Police Brutality Against the African Americans Essay

Is it true that roughly 23% of police misconduct reports involve the use of excessive force especially against the African Americans?

In the contemporary United States police brutality is a major issue of concern. For instance, in 2017 a jury cleared Jeronimo Yanez a former police officer for manslaughter in the killing of Philando Castile a 32-year-old. Protesters in Minnesota's St. Paul shuttered down the interstate 94 with placards that read "black lives matter" (Crosby 2018). This kind of scene had been familiar as people had held massive protests a year earlier when Yanez shot Castile allegedly after pulling him over for a broken taillight. A footage showed Yanez firing through the open window; Castile was among the 233 black people killed in the United States in 2016 by the police bullets. In the contemporary United States, there are raw footages that show excessive police brutality directed towards the African Americans. The police are always seen in this footages beating and shooting unarmed African Americans which have prompted disbelief and stirred outrage in the world. The footages are captured by the police cameras and cellphones and spread through the social media which has shone a light on the worrying encounter with the police in the US. This paper will seek to discuss whether the issue of police brutality to the Africans Americans is racially propagated or not?

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When a black person experience brutal police force the question that typically lingers in our minds is whether the action was racially triggered or had anything to do with it (Crosby 2018). Many investigations agree that the issue of racism plays a big role in influencing the police in becoming brutal. This is typical as a result of the implied racial biases of the personal police officer concerned. Most police agencies have tried to rule out racism by claiming that we do not comprehend what is in the heart of the police when committing excessive brutality to the victims (Carter 2016). The division between the police and the African Americans is evident in the inherent racial separations in the public perception of the criminal justice system and the law enforcement. It is in the public domain that the police are too quick to use extreme force against the African American while the use of this deadly force to the whites is only when necessary. The African Americans and the white American are largely separated on the issue of whether the police personnel who kills or injure civilians are treated too leniently by prosecutors and this contributes to the utilization of excessive force to the civilians (Carter 2016).

In the United States reports indicate that there are huge racial disparities in how the police use force. Vox's Dara Lind analyzed the available data on the FBI and found out that the police kills the African Americans at a disparate rate (Holmes 2008). According to the study, African Americans made up 31% of the victims of the brutal p[police force killings in 2012, despit6e the fact that the African Americans only make up 13% of the total US population. Granting that the data is unfinished because it is established on voluntary from the law enforcement agencies throughout the country. This report outlines the problems of vast differences in how the police utilize force among the American citizens. According to the investigation by the Guardian, the differences appear to be even sharp for the suspects who are unarmed. The racial minorities accounted for 37.4% of the total population in the United States and made up 46.6% of the armed and unarmed police victims, nevertheless, they made up 62.7% of those killed by the police force who were not armed (Haight, Kayama & Gibsom, 2016). These disproportions in the use of police force replicate widespread racial disparities across the whole US criminal justice system. The African Americans are much more likely to be detained for drugs, despite the fact that they are not likely selling or take them. They also make a disparate amount of the total prison population.

The school-prison pipeline has also contributed to excessive police brutality (Haight et al 2016)20. The school is considered to be a place of the potential solution against inequality, poverty, and racism but t5hat is not the case in the American schools whereby students are racially profiled. The high presence of police officers in the schools have increased black students suspension this has increased their rate of being found on the wrong side of the law. It is the black students who are mostly referred to the police officers by their teachers this is due to the fact teachers think that the black students are aggressive and dangerous. Through this police referrals, the black students are in constants encounters with the police who also thinks that they are more likely to get indulged in crimes (Holmes 2008). The schools statistics show that the Africans Americans are treated disproportionally different from the white students; they are dealt with more harshly by the school systems. Africans American children are considered the threat from an early stage of their life and it not unheard of African American students being taken out of class in handcuffs. This shows how the schools are funneling certain students into the prison system.

In the US justice system, there is an aspect of racial disparity. According to a report by (Nellis 2016) found that African Americans were detained in the prisons at an average rate of 5.1 times that of the white Americans and in other states this rate was 10 times higher when they are only 13% of the total Americans. He also found that the difference rate was also double the average in five of the states. The state of New Jersey had the highest rate at 12.2 African Americans to one white American. This clarifies the issue of criminal justice system especially in relation to race, particularly in the recent years. According to the study, the drivers for this disparity is the biased making of decisions in the criminal justice system, unemployment history, criminal history, educational outcomes, and poverty (Haight, wanyama, and Gibson, 2016). Furthermore, biases based on race may affect the prosecutor's decisions in the criminal justice system when ruling against the black Americans.

In my opinion, this disparity between the uses of police excessive force against the civilians is partly explained by the socioeconomic factors. For instance, poverty is more prevalent among the black Americans this makes them more vulnerable to committing crimes. Also, unemployment is factors which lead to the black Americans committing crimes and being arrested. Another thing is racial segregation, racial profiling makes the black Americans the marked people of the society and is targeted in all the areas of the society for education in the school to prison pipelines to the justice system. And lastly, the neglect by the police when it comes to serious crimes which lead to more violence and crime in the African American societies. Consequently, there is the tendency of the police presence in the African American neighborhoods and so they are more likely to carry out policing actions from the traffic stops to detentions and shooting in this areas.

But an examination by the sentencing project established that the higher rates of African American crime rate explained probably about 61-80 percent of the African Americans over-representation in prisons. This shows that up to 39% of the racial difference of police brutality towards the African American and their imprisonment is accredited to other reasons including racial biases or past criminal records that impact on a use of excessive force or prison sentence. (Crosby 2018). According to a 2015 study by Cody Ross found that there was no relationship between the level of racial biases in police shootings and the rate of crime in the county, this indicates that the level of police hurting and shooting African Americans is not in response to the county's crime level rates. This clearly proofs that other aspects other than the level of crime are in play in this brutality experienced by the African Americans.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the racial disparity has increased critic of law enforcement over the last decade. This has led to the movements black lives matter that has risen to national status due to controversial killings by the police in many cases. In my opinion, as far as there are some factors that explain the black people overrepresentation in the police shootings and in prisons, other factors such as racial segregation plays a role in ensuring that violence against the black people are is propagated. The US law enforcement agencies should ensure that they should not racially profile people. Today we see so many videos in the social media that depict police brutality among the African Americans. The judicial justice system and the policing system should ensure that the officers have a good training in issues of racial profiling And completely ensure that there are policies set in place to curb this problem.

References

Crosby, E. (2011). Black Rage in New Orleans: Police Brutality and African American Activism from World War II to Hurricane Katrina. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jar195

Leighton, J. (2018). "All of Us Are Unapprehended Felons": Gay Liberation, the Black Panther Party, and Intercommunal Efforts Against Police Brutality in the Bay Area. Journal of Social History. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shx119

Holmes, M. D., & Smith, B. W. (2008). Race and police brutality: Roots of an urban dilemma. SUNY Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/pap011

Carter, S. A. (2016). The School-To-Prison Pipeline: A Comprehensive Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/sww028

Haight, W., Kayama, M., & Gibson, P. A. (2016). Out-of-School Suspensions of Black Youths: Culture, Ability, Disability, Gender, and Perspective. Social work, 61(3), 235-243. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/sww021

(Haight, wanyama, and Gibson, 2016)