The Lapd And Their Tie Ins With The Mexican Population

Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.

The main race being incarcerated and targeted is African Americans. For years, poor neighborhoods have been targeted by police, whose main purpose was to find drugs by any means

The history of Mexicans in Los Angeles is a long one. The city itself was founded in 1781, by Spaniards and mixed race Latinos. As time went on, Latinos faced more and more discrimination. Certain events stand out in California’s Latino history. In the forties, Caucasian sailors would beat up Latinos who wore “Zoot Suits”, or baggy clothes, and the police let the Caucasians do it with no consequences.

It becomes a vicious cycle; the police stigmatize the minorities (even those who are not involved in any illegal behavior) and the minorities respond in a way they feel will garner them respect. Many times, guilt is placed without reason and they feel powerless against the bias. It’s in these moments that they will react inappropriately, knowing that they will be likely punished or abused. This sense of control causes a downward spiral in their social stability. Once a minority is targeted, it is very unlikely they will be able to shake the labels put on them by the

An additional study that Muller conducted was related to the number of foreign whites being incarcerated or joined as a part of a state’s police force and their relationship with the African Americans incarceration rate. Mullers findings suggest that as African American migrants started appearing in the

People argue that racial profiling is used. However, if one thinks logically it can be argued that a lot of gun and drug activity happens in minority neighborhoods and, as we learned in class, many minorities live in “bad” neighborhoods because they make less money than people who live in “good” neighborhoods. This is not to say that whites or people who are not considered a minority do not live in “bad” neighborhoods, it simply means that the majority of these people are minorities. With that being said, because more drug and gun activity take place in these neighborhoods and more minorities live there, it is more likely that more minorities will be stopped.

Systemic Racism is a system of inequality based on race. This has been relevant in our country not only since slavery but even in today’s standards. Another way to word systemic racism is systemic privilege, or “white privilege”. The concept of privilege refers to any advantage or ease of living that is unearned, exclusive, and socially bestowed. For instance, white people are generally assumed to be law-abiding citizens until they show signs that they aren’t. While people of color are predominantly assumed to be criminals or potential criminals until they show that they are not. To further explain, when it comes down to being

The main focus has always been racial profiling by the police officers strategy is that race or ethnic traits help law enforcement to focus on those more prone to be involved in suspicious activity. However, by profiling by race as a focusing on component, the police will secure more criminals. This dispute has been the argument for years, by the black communities, about white police officers coming into their neighborhood harassing them. It is a known fact that more blacks get stop and frisk than white do. Also, more blacks get arrested and serve more time than

The criminal justice system policies and practices has contributed to the racial disparities among Hispanics in southern states throughout history. For much of America’s history, southern states controlled crime with a prejudiced criminal justice system and extralegal violence. Race influenced southern states attitudes toward crime not immediately, when the first Africans landed in North America, but later, after slavery became the primary system for controlling labor. This action cause a changed in the criminal justice, permanently setting the South on its course toward extralegal violent crime control. Due to the discrimination and racial profiling in the criminal justice system; Hispanics are at a disadvantage in the education

Furthermore, after the incident of September 11th, 2001, people of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian background have been profiled by airline personnel, the local police, and federal law enforcement. Also, ever since the dawn of the war on drugs in the 1980’s, the police have been targeting mostly the black and Latino drivers for drugs. The police do racial profiling as to lower the acts of crime, but what they do not realize is that crime is not always done by specific racial groups. As for the targeting only the black and Latinos for drugs, many studies at traffic stops have shown that white drivers were most likely to possess drugs rather than their African American and Hispanic counterparts. Similarly, in the New York City, the Latinos and Blacks are the victims of stop-and-frisks. While the New York City authorities say that it helps lower crimes, New York Civil Liberties Union have shown that whites have been found in the possession of more weapons than their Hispanic and/or African American counterparts. All these above-mentioned examples prove Alexander’s idea of racism persists.

For the past few years there has been an ongoing debate surrounding the issue of racial profiling. The act of racial profiling may rest on the assumption that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to commit crimes than any individual of other races or ethnicities. Both David Cole in the article "The Color of Justice" and William in the article "Road Rage" take stance on this issue and argue against it in order to make humanity aware of how erroneous it is to judge people without evidence. Although Cole and William were very successful in matters of showing situations and qualitative information about racial profiling in their articles, both of them fail at some points.

Although police and prosecutors may contend that discrimination does not occur within their agency but that does not mean discrimination doesn’t occur. The facts show that minorities are targeted much more than whites. There are many factors that contribute to this. I don’t believe it is any one agency that specifically targets minorities but rather the criminal justice system as a whole. The interplay between the media, the

Obviously there always is deep rooted racial problem in this country. It occurs every day, in cities and towns across the country, when law enforcement target minority ethnic group especially African Americans and Latinos. It is illegal and a clear violation of the rule of law.

Do Law Enforcements practice Racial Profiling in Street-Level Crime in the country? This inquiry persists to be the main deliberation by the experts, and it is the question that convoys the research.

Hispanic Americans suffered similar fate as African- Americans in racial profiling. The media portrayed them as part of gangs and selling drugs. This group is more likely to have a strong group identity and view the police officers as “gringos” or foreigners (Aguiree , 2004). They already look at the police officers with negativity due to increased activities of deporting illegal occupiers (Davis & Hendricks, 2007). The police officers may be influenced to believe that this group is at higher risk of breaking laws and do not understand Hispanic Americans’ culture.