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Thesis Statement On Racial Profiling

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or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The argument here is that skin color correlates to the probability that the person is involved in criminal activity, and this violates the fourth amendment in that skin color does not qualify as a “probable cause.”
Although much has improved, many black Americans feel targeted and uncomfortable when in the presence of an officer. Their reasons for their fear have been because of events in which violence and death has been the outcomes of routine traffic stops, like in the case of Philando Castile. On July 6, 2016, Minnesota Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled over Philando Castile with his girlfriend and 4-year-old daughter in the …show more content…

So, what is their side to the story? Contrary to what some officers may say, many other officers admit that they use racial profiling and they have several justifications for it. Sgt. Mike Lewis of the Maryland State Police Department (one of the many departments that has been accused of racial profiling), reasons that racial profiling can help with the issue of drug trafficking, in which he says that, “…it is most likely a minority group that’s involved with that.” He comes to this conclusion as a result of statistical data, not racism. Lewis then goes on to talk about how the scrutiny from the public faced by police makes it hard to carry out their job, knowing that if the person they pull over happens to be black, it is automatically a case of racial profiling and the officer enforcing the law is a racist. Not only does Sgt. Lewis justify his actions, but officers nationwide justify racial profiling as effective strategy in law enforcement, as well. As long as race is not the only factor in building a criminal suspect profile, they argue, police have every right to use it. Rather than looking at racial profiling as the problem facing African Americans today, black officers argue that they themselves are to blame. Reuben Greenberg, who is the police chief of Charleston (South Carolina), believes that rather the ‘black-on-black’ crime is to blame: “... the greatest problem in the black community is the tolerance for the high levels of criminality…Fifty percent of homicide victims are African Americans. I asked what this meant about the value of life in this

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