Sunday, December 23, 2007

Where did This Come From

When I say, This, I'm talking about the minority association with crime police officers have. Maybe it comes from back in the Jim Crow Days, when the mid-century policemans philosophy was created.
That philosophy being that any black criminals, suspects or any black showing signs of incooperation was to be scolded physically with violent force, and this approach would keep blacks in place and crime low.

In 1951 William Wesley wrote in his observation of the Indian Police that not one white policeman failed to mock the Negro or use somekind of racial slur. From back in the days the "symbolic assailant" was created. Anyone that uses physical signs, certain verbal gestures, or wearing a certain type of clothing has come to be recognized by police as a prelude to crime.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2007.00422.x?cookieSet=1

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Labeling causes Police Prejudice

Police build prejudices based upon experience of labeled minority groups, preferably Black and Latino. The labeling theory says that if you give a person a label for their initial act of deviance they will conform to the requirements that come with the label, therefore going back to the norm or more that they violated in the first place and violating it again, making this the secondary act of deviance. So if for years and years black youth are being brought up in a subculture of mixed types of deviance; and they are running into the law as juveniles, getting off on misdemeanors. Those same juvenile offenders according to the labeling theory will commit felony crimes after that initial misdemeanor offense that gave them the deviant label.

If police happen to realize the overwhelming numbers among the minority community and see who's being labeled what, they're obviously going to come to a prejudgment about blacks and Hispanics without knowing any, the prejudice is formed. And with that prejudice they will hit the streets looking for blacks and hispanics to commit crimes not commiting them, but assuming they will commit them because of that prejudice that has been developed due to labels. So they're going to be out there stopping nearly every not normal minority male they see and who knows what's normal to them.

And in them detaining more youths on petty offenses, giving them labels easier from young. Officers are just training an army from of adult offenders from young. Its like if you tell a kid they're stupid at toddler ages, that kid is going to grow up thinking that they're stupid, because you gave that child the initial label.Government officials need to come up with some alternative for juvenile offenders to avoid prosecuting and labeling them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory

Discrimination from the Inside Out

As we know, most negative habits that children acquire are picked up, rather than learned, at home most of the times. For children its from parents and immediate family. For adults on the other hand with jobs with a chain of authority, its what they pick up from their superiors in the job place. For example, if a Captain singles out a minority officer and makes unequal and discriminatory remarks, what can we expect other officers below the chain of command to do; exactly what their commanders and captains do, because they are the immediate parents of the precinct and to rookies they're like little kids in school.

There has been numerous incidents and allegations of what is called "departmental discrimination". You might think for a second that this whole "protected by the blue shield" unwritten code of secrecy that the NYPD stands by would prompt them to treat all people behind this shield equally and brotherly. Some people dream of being police officers their whole lives and then they get there and because of their skin color or nationality they aren't accepted into this family that they've dreamed of being in since child hood, it's extremely ridiculous and disgraceful.

Off duty NYPD Officer Aki Perez, twenty-five years old, of Puerto Rican descent was on his way to his mother's house last year when he was stopped by two undercover narcotics detectives. Nothing was said about whether Officer Perez identified himself as an officer, but if you're an off duty cop and you are stopped by on duty officers, what would you do first? So the detectives searched Officer Perez found no drugs or illegal contraband on him, but still they proceeded to detain Officer Perez. When they took him to the precinct he took a voluntary drug test and passed it and they still proceeded to charge him with loitering and criminal possession of a controlled substance, charges which were later dropped. Officer Perez countered with a 5-million dollar law suit against the NYPD accusing them of maintaining a hostile work environment, conducting unwarranted investigations, and dispensing overly severe disciplinary penalties.

So if an officer is experiencing that first hand from superiors, what do you think he's going to do when he hits the streets full of minorities.

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/race_class/cops_benson/discrim.htm