The article Antwon Rose Shooting: White Police Officer Acquitted in Death of Black Teenager written on March 22, 2019 documents an issue that took the attention of most people globally. A former police officer who lived in East Pittsburgh, Pa. was cleared as innocent on Friday on all dimensions regarding the death of a black teenager who run away during a traffic stop last summer. The final judgment of the death of Antwon Rose II was made after a four-day trial in Pittsburgh and in about 3 hours of jury negotiation. A video that had the record of this lethal shooting was extensively seen on the internet, and as a result, there were many protests in Pittsburg. This was a typical scenario of the killing of an unarmed black person by a police officer. The officer by the name Michael Rosenfeld, a white, was indicted of homicide in reference to shooting to death of Antwon. Antwon was a 17-year-old African American. Antwon was unarmed and ran after Mrs. Rosfeld and pulled over the car he was riding accompanied by another young person (Hassan, 2019). Prosecutors determined that Mr. Rosfeld shot the victim, a passenger, three times – in his back, face and elbow. The juries who consisted of six whites and three blacks could not rule otherwise because of the friction created by the protestors in Pittsburgh who were crying for justice.
From a social perspective, racism seems to be the issue in this confrontation and crime. Violence against the blacks or black American community is a rampant problem in this society. According to Cole (2017), young black individuals are eight times more likely than other Americans to be murdered by the police in 2017. In the black community, there is a feeling of fear and skepticism in response to the police. The violence against Antwon (who was unarmed) and did not show any threat of danger is an instance of extreme policing (Hassan, 2019). These instances of police cruelty are instances of a police approach of “broken windows’ policing. George Kelling and James Wilson formed this policing approach. The concept is to display superiority and issue a warning through small offenses varying from loitering to wreckage, traversing in a region, and this will reduce crime rates of all kinds.
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Nonetheless, the policing approach above has been confirmed to promote racial profiling and focusing on impoverished individuals generally. From a sociological angle, I suggest that instances of extreme policing the only amount to conflicts. Conflicts may arise because of a police officer going after someone, who is normally harassed by the same police officers regularly, who in turn talks rudely at that instance. Consequently, the police officer responds as if he is the one who has been offended and worsens the occasion until a violent result is attained (Swaine & McCarthy, 2017). With the growth of the movement “Black Lives Matter,” we are presently witnessing social change occurring from this conflict.
I am strongly convinced that the history of how the police have engaged with individuals of color has complicated the relationship between these two parties. For instance, when officers confronted peaceful demonstrators, and police dogs chased them during the Civil Rights Movement, it made the black community doubt and disregard the police. Conflicts are experienced because of things like power, wealth, and social standing that are not enjoyed by all, scarce resources, and when the demand surpasses the supply (Swaine & McCarthy, 2017). On the ground of this conflict, the conclusion is that police shooting that is done against the black people may happen because the police are taking advantage of extreme policing to counter some social groups.
The stop-and-frisk programs in most states of America such as New York, Pittsburgh and many more are a major instance of extreme policing. This police approach has led to great conflicts between blacks and whites. In fact, with the support of President Trump against the black immigrants, the conflict is intensified. This program has seized and investigated thousands of individuals; unfortunately, white people only form a small percent of the searches. The remaining time, it is only African Americans and Latinos who form the most percentage. From this, it could be evidently determined that African Americans that are almost a quarter percent of the nation’s population are being seized twice as much as they would be if at all police officers were being fair at stopping and frisking all citizens randomly. Of course, they do not practice this. Racial profiling and unfair treatment of African Americans is imminent as they are many times the ones being victimized through police brutalities. If Antwon Rose and his fellow teenager were whites, their interaction with this police officer may have not resulted in that ordeal (Cole, 2017). I believe that Antwon Rose and his friend feared the police and that might have been the basis for them driving the way they did. This could only qualify to be racial profiling and segregation. Maybe, the young men in the car felt fear and they thought of running over the car of the officer so that they might live to present their side of the story.
As defined by Karl Marx, the conflict theory indicates that society is in a place of continuous conflict based on the scarce resources existing. He portrays that social order is regulated by domination and power, instead of consensus and compliance. The government or state offers their nationals several services including the police. Because of being given the police, citizens responsibly remit their taxes that give the state the ability to keep running (Swaine & McCarthy, 2017). The society believes that the police should have the capacity to fairly shield and serve by maintaining law and order. Citizens should feel the safety of interacting with public servants, who include the police. However, in place of the feeling of security in the presence of the police, African Americans are threatened and intimidated that their children and they would be abused, arrested or even die unfairly in the hands of these government representatives (Cole, 2017). They feel that the police officer would be acting in extreme prejudice and fail to comply with institutional policies just on the grounds of racial profiling and presumptions of black criminality. As determined earlier, cruel police treatment of demonstrators could be traced in the repression of African American protest campaigns and the wrong attitudes on black lives that most times motivate contemporary police practices.
African Americans are experiencing a lot of challenging times and threatening ones in an urge to uphold and enhance their positions within the society. History has confirmed that African Americans have always fallen ill in the hands of the police, which affects the normal engagement between the two today. Considering the Karl Mark’s conflict theory, such tensions that occur between races amount to social changes. Even though social change have developed very gradually, the situation of the blacks has slowly moved in this nation (Swaine & McCarthy, 2017). The occasion in which Rosa Parks declined to go to the back of the bus in Selma, Alabama, laws shifted in favor of the blacks, as it was now prohibited that seating in a bus was not to be preferential on the Whites. Separate but equal learning institutions were eradicated because of these protests.
In conclusion, a number of changes should be instituted socially to eliminate racial profiling and prejudice. Transparency of the public law should be heightened, in fact with the inclusion of independent oversight organizations to monitor operations of the police and ensure that they are transparent and streamlined. Failures of the policing department and the justice system should be addressed amicably so that racial prejudice that some white officers have towards the black is eliminated. The ultimate goal should be to stop violence against black citizens that lead to unnecessary deaths like the one in the article above.
References
Cole, P. N. (2017). The Black Civil Rights Movement is Back. Retrieved March 27, 2019, from https://www.thoughtco.com/the-black-civil-rights-movement-is-back-3026215
Hassan, A. (2019, March 23). Antwon Rose Shooting: White Police Officer Acquitted in Death of Black Teenager. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/antwon-rose-shooting.html
Swaine, J., & McCarthy, C. (2017). Young black men again faced the highest rate of US police killings in 2016. Retrieved March 27, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/08/the-counted-police-killings-2016-young-black-men
