Racial Profiling Is Proven Not Necessary In Law Enforcement

How do you judge an individual when you first make their acquaintance? Perhaps you will study their facial expressions, or the way they walk. Maybe you focus on the way they talk, the sound of their voice when they laugh, or even the clothes they wear. Law enforcement in today’s society have a bad habit of using race as a way to make assumptions about people and suspects. This horrible habit officers are attempting to stray away from is called racial profiling. Racial profiling has a negative impact on our world because it is considered stereotyping, it can lead to wrongful convictions, and it can cause PTSD.

Racism has been rooted in certain policies in history such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and it continues to thrive today. The key to erasing racism from our world is to end to racial profiling. To grasp the concept of racial profiling, one must fully understand what racial profiling includes. Racial Profiling is defined in the dictionary as “government activity directed at a suspect or group of subjects based solely on race. ” The definition of profiling, however, suggests that profiling can be used as a more general term and can apply to not only race, but gender, religion, and even age.

Profiling is basically using someone’s specific characteristics to predict their behavior patterns. Racial Profiling has also been used in determining whether an individual may be participating in illegal activity, which is its most common use. Racial Profiling is illegal and is considered to violate the US Constitution’s promise of equal protection under law. The police officers of America are supposed to make everyone feel protected, but people have developed fear when they see a patrol officer as opposed to of a feeling of safety. Years of slavery and legal segregation have lead to the continuance of stereotyping based on race. These types of generalizations can have upsides as well as downsides when used in law enforcement.

The year is 1944. In the little town of Alcolu, South Carolina, the white and black neighborhoods were separated by railroad tracks with separate schools and churches for the white and black residents. On the morning of March 23, 1944, the bodies of Betty Binnicker, age eleven, and Mary Thames, age seven, were discovered. The bodies were beaten with a blunt object, force trauma was caused to the head and face, and then laid in a ditch filled with muddy waters near the railroad tracks of the black neighborhood. The young white girls were last seen riding their bicycles looking for flowers. As they passed the Stinney property, they asked George Stinney Jr. and his sister Aime where to find passion flowers. George Stinney Jr. , age fourteen, was arrested on suspicion of murdering the white girls. George was prohibited from seeing his parents until after his trial and conviction. The officer stated how he arrested a boy named George Stinney, and he made a confession on where to find the murder weapon. No confession statement signed by George is known to exist. The trial was completed within one day. The Jury consisted of all white people. The courtroom had over one thousand people, but no black individuals were allowed to enter the room. George was denied appeal and is the youngest person to be executed by an electric chair. Between the time of George’s arrest and his execution, he only got to see his parents once. George was small compared to the usual adult prisoners, so it was difficult to secure him to the chair. The adult sized mask did not fit his face, and when he was hit with the first 2, 400 volts, the mask fell off. He was declared dead after four minutes. George was executed only eighty-three days after the bodies were discovered.

Even though this happened in 1944, the pressing issue continues, and many unlawful convictions due to racial profiling still exist today. When it comes to any controversial topic, there are always two sides to each story; therefore, both pros and cons to racial profiling exist. In 2015, Donald Trump stated in an interview that profiling can be considered beneficial in the sense that some groups have a greater likelihood to commit crimes compared to others. While this statement is true and may be helpful in the eyes of law enforcement officers, it is not fair to those who fall into this category. Another pro would suggest that racial profiling can hold the potential to prevent crime in the long term, thus saving money. This idea is also accurate and can offer insight into stopping crime on a day-to-day basis. The cons, however, heavily outweigh these pros. Racial discrimination violates an individual’s rights as an American citizen. This fact, plain and simple, also implies racial profiling is responsible for making a community feel unsafe, not to mention costing a great amount of money. Lombardo states that an accurate racial profile can save both time and money, but an inaccurate profile can be costly to financial resources and withhold the crime from being solved.

Racial profiling and discrimination has a negative impact on each individual’s feeling of safety and is based on the underlying issue, stereotyping. Stereotyping unfortunately is a huge problem in the world today. We seem to have the need to judge or point blame just because a person talks different, dresses different, or because of their physical appearance, for example: their race. Studies have shown that most people believe that African Americans are more likely to commit a crime and are prone to violence and that all Hispanics are here illegally, the list continues to grow. Given the circumstances, this creates a misconception of how people of different ethnicities live their lives. This leads us to another huge problem-discrimination. We tend to believe certain people most likely commit crimes, when what needs to be done is the proper investigation while gathering all the information before placing the blame. Stereotyping can even have harmful effects as well such as PTSD or other mental health disorders. Everyone has heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Veterans, victims of sexual assault, and gunfire, but a lesser talked about cause of PTSD is Racism and Racial Profiling. These cases mainly stream from hate crimes and stereotyping among our society and among our law officers. PTSD symptoms can go as far as paranoia from a traumatic experience. This “trauma” that is being referenced is most commonly causing individuals affected by racial profiling to feel a sense of unsafety, thus, leading into paranoia. A research article stated that African Americans have a lower chance of contracting an anxiety disorder or mental health disorder, but that 1 in 10 African Americans become traumatized by a racial experience.

The aftermath of racism is affecting the health of victims. If law enforcement continues racial profiling, these horrible outcomes will continue to grow. While many believe racial profiling is only used in law enforcement, it is much bigger than people think. Racial profiling is used in everyday life such as work, education, and the public realm. For example, black students are more likely to be suspended than white students. Racial profiling can begin as early as the age of four, particularly for boys, and can last a lifetime for a victim or racism. In a school setting, black male students are singled out and observed for misbehavior by teachers of races both black and white. Could a child’s education be where the root of the problem with racial profiling starts? The answer is absolutely. Children of color are used to being racially profiled by early to mid teens, and they start to expect it everywhere they go, even at the grocery store. To completely end racial profiling and racism, we must start at the beginning of the children’s lives and treat all kids with equal respect no matter the color of their skin. The news media has a harmful way of manipulating individuals for their own self interest. The news anchors, more often than not, strive to dramatize the news to get more views. They target peoples opinion, whether good or bad, to get all the views possible. It is their way of sucking people in and keeping interest. They sometimes seem to stretch the facts past its truthful boundaries. The news media, at times, create misleading information for their own interest even though it is deceptive to the viewers.

Again, it is all about the view numbers and to get the people involved in theories, good or bad. Media can be your local news, national news, or even social media. Almost everyone has a facebook or twitter account, so it is easy to get the public's attention. Though these stories gain popularity for that media outlet, they create issues for the people or groups that they target. Hurting others by singling them out and making assumptions to gain fame is not a sufficient means of earning this popularity, no matter the type. Whether it be racial profiling or any other pressing issue, the media will lead viewers astray to push their own views. It is unfair to judge others based on their skin color, their backgrounds, and their culture.

Today’s society, especially in law enforcement, uses race to judge someone by jumping to conclusions. Law officers in particular should try to maintain a neutral opinion and respect for all types of citizens they are serving. Perhaps personality profiling is what officers should strive to move towards instead of race, gender, and social class. This would create a more equal field for citizens and would be a fair way to treat others. By looking at personality instead of race, officers are forced to wait and see how a suspect acts and what they say before creating a judgment about a person. Racial profiling can cause PTSD, can lead to wrongful convictions, and is frequently based on stereotyping. Though there are many factors that contribute to racial profiling, trying to exclude these in your daily routine will help them become absent from the minds of society. This would help in the long term by straying away from racism toward a much bigger and better goal: equality.