Eisenbart 1

Madelyn Eisenbart

Marcum

ERWC

31 October 2016

Negativity in Blue

Throughout the existence of the United States, there has been a large amount of time

where people of colour have been horrendously mistreated. It ranges from physical beatings,

to simply standing in front of their own homes and getting frisked for acting suspicious.

People do not deserve to be mistreated for their looks or innocent actions, especially people

of colour. Police officers abuse their power and create fear in citizens lives by discriminating

and arresting African Americans and Hispanics for acting suspicious which ultimately leads

to an overpopulated prison system. People shouldn't have to live in a world where they fear

the thought of dealing with a bad cop.

When going through Police Academy training, future police officers are tested on basic

knowledge on law, psychological abilities and physical capabilities. This testing is a way to

see if the aspirant is right for the position both mentally and physically. Being a police officer

can be very difficult under stressful situations, so if the aspirant doesn't have the ability to

stand firm and take verbal abuse without leading to violence, then they probably should not

be a cop. To pass the Police Academy tests, you must have at least 480 hours of training and

pass the test with an overall score of at least 70 percent (1). This shows that the

requirements to become an official officer are very exiguous. They do not get tested on
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whether or not they are bias towards different races. Law enforcement should not be racist

towards people, especially in this field of work, because when protecting cities they should

be looking for crime, not racially profiling people and picking on them to frisk.

Street policing these past few years have been getting a lot of attention by the media

because of police shootings and stop and frisk rates; more specifically towards African

Americans and Hispanics. In 2013, 191,558 New Yorkers were stopped and frisked; 56

percent were black, 29 percent were latino and 11 percent were white, 88 percent were

innocent (2). Most of these stops are due to suspicions and stereotypical views from past

experiences in our law enforcement system. It is unjust to see people of colour horrendously

misjudged while others are pardoned. If police spend more time actually looking for crime

rather than stereotyping races, maybe our prison systems would not be so over populated.

On July 14th, 2015 President Obama gave a speech at the NAACP (National Association

for the Advancement of Colored People) annual national convention. In this speech, he

mentions how our prison systems are over populated. The United States holds 5 percent of

the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prison population (3). So many people

get arrested when innocent, yet because of our national court system, they go without trial for

longer than necessary. These innocent people are crowding our prison system which means

more wasted tax money on keeping them alive.

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Law enforcement takes advantage of their duties by discriminate against races by

stopping and frisking African Americans and Hispanics for their innocence, arresting them and

throwing them in our overpopulated prison. Because police are not trained to be

nondiscriminatory, they bring their biased views on races to their job. They stop a lot of

African Americans and Hispanics for acting suspicious, when in fact they are innocent.. If our

law enforcement was not racist, citizens would not have to be afraid.
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Work Cited

Kelly W. Patterson. Just How Many Bad Cops are There and Whats Their Impact?

cop block,

<http://www.copblock.org/99550/how-many-bad-cops-what-impact/>.

NYCLU Stop-and-Frisk Data tNew York Civil Liberties Union

<http://www.nyclu.org/content/sop-and-frisk-data>.

Hudson, David. President Obama. White House,

<https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/07/15/president-obama-our-criminal-justice-sys

tem-isnt-smart-it-should-be>.