The Pros And Cons Of Racial Profiling

1220 Words5 Pages
Police have to do what they can to protect the public, but these actions sometimes cross lines and end up doing more harm than good. Within policing, racial profiling is an unacceptable and ineffective method towards solving crime that must be improved to create an equal and functional society. Racial profiling, a destructive process that still continues today, involves the police using race or ethnicity as reasoning to suspect a person of a crime. Racial profiling comes in many forms, varying from humiliating and inconvenient, to violent, dehumanising and, in some cases, fatal. Examples may include “…the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations…the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for…show more content…
While the examples vary, they are all alike in the injustice that individuals experience when undergoing these measures from police. One of the most appalling examples can be seen in the Amadou Diallo case in 1999, when the African American man was shot 41 times by police officers after reaching for his wallet, an event which left the officers acquitted of all charges. “All four [officers] were members of the New York City Police Department's Street Crimes Unit. A report on the unit found that blacks were stopped at a rate 10 times that of whites, and that 35 percent of those stops lacked reasonable suspicion to detain” (American Civil Liberties Union). Even though most would like to believe that North America lives in a post racial society, events like Diallo’s continue to happen today. Racial profiling is not a matter of police making one wrong decision, it is the mindset of some officer’s who believe that they have the right to treat individuals differently in accordance to their race. “We will not hinder the work of our nation's brave police officers. They protect us every day -- often at great risk. But by

More about The Pros And Cons Of Racial Profiling

Open Document