Police Brutality and Minorities
Introduction
Police brutality towards ethnic and racial minority communities is a complex and enduring problem that exists among various policing sectors all over the world. In this research, a brief discussion about police brutality and minority societies is being provided. The relationships between the police and the minority are harmonious nevertheless they are sometimes problematic. Brutality among the minority leads to these societies being deprived of their rights to essential services and police protection to which they are entitled to. The police in some circumstances stop addressing domestic violence behaviors in the minority groups because they believe that individuals from the minority society engage themselves in criminal acts.
A direct conflict between police and minority brutality takes the form of harassment and excessive enforcement. Albeit, this is not as a result of police attitudes or lack of fairness towards these racial minority societies because they reflect the values of other larger societies. Police in some cases aggravates prejudice when a society is hostile towards a particular minority group the police often say that the discriminatory conduct towards the group is justified (LeCount, 2017). These intensities of brutality against the minority community depend on social and historical factors. The longer a group is seen inferior, the more likely the minority group is prejudiced.
Minority groups brutalized mostly by the police comprise of perennial nomads, smaller tribes in communities, and the indigenous people in former European colonies (Matras & Leggio, 2017). Moreover, wars can also provoke hostility between these minor groups where they are perceived as enemies.
Police brutality also occurs when the larger groups perceive the minority groups as refusing to follow the values of the majority groups. For example, the lesser status of women in some émigré cultures in Western nations where endangered considerable hostility towards men is seen. Incidental anger also plays a crucial part in discrimination against the minority. Émigré laborers who are taken by majority societies when they need them to complete their work when it is in plenty, they face brutality in support of the police in periods of unemployment.
Police Interaction with Minorities
Interaction between the police and the minority is a national disconnect that exists between the ethnic and racial minority groups with the law enforcers. The Gallup poll data in the United States revealed that minority group satisfaction with the police is at its lowest among the Hispanics and African American citizens. All over the country in 2014 less than only 35% and 50% of African American and Hispanics, respectively, had confidence that law enforcers will treat them fairly (Ekins, 2016). Having this level of belief in two out of three of African American and Hispanics show that the groups have mistrust to the law enforcers. The type of conduct creates a crisis in the states and it needs to be addressed immediately.
To address this interaction between the police and the minority citizens various policymakers, civil rights leaders, and the politicians have to invent recommendations that incorporate multicultural training for the police officers together with the modification of law enforcement organizations by employing law enforcers from underrepresented minorities societies. Law enforcement agencies are supposed to strive in crafting a labor force that covers a broad range of assortment, including life experience, language, race, gender, and cultural background that will enable improvement in effectiveness and understanding in dealing with ethnic and racial minority groups.
In training and education, the law enforcers the coaching should incorporate fairness, implicit bias, historical trauma, impartial policing, and other important themes that address the process that aims at building legitimacy and trust in diverse minority community groups. Although, some other communities from the white European descent show African American no respect because of their color. These officers are treated worse than their white counterparts. Hence States should form commissions to address similar recommendations. Nonetheless, over the centuries similar platforms have been created yet interaction between the minority groups and the police, especially in the African American societies in the United States of America continue to overwrought.
The theory behind multicultural consciousness is that if the police officers tend to have the understanding of histories, experience and the norms of various communities other than the white European individuals they will realize and become more enlightened to the norms and cultural experiences, that hold few prejudiced opinions and this will enable them to handle all citizens in a manner that is less prejudicial not only to the white citizens of European descent but all races of humans. These training will, therefore, involve a combination of field trips, video clips, lecture discussions of the groups that will seek to inform the law enforcers officers. For instance, in implicit bias, the training will inform the law enforcers about the pervasiveness of their insensible prejudices and their insentient brutality activities. However, this training despite existing there before is perceived negatively by law enforcers, even those from the minority groups because of their negative attitudes.
Consequently, police agencies, like all governments, should have gender diversity, ethnic and racial diversity because that is the quintessence of justice and fairness for each citizen. In a free brutal society groups should not be barred from job positions in police agencies because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, and race. Law enforcement departments are supposed to have a diverse department that is ready to recruit and hire individuals from all races to assist in defending against legal challenges of brutality.
Is police brutality a systemic problem that specifically targets minorities?.
Police brutality is a systematic problem that specifically targets minority individuals. In various states within the United States of America, black citizens are much more likely to be shot by the law enforcers than their white counterparts. From the available analysis of the FBI data by Dara Lind for Vox, it is evident that the USA police kill African American citizens at uneven proportions (Greene et al., 2019). In 2012 the African American accounted for 31% of the police killings. These disparities appear to affect even unarmed suspects in the streets. In 2015, an analysis by Guardian was done and it proved that out of the general population in the country, 37.4% was among racial minority groups, and 46.6% of unarmed and armed victims while unarmed individuals killed by the police was 62.7% (Delgado, 2019).
These systematic targets show how widespread racial discrimination is among the law enforcers towards minority groups. African American citizens make up lopsided numbers of the prison population in the United States and are likely to be detained for drugs, even if they are not selling or using them.
Some of these systematic targets of police brutality are due to socioeconomic factors such as unemployment, poverty, and segregation that cause more violence and crimes among the African American groups. Because of these the police mostly patrol around their backyards resulting in more traffic stops, policing actions to arrest, and even shooting in these regions. Although, in this area, 39% of brutality is attributed to other factors other than crimes such as past criminal records and racial bias that influence imprisonment. According to research conducted by Cody Ross in 2015 proved that there is no existence between the crime rates in the country with the police shooting (Frye, 2019). Thus, it shows that the law enforcers shooting data is not due to local violence and crimes, this suggests the existence of other factors.
The systematic brutality has fuelled criticisms of police officers over the last decades in harming the lives of the African American citizens. These brutalities contribute to the forces that lead to the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movement due to the controversial police shootings and killings of Eric Garner and Brown Ferguson in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. The brutality has fostered concerns about why black lives matter to fewer law enforcers and any victim other police shooting will just be another African American citizen.
Do we see more cases of police brutality because there is more of it or because of increased use of technology and social media platforms?.
More cases of police brutality have been seen recently, despite existing before due to increased use of technology and social media platforms. The police officers are serving all across the American states under pressure in trying to ensure order while protecting the law. For instance, the police officers who enforce the law are in danger due to social media because individuals ensure their conduct is posted on social media as a result of the few police officers who have brutalized other citizens.
Social media comprises Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram which outlets use to inform people of what is happening all around the world. Though the same platforms have helped in addressing the harassment of many police officers who are discriminating and shooting citizens because they are from minority groups. Social media has helped in checking the information and reflecting on the segregation of law enforcement officers in the world.
Due to the use of increased use of social media platforms to address brutality, the platforms have enabled the minority groups to release information about how they have been harassed, threatened, and their family members killed because of police brutality. The platforms provide evidence through videos on why the police brutality should be stopped. As the brutality increases the social media platforms are also advancing their abilities of cyber intelligence, thereafter condemning such actions towards minority groups of societies. Comments also in the social media platforms on the shootings for example, of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson, if not for twitter the family of the individual could have not received justice. Twitter fans twitted and commented on the incident until the government had to take action. Social media has helped a lot in monitoring all activities of brutality, by the media fans posting and commenting about every detail thus exposing police brutality behaviors.
Conclusion
Police brutality in minority groups is an activity performed by law enforcers all around the world and in the United States especially. Various efforts are the core issues that contribute to police brutality that comprise insure culture of law enforcement departments towards the minority communities, and the resistance of these law enforcers to change by handling all citizens equally without discriminating against others because of sex, race, sexual orientation, and color. Regarding all these activities, activists recommend that the police should be trained about the significant norms and cultures of every ethnic community and why they should treat all citizens equally.
Moreover, technology and social media have helped in shaping the brutal actions among the police officers. Each day, millions of tweets are shared via social media, which are a rich source of information on public sentiments on countless topics about the discrimination of law enforcers. In posting the segregation and police brutality people take their time to express their negative and positive opinions of the police.
References
Delgado, M. (2019). Urban Youth Trauma: Using Community Intervention to Overcome Gun Violence. Rowman & Littlefield.
Ekins, E. E. (2016). Policing in America: Understanding public attitudes toward the police. Results from a national survey. Results from a National Survey (December 7, 2016).
Fryer Jr, R. G. (2019). An empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force. Journal of Political Economy, 127(3), 1210-1261.
Greene, L. S., Inniss, L. B., Crawford, B. J., Baradaran, M., Ben-Asher, N., Capers, I. B., … & Lindsay, K. (2019). Talking About Black Lives Matter and# MeToo. Wis. JL Gender, & Soc’y, 34, 109.
LeCount, R. J. (2017, December). More black than blue? Comparing the racial attitudes of police to citizens. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 32, pp. 1051-1072).
Matras, Y., & Leggio, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). Open Borders, Unlocked Cultures: Romanian Roma Migrants in Western Europe. Routledge.
Outline
Topic: Police Brutality and Minorities
Thesis: Research about police brutality and minority societies. The relationships between the police and the minority are harmonious nevertheless sometimes it is problematic.
Introduction
- Police brutality towards minority groups
- Conflict of police brutality on minority groups
- Minority groups brutalized by the police
Body
- Police Interaction with Minorities
- Police interaction with minority group is a national disconnect
- The interaction should be addressed through training and educating the Law Enforcers
- Multicultural consciousness should be applied to reduce police brutality
- Police agencies should have a diversity of employees from all races in their departments
- Is police brutality a systemic problem that specifically targets minorities?
- Police brutality is systematic
- Brutality is spread in the minority group regions
- Social factors contribute to police brutality. For instance, poverty, unemployment
- Police brutality fuel criticisms among the law enforcement agencies
- Do we see more cases of police brutality because there is more of it or because of increased use of technology and social media platforms?
- Social Media and technology posts police brutality to the public
- Social media platforms include Twitter and Facebook
- Social media have enhanced sharing of brutality information through videos and comments
Conclusion and Recommendation
Conclusion
- Police brutality actions performed by the law enforcers to minority groups which are harming them
- Factors contributing to police brutality include insure culture of law enforcement departments towards the minority communities, and the resistance of these law enforcers to change by handling all citizens equally
Recommendation
- The police should be trained about the significant norms and cultures of every ethnic community and why they should treat all citizens equally.