Introduction
Racial profiling of citizens and police officers of color refers to the discrimination by law enforcers targeting individuals and other officers of color. It is a deeply troubling and longstanding national crisis in the United States (Morton, 2018). It is an occurrence that happens daily across towns and major cities in the United States involving law enforcers targeting their colleagues and citizens of color with unnecessary searches, humiliation and interrogations based on suspicion without evidence of criminal engagements (Epp et al., 2017).
Policing and profiling have been on the rise since 2016 where law enforcers associate higher rates of committing crimes to people of color particularly. There are higher chances that blacks are likely to be pulled over, stopped and harassed by law enforcers in the streets even if there is no evidence showing that they have committed any offence. The information available on stop and frisk are consistently indicating that only about 3% of such searches show some evidence of criminal misconduct. This thus translates to mean that about 97% of the blacks stopped for a search are particularly getting punished merely for belonging to a certain group that is characterized with the commission of crimes at higher rates (Maitreyi, 2016).
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In the wake of the black lives matter, shocking statistics continue to emerge on police brutality and racial bias both within officers of color in the law enforcement and law enforcers with citizens of color. Police data show that about 1,000 civilians lose their lives every year in the United States to law enforcement officers (Heteyi, 2016). Of the lives lost annually as a result of the brutality of the law enforcers, civilians of color are two and half times likely to be killed than white civilians in their lifetime (Edwards et al., 2019). In another study, evidence shows that among civilians shot dead by law enforcers; people of color are two times likely to be unarmed (Tolliver et al., 2016).
Police officers of color equally face discrimination in their course of duty and are often seen by other officers to likely compromise law enforcement especially where there are many civilians of color. In enforcing searches, law enforcers of color are likely to use less force on suspects of color than their white counterparts (Pierson, 2020). Police officers of color often get subjected to racist abuse as a way of testing them (Todak, 2018). The police department believes that failure by the law enforcers of color to react to their abuse means that they cannot react against abuse of civilians of color thus their careers cannot be damaged (Hong, 2017). This very act seems to perpetuate racism in the police force and enhances racism in the law enforcement department.
In research done by Stanford University on Oakland police department, officers there are likely to stop, search and handcuff black people than white people. They are less likely to speak respectfully to officers of color than their white counterparts (Shjarback, 2017). The data also indicated at the time of the survey, 16,818 people of color were racially abused while 3,661 were white citizens (Eberhardt, 2016). Police in Oakland according to statistics are 37% likely to have allegations against them continued. Black police officers in Oakland in March 2019 detailed the prejudicial culture in the department on hiring, handing out assignments and punishments in an open letter they wrote (Oakland Police Department, 2020).
References
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Edwards, F., Lee, H., & Esposito, M. (2019). Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race-ethnicity, and sex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 116 (34), 16793-16798.
Epp, C. R., Maynard‐Moody, S., & Haider‐Markel, D. (2017). Beyond profiling: The institutional sources of racial disparities in policing. Public Administration Review , 77 (2), 168-178.
Hetey, R., Monin, B., Maitreyi, A., & Eberhardt, J. (2016). Data for change: A statistical analysis of police stops, searches, handcuffing, and arrests in Oakland . Calif., 2013-2014. Technical report, Stanford University, SPARQ: Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions.
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Maitreyi, A. (2016). Data for change: A statistical analysis of police stops, searches, handcuffing, and arrests in Oakland, Calif., 2013-2014 . Stanford University, SPARQ: Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions.
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Tolliver, W. F., Hadden, B. R., Snowden, F., & Brown-Manning, R. (2016). Police killings of unarmed Black people: Centering race and racism in human behavior and the social environment content. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment , 26 (3-4), 279-286.
