Racism: Ending Unnecessary Police Brutality against African American
Introduction
From the death of George Floyd in the hand of police to the heavily militarized response on the wake of Floyd’s death protests, the events in Minnesota have fueled the heat on the long smearing debate over the persistence of inequalities in our criminal justice system. Ontario Human Rights Commission (2017) claims that those with little experience on racial profiling or know no one who has, it may appear as nothing more than mere inconveniences. However, racial discrimination is much more than just an annoyance or hassle with direct and real psychological, emotional, mental, and physical consequences.
This participatory action research examines the factors which underwrite police discriminatory and excessive use of force against African Americans from a criminal justice perspective. Through scholarly data analysis, it provides an overview of the issue and establishes the pervasiveness of the overuse of police power and its disproportionate impact on the African American Community. Moreover, the essay examines how policing methods and police training techniques can undergird excessive use of force against the African Americans and reforms including the department of justices on stopping racial profiling. The use of excessive force by police against innocent African Americans cannot be justified and should be treated as a public social issue that requires developing clear and consistent standards for training police officers.
Racial Profiling
While racial profiling is by no means a new social phenomenon in the United States, recent incidents have however reinvigorated protests and the consolidating effort on human rights activists in the movement for “Black Lives Matter” and other racial groups have thrust such injustices into the public domain. However, Motley and Joe (2018) claim that despite the growing and widespread acknowledgment of the gravity of the challenge and the necessity of fastidious radical change in the criminal justice system on the law enforcement practices, the law enforcers are hardly held accountable for their action. Prosecutions and investigations on excessive use of force and killing by police have become an exception rather than a norm.
The excessive use of force by police on the victims not only affect differently based on their racial background gender identity, mental health, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation as well as other parameters. According to Harris and Leonardo (2018), the intersection forms of structural biases and racial discriminations compound each other, increasing human rights violations. For example, the states and cities where numerous racial police killing has occurred over the last decade such as Maryland, Minnesota, and Baltimore have a vast history of economic inequalities which falls along with the racial framework partially pioneered by implicit social dynamics, explicit government policies, and institutionalized racism.
Human rights activists and advocates specifically the local leaders and organizations of color have for long highlighted the persisted challenge faced by the African Americans in the United States, articulating the necessary steps required to address these issues. Additionally, the movements against the discrimination of the black community are gaining momentum and Americans are demanding social justice. Consequently, the United States has a robust duty in taking the necessary action to remedy and prevent the rampant excessive use of force by police against the African American Community (Kennedy, 2020).
Police Force Regulation Framework
In some cases, police officers are confronted with inevitable situations in which they have to decide on whether to use force and how much of the force is appropriate. The Inter-American Court on Human rights suggests that States should adapt their laws and ensure “security forces, which are entitled to use legitimate force, respect the right to life of the individuals under their jurisdiction” (Gayet, 2018). However, the legal framework that regulates the use of excessive force by police in the United States hardly adapts to these requirements on police best practices. Therefore, to make sure the conditions necessary for the full enjoyment and exercise of the right to human life, each State should adequately standardize particularly the use of lethal force.
The legal paradigm for police use of force does not require exhaustion less-lethal or non-violent means before resorting to lethal or violent force. Moreover, it does not consistently completely prohibit excessive use of force in marinating law and order, apprehend suspects or prevent escape in the absence of an imminent threat of serious death. The United States department of justice outlines that lethal force is only unnecessary if non-leather force is sufficient to satisfy the purpose of law enforcement (Kennedy, 2020). Although these guidelines an enhanced on the reasonable American constitutional standards, their baselines are set on non-deadly force instead of non-violent means of law enforcement and situations diffusion.
As evident, the lack of concretely sufficient, specific, clear, and objective framework concerning what consists of a lawful use of force in certain contributes to overreliance the specific police officer’s subjective views in influential to their actions reasonableness. Reliance on police officers’ views runs the risk of permitting their discriminative views, whether implicit or explicit, constitute the lawful use of force parameter (Miller, 2016). Implicit racial discriminations and perceptions and may define the offers decisions to unnecessarily using violent force. Therefore, interconnecting the United States legal framework with international standards will enhance and clarify the rule determining the use of force, reduce the incidences of racial discrimination, and ensure there are a great respect and protection dignity.
Police Training
Criminal social justice requires the United States to ensure the law enforcement officers are thoroughly trained on how to lawfully use force non-discriminatorily and prevent the abuse of African American rights abuses resulting from discriminatory and abusive use of force (Kennedy, 2020). Police offers should be trained on their obligations under national and international criminal law paradigm regarding the use of force and non-discriminatory adjunctions. Moreover, the police enforcers should be trained on how to conduct themselves in a way that meets, protects, respects these obligations for the African American community. The police officers as state agents have a right for proper training in which at the same time will minimize unnecessary racial discriminations.
Additionally, States should that their public authorities act conforms with these obligations by actions such as ensuring that law enforcement force treats individuals of all skin colors equally. They should pursue such obligations by training the law enforcers their roles in respecting and protecting human dignity for all without reference to individuals’ skin color. Several organizations on the elimination of racial discrimination have consistently stated that racism and racial discrimination in the United States violets the state and police force obligation on non-discriminatory police services.
However, the police force training efficiency on non-discriminatory and the proper use of force should be gauged by its impacts on the police conduct. According to Kennedy (2020), As long as the African American community will continue to be disproportionately victimized by police excessive use of force, the training procedures will continue to be scrutinized and enhanced to better prepare the law enforcers to protect, respect and uphold human rights for all races. It is indistinguishable from the insufficient accountability mechanisms and systematic racism. It is because the law enforcers act differently when in the wealth, white environment, clearly suggesting that they can act humanly but only chose to apply discriminatory policies on the low-income black American community.
Investigation and Accountability
Historically, police aggressiveness practices discriminating African Americans are deeply rooted and forms part of the system of social and ratio control. However, contemporary racial profiling imposes a disproportionate burden on the black community. African Americans are to be stereotyped as drug abusers or violent criminals than any other racial or ethnic group. While researches report a similar rate on the abuse of drugs among the American racial groups, police officers target African Americans for drug crimes with exceptionally disproportionate numbers. The racial discrimination on African American is becoming a self-perpetuating cycle.
Interestingly, law enforcers tend to receive a broad discretion to use lethal, violent, and deadly force against the African American community. Contemporary studies show that discriminatory practices by the police officers within the judicial system in most cases insulate law enforcers from criminal liability for human rights violations (Kennedy, 2020). While prosecutors are unlikely to charges against the police due to their professional relationships, grand juries are unlikely to indict them. Moreover, only federal and state prosecutors can initiate criminal proceedings against them, most of whom have wide discretion. Criminal investigations against the police also undergo the challenge of unreliable witnesses or intimidation of witnesses because of the police unions’ influence or the departmental culture of secrecy.
To ensure unprejudiced investigation and accountability of police use of excessive force specifically against the African American, the United States should put in place mechanisms for community and external oversight on police conduct. While some communities seek opportunities for civilians’ contributions in external prosecution procedures that accompany internal reviews, others advocates for deployment of independent citizen review boards that review complaints against the members of the police force and recommend disciplinary actions (Kennedy, 2020). Although these forms are divergent, their mechanisms possess great potential which can enhance police accountability and transparency. Prosecutors, judges, and civilians review boards can play a very crucial role in ensuring there is justice for the victims and their families.
Conclusion
Conclusively, the use of excessive force by the members of the police force against the African Americans is unjustifiable and should be treated as a public social problem that requires clear, consisted, and proper standards for training police officers, regulating the police force regulation framework, and unprejudiced investigations to hold those abuse their forces accountable. This essay has extensively outlined each one of them giving the best approaches and practices. The practices should be implemented to offer undiscriminating policing procedures that underwrite the excessive use of force specifically against the African Americans and transform the department of social justice. Racism not only provide annoyance and hassle to the victims, but it also has direct and real psychological, emotional, mental, and physical consequences that are undesirable in the contemporary setting.
References
Gayet, A. C. (2018). The Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In Comparative Perspectives on the Enforcement and Effectiveness of Antidiscrimination Law (pp. 543-562). Springer, Cham.
Harris, A., & Leonardo, Z. (2018). Intersectionality, race-gender subordination, and education. Review of Research in Education, 42(1), 1-27.
Kennedy, R. (2020). Excessive Use of Force by the Police against Black Americans in the United States. New York: Excessive Use of Force by the Police against Black Americans in the United States.
Miller, E. J. (2016). Encountering Resistance: Contesting Policing and Procedural Justice. U. Chi. Legal F., 295.
Motley Jr, R. O., & Joe, S. (2018). Police use of force by ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic class. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 9(1), 49-67.
Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2017). Policy on eliminating racial profiling in law enforcement. Ontario Human Rights Commission.