Introduction
People around the globe are distinguishable because of tradition, culture, appearance, and color. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, people are divided with these distinguishes. However, exploration leads to discovery and many people from different parts of the world started to travel from one place to another. This then leads to mixing from one race to another but people often have different distinctions that gave them difficulties in mingling to another group. Pilgrimage made a nation so powerful like the United States of America but it also gave grief and pain to those subjects of slavery back then. Amendments after the Civil War gave the slaves freedom. Then, USA was renowned the land of the free that gave other races to join the country and be part of the melting pot. However, Jim Crow and terrorism gave the other races hard times in terms of equality and living in peace in USA. Discrimination is still widely observe these days because of difference in colors and appearances of other races. This will then result to oppression.
Racial profiling is one of the example of oppressing another race in regards of enforcing the law. Officials of law enforcement sometimes show this discriminatory practice suspecting and targeting individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin in regards of crime that has been done (ACLU, 2005). This activity occurs every day across the country in cities, highways, airlines, and other places that needs inspections. Also, racial profiling targets people of color on perceive race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin for detentions, interrogations, and searches even if the law enforcer or private security doesn’t have any warrant of arrest or search and doesn’t have any evidence of crime (ACLU, n.d.).
Many movements and also the government are providing some ways in preventing racial profiling because of the inequality of law enforcement and police brutality. It will also give a fluent flow in our daily activities and providing justice to everyone. However, this profiling has been giving the officials some measures in preventing some crimes. Racial profiling has significant use in terrorism. Government officials are setting better methods of profiling for better implementations. Therefore, there are only limitations in racial profiling in terms of enforcement but not absolutely removing it.
Police
Police’s main objective is to protect the civilians from any harm but many bad impressions are given to these law enforcers. There are good cops and bad cops but sometimes, citizens might provide bad impressions if police officers are just following the laws and method in law enforcement. Also, some bad cops are using these enforcements to do their own will. Racial profiling is one of these methods used by the cops to enforce law. Therefore, it is now difficult to distinguish bad or good law enforcer because of the methods of enforcing the law.
Police’s racial profiling practice sparked in a national debate in the 1998 shooting death of three young minority men by state troopers during a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. Critics believed that it’s more in discriminating races that aren’t white at all. The most common racial profiling is when a police officer stop, question, and search African Americans, Hispanic Americans, or members of other racial minorities. Most of these occasions occur violently in the aggressive stop-and-search tactics enforcement, and sometimes violate the Civil Rights of the citizens (Farlex, n.d.).
Two of the most tragic incidents this year of racial profiling happened in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York. Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson. Officer Wilson, a white policeman, was the enforcer at that time. However, Bob McCulloch, St Louis County’s top prosecutor stressed that members of jury, consisting twelve strong panel of nine whites and three blacks, were the only people who heard every witness and every piece of evidence. This was done in twenty-five separate days of hearing more than seventy hours of testimony. The conclusion was no probable cause for indictment of police officer Darren Wilson. However, there are footage of CCTV that suspects Brown in robbery in a convenient store. When Mr. Wilson block Mr. Brown and his friend on the street, he noticed that Mr. Brown matched the suspect in a recent robbery, and Mr. Brown was carrying cigarillos, which had been stolen (BBC, 2014). This did an issue about racial profiling but not as big as the incident of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.
Eric Garner died this July after he wrestled with Daniel Pantaleo, New York Police Department (NYPD) Officer, during an arrest because Garner is selling loose cigarettes in his neighborhood. A video of his arrest went viral online. The video showed that Pantaleo wrapped his arm on the neck of Garner while Garner was exclaiming that he can’t breathe. Pantaleo claimed that he was just using a maneuver taught in police academy, a chokehold. However, it has been banned for two decades. Despite the ban, there are many records of use of the chokehold in New York City (Sanburn, 2014).
The jurors deliberated the incidence less than a day by watching the footage and hearing the testimonies of witnesses. The deliberation comes to a conclusion that there were not enough evidence in the death of Eric Garner resulting to no indictment against NYPD police officer, Daniel Pantaleo. Brown and Garner’s death indictments against two white police officers were released in the same week. Both incidents killed two unarmed black men. These two results caused outrage to many New Yorkers that lead them to make protests against the decisions. Protesters covered the street from Tompkinsville to Times Square in New York City. They expressed their outrage against the decision. New Yorkers might angry but they expressed it in peaceful demonstrations. On the other hand, after an hour of result of Brown’s case, people of Ferguson went rioting in the streets. Other athlete superstars like LeBron James and Derrick Rose wore ‘I Can’t Breathe’ shirts in support of the Garners. Afterwards, President Obama from Washington gave a speech regarding the situations and results of the deaths of two African Americans. He assured that he will help solve the inequality issue in law enforcement to help everybody, African Americans and other races, for them to have fair judgments (Goodman and Baker, 2014).
Airports
On September 11, 2001, many had lost their lives on the World Trade Center because of the attacks of terrorism using airplanes to crash in the building. After this incident, members of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities have been profiled by airline personnel, federal law enforcement, and local police to assure the security of the airports (ACLU, n.d.). Security of air flights are taken seriously by law enforcers because it can cause hundreds of lives in an instant. However, many citizens and members of these nations, organizations, and groups suffered much humiliating detention on minor immigrant violations even if it doesn’t have any connections in September 11th attacks (ACLU, 2005).
On the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, there were passengers that were yanked off an airplane at Metro Airport in Detroit. Shoshana Hebshi, half Jewish and half Arab, and two Indian-American men were targeted by federal agents who entered the airplane of Frontier Airline Flights. They were ordered to get off the plane, hand-cuffed them, and pushed them down the stairs. They were detained after people on the plane complained two of them were going to restroom. The pilot was alerted by the flight attendants that they were possibly Arab descent. They were terrified, especially Hebshi, being the woman because the agents were holding large guns, and having militaristic looks. According to her, she was frightened and humiliated because she was placed in a cell, ordered to be totally naked, squat, and cough while an officer was looking at her. Being an American citizen, freelance journalist, and a mom of seven-year-old twins, she is concerned about her children growing in USA. She, with the help of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), file a lawsuit against Frontier Airlines, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other federal agencies. She hoped that this will lead to changes and heightened awareness of abusive law enforcement, especially to profiling against Arab-Americans, Muslims, South Asians, Latinos, and other discriminated races and groups over the past decades (Warikoo, 2013).
Limits on Racial Profiling
The incidents of racial profiling and protests lead to some adjustments to its methods. The government will not remove the racial profiling because of precautions in some areas like the airports. The changes mainly applied to the police enforcement around US. There are also organizations who help the victims of racial profiling like ACLU. Department of Justice (DOJ) had announced new limits on racial profiling on December 8, 2014 following the results and protests about the two police incidents in Missouri and New York. DOJ is also hoping that the other law enforcement agencies will follow after this adjustment coming from them (ABC, 2014).
Policies were revised by DOJ like (a) expanding the characteristics it protects to include prohibitions on profiling on the basis of gender, national origin, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation, in addition to race and ethnicity; (b) adding state and local enforcement officers with federal law enforcement officers in participating in federal law enforcement task forces; (c) eliminate the broad carve-outs for law enforcement activities related to protecting national security or the integrity of the borders; (d) maintain the stringent 2003 standard governing routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions; and (e) law enforcement routine decisions like traffic stops may not use the characteristics shown above (ABC 2014). Police measures in handling criminals or suspects might be done in less brutality after these implementations to provide equal rights to everyone. Otherwise, after these implementations in racial profiling, Obama administration will still implement it in airports (Horwitz and Markon 2014). Racial profiling was not lifted in airports because of counter-terrorism measures of the US government departments and agencies. Everybody, especially the immigrants, is hoping that the implementations will be applied in equality and can brought peace without fear from the affected race, color and other characteristics.
References
ACLU. (No date). Racial Profiling. Retrieved from ACLU.org https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/racial-profiling
ACLU. (2005, November). Racial Profiling: Definition. Retrieved from ACLU.org https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/racial-profiling-definition
Baker, A. and Goodman, D. (2014, December). Wave of Protests After Grand Jury Doesn’t Indict Officer in Eric Garner Chokehold Case. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/nyregion/grand-jury-said-to-bring-no-charges-in-staten-island-chokehold-death-of-eric-garner.html
BBC. (2014, November). Ferguson decision: Official account of final 90 seconds. News US & Canada. Retrieved from BBC.com http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30187257
Farlex. (No date). Racial Profiling. Retrieved from The Free Dictionary http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Racial+Profiling
Horwitz, S. and Markon, J. (2014, December). Racial profiling will still be allowed at airports, along border despite new policy. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/racial-profiling-will-still-be-allowed-at-airports-along-border-despite-new-policy/2014/12/05/a4cda2f2-7ccc-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html
Sanburn, J. (2014, December). Here’s What a Chokehold Actually Is: The NYPD has a strict definition. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/3618092/eric-garner-chokehold-grand-jury-2/
Warikoo, N. (2013, January). Ohio woman sues FBI, airline for racial profiling. Detroit Free Press. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/22/racial-profiling-lawsuit/1856619/
