Visual Judgments

“Everything isn’t racial profiling” was posted on Townhall January the ninth of 2002. This article was told by Linda Chavez and cleared up on the subject of racial profiling, which is, still a thing today. Chavez explains her story to us as, “Racial profiling is an ugly business.” In her essay, she argues the circumstances of racial profiling and how it entails picking someone out for special scrutiny simply because of his race. Chavez paints us a picture of real world examples and stories of her own, so that we would be able to understand this “ugly business”. Repeatedly, she brings up airports and airlines as an example, showing where it is brought up most. And finally, she informs the audience on why the United States is more secured. Through the emotions of her journeys, the logical events that she talks about, and the information she provides, Chavez informs her audience on why racial profiling is such an ugly business.

While explaining my research question I will be fully breaking down the research question of The consequences of racial profiling on the relationship between individuals and law enforcement departments. This issue I will be breaking in a couple different topics that will then be provided will a complete analysis of examples of literature that supports my issues I choosed to fully examine. These topics will be presented as, The use of racial profiling as an individual in a civilian society of the relationship between individuals and law enforcement departments

Profiling is something that every person has or will do at some point in their life; some may even profile without even realizing it. There are various forms of profiling which will be discussed, along with the history behind profiling and how it has been used successfully by Law Enforcement in several areas as a field on investigation (Douglass, Ressler &Burgess, 1986). Profiling has various positives along with negatives, and these are accepted by Satzewich and Shaffir (2009) who suggest that racial profiling is best understood in the context of a police subculture where these police officer intergrade profiling as part of their every day work routine. Profiling is a big factor in the daily work of every Law Enforcement Officer and it cannot be avoided (Becker, 2004). For the most part profiling is seen as part of an officers daily investigative tools, from border searches, to pulling vehicles over for traffic citations the officers will use his or her discretion on those who arouse their suspicion (Rose, 2002). Therefore, this paper will analyze the overall effectiveness of profiling and how it either proves to successfully reduce crime or not (Rose, 2002).

In relation to the debate of ‘racial profiling,’ Taylor and Whitney define racial profiling as “the practice of questioning blacks in disproportionate numbers in expectation that they are more likely than people of other races to be criminals” (Taylor & Whitney, 2002). Statistics show that African-Americans and Hispanics commit more crime than Caucasians, with 90% of the 1.7 million interracial crimes stemming from the hands of African-American men. Even looking at these numbers, does that make it okay for the police to arrest and interrogate these racial minorities at such a high frequency? Where are these statistics coming from? How accurate are they? Does the media provide a skewed analysis of these findings? These are the types of questions that need to be addressed in regard to evaluating the validity of racial profiling.

The concept of racial profiling has its wide range of definitions. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, racial profiling means “the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual 's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin.” In other words, racial profiling has its assumptions that particular individuals are more likely to be involved in transgression or unlawful activities based on individual’s race or background. Racial profiling does not just exist today; it thrives and mostly propels a brutalizing message and inhuman misconception to citizens of the United States whom they are pre-judged by the color of their skin. The primary cause of profiling is racism or race-related discrimination. Unfortunately, this unwarranted approach is now commonly used by law enforcement officers, even though it could be both unjust and unconstitutional. Not only does it violate the core principles of this country, but it can be dangerous and deadly because it threatens our privacy and security. It is also a threat to racial equality, where many influential and prominent people have fought for to accomplish. Although many heroic activist leaders have ended racial division to its certain extent, yet many African-Americans all over America still face the rigid unequal world because of unjustifiable race-related tragedies that tremendously affects African-Americans.

In a colorblind era, many people find themselves in a blissful thought that all individuals are equal yet the typical case is for individuals to have a fair amount of both privileges and disadvantages due our biased society. The second chapter of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Lockdown, offers insight into the injustice that can occur to people of color when being searched by police officers under the guise of random searches. Comparable texts to Alexander’s “Lockdown” in The New Jim Crow are Allan G. Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference and Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formations which discuss in detail both race and privilege which are key components that contribute to a person’s likelihood of being “randomly searched” by police officers.

Criminal profiling is designed to help police spot criminals by developing a set of personal and behavioral characteristics associated with particular offences, with a better “profiles” it is easier to treat whoever as a suspect. (Harris,11). But while using this tactic, it can quickly become into harsh racial profiling, only because they both share the same techniques. But many law enforcements might argue back that it makes perfect sense in using these specific traits due to that fact that certain races have larger involvement in certain crimes (Harris,17). By saying this, the officials basically have a free pass at detaining anybody, only on the basis of a suspicion which is concidently related to their skin color. There have been countless situations where innocent people who are automatically assumed to criminals and were discriminated against. One example dating back to 1998, happened to Sergeant First Class Rossano Gerald, an African American who had devoted his life to the United States Army, was on the way to a family reunion in Oklahoma. During the roadtrip Gerald noticed several patrol cars who followed him for a little bits of times. Then, he was pulled over six times and the seventh time after being wrongfully accused of going over the speed limit and even after providing a valid licence, proof of insurance and a army identification, was detained inside a police vehicle. The police then said that he has smelled drugs and called the dogs to look for

Limits should not be placed on a police officer’s observations simply because some critics claim that the content and substance of these observations may be racist in nature. Case law has supported racial profiling as long as it is not the only reason for police contact (Von Kaenel 2). Racial profiling critics think that strategies which focus on race will result in higher arrests for a minority group even though the particular minority group might be under in the general population (Von Kaenel 2). Critics also say it encourages unjustified detentions, “fishing expeditions” unlawful arrests, and will inevitably lead to an erosion of the people’s civil rights. But officials argue that disregarding racial profiling does nothing to protect the public and will delay the apprehension of a suspect (Von Kaenel 1). After reviewing this information, I believe racial profiling should be one of the strategies police use to narrow their suspect pool during criminal investigations.

In “Introduction: From Racial Profiling to Racial Literacy,” Lani Guinier states that racism is everywhere and it still exists in our society. It also comes in the form of racial profiling. According to Guinier, racial profiling is the suspect’s race based on his color, power and socioeconomic class. She provides some examples and arguments about how racial profiling is widespread and is bad law enforcement. One example of the “they say” statement is when Guinier provides an example of Nii-Odoi Glover, an event marketer in Los Angeles, about how many times Glover has been stopped by the cops throughout his life.

Many studies have been made in the field of criminology, concluding that profiling is a necessary means for discovering and apprehending criminals. There are many different types of profiling and many people think of profiling differently; however, all types of profiling does work and is proven to help stop crime. This paper will explore the following: profiling and different forms of it, the closely related stop and frisk policy, different cities that have proven statistics that profiling does work, how airports are now profiling, and different serial killers that have been apprehended due to work from profilers.

This journal entry was taken from the Canadian journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and is one of the wide variety of articles discussing the issues of racial profiling and linkage to law enforcement. Janet Chan specializes in Criminal justice policies, and policing and security, she used sources similar of John Crank with additional new sources, but both papers were different due to each approach. Chan acknowledge her stand in the introduction of the paper. Chan expertise in field of Criminology aided in supporting the points of the paper. Th encore purpose of the paper is to provide different solutions for racial profiling in law enforcement which are studied in other countries. One of the solutions Chan stated is for officers to be trained and educated about the impact of racial profiling, and the creation of a database to monitor such behavior.

The racial profiling still does exist in today’s society. When something happens, most of police officers and people accuse black males based on their record or they suspect African-American people because they made many serious crimes before and they still do. In the Brent Staples’ essay, “Just Walk on By," Staples always acted carefully or accused of something that he didn’t do because of his appearance. However, people should know that we don’t need racial profiling anymore . Although they look suspicious and seem they are going to make a crime, sometimes they can be the victim.

Law enforcement agencies and other supporters have argued that profiling is a necessary means in fighting crimes efficiently. The police are able to save time, money, and resources by narrowing down a large amount of suspicious people through profiling. As a result of this, they can then concentrate their attention on the suspects that are likely to commit felonies. Profiling, however, has been shown to lead to the complete opposite of increasing public safety and preventing crimes. Research on traffic stops revealed that Hispanic and black drivers were more than twice as often as white people to be pulled over and searched. Yet, drugs, weapons, and other contraband are more frequently found in the cars of white owners (Natarajan 2).

The paper analyzes and evaluated the argumentative structure of ‘The Racialization of Surveillance Technologies’ using the ARG method. The first section provides a brief summery outlining the conclusion and main points of the essay. The second section of the paper features a structural outline of the paper include a listing of the main premises and the argumentative pattern, followed by a evaluation of said premises using the ARG method. The conclusion discusses weaknesses in the argumentative structure of the essay as well as suggestions for its improvement.