Factors That Cause The Police Of Racial Profiling

There are many factors that cause citizens to resent police officers. A major problem that causes people to dislike police is racial profiling. Racial profiling is a nationwide problem, and often topics of many lawsuits and public debate. According to the United States Department of Justice, racial profiling is, any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity. (Ramirez, McDevitt, Farrell, 2000, p. 3) Racial profiling could consist of various practices that police officers engage in. For example, they could pull†¦show more content†¦Tension between police and minority groups have caused many violent riots throughout the years. The 1992 Los Angeles riots were mainly due to black-white tensions, and the public’s response to the acquittal of Los Angeles police officers in the case against Rodney King (Baldassare, 1994). Agencies have taken notice of this problem and are now doing their best to try to reverse societies perceptions of racial profiling. This paper will explore the problem of racial profiling, and how police agencies are now using new policies and techniques to help limit it. A popular belief for citizens of the United States is that black drivers are more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. Also, once they are pulled over, they are more likely to be searched if they are black. Rosenfeld, Rojek, and Decker (2011) found, through a combinati on of studies, that blacks are more likely to be searched than whites for younger drivers. They are also more likely to be searched. Their results change, however, when looking at older drivers over the age of 30. In that situation, traffic stops are close to being equal, and white drivers are more likely to be searched. They speculate that older black men no longer have a defiant attitude as younger blacks, so they cooperate accordingly with the officer. They point out their possible flaws in their studies stating that these show only one city or police agency with their results, and racial profiling could be much