Racial Profiling by the Police - Research Paper Example

Racial Profiling by the Police Racism has been prevailing for centuries, and despite the fact that it is frowned upon, it has not been eradicated from society. What is racial profiling? By the definition of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, “racial profiling is any action undertaken for reasons of safety, security or public protection, that relies on stereotypes about race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, or place of origin, or a combination of these, rather than on a reasonable suspicion, to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment” (Ontario Human Rights Commission). It differs from criminal profiling based on assumed stereotype of race whereas the latter is discrimination relying upon behavior and/or descriptive similarity with an individual. This becomes an issue when people begin to act out on these stereotypical views and consequences affect others; so the vicious actions of profiling commence. Everyone must have experienced profiling at least once in his/her life, but primarily persons are targeted. Such profiling is exercised by people in authority including school administrators, security personnel, criminal justice and law enforcement agencies. Police profiling is a type of racism carried out by the police officials against the offender. It has been seen that this problem has been prevalent in even the most developed parts of the world and it becomes the main reason of discrimination against the civilians. The police department is considered to be one of the most influential departments in all the countries and, hence, racial profiling by this department can lead to many problems within the infrastructure of the country. Recently, the congressman Keith Ellison picked a fight against the department by voicing his concerns for the Muslim Americans. Ellison stated: “Racial stereotyping is simply not good policing.. It threatens the values Americans hold dear”. He argued that he himself was a target of this discrimination and wanted the relevant authorities to take into notice the current problem going inside one of the most developed countries in the world (as cited in Diaz 2012). Racial profiling threatens our fundamental principles. Racial profiling by law enforcement agencies and the associated prosecution of people of colored skin is one such example. It targets people on artificial basis of color on matters of law enforcement, causing hindrances in policing efforts and making law enforcement agencies lose their credibility within the community which they have vowed to protect and serve. The police force is looked up to maintain fairness and justice in a society; the disgraceful exercise of racial profiling has caused people to fear the system. This unjust practice remains stain on democratic nations and an insult to the claims of racial equality. It is, however, imperative that the origins of racial profiling by the police force and criminal investigators are highlighted. In the 1950s, a high-profile officer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Howard Teten, introduced and popularized the mere notion of racial profiling by analyzing the attributes and traits of the criminal, his past records and the situation at the crime scene. This practice of profiling, even though stereotypical in nature, spilled over to the police force with time. Since September 11, 2001, racial profiling has grown and the Obama administration and FBI guidelines have been codified by these practices such as the dishonorable treatment of Muslims and Arabs as suspects, denying them equality of innocence and protection under law. What has been more disturbing is the federal government’s backing of record searches of immigrants, such as Latino and Mexican communities, by the local law enforcement agencies. Because any legal cure for racial discrimination by law enforcement presently necessitates specific evidence of committed to discriminate, it is exceedingly problematic, if not impossible, for single sufferers to voice their contentions and trial the abuses of their rights and larger law enforcement practices without complete data that can quantize the larger impact on sectional communities. And even In spite of vast proof of its existence, often reinforced by certified documents, racial profiling continues to be a predominant and egregious system of discernment. Even though racial profiling by the police force in the United States of America took its toll after the September 11th attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon, it must not be forgotten that after the Oklahoma bombings in 1995, the police force commenced the investigation process suspecting the involvement of a group of ethnically Arab men, however, it later turned out that the bombings were masterminded and carried out by white American men. The Arabs were not compensated for the atrocities they faced by the police during the investigation process. “Another very prominent example dates back to the 1980s, when the Illinois Police Department launched the crack-cocaine epidemic by targeting the drug runners of Chicago. Proving the stereotypical and generalized nature of racial profiling, the local police targeted young, walking Mexicans. The cases where they did not answer their questions appropriately or in an adequate manner, the youngsters, without having a proof of being in possession of drugs, were arrested and sent to jail.” (Nittle) As a part of the research conducted by the criminology students at the Northeastern University in 2006, the New York Police Department was made to carry out random checks on passers-by and pedestrians. Police personnel were placed in no particular order at spots all across the New York City. “Raw statistics and random samplings for the aforementioned activity show existence of major racial inequality; eighty nine percent of the stops included non-whites, bringing forth the intrusive nature of the police officials.” (Institute of Race and Justice at Northeastern University) During the 9/11 attacks, Bush administration in the United States of America was responsible for some steps taken by the government which were considered as a move towards the legalization of racial profiling, contrary to the policies of the government that stepped into the White House a few years later. These steps included the introduction and enactment of the United States Patriots Act and the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. These measures by the administration were considered a clear, blatant violation of the democratic rights of the citizens. Under the Patriot Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local police departments and other law enforcement agencies, were officially authorized to search peoples’ homes, financial transactions, personal records such as emails, telephone logs and directories, intercept calls and, hence, racially profile suspected terrorists and abduct them. “The Patriot Act and TIPS continue the tradition of US governmental repression such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s against leftists, and the COINTELPRO program of the 1960s directed particularly against black radicals.” (Hawkins) The rehearsal of racial profiling has no room in law enforcement. It is an action that dents the public trust animated for an operative community regulating organization. Police must be professed as both benefactors of public security and respectful to the civilian liberty of those they have avowed to guard and serve. While the bulk of police officers aid their societies in a proficient and principled custom, the argument over the authenticity of racial profiling as a practice in law enforcement is flashiest on the side of its presence on a national level. In fact, according to Russ Leach, “1999 Gallup Poll reveals that 60% of Americans polled believe racial profiling exists” (International, Gallup). To reinstate public trust and recover community/police relations, law enforcement organizations must address both the apprehensions of the public at large that are applicable to prejudiced policing, and the accusations of racial profiling made by commonplace residents. Some police administrators and many campaigners on both sides of the racial profiling deliberation settle that data gathering and examination is a vital phase in the method of defining whether racial profiling prevails in law enforcement agencies. Some opinion the collection of traffic stop data as a organizational instrument that will not only help in the documentation of unruly police officers and performances but also help in classifying challenging governmental strategies and procedures. Without traffic stop data collection, it is tough to define with any dependability if an issue is truly occurring within the authorities and unmanageable to amount the extent of the problem if it does exist. Traffic stop data collection delivers organizations with the practical facts they need to react to the practice of racial profiling. It can also be a commencement to providing police supervisors with the resources to bring their sections/sections/sub-divisions far from the timely and fruitless job of distrustful patrolling and back to a more useful outline, that of providing decent and unbiased communal security. Some of the uneasiness voiced by adversaries of data collection and analysis is in an organization’s capability to create dependable evaluated data or a standard that will precisely replicate the polygonal matters adjoining specialized policing and the complications integral within the societal and social range of the public. The employment of survey and poll only once measured the average level for many organizations in the study of traffic stop data, caused extensive accusations of ethnic profiling and discrimination against law enforcement agencies. It is now normally considered that the advancement of a consistent reasonable standard to define whether factions are being stopped in disproportionate figures should scrutinize data using both peripheral and central methods. If statistics are viewed, the discrimination against Hispanic/Latino has been on a rise from 2002 to 2005 as “there is an increase of 0.3 percent in them being stopped in contrast to the 2.6 percent decrease in them being searched. Although the figures of white people that are being stopped are neck to neck with the Black/African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos with percentages of 9.2 in 2002 falling to 8.1 by 2005; the percentage of them being stopped is an extreme of minimum percentages of 3.5 in 2002 and rise 0.1% to 3.6% in three years till 2005. In comparison to this in 2002 the black/African Americas have a percentage of 10.2 and the Hispanic/Latinos have a percentage of 11.4.” (U.S. Department of Justice). From the aforementioned statistics of drivers stopped/searched by the police, the presence of racial profiling can be evidently seen prevalent in daily routines of peoples’ life, which clearly states the extent of racial profiling prevalent in the United States of America. This shows that the racial profiling is not only limited to airports and terrorist detention camps, but also universities, supermarkets and has become an integral, yet unfortunate and painful part of the daily routines of the racial minorities. The European Research Paper Archive is a serious means of endorsing government checking and certification of racial profiling, including the collection of broad statistics on discontinuities, hunts, detentions, and law enforcement officers’ clarifications for these happenstances. Both Democratic and Republicans acknowledge that racial profiling is illegitimate, socially corrupting and counter-productive. The rules may appear race-neutral but in reality, they curb the rights and liberties of the people on synthetic basis of color and creed and forming their biased nature in the communal notice and among lawmakers as a difficult combat. These procedures have spread fear in the air and wrongly expanded the distrust in the local law enforcing bodies which has led to an intense increase in rate of hate crimes towards the racial profilers. These guidelines have caused havoc in communities, families and individuals shredding them apart. The initiative taken by American Civil Liberties Union has surrounded educating the public and advocating against racial profiling including legislations and lawsuits. Racial profiling is a menace in society which results in citizens living in an atmosphere of fear and, thus, must be overcome by awareness advocacy and educating the public against this discriminatory practice. It is the obligation of the police administrator to train, employ, withhold, oversee, and direct police staffs in a way constant with the unprejudiced and moral performance of police facilities. The police and other law enforcement agencies must have an Incorporating strategy, data assortment and investigation, communal outreach and responsibility centered administrative system that clasps constables accountable for their behavior, and a resident complaint procedure represents essential implementation that a police administrator must use to successfully diminish occurrences and limit public charge related with the practice of racial profiling. In addition, law enforcement organizations need to cultivate additional drilling sessions that will address the exact requirements of their divisions and groups. The expansion of these programs should be a collaborative exertion of police staffs, communal activists, instructors, and promotional groups. To efficiently decrease the occurrences of actual or professed bias regulating within an agency, energies must also be made to incorporate subjects connected to this practice into other educational and training opportunities. Works Cited “Ellison takes up the fight against police profiling”. StarTribune.com: News, weather, sports from Minneapolis, St. Paul and Minnesota. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/147852775.html Hawkins, Ejmeer. “Racial Profiling Post 9/11”. n.d. Web. 20 April 2012 . Head, Tom. "Why Racial Profiling is bad". n.d. Web. 20 April 2012. Institute of Race and Justice at Northeastern University. n.d. Web. 20 April 2012 . International, Gallup. 1999. Print. Nittle, Nadra Kareem. “The Case Against Racial Profiling”. n.d. Web. 20 April 2012 . Ontario Human Rights Commission. n.d. Web. 19 April 2012. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. "National Crime Victimization Survey." 2006. Print. Read More