Racial Profiling

Racial profiling or race-based policing have existed as long as formalized poling has been in existence in this country. In 1693 laws were established in Philadelphia that allowed for the arbitrary stopping and detaining of African-American slaves. In the 1990’s the issue of racial profiling was thrust to the forefront of America’s social consciousness. Terry v. Ohio (1968), mandated that police must possess at least the minimum requirement of reasonable suspicion to search or seize an individual. These minimum requirements are bastardized when race is the sole determinant factor that prompts a police officer to stop (seizure) or search an individual. In the 1990’s the New York City Police Department’s zero tolerance stance on policing brought …show more content…
There are several possibilities as to why this disproportionality exists, but there is no one definitive answer. One can infer that a racist ideology exists in officers who intentionally target African-American or other minorities for stops and searches. This cannot be proven because no officer would ever report on an official police document that he stopped/searched an individual simply because they were African-American. A racist mindset is subjective and cannot be tangibly presented. Human beings come from different backgrounds and are influenced by different inputs, there is no legitimate way to measure the impact of this on an individual’s behavior which is what my hypothesis on subjectivity …show more content…
Population in a particular area may impact the number of a particular race that are stopped by police. For example, if a particular neighborhood’s population is 80% African-American the likelihood of African-Americans being stopped is substantially higher than the rest of the population, of course this is predicated upon officer’s conducting stops for legitimate reasons. Higher incidents of crime involving offenders of a particular ethnicity can have an impact on the number of stops for those who make up that particular demographic. For example, if there is an uptick of robberies in a particular area that are being committed by young, African-American males, it would be expected that officers attempt to identify and stop males who fit that criminal profile. From the outside looking in it may be perceived that young, African-American males are being arbitrarily

Show More