Aisse Tounkara
11/08/2019
Professor Hall
When Is This Going To Stop
Everytime you turn on your TV you see something on the news with involving police officer who shot and killed a African American because they felt threatened by their presence, or they felt like they were a threat to someone else. Over the years Policing has evolved but the same ideas remain. Police still treat black communities different from the white communities when it comes to a lot of different aspects. Preconceived notions of African Americans lead to their brutality.
In this first article “ Policing in black and white neighborhoods” written by the American Psychological Association it talks a lot about implicit bias and how that leads to preconceived notions. Implicit bias is when we have attitudes towards certain groups of people or associate stereotypes with them without conscious knowledge. A lot of Police Officers have implicit bias. Police officers are told to police differently in these low income neighborhoods compared to the other neighborhoods. It states what Police Officers see when they encounter an African American person and vice versa. It’s crazy that this is the norm because this leads to terrible encounters which always ends up deadly. Over the past years we have seen a vast majority of African Americans unarmed men mostly and women lose their lives in the hands of police. When the time comes for justice to be served the excuse is always “ They felt threatened” and this article says that an officer is more likely to shoot an unarmed black person first rather a white man who is armed. This has to due with the fact that a black person will always be seen as a threat.
These preconceived notions never end well. It states “ These serious judgements often manifest themselves into even worse scenarios”. What this is saying is that it’s never going to be a positive interaction. When the researcher Kirsten Weir at the American Psychological Association asked Hillary Clinton “If Police were implicitly biased against black people” she herself knew that this was true and a problem. Her response was like the people in high power response trying to beat around the question. I learned the effects that implicit bias in the police and the extent that it leads too.
In this second article “ Implicit Bias replaces the r word This is how we explain cops killing black men” it says a lot about the police officers implicit bias. I learned what implicit bias is and that we all have an implicit bias of some kind. Stephon Clarkson was an African American man who was shot 20 times by police officers. According to the article written by Marcos Breton “Implicit bias was possibly behind Clark getting shot repeatedly in the back. When they pulled the trigger 20 times they never knew if he had a criminal record or not, whether he was a bad person or not. They instantly saw race and thought oh this guy must be a bad man and shot him. They were taught that every approach with an African American man is going to turn out bad. They react by pulling the trigger. They felt harmed by his presence and this article does a good job explaining the steps it would take to confront the implicit bias.
The Government officials know that implicit bias is a problem so the fact that they care enough to do something about it says a lot. This article says that a lot of Police Officers have implicit bias and they don’t even know that they do. They are taking necessary trainings to decrease the number of police killings in African Americans when it comes to this implicit bias idea. That’s what I learned a lot about in this research. While reading and analyzing the source I learned that systematic racism and implicit bias goes hand and hand. According to this article it states police departments are eager for solutions that will reduce racial disparities. “Police chiefs know what the stakes are,” he says. Policymakers, too, are keen to take action. In October, for instance, the New Jersey attorney general issued a directive requiring mandatory classes in racial bias for police officers in the state. Psychologists, meanwhile, have the skills to understand discrimination and point to evidence-based solutions. “This is an area that’s worth a lot of investment in research, and important for psychologists to think about,” Glaser says. This shows that the necessary actions are being done to decrease the number of killings because they know that implicit bias exists. The mayor is requiring that mandatory implicit bias training classes be taken.
In the blog “Race and the Police” written by the National Police Foundation it talks about other factors besides implicit bias that’s also a problem when it comes to Police Brutality. This source is a source that many people use when it comes to their research. Clarence Edwards a former police officer who worked with the police force for many years states “Race continues to influence how people of African American descendants are treated by law enforcement.” They are treated very unfairly by members of law enforcement. So a police officer is more likely to pull the trigger on an African American compared to a Non African American for the same crime”. This is because race will over power everything and implicit bias towards one would cloud that judgement.
I learned from this source that race was another major issue when it came to Police Brutality. The whole idea behind preconceived notions and police is racism. If a police officer sees race before the law than the outcome of that is not going to be great. This source is a very reliable source and thorough research was done because it provided me with a lot of facts and research that the police foundation has done.
Structural racism is also another factor of Police Brutality. This article does a good job explaining that. When a study was concluded by a group of researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health, they found that a lot of interesting stuff. According to the text “How Structural Racism is Linked to Higher Rates of Police Violence” a research was ran and data based was looked at from the Mapping Police Database. “They found that structural racism does positively correlate”. Research has been done in other states based on this information and it turns out to be true. A connection can be made between the two.
Overall, in this research I learned what implicit bias is, and what are the different kinds of causes of action that leads towards police brutality when dealing with African Americans. What I found interesting is that police officers police different in certain neighborhoods, and how implicit bias training will make a change for the better. The questions that I have when it comes to this research is if the implicit bias of police officers towards African Americans is going to change, or if it’s still going to remain the same. A society is evolving it would only be right for change to start happening.
Bretón, Marcos. “’Implicit Bias’ Replaces the ‘R’ Word. This Is How We Explain Cops Killing Black Men.” Sacbee, The Sacramento Bee, 8 Apr. 2018, www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/marcos-breton/article208230624.html
.Baker, Al. “Confronting Implicit Bias in the New York Police Department.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 July 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/nyregion/bias-training-police.html.
Weir Kirsten “Policing in Black and White Neighborhoods” American Psychological Association, 10 December 2016 cover-policing
Edwards Clarence “Race and the Police” National Police Foundation race-and-the-police
