When you think of a criminal, you probably imagine a tall, strong black male. Racial profiling is becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s society. We see it in court trials, during arrests, and even before an arrest is made. For example, in the case of Trayvon Martin, where George Zimmerman wrongfully shot him because he believed Trayvon was a criminal based on the way he looked. During court trials, judges and juries can be persuaded by the characteristics of the person on trial. Therefore the criminal justice system sees race before it sees a crime. It prioritizes the “majority” or what it considers to be “better” before it takes the crimes committed into consideration.
In cases like the Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman trial, we see racial profiling and how it impacts society as a whole. “The shocking killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, FL” was due to the fact that, “George Zimmerman, 28, a neighborhood watch/wanna-be cop thought Martin looked suspicious–the young African American was wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles along with a can of iced tea. Race undoubtedly played a role in local police accepting Zimmerman’s version of events and not arresting him on the spot.”(Hanley, 2012) While events like these affect a majority of people, the individuals who are most impacted by these incidents of racial profiling are African Americans in today’s society. The case of Trayvon Martin and cases similar to it shine a light on the black male and female stigma.
The article Post-Racialism and Searches Incident to Arrest, by Frank Rudy Cooper discusses the case of Arizona v. Gant. “Police arrested Rodney Gant for driving with a suspended license. During a warrantless search of Gant’s car incident to his arrest, officers found a weapon and cocaine. Gant moved to suppress this evidence; the court denied his motion, and he was convicted of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.”(Daly, 2009). Gant makes a point of saying that “the search and seizure violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens ‘against unreasonable searches and seizures.’” From my understanding of the case of Arizona v. Gant, Gant was arrested for driving without a valid driver’s license. The police then proceeded to investigate his car and found a gun and a bag of cocaine. The police officers had profiled Gant as a criminal due to the fact that he was driving without a license, and they then proceeded to lock him in the back of a police car and search his vehicle without a warrant.
Cooper states that “racial profiling lives on in the post-Gant era because the Court failed to prohibit pretextual searches. Cops may leave suspects near a car in order to satisfy Gant’s first prong. More importantly, they will often be able to characterize the crime of arrest as suggesting there could be evidence in the car. For instance, if a distracted driver turns without signaling, what is to stop an officer from claiming she suspected the crime of Driving Under the Influence and was searching for beer cans.”(Cooper, 2012).
In the case of Arizona v. Gant, the racial profiling that the officers exploited had proved useful because it leads to finding a weapon and cocaine in Gant’s car. Cooper writes that “the Gant Court thus remedies only the general problem of officers searching for weapons after they have eliminated any safety concerns but not the specific problem of racial profiling through searches incident to arrest.”(Cooper, 2012) He states that “we must address the mindlessness of present doctrine,” that being that we automatically racially profile people. Cooper explains that “we must address” but we must also eliminate it because racial profiling, while it can lead to getting weapons and drugs off the streets, can also lead to the wrongful death of innocent American people.
In the article Racial Profiling and Use of Force in Police Stops: How Local Events Trigger Periods of Increased Discrimination, by Joscha Legewie, the discussion of racial profiling is brought up, and Legewie argues that “racial bias and the use of force increases after relevant events such as the shooting of a police officer by a black suspect.”(Legewie, 2016)
Racial profiling becomes more relevant after another incident triggers it. Legewie set up his own experiment in order to better understand what triggers racial profiling, and from his results, he found “evidence showing that incidents of extreme violence against police officers can lead to periods of substantially increased use of force against African-Americans but not against other groups.”(Legewie, 2016)
After more research, Legewie finds that “the findings reveal a general set of processes where local events trigger discriminatory responses both with the police and with other actors who might engage in discriminatory behavior (employers, landlords, teachers, etc.). From this perspective, discriminatory behavior arises not only from static conditions but also from temporal sequences of events and responses.”(Legewie, 2016) Legewie’s findings support my idea that the police, among others, racially profile.
His research goes more in-depth to explain that the police often use their surroundings to profile people, not just the people alone. Legewie adds that “other research on police behavior highlights the importance of place without relying on a minority threat argument. Werthman and Piliavin, for example, maintain that neighborhoods influence expectations regarding appropriate behavior and function as an important indicator used by police to identify suspects, which in turn influences police conduct”(Legewie, 2016)
Legewie further explains that “the use of police force is substantially higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods and in those with higher homicide rates.”(Legewie, 2016) Legewie, similarly to Cooper, writes that “an increase in the use of force might not necessarily be based on a conscious or even retaliatory response to the event.”(Legewie, 2016) After hearing so many horror stories on the news about black men and police seeing it first hand, our minds, and the police officers’ minds, automatically and possibly at times unconsciously believe the black men to be the criminals, even if they, in fact, did nothing wrong.
It is easier to assume someone is dangerous than to assume they are genuine because if assumed dangerous, the mind becomes cautious of the person and situation that it has been put in. When police are on duty, they have to assume everyone is guilty in order to protect themselves in some way. The final article I read and analyzed was Against Racial Profiling by Amit Pundik. Pundik writes the following situation, “a police officer sees a suspicious bulge in the pocket of a passing pedestrian and deliberates whether to stop and search.” He then explains, “The pedestrian is also a young, black man, and from past searches and convictions, the police arguably know that such men are much likelier than other people to carry an illegal firearm.”(Pundik, 2017)
Pundik explains that “from the individual’s membership of a certain racial group, the searcher is invited to infer that the individual is likelier to exhibit some culpable behavior.”(Pundik, 2017) Pundik’s quote states his belief that the police infer criminal behavior based on the characteristics of a person, such as skin color and the neighborhood the person was found in. Pundik adds that “whenever inferring culpable behavior presupposes the existence of some causal factor outside the agent’s control.” The “causal factors” that Pundik mentions are any behaviors or characteristics that cause someone to stereotype or pre-determine who a person is or how that person will act. Pundike’s argument is that no matter what we do as human beings, we will always racially profile, whether it is casually or consciously.
In cases like the Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman trial, we see racial profiling and how it impacts society as a whole. In the article Racial Profiling and Use of Force in Police Stops: How Local Events Trigger Periods of Increased Discrimination, by Joscha Legewie, the discussion of racial profiling is brought up, and Legewie argues that “racial bias and the use of force increases after relevant events such as the shooting of a police officer by a black suspect.”(Legewie, 2016) Racial profiling becomes more relevant after another incident triggers it. The final article I read and analyzed was Against Racial Profiling by Amit Pundik.
Racial profiling is becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s society. Cooper states that “racial profiling lives on in the post-Gant era because the Court failed to prohibit pretextual searches. Gant, the racial profiling that the officers exploited had proved useful because it led to finding a weapon and cocaine in Gant’s car. Cooper explains that “we must address,” but we must also eliminate it because racial profiling, while it can lead to getting weapons and drugs off the streets, can also lead to the wrongful death of innocent American people. During a warrantless search of Gant’s car incident to his arrest, officers found a weapon and cocaine.
Cops may leave suspects near a car in order to satisfy Gant’s first prong. Gant, Gant was arrested for driving without a valid driver’s license. Race undoubtedly played a role in local police accepting Zimmerman’s version of events and not arresting him on the spot.”(Hanley, 2012) While events like these affect a majority of people, the individuals who are most impacted by these incidents of racial profiling are African Americans in today’s society. It prioritizes the “majority” or what it considers to be “better” before it takes the crimes committed into consideration. Gant.
