Discrimination against the African Americans is something very common among most of the people within the country. Many of such cases have been reported and some of them have ended up receiving poor judgment as the judges too tries to discriminate the individual mainly because they are African Americans. The case reported is the investigation of the Ferguson Police Department as they try to find out the practices of such unlawful conduct that is being conducted by the Ferguson Police Department. It was opened by the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. In this investigation, they found that the Ferguson Police Department had some racial bias in dealing with some issues and such court practices were mainly borne disproportionately by the African Americans (Ellenberg, 2014). This brought about intentional discrimination on the basis of race.
The law enforcement practices that were done by the Ferguson Police Department impacted African Americans in one way or the other. In the report, it is noted that “Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population” (United States Department of Justice, 2015). Furthermore, the author says that the African American are more likely that the white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops despite after controlling for the non-race based variables for example the reason as to why the vehicle stop was initiated. In this region, discrimination had dominated this police department as some based on the race of an individual to determine whether or not to stop the car for a search or not.
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According to some research conducted, it was found that the African Americans were more likely to be cited and arrested following the stop regardless of the main reason as to why the stop was initiated. Furthermore, the African Americans are also more likely to receive a multiple citations during a single incident. It was found that the African Americans were issued with more citations than the non-African Americans following the kind of discrimination that was taking place within the Ferguson Police Department. Some of the offenses that were being brought forward were more exclusively against the African Americans. For example, it was found that between the years 2011 and 2013, more than 95% of Manner of Walking in Roadway charges as well as 94% of all the failure to comply charges were the African Americans. Such instances can show how much discrimination the African Americans were discriminated against. In addition, the officer’s visual assessment also contained some form of biasness with some stating that majority of those who were over-speeding are the African Americans which was not true.
The Ferguson Police Department also used force on African Americans than any other groups. Over 90% of the instances where this police department used force was against African Americans. The author sarcastically states that “in every canine bite incident for which racial information is available, the person bitten was African American” (United States Department of Justice, 2015). This racial discrimination against the African Americans also extended to the Municipal courts. The study conducted showed that African Americans were 68% less likely to have their cases dismissed by the court, and that their cases were more likely to last longer as well as requiring more than usual court encounters (Katz & Stern, 2008). The author of this article states that “African Americans are at least 50% more likely to have their cases lead to an arrest warrant, and accounted for 92% of cases in which an arrest warrant was issued by the Ferguson Municipal Court in 2013” (United States Department of Justice, 2015). Furthermore, over 98% of those arrested by the Ferguson Police Department due to an outstanding municipal warrant were African Americans.
According to the investigation, the disparities in the proportion between the African Americans and the other races in the manner in which people violet the law is mainly due to unlawful bias that exists as well as stereotypes about the African Americans. There have been some evidence showing racial discrimination among the police offers in the region as well as in the court staff in the Ferguson. In addition, the police supervisors also had circulated emails saying that the stereotype racial minorities were mainly criminals (Katz & Stern, 2008). This shows how the African Americans were discriminated mainly by the law enforcers who were to protect them against discrimination by a common civilian.
It is said that the harsh nature and disparate results of the Ferguson’s law enforcement system was mainly due to a pervasive lack of personal responsibility among some of the segments of the community. In most cases, the police officers acted unconstitutional way by propagating discrimination among the people of different races and more so the African Americans. This cases of stereotype as well as racial discrimination has been evident among the police officers but there has been no any efforts to avert this problem among them (Ellenberg, 2014). They have failed to correct this consistent cases of racial discrimination against the African Americans in the region which is mainly caused by the police as well as the court. Following this, one can see how the African Americans have been discriminated and ill-treated by the police officers in this region, including false arrests.
- Ellenberg, G. (2014). Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. Journal Of American History, 100(4), 1282-1282. doi:10.1093/jahist/jau132
- Katz, M., & Stern, M. (2008). Beyond Discrimination: Understanding African American Inequality in the Twenty-First Century. Dissent, 55(1), 61-65. doi:10.1353/dss.2008.0015
United States Department of Justice, C. (2015). Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. United States.
