Racial Profiling of African Americans in Lake County Indiana Term Paper

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Racial Profiling of African-Americans in Lake County, Indiana

Students need to have an awareness about racial profiling, who are most likely to be targets for racial profiling, and about the steps necessary to work upon the solutions to racial profiling and this can be understood within the context of racial profiling in North West Carolina. Racial profiling is considered to be one of the vital civil rights concerns of the present day. It has widespread influences adversely affecting more than just the victims to all the persons of all the generations and different status. It weakens the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and inhibits effective policing in the communities that necessitates it the most. In the circumstances of traffic stops by police officers, racial profiling is indicated to be the application of race or ethnicity by the enforcing officers as an element in concluding to stop, question, and search or arrest somebody. (Components of Racial Profiling Legislation)

The racial profiling influences the law abiding citizens along with the offenders. The naive persons of color are detained interrogated and searched for the causes that would not result in the detention of the white drivers. Racial profiling not only undermines the civil rights of the whole community to the objective of criminal justice, but it is an unsuccessful crime avoidance device that at last victimizes the most people that it is believed to have safeguarded. A 1999 Gallup poll reveals that nationally, 42% of African-Americans think that they have been detained by police as a result of their race, 77% of African-Americans think racial profiling is extensive and 87% disapprove of the practice. (Components of Racial Profiling Legislation) A study conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University indicated that more than half of all black men are now indicating that they are victims of racial profiling by police. (Discrimination's Lingering Sting)

But there are no police officials in Northwest Indiana who will recognize that racial profiling is prevailing in their Department; not with their officers and not under their supervision. However, this is not the factual prevalence in the Northwest Indiana. (Badge challenge: Recruit minorities) North Carolina is one among the 11 states which has enacted legislation for dealing with racial profiling. (Components of Racial Profiling Legislation) New bills infused in Illinois, Indiana and Texas include provisions for finding out whether any officer has a pattern of disproportionately deterring people of color, and to entail counseling and training to any such officer. It is factual presently that skin color may entail one suspect in America. It reveals one more likely to be stopped, more prone to be searched and more likely to be arrested and imprisoned. (Discrimination's Lingering Sting) Profiling became more indicated during the decades 1980s and 90s when the troopers were accorded incentives for making increasing numbers of drug arrests. (Danitz, 1999) One conventional law enforcement validation for racial disparities in police detentions and searches is that it entails sense to detain and search people of color in greater numbers, since they are more prone to be guilty of drug offenses. (Components of Racial Profiling Legislation)

The troopers are illegitimately identifying minorities and deterring them for traffic violations, then making the drivers and passengers to lengthy searches, abuse or arrest in an effort to suppress the drug trade in North West Indiana. The protests of most of the motorist concentrate on the East Coast artery, I-95, and are known by law enforcement officials as the drug corridor. A recent incident shows that while four men, three black and one Latino, made their way down the roads of North West Indiana, they had no way of revealing that three of them would finish up at a hospital with bullet wounds prior to their reach the state line. But that is what prevailed. Two troopers ventured into their rented van and pulled it over for accelerating.

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In the subsequent moments the officers fired 11 shots into the vehicle targeting three unarmed passengers. The police reveal that the van had initiated to reverse, but the passengers did not agree. Their attorneys strengthened by an outraged public, dispute that the young men were deterred since they were minorities a practice known as racial profiling. (Danitz, 1999)

Another incident was reported in Post-Tribune that when a trio of cars was accelerating down U.S. 41 in West Lake County, a white officer searching the area preferred to stop one of the three accelerating cars and it was the one which was driven by a black man. Out of all the drivers detained by police, about 26% of black drivers reveal that they believe that they were not detained for a legal reason. However, John Krull, executive director of Indiana Civil Liberties Union reveals that the statistics is even higher. There might be a legal reason for being detained, but that does not imply of being insulted, compelled to get out of the car and assume the position that guides to enhance the cases of racial profiling in North Carolina, especially against the African-Americans. (Even a judge can't escape racial profiling) The extensive perception among African-Americans that they are not justly targeted by the police in North West Carolina since their race has led to a lack of trust in the police. Such suspicion hinders the police and communities of color, by hampering effective police work. (Components of Racial Profiling Legislation)

While the Indiana Civil Liberties Union has been associated in secluded cases, there has been no transition in Indiana for extensive reform. They indicated that they failed an important case addressing the 'Driving While Black', associating an African-American state trooper those kept getting pulled over in Carmel, according to John Krull, ICLU executive director. Moreover, the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute confesses it has performed little for dealing with race. (Badge challenge: Recruit minorities) The initial step in the direction of racial profiling is for law enforcement agencies to reveal data on the race of all the drivers they detain, along with associated statistics on the nature of the detentions. The collection of data is essential for detecting the problem and according orientation to the efforts to remove profiling both as a practice of individual personnel and also as an institutionalized Departmental policy. Data collection is not proposed as a study and is not to be visualized as something that delays the implementation of a solution to racial profiling. It is essential for effective analysis of the data that adequate categories of data be recorded. The essential categories are the location, date and time of the stop; and data associated with searches. The recording of complete investigated statistics is suggested irrespective of prevalence of a search, the authority for the investigation and irrespective of the revelation of any contraband. (Components of Racial Profiling Legislation)

Criminal Justice Professors, law implementation organizations and police chiefs concentrate on the same area when revealing how to bring about the fundamental transition to the mode that the law implementation deals with issues of race. Keeping aloof from regular classroom training and direct contact with diverse people and concerns, officials reveal departments must initiate to more exactly reflect the communities they continue and offer tangible opportunities for progress for all. Generating substantive variation in law implementation initiates with introspective outlook of officials. The concentration must be on numbers, data and statistics. The development of an Early Warning System being applied by some major metropolitan departments, as a management device is a step. Such a program gathers citizen grievances, performance assessment and points out instances of coercion and is a mode of detecting those officials who might have concerns to solve or bring about variations in the community perception of an officer. Still Departments have been attempting to make officials more conscious of the.....

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