African Americans And Law Enforcement
Uploaded by sls465 on Apr 18, 2007
African Americans And Law Enforcement
It was late one mourning, and the well- dressed young African American male was driving his Ford Explorer on I-85, sees the blue lights of the Georgia State patrol car behind him. The officer pulls behind the sport utility vehicle. The young man’s heart is beating like thunder. He is on his way to Norcross for a job interview. The stop, obviously for speeding, should not take long, he reasons, as the highway patrol officer walks cautiously toward the Ford Explorer. But instead of simply asking for a driver’s license and writing a speeding ticket, the trooper calls for backup. Another trooper arrives speeding, his blue lights flashing as well.
The young man is told to exit the vehicle and sit in the back of the patrol car, as they announce their intention to search it. “Hey, where did you get the money for something like this?” referring to a palm pilot as one trooper asks mockingly while he starts the process of going through every inch of the Explorer. Only minutes later, an officer pulls off an inside panel door. More dismantling of the vehicle follows. The driver had an idea about what was going on. Eventually, they say they are looking for drugs. But in the end, they find nothing. After ticketing the driver for speeding, the officer casually drive off with a look on his face that said ‘you may have gotten away this time, I’ll remember who you are and I will catch you the next time. Sitting in his now trashed sports utility vehicle, my brother murmurs in his anger and humiliation. Unmotivated searches like this are daily occurrences on our nation’s highways and there is more contacts between African Americans and law enforcement than there are between police and whites when officers initiated contact.
Many conservatives, on the other hand, feel such complaints as the exaggerations of overly sensitive minorities. Or they say if traffic cops do in fact pull over and search vehicles of African Americans disproportionately, then such racial profiling is an unfortunate but necessary component of modern crime fighting. The incident above should give pause to those who think that racial proofing is simply a bogus issue cooked up by black leaders such as Al Sharpton and Rev....