Snitching Bill Maxwell Analysis

Michael Dowd, dubbed the name “Dirtiest Cop in New York City”, prospered enough than any US President’s annual salary, calculating by the amount of money he stole in robberies he and his partner, Kenny Eurell, planned in their patrol car to the eight grand a week they were paid from a drug gang leader. He and his fellow partners-in-crime would use police tactics to rob dealers. Certainly, Dowd was not only intelligent in his mischievous ways, but he had balls and didn’t rat out on his partners, which made him fearless of the consequences that might follow. He may be nervous at times, but was never feared of being caught. He was determined, demanding, obnoxious, greedy individual, and would go after anyone that threatened him and owed him money.

Neil Irwin’s “What the Numbers Show About N.F.L. Player Arrests” takes a strongly analytical look at N.F.L. player’s arrest records. Using a database from USA Today, Irwin forms that data into easy to process statistics and graphs. He then goes on to make theories to explain correlations we find in this data. The writer leans heavily on the use of statistics, but also uses Appeal to the Opposition, and Concrete Examples to put together this piece.

Buntin, J. (2017, July). In Extreme Community Policing, Cops Become the Neighbor. Retrieved October 15, 2017, from

Another cause in the spike of black inmates is the push for prisons to remain functioning and full of inmates. The U.S. has the largest incarceration rate compared to any other country in the world, and according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the majority of those imprisoned in 2006 were black citizens at approximately 4.8%, whereas Hispanic inmates make up 1.9%, and white inmates make up 0.7% ( BJS.gov). Many will argue that the reason the rate is so high is because of the lack of education/lower class status of black communities, but evidence points toward how some law enforcers racially profile or are informed to do so when suspecting criminal activity, especially so with black people.

Numbers suggest that, for instance, while Blacks compose six percent of population in St. Clayton city, they represent 57% of overall police arrests. Similarly, the probability of Black arrest in Berkeley (CA) and Madison (Wis) cities is nine times higher than other racial groups compared to their corresponding population. In addition to this, Bureau of Justice statistics report that at the national level, Blacks are two times more likely to be arrested compared to Whites. Concurring with media reports and national statistics institutes’ estimates, empirical studies also report high proportion of minority arrests compared to their representation in the population (Golub, Johnson, & Dunlap, 2007).

“Many years later, little had changed. A black man named Rodney King was involved in a high-speed chase in Los Angeles. California, on March 3, 1991. Police pulled him from the car and beat him. A bystander took video footage of the beating. The four police officers involved were indicted, but they were acquitted in 1992.” ( "Police Brutality and Race.")The quote from the article “police brutality and race” shows a situation that happened in 1991 that is similar to the incident in the book. A lot of times when incidents like police brutality the police officers often win because they are “doing their jobs” when in reality they are often accusing many citizens. Often cases of police brutality the civilian that is abused is male and black. This is because they are stereotyping thinking they are up to no good when they can be innocent by standers. Racism and stereotyping in most cases end badly. Police officers abuse their powers and hurt and or injure people because they “assume” which often leads to a bad ending. “FBI statistics show that white officers killed black suspects twice a week in the United States over a seven-year period. That’s an average of 96 times a year.” (police officers abuse their power).studies show that WHITE police officers are the ones to kill BLACK suspects due to “assumption”. Their is a very high statistic that shows how many blacks are killed in a

Stephanos Bibas explained the high incarceration rates in his article, “The Truth About Mass Incarceration,” by stating that, “Over the past few decades, prosecutors have grown tougher, and more consistent.” He also explains that over half of arrests today lead to felony convictions versus twenty years ago when one-third of arrests lead to felony charges (Bibas). Bibas concludes that the increasing incarceration rates cannot be tied to racism among the judicial system, but can be explained by increase in convictions and arrests for crimes considered felonies. Even though Bibas presents fair points, race is also a factor in arrests, between June 2005 and June 2008, African Americans consisted of 85% of all stop-and-frisks by the NYPD, while only 8% of stop-and-frisks were performed on white people (Graff 129). “...The criminalization process works so well precisely because of the hidden logic of racism,” Angela Davis writes to describe how hidden racism leads to the widespread belief that African Americans are more likely to be criminals than white people (268). This societal expectation that all African Americans are criminals has lead to more stop-and-frisks and more arrests of people of

In order to understand the nature of the statistical disparity, the first aspect that must be examined is necessarily the statistics themselves. Recent data (1998) shows that more than two out of every three arrested persons are white (67.6%) and that African Americans account for only 30% of all arrests. More striking is the data adjusted per capita: African Americans are two and a half times as likely to be arrested as whites, and are even more over-represented in violent crimes, for which they are over three times as likely to be arrested. African Americans are five times as likely to be arrested in cases of robbery or murder (Walker et al., 39).

Tetzlaff-Bemiller, M. J. (2011). Undercover online: An extension of traditional policing in the united states . 5(2), 813-824. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=55aa80b7-28ab-4e79-bcdc-1faa9e027f67@sessionmgr112&vid=1&hid=104

When examining the claim that black people are simply more prone to drug use, Alexander pulls statistics to create a rebuttal proving otherwise. She cites the National Institute on Drug Abuse, stating that they “reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students” despite the Human Rights Watch noting that “the rate of incarceration for African Americans dwarfs the rate of whites” (Alexander 98-99). Alexander uses an appeal to ethos to disprove the opposition’s argument when quoting the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a credible source that validates her claim. The statistic that whites use drugs at “seven times the rate” of blacks appeals to logos, as it logically suggests that due to higher drug use, whites should be imprisoned at higher rates. Contrasting two opposing facts, one showing how whites use more drugs and one showing how more blacks are jailed for drug use, logically proves drug imprisonment to be founded on racial bias. Alexander uses statistics again when discussing racism within law enforcement, using data from a study conducted on police stopping motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike. The data found, “only 15 percent of all drivers. . . were racial minorities, yet 42 percent of all stops and 73 percent of all arrests were of black motorists, despite the

Now consider the number of innocents that never get this chance at redemption. Currently the Federal Bureau of Investigation is collecting racial and ethnic information and mapping American communities based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crime and sharing it with unknown state, local and federal agencies (American Civil Liberties Union, 2012). Since 9/11 the operating parameters Americans expect to protect their rights to privacy have been obliterated. The FBI can now initiate an investigation of a person without the standards of just cause that once protected the rights of all Americans. To the African American male this is nothing new, random searches and undue investigations have always been a part of being an AAM. From a police prospective there are ongoing efforts to equalize the authorities governing the communities focused on diversifying the system and gaining trust amongst the inhabitants. Jones-Brown (2001) argues that to be black and male amounts to a fatal profile for which there has been little to no judicial redress. She cites Natapoff (2004) in noting that one in four black males 20-29 years of age is locked up, on probation or parole, or being pressured to snitch. The research goes further to say that one in twelve in high crime areas are snitching under duress causing a social breakdown of communities nationwide.

Mac Donald (2008) looks at the idea that cops over arrest blacks and ignore the crimes that whites commit. However, the races of criminals that are reported by the victims do in fact match arrest data. According to a research study as far back as 1978, “a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests--a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes” (Mac Donald, 2008, p. 15). It does not make sense to think why crime victims would be biased in the reports they give to the police.

The incarceration rate for African Americans is higher than that of Caucasians and has been that way for years. The Blumstein study conducted in 1982, found a disproportion between black and white incarceration rates of seven-to-one (Hawkins & Hardy, 1989). The inequality of incarceration rates within criminal justice lingered. Authors of State and County Incarceration Rates: The Direct and Indirect Effects of Race and Inequality, Thomas Arvanites and Martin Asher, stated that the white majority feels threatened by nonwhite minorities because they believe they are more involved in crime. Blacks were seven times more likely to be incarcerated than whites in 1993. Due to these facts, “cultural conflict theorists argue that law enforcement

In Steve Chapman’s article “Are Blacks to Blame for Cops Actions?” the author addresses the most important controversial problem we had for centuries. Does racial profiling exists? If so, what is the problem with it? Many say that law enforcement are only targeting the minority, to be specific mainly African Americans. This is because they are the only ones to blame and that if they were not committing so much crime, they wouldn 't get so much attention from police(502). The author points out that blaming the black community for violent crime by blacks we fail to notice the truth of today’s real crime. I strongly believe with the author, we fail to notice the real crimes that are society has. Are we so distracted by what the media

The article “Race and Policing: Treat Black Men And Boys like Victims, too” written by Gene Demby; focuses on the matter how black people are more likely to become the perpetrator of crime instead of the victim. he researched on the matter. His article focused on the study by the two sociologist names Andrew Papachristos and Christopher Wildeman. The passage argues bout the fact that people focuses on the fact the black men and boy are get blamed for the crimes but people don’t focus on the part about they being the victim. the police department in the areas where the majority are black people do not seem to care about solving the crimes as much as other areas. In the essay it was mentioned that in an urban area in Chicago, where the majority