Racial Profiling Post 1

Racial Profiling

            Racial profiling is defined as discriminatory process by law enforcement officials who target a group or person of certain ethnicity, race, religion or national origin on suspicion of crime. This has been an ongoing issue for a long time. Nowadays certain racial groups are targeted on a daily basis such as Middle Easterners, African Americans, and Mexican immigrants. It has become a problem because people are now being judged by the type of clothes they wear, they color of their skin, and the issue whether they have legally or illegally entered this country.  There are stops being made by law enforcement officials throughout the day because an African American was driving by looking suspicious or a Middle Eastern looking person has left his bag near the elevator to go to the bathroom and people decide to call 9-1-1- because there might be a bomb in the bag, only to find out it was his laptop and he had just gone to the bathroom. Numerous amounts of people are affected by racial profiling many of those which fall under the minority group. Some of the factors such as religion and race play a huge role. A person with darker skin is more likely to be pulled over than a person with a lighter skin. A Muslim person is more likely to be frisked at the airports than a person who is a Christian. The legal system itself gets sued by many of these individuals and most of the time these individuals win their cases because of the mistakes that are made by the officials. The government loses millions of dollars and not all to law suits but to the funding it provides the departments to properly train their employees about racial profiling.

            There really isn’t anyone who benefits from this problem since it involves people being disrespected, the government losing money, and some even losing their lives. For example, Kendrec McDade was killed by Pasadena police officers who responded to a call of a person who was robbed at gun point by two black teenagers. When the police responded they found Kendrec who started running and one of the police officers blocked Kendrec with his police cruiser while another was on foot chasing him. The police officers alleged that Kendrec was reaching for something in his waist therefore he was shot by both of the officers and later died at a nearby hospital. He was later found to be unarmed and the person who reported the crime had lied to the police about the gun so they would respond faster. The police department tried to cover up the mistakes that they did during the investigation and the lawyer which represented the family stated “They have made millions of mistakes in this case. The cover up is the worst.” (Pelisek 2012) Parents lost a son who was unarmed to violence and since he was black he was already considered dangerous. What made it worse was him trying to pull up his pants which looked like he was reaching for something in his waistband. People that contribute to the problem are people who are uneducated about other races. Just because someone is Muslim doesn’t mean they are a terrorist, just because someone is Mexican doesn’t mean they are here illegally, and just because someone is black or brown doesn’t mean they committed a crime. Law enforcement officers who are not properly educated will continue to racially profile innocent people and maybe someday it will go too far which will probably have devastating results. However some law enforcement agencies have implemented programs to educate their officers about the different types of races and how to handle a situation related to racial profiling. It’s not just the officers who are making these mistakes. There are normal citizens who are making this mistake on a daily basis. Many people are targeted and are affected in some sort of way by racial profiling. It is time for the government to create programs that will be educate people and if the problem still persists then there should be appropriate action taken against the person or people that are making the same mistake again.