The Pros And Cons Of Racial Discrimination In Law Enforcement

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.

Eric Garner was a 43 year old African American man who was also fatally injured by a law enforcement officer. A police officer in Staten Island, New York claimed Garner was selling illegal cigarettes, and then the officer placed Garner in an illegal choke hold. A bystander was able to record the event on his/her smartphone. Although the officer placed Garner in an illegal chokehold, the officer was not charged with any crimes. The officer was only put on modified duty, and his supervisor was stripped of her gun because of failure to supervise.

One of the many controversial topics is racial profiling. For centuries, America has looked down and discriminated minorities and it still continues today. It began when minorities started to immigrate to America in search of better lives. Most whites believed in white supremacy and thought minorities were aliens. The police use racial profiling mostly towards minority groups. Racial profiling is the use of race or a skin color to suspect someone of doing an offense. While some people think that racial profiling is beneficial because it lowers crime rates, racial profiling creates false accusations against minorities; therefore we should limit the use of racial profiling.

Four years ago Danroy “DJ” henry Jr. from Easton, Ma, was killed by a New york police officer. Since then the nation seen the death of trayvon Martin who was kiilled by a neighborhood watch volunteer and Michael brown who recently just got killed by a policeman in Ferguson, Missoury. However, the story of Eric Garner is shown to be an ongoing issue between Eric Garner and the New york police department weeks prior to the incident. In the video, Garner is seeing expressing to the policeman that he was tired of being harassed by the same policeman and he was not selling cigarettes. During the whole conversation more officers started to approach the scene and eventually as Garner was speaking the officers moved to arrest a much taller Eric Garner. After Garner resisted the arrest, officer daniel pantaleo approached garner and put him in what is an illegal chokehold and brought him to the ground. Four other officers restrained Garner in the sidewalk where he repeated “ I cant Breathe” 11 times to the police officers that was in the scene. After the incident the police department stated it was an unfortunate situation of man who had previous altercation with the police prior to july 17th 2014. After the incident medical examiners determine Garner’s cause of death was due to neck compression, and the compression of his chest and contributing health factors such as asthma and cardiovascular condition that correlates with his death. On December 3rd 2014 a grand jury decided not to

On July 17, 2014, a plainclothes officer for the New York Police Department stopped Eric Garner on the street and attempted to take him into custody. After Garner resisted arrest, the police officer placed him in an apparent chokehold—a move that is banned by the NYPD. In an amateur video of the dispute, Garner can be heard claiming that he could not breathe. The struggle continued, and complications led to his death. The medical examiner’s report noted that Garner’s asthma, obesity, and cardiovascular disease were contributing factors to his death. However, the cause of his death was the compression of his neck and chest from the chokehold—his death was ruled a homicide (NBC New York, 2014). A nationwide outrage followed Garner’s death as the video spread on social media websites.

Criminal justice professionals can lower the controversy surrounding profiling in law enforcement by eliminating the practice altogether. There is more than enough meta-analysis data available to substantiate that the practice of profiling is discriminatory and violates an individual’s constitutional right to have access to equal protection. For most people, when we recognize anything that does not work we either get rid of it or attempt to fix it so that it is actually useful. The same philosophy has to be applied to racial profiling. If there is to be any solution to eliminating racial profiling there must be a proper balance between the constitutional safeguard of equal protection and police policies that use race appropriately (Jones, 2006).

Racial profiling is a form of racism which involves an individual of a certain race or ethnicity is looked at or portrayed as a person more likely to engage in misconduct than any other race or ethnicity. In the United States, people view other other races as a sign of danger just because of their skin color and ethnicity. The truth is, everyone is capable of being any one of those people; it merely depends on the person’s background. Judging people by their race has both negative and positive attributes. Racial profiling has been known to be ineffective, and it degrades and violates people of their civil rights. Although there are negative aspects of racial profiling, it has benefited society and the United States by decreasing crime rates and terrorism. The question to be answered about this subject is: Should racial profiling be used?

Racial Profiling is a government activity directed at a suspect or a group of suspects based solely on race. Racial profiling has become a major problem in the United States. According to an article written by the Editorial Board of St. Louis Post-Dispatch . “In 2014, blacks were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over in the state of Missouri than whites.” The point of the article was to show that finding better ways to detect criminals would make the United States a better country over all. Also stated in the article “More Training and Police Consolidation Would Improve Racial Profiling stats.” But it is deeper than just more training and police consolidation.  As stated in an article in the New York Times written by Manny Fernandez, in Texas the lawmakers created a law known as Senate Bill 4 that prohibits cities and counties from adopting policies to limit immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement is an American federal law enforcement agency, it is responsible for enforcing federal laws governing border control. Racial profiling is an ineffective and degrading practice because it violates civil rights, it’s unconstitutional and it’s a road block for future growth.

Police brutality continues to be one of the most serious and contentious violations of human rights in the United States. The unreasonable amount of force used by police officers prevails because of a lack of accountability. This makes it feasible for officers who do violate human rights to get off clean and recommit the violation. A sad fact is that police and/or public officials deny time after time any claims of human rights violations, claiming it was an abnormality, when they should be taking action and holding officers responsible for their actions. (Williams 1998, 45)

The first case of police brutality is the case of Eric Garner, and the infamous chokehold that resulted in his death. Only July seventeenth, of 2014, in New York City, Garner was suspected of selling cigarettes without tax stamps. When one of several officers at the scene, named Daniel Pantaleo took Garner’s wrists behind his back, he tried to push them away, this being resisting arrest. After this, Pantaleo put his arms around Garner’s neck, and pushed him to the ground, his hands on his heads. While in the chokehold, Garner attempted to say, “I can’t breathe!,” over ten times. The chokehold was revealed to be the partial cause of his death at the autopsy. Garner was 43 years old when he died. This is evidence that police brutality is clearly in existence. It is also clearly an injustice, since there were no charges in the case. The grand jury found "no reasonable cause" to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo.

Nonetheless, law enforcement officers have the unique opportunity to combat their lack of awareness in efforts to reduce, mitigate, or even reverse the disparity of minority youth in the juvenile justice system by increase training and compliance with the JJDA. For example, the Connecticut juvenile justice advisory committee has trained 1,400 law enforcement officers on the disproportionate minority contact since 2007, reporting a lasting positive impact on officer’s knowledge and attitudes about adolescent development and other issues regarding the racial disparity [citation Mendel]. Training must include adolescent development and psychology, demographic and cultural influences and creating rapport with the adolescent by offering respect

Law enforcement officials are continuously criticized due to the way one perceives another individual (Levinthal, 2012). Levinthal (2012) notes law enforcement developed a drug courier profile. The profile assists officers to recognize possible drug smugglers, as well as, the behavior involved of the individual targeted (Levinthal, 2012). Criminal profiles can vary from one law enforcement official to the next; however, at some point, the behaviors all link together. The inconsistency among officers can cause disputes between societies as a whole. Much controversy follows the drug courier profile resulting in a racial profile (Levinthal, 2012).

My position on if there is discrimination in law enforcement or the institutions that they are from is that they are not discriminatory towards minorities. I've come to this conclusion by reviewing data from various credible sites such as FBI criminal database, the daily wire news, Columbia University, and bjs.gov. I will first start with the stats from the federal bureau of investigation´s annual report from 2015, it states that from a total of 9,014,635 the vast majority of crimes committed is by whites at the majority of 6,214,197, in contrast, the only ⅓ of crimes in America are committed by non-whites. The difference between white and nonwhite offenders is that nonwhites commit the majority of violent crimes making up 52% of murders and

The Communications Division incorporates a diverse population of individuals. The Government utilizes Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 in order to prohibit discrimination in the workplace. Teamwork, comradery, and mutual respect are important in any profession, but even more so in a public safety environment. Harassment and discrimination shall not be tolerated.

Police should acknowledge the history of racial minorities and others who have faced injustice at the hands of the police. What's more, police ought to never markdown the negative encounters of people with the police. African-Americans have a past filled with being minimized and abused by the police, prompting an absence of trust and disdain. This history is reflected in many individuals' emotions about the police. For example, there are many individuals alive today who have their own recollections of the Jim Crow period, when many police offices were operators of authorization of laws that regulated racial segregation. Social liberties pioneers at the PERF meeting in 2015 said that while beyond any doubt many cops were not by any means conceived at that point and in this manner can't be considered in charge of implementing Jim Crow laws, all cops ought to know about this history and ought to be capable to it, implying that police must comprehend that this history is honestly a piece of a few people's sentiments about the police. What's more, taking a gander at later history, police must comprehend that the doubt of police by some group individuals is likewise established in issues, for example, racial inconsistencies coming about because of laws that require forcefully more noteworthy punishments for rocks infringement rather than powder cocaine.