Persico And Todd's Model Of Police Behavior

Moreover, minorities were detained for longer periods of time per stop than whites, and were 80 percent of those whose cars were searched after being stopped. The discriminatory treatment of minority drivers was duly noted by Volusia County Sergeant Dale Anderson, who asked a white motorist he had stopped how he was doing; the motorist responded “Not very good,” to which Anderson responded, “Could be worse – could be black” (civilrights.org, 2011).

There are many different perspectives that people are taking toward the idea of race-motivated police traffic stops. The frequency of traffic stops among college students and whether or not race is a cause in such traffic stops has many other factors that that need to be taken into consideration, such as gender, age, vehicle, location, and attire.

The judicial system in America has always endured much skepticism as to whether or not there is racial profiling amongst arrests. The stop and frisk policy of the NYPD has caused much controversy and publicity since being applied because of the clear racial disparity in stops. Now the question remains; Are cops being racially biased when choosing whom to stop or are they just targeting “high crime” neighborhoods, thus choosing minorities by default? This paper will examine the history behind stop and frisk policies. Along with referenced facts about the Stop and Frisk Policy, this paper will include and discuss methods and findings of my own personal field research.

African Americans in the U.S. consist of the majority race incarcerated by police officers. Due to the Stop and Frisk program, several of them have been in the spotlight for police stops. The Stop and Frisk Program is a policing strategy that stops anyone with reasonable suspicion and then frisks them for any illegal paraphernalia. Wagner shows the several stops, and then compares it to the statistics that out of all these stops African Americans take the overwhelming majority of these stops consistently. For example, African Americans are 12 times more likely to have forced used against them than Caucasian people and, 11 times more likely to get stopped and frisked than Caucasian people. (Page 1). Some may say the cops are the doing the right

Stop and Frisk has been a very controversial topic for quite some time, especially throughout the last election cycle. It is defined as the circumstance where a police officer will temporarily detain an individual, who they have reasonable suspicion that the individual could be armed and/or dangerous, and pat down their clothing. This issue has been of grand concern for a multitude of individuals due to the increased fear in the minority communities, who have been declared more likely to be stopped and frisked, or ‘suspect worthy,’ which points in the direction of the unconstitutional use of racial profiling. In addition, the data — as explained in class — implies that the increase in stops and frisks during the time stop and frisks were

The stop and frisk strategy is an integral part of policing in America. It is, therefore, crucial to assuring that this strategy is unbiased towards race when being performed by officers. In order to establish if racially biased behaviour is present in police officer stops, data on the stop and frisk program in New York provided by the NYPD was analysed. \\

Every day people are pulled over for seat belt violations, expired tags, and loud music, but does this become an issue when law enforcement starts pulling people over for no reason? Racial profiling, while used inappropriately, may have its advantages because it can help cut down on theft, drug trafficking, and prevent vandalism. However, there are disadvantages such as innocent people being affected, and business retail declining. Racial profiling has been increasing for many years. Racial profiling is a form of discrimination by which law enforcement uses a person’s race or cultural background as the primary reason to suspect that the individual has broken the law (Nittle). The term “driving while black” arose from the practice, as African American drivers frequently complain that police officers pull them over for no reason other than their race and the stereotypes linked to it (Nittle).

The perception of racial discrimination in the United States is a highly sensitive subject that has many associated factors that leads the view of an unjust criminal justice system. Cole and Gertz (2013) believed that racial status must be taken into account when evaluating police interaction

According to this perspective, disproportionate searches of racial minorities are justified if hit rates are equal across races or if some other measure of “efficient policing” is achieved. Although proponents of these two approaches disagree with one another as to whether racial disparities in search rates are morally or legally acceptable, their analyses suffer from similar shortcomings. In particular, both the civil libertarian and the economics approaches assume intentional or purposeful discrimination by police offers. Although data from around the country suggest that racial minorities are often searched at a disproportionately higher rate than Whites, there is little empirical evidence that those disparities are the result of malice or purposeful profiling. We instead begin with the assumption—based on considerable empirical evidence—that the factors influencing police officers’ decisions are complex (Black 1980; Goldstein 1977; Reiss 1984; Wilson 1973). In the present research context, therefore, it is implausible that race is the sole factor that causes police officers to search motorists. To be sure, the recognition of the “multivariate” nature of police officers’ decisions to search has yet to be met by concurrent multivariate empirical models of such behavior. Indeed, incidents of searches are complex events that cannot be understood through simple univariate frequency statistics and/or bivariate relationships. The Supreme Court itself often adopts a

These tests are applied to two datasets from the Florida State Highway Patrol. The traffic dataset consists of all stops and searches conducted on all Florida Highways from January 2000 to November 2001, including the race of the motorist, whether a search was conducted, and the ID of the trooper making the stop. Model relies on the assumption that all troopers face the same population of motorists. However, the data shows that this is not the case. So, the authors use a reweighted sample to test for racial bias. From this test, the author could conclude that white officers search the highest percentage of the motorists they stop, and black officers search the lowest percentage, regardless of the race the motorist. For all officers, the percentage of black motorists searched is higher than Hispanic motorists, which in turn is higher than white motorists. In turn, all officers have the highest success rates for searches of white motorists, followed by black and then Hispanic motorists. This paper concluded that troopers of different races do not exhibit relative racial prejudice.

In their work Searches and traffic stops: Racial profiling and capriciousness, they introduced the dynamic of capriciousness or the randomness of a decision by police to stop a particular individual. (p. 164) The authors expound on the fact that initial research in the field of racial profiling focused on the rate of traffic stops, this is consistent with most of the empirical research literature reviewed in this work. (p. 164) The authors find opposition to this methodology, stating that this manner of research does not capture whether the traffic stops are out of balance with the number of stops compared to the minority community. The importance of integrating population into research on this subject matter is important and is relative to the outcome of the research, this is in-line with the hypothesis made by this writer. During their examination of searches conducted as a result of traffic stops, these authors postulate that capriciousness, or randomness needs to be considered in the research. (p.

Much has been composed about Stop-and-Frisk Policies and their negative effect on Black and Hispanic people group. In any case, how does stop-and-search influence the individuals who aren't being ceased or searched. Furthermore, much has been composed about the lawfulness of haphazardly seeking individuals in the city. Another review set to be distributed in Law and Human Behavior proposes that racial profiling makes white individuals more prone to take part in unlawful conduct. These outcomes demonstrate that racial profiling could expand wrongdoing among nonprofiled bunches, having a counterproductive impact. The Feeling of Impunity is that seeing others get profiled builds your sentiment exemption, however there doesn't need to be a mind-boggling

from October 2013- May 2014 shows that Connecticut police made about 370.000 traffic stops during this time period. Black make only 7.9 percent of the state population, however, they accounted more than 14 percent of traffic stops. Latinos, on the other hand, account for 9.7 of the state population, however, represented 11.8 percent of traffic stops in comparison to whites that accounted for 2.65 percent of all traffic stops. This gruesome data shows that there is a disproportionate rate of who’s being stopped. Further, in an analysis of the San Diego Police Department data, found that African Americans in that particular city are 50 percent more likely to be stopped than any other driver. Consequently, Smith et al. (2003) report that African American drivers were 17 percent more likely than their white counterparts to be ticketed by the North Carolina Highway Patrol.

Driving while Black or DWB is seen as the most common reason for a police stop and search according to many African Americans. Racial profiling is not a new issue that is happening amongst U.S. citizens, it has been going on for centuries and well beyond that. Racial profiling is the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense. We see this far too often in low class black communities. It has been said, that the police actively use racial profiling as a way to get criminals off the street. They use their stop and search technique as a way of picking “random” people to stop. They take into consideration many factors such as location, car model, time of day and most importantly race. Racial profiling not only hurts the people of the community, but the police as well. It creates a distrust in the people we are supposed to trust the most, the police.

Racial profiling consists of a law enforcement agent making a complete stop of a suspect based on race or ethnicity in its entirety (Pollock, 152). This type of profiling has had mixed views on whether the legality of this is right or wrong based on the individual demonstrating the course of action. Since discretion is primarily up to the officer, it is hard to establish an ethical and legal boundary between suspicious activity of an individual, despite the color of their skin, and racial profiling, involving solely the race of that individual. For example, pretext stops are commonly used in authority to use minor traffic violations as an excuse to look for further wrongdoings (Pollock, 152). Historically, African Americans have been treated harshly by not only the criminal justice system, but also society in general. Although we have advanced in our demographic views, this prejudice against any group including minorities, women, and homosexuals is still prevalent, which plays a major factor in decision making. The question that needs to be answered is did I let my preconceived notion of minorities committing more crime get in the way of my professional duties, therefore when a black male driving an expensive range rover passes me, I have reasonable precautions to investigate further?