bad people, people that do crimes and our threat to our society. Using violence against people that haven't done any threat to our society is wrong. In Sweden there is some racism, but not to the extent that black people will get harassed because of their skin color. In Sweden, the law is for everyone and whoever breaks the law will get the punishment they deserve. We all know that it is always two side of a story for example what happened to Michael Brown on August 9, 2014. Michael Brown was robbing a grocery store. The police officer stated that “He shot Brown after the teen attacked him”, While brown’s family said, “Brown was surrendering when he was shot dead.” You are always going to hear two different sides but the justice will find out who is the guilty one and who is the victim.

Discrimination has many meaning and many different ways people can discriminate against others. Discriminations can be as simple as a person making a judgment against someone else by the way they dress or the way they speak or it can be the people are discriminated (out casted/left out) because they choose to be different or have a disability or different colour of skin or even religion. Discrimination is unfair treatment of a person action based on prejudice.

Racial disparities occur in arrests, stops and use of force. A report on the Minnesota police department found that Black people are stopped more than twice as much as they should be, for their share of the population(4); In Ferguson it was found that police arrest black people at a rate three times higher, than their share of the population, and “At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson” (5). Force was also found to be used at more disproportionate rates against black people. It was found that blacks are 50% more likely to experience “use of force”(6). These are clear cases of racism in the police force, it shows that there is bias rooted in all enforcement actions. It would be statistically impossible for these disparities to exist, without some element of racism in many actions and levels of the police force, and the only way to change this is to completely reconstruct how enforcement is carried

Recently, there has been much in the media about clashes between African Americans and the police. Two such cases, being the shootings of Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald - both incidents resulting in public outrage. These cases result in questions about racial profiling by police. Through research, it is clear that African Americans are the target of racial bias by many police departments in the United States; in order to remedy this situation, law enforcement agencies need to (and are beginning to) undergo scrutiny on their interactions with the public and, additionally must receive training on diversity.

The rate for police brutality has not successfully decreased, in fact, according to the article “Racism and Police Brutality”, by Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson NMPSRP, “months of April 2009 and June 2010 there were 5,986 reports of misconduct, 382 fatalities linked to misconduct, settlements and judgments that totaled $347,455,000, and 33 % of misconduct cases that went through to convictions and 64 % of misconduct cases that received prison sentences.” The victims are usually black, in cases like this. Blacks feel like all cops don’t care about them or really see them as human beings, which creates tension and miscommunication. The miscommunication makes cops believe they have the right to be more physical or brutal, but some don’t realize it is all caused by police methods and treatment towards Blacks. People say such things like “cops are pretentious douche bags. Officers may have a dangerous job buy y choose a line of work where most off hates you” (Chaney, and Robertson 488), these are people’s thoughts, feelings, and beliefs toward

For months now, news channels and others have been posting videos of police brutality towards black people. Furthermore, the majority of these officers are of a white racial background. For many years, black people have been subjected to racism and bigotry. While people such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks have worked hard to end the discrimination of blacks, people continue to mistreat them, namely whites.

In recent years’ police departments around the country have been brought into the public eye. Due to their actions towards African Americans many have become suspicious about the criminal justice system and the amount of trust that can be bestow upon them. The public has only focused on police but fail to realize that this goes deeper into the system itself. There have been many court cases where African Americans have received harsher punishments than Whites for very similar crimes. This shows that it may not only be one part of the system that are treating African Americans badly. There are multiple areas that misuse their power against them and this didn’t just start to occur recently this had been occurring for years.

Discrimination is not only seen in between blacks and whites when police and legal issues are involved, it is also felt in the workplace. “A subsequent study by the Pew Research Center last summer showed that blacks with higher education levels were actually more likely to see discrimination. Eight in 10 of blacks with at least some college (81%) said they experienced discrimination vs. six in 10 with a high school diploma or less (59%)...”(CNN). There have even been a study between Northwestern University, Harvard, and the Institute for Social Research in Norway that showed the application process between whites and blacks is surprising pretty different; “white applicants receive 36% more

Turns out, a number of black New York Police Department officers say that while off duty they have experienced the same pernicious racial profiling that cost unarmed 43 year old Eric Garner his life (NewsOne Staff, 2015) White Police officers profiling blacks as well as fellow officers while off duty.The conformity in the police department intends that you,the police officer, have to agree with all of our decisions, even if you disagree with it.For example, a retired police officer named Desmond Blaize told reuters that he once got stopped while taking a jog through Brooklyn’s upmarket Prospect Park. He said, “ I had my ID on me so it didn’t escalate.” White police officers have intentions of who to blame for the crime even if they didn’t have nothing to do with it. Police officers prejudge blacks as the ones who do the most wrong in the society.The more police officers felt socially isolated from the community they served, the more they withdrew and the more negative they felt towards its citizens

The largest component of the criminal justice system is the law enforcement. This section includes police officers, sheriffs, and marshals. The discrimination people of color experience start with these authoritative figures. “Seven in ten blacks said that the blacks in their community were treated less fairly than whites in dealing with police.” (Pew Research Center). The intended role policemen/women play is to protect and serve the citizens they represent. Yet, this study reports 70% of African Americans feel they are unequally treated in their communities by these law enforcers. Stevenson also writes about the statistic concerning African Americans and the police, “I found that

Discrimination is treating someone differently, often unfairly, because he/she is a part of a specific group, class or category of people. For instance, a girl named Wu Qing in China was discriminated against and could not find a job because how her body was a bit chubby and the scars in her face from an accident in her early childhood. Even though she was kind and used to be straight-A student, she had no friends. Now, she is looking for selling her kidney in order to pay the plastic surgery fee. Discrimination can change a person from innocent to evil is an important theme in the novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley. Even though

Unfortunately due to our past history, discrimination had been among us from since decades. Discrimination and prejudice would probably be among us until the end of the world. Prejudice and discrimination is an action that treats people unfairly because of their membership in a particular social group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs to rather on that individual. It is an unfair treatment to a person, racial group, and minority. It is an action based on prejudice.

Facts don’t lie. Even though America boasts to be the melting pot of all races, the statistics prove otherwise. Recent years have clearly shown the Police brutality against the African-Americans.