Studies confirm the persistence of the “driving while black or brown” phenomenon. Los Angeles Police Department data for the period of July-November 2002 reveals that while blacks comprised only 10 percent of the overall of Los Angeles, they were 18 percent of those subjected to traffic stops. Moreover, 22 percent of blacks who were stopped were asked to step out of their cars, as compared to only 7 percent of whites stopped. Once out of their cars, 67 percent of blacks were patted down and 85 percent subjected to a body search. Fifty-five percent of Hispanics removed from their cars were patted down 84 percent searched. By contrast, only 50 percent of whites were patted down and 71 percent searched. Again this information is of a large city that is very large and plagued with crime. The police are solely responding to the demographic of offenders. How many white gang members do you see or hear about, Los Angeles is infested with territorial gangs. What wasn’t stated in that article is why those traffic stops actually happened; speeding, failing to stop, drunk driving, reported stolen, sound infraction, not wearing their seat belt, out dated tags, lights out, or broken mirrors. Any of these traffic stops could have originated from any one of these scenarios and then progressed into something else that led to being pulled out of the vehicle and patted down. Another fact that wasn’t stated in the article was how many of these stops led to tickets or arrests.
In Workers World they printed this.
Was racism a factor in police shooting? This past May 28, it was a 25-year-old police officer, Omar Edwards, who was fatally shot by fellow officer, Andrew Dunton. Edwards was black and Dunton is white. Edwards, who was off-duty and in plainclothes, was shot in the chest and arm while chasing a Latino man in East Harlem with his gun drawn. According to news reports, it is only after Edwards had been shot and lying on the pavement bleeding to death that Dunton and two other white officers discovered, once they had handcuffed him, that he was an officer. The police shooting a man running down the street with a gun drawn in East Harlem, sound like job well done. Edwards was not in uniform or badge and off-duty, he might