Racism is not about bad manners, but a system of treatment, discrimination and brutality in American society. Diversity groups face Racism everywhere their surroundings. In New York City there has been a lot of cases where unarmed individuals are being killed and stopped. After reading the “Intersections” play written by students of LaGuardia community college, gives students knowledge about others situation in terms of financially stability, family matters, education importance, stress they go through and how they resolve it. In the play there was a situation occurred at the end, where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by the police without any warrant and justify evidence. In America we have been educated that we have our rights that are freedom of religion, speech, equal justice, and so on. We have the right to not cooperate with police without any warrant. Yet, there are still individuals mostly black people are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted and executed than any other group. How police force overwhelmingly attacks unarmed black individual increasingly in the New York City?
The use of force is actually unavoidable in police work/system. I think there might be many situations in which the lives of officer or the civilians can be taken using the amount of force when necessary or using it improperly. Obliviously the police officer has to be trained properly how to use force. For instance, the officer must be trained how to conduct a threat and what methods will be used. To me it looks like the practical training has been completed so that it allows officers to become comfortable with the use of force technique. One of the scene in the play “intersections” written by students of LaGuardia Community College, we meet Alex and Mike, who are under police training and becoming officially police officers. Alex undergoes harsh and tough training to become police officer. Being in the training Alex experience physically tortured and been pepper sprayed in his eyes. This was part of the police system training. In police system training, “Alex has to do drills as his eyes are totally burning in pepper spray” (Intersections 15). and, “for the police officers, force sir. (he’s confused and in pain. Spitting, leaning over … etc.) (intersections 16). From this scene we can conclude we can conclude that Alex as an individual goes under emotional and physical intense pain. Alex totally having struggle to say the definition of force. He seems nervous and frustrated about all these training has going through. He sounds like he can’t absorb altogether. I mean can you really get this, did Alex really learned something besides harsh training and hurt feelings and intense pain? Or did he just do what the officers told him to do? In my perspective Police officers should be well trained without any force or emotionally frustration because these trainers will become officers and will be protecting us. Yet, if they fail to use that training properly in time of problem then they might end up targeting innocent individuals. And Alex did experience this situation. When he officially became police officers this is what happened as a result of his training.
Janelle, black teenager who does not give up on her grandmother health as she was on the last stage of cancer. Janelle wanted to bring her grandmother home and won’t let her stay in hospice or nurse care. She is a hard working student and tries to battle school and caring for her ill grandma. Janelle couldn’t tolerate her grandma’s health and said, “this shit I can buy on the street is better than those fucking pills. At least with this, she will be at ease” (Intersection 23). When Janelle went to buy drugs and was on her way back home she was stopped by the police named Alex. Alex, the police officer who was chasing a white suspect wearing a hoodie unfortunately Janelle got suspected.
Alex: HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM
Janelle: What I haven’t done anything
Alex: I NEED TO SEE YOUR ID
(she goes for her pockets)
DO NOT REACH YOUR PCKETS
Janelle: But you just said you want to see my ID
Alex: … TURN AROUND. TURN AROUND.
(we hear a gunshot) Phones have begun to appear, flashes of light pointing at the floor.
Alex: REASONABLE AND EFFECTIVE, THE AMOUNT OF FORNCE WAS REASONABLE AND EFFECTIVE….
The above scene shows that Janelle was on her way home and she was stopped by the police with the doubt that she is the suspect because she was black and wearing a hoodie. This fact made the police shot and killed Janelle without any reasonable cause, without any warrant and with no justify evidence that she is the suspected. Janelle was considered a danger to them. I think police should get more practiced with how to get their real suspect because if these types of cases continue in our society we would end up with genocide. An officer of the law can be properly trained to run the law in neutral way that will not violate a citizen’s rights. The reason of the use of force is the most important purpose an officer must make before deciding to use force on a suspect. Janelle was innocent she was worried for her grandmother health, she got her something to cure her cancer but she was shot to the ground.
Some might believe that police officers are the only source of protection for the public’s rights from the powers of the state yet allowing them to stop you is essentially giving up our protection. Reading the article “Police Terror in Big Apple” by George Scott, concluded that police brutality has been increased in the New York City. “Stop and Frisk” is all about people experienced with cops. “Stop and Frisk” is when police temporarily detain a person and check that person. As George Scott said “Getting stopped and possibly beaten by NYPD is the experience… for blacks’ folks, yet … VERY few white folks share” (Scott 21). White people are on the sideline in these type of accidents while black people experience “stop and frisk” very often by the police. White race doesn’t face struggles as a minority does. Scott also discus that 53% black people were stopped by the NYPD in 2011 compare to white people were stopped only 9%. We see the number difference is increasingly different between black and white folks that were stopped. To me which obviously seems racism in police system. The stop and frisk law was changed after “Scheindlin ruled in an American civil liberties Uman-initiated case, that the NYPD must have probable cause in order to stop people” (Scott 21). This was a new rule added to the NYC state law by federal Judge Scheindln because of the fact that New York City police officers have blind eye to the evidence and are conducting stops in a “racially discriminatory manner” (Scott 21). Racism should not be existed in this modern world, in the United State of America. America has the new view of being land of the free but still are facing discrimination and racism. A land where innocent teenagers are being killed unarmed. And all this happened in the case of Ramarley Graham in 2012. Graham was 18, an unarmed teenager who was shot and killed by the NYPD in his grandmother house in the Bronx. Graham was shot with “no warrant” (Scott 22). He was killed because he was caught with marijuana by the police. However, Graham was not given justice. “In 2013 a grand jury refused to indict the officer” (Scott 22). This case is full of brutally behavior and so prejudice to Graham family. Police did not have any evidence to prove he was the suspect, without any witness he was overwhelmingly shot. By not getting a warrant, a law enforcement officer is going off of his own personal notion that someone may be guilty. Going back to Janelle situation she was having drugs but did not gave any harm to Alex, and he killed her. Janelle wasn’t showing any offense to get out of the situation she was doing what Alex was asking her to do so. Yet, Alex ended up shooting her because she seemed suspicious to him. With racial profiling, police are using skin color to not only justify their suspicion, but to define it. They have no valid reason to pull over African-Americans more often than whites but for the fact that they are black. Yet, prejudice still exists in America. Why would a police kill a teenager having marijuana with him? This was inhumane aspect of the NYPD system.
Another article “The Rise Black-aimed death squads among the police” by Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka discussed the case of Amadou Diallo’s, 23 years old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four NYPD in 1999. This case was such a heartbreaking and brutal. Diallo was immigrant, came for education, expect for better life and was killed violently. Baraka said, “These cops were shooting at Diallo’s Blackness” (Baraka np). Police officer did not go for investigation to find the cause why to target this black man, what is wrong with him. But they liked to use their guns rather their sense of humor and understanding the reason why killing an innocence person. The 4 officers who killed Diallo motto was “we own the night” (Baraka np). This shows that the officers were openly terrorizing racial-fascist. This motto fact was resisted by the people and the officers were freed without any guilt. It seems fully racist to me that they were killing him because of his color. Police prejudice and racial profiling is responsible for many false arrests, beliefs, and death of African Americans. It is a difficult and unfortunate part of life that certain groups of human being faces these upset obstacles in their life because they belong to minority group or because of their skin color.
To police officers, use of force is a necessary part of their job. No officers will know if when should the use of force must be applied because of their training. Moreover, we all know that Racial terrorism hasn’t finished, every individual face it in different way from other individuals. The stop and frisk law is experienced by every individual from differed backgrounds. I think the idea of stop and risk is install fear in us to be ready to get checked by the police but why is police forgetting that we still have the right to say no if we don’t want to get stopped and frisked. Black people are incarcerated at a rate six times that of whites. Again racist still have not finished even after the civil right movement. There hasn’t any change in our societies. The police are not only being trained to brutalize, hate, fear, disrespect and murder any black, yet they have been taught that they can get away with it.
Work Cite:
Baraka, Amina. “The Rise of U.S. Black-Aimed Death Squads among the Police.” New York Amsterdam News, vol. 90, no. 11, 11 Mar. 1999, p. 12.
Scott, George. “Police Terror in the Big Apple.” Against the Current, vol. 38, no. 6, Jan/Feb2014, pp. 21-33.
I emailed you my expectations for assignment #2.
Pre-draft
Rough-draft
Peer review names: Saeed, Amina, and Sandep.
Artist Statement:
The audience for this paper is I guess everyone from all race in this diversity city New York City. I am contributing a message about police system in this city we live in and daily treatment of police towards us. So we red a play called “intersection” written by LaGuardia community college students. We see so many situations where people faced problems and how they struggle to overcome the conflict line. Then I choose one situation from the play, where a black girl was shot and killed by police officer with no valid reason. Then I researched and study some cases related to that situations. I want to let my audience know how racism is still relevant to this day and also that we have our rights everywhere. No matter what background, race, religion you are from we have to know our rights. For instance, if an individual is going somewhere and the police officer stop you, you have to right to reject compromising with them. I want my audience to learn that even when the civil right movement happened, there hasn’t been any changes since then. Black people still face racism; they still struggle from it. When it comes to arresting or targeting police mostly or I will say very often shot and kill black people. Most of the cases I discuss, the black individual has been killed innocent with no warrant. I guess the audience will learn something from the paper because I went deep in the play and discuss it well. On the other hand, they might not, because I sometimes write too much where I am lost and my ideas are spread out imperfectly. I don’t really know if I had brought unique perspective to my analysis that someone else might not have like I can read my paper several times and it will seem perfectly fine but in other people perspective they might not see what I see or they might see what I don’t. I learned a lot in this paper. I never knew that black peers are been stopped by the police compare to white peers. I did not know the cases I researched about. So I guess I am feeling the situations and what black families and those innocent individuals had went through. Honestly I like to go back to history and talk about it but in this paper I did not do any history background. I want to learn why do we have to practice racism in this modern world and why not we treat everyone the same as others regard to religion, race and background/class. If I had another week or so for this research paper, Yes, defiantly, I would had expand my thoughts on the paper. Since I discussed 2 cases I would had discussed few more cases from history. To sum up, I think we all need to change our thinking regard racism. Racism is often taught depending on who raises you and to which background you belong. You can change your mind but if you grew up thinking that people of another race are lower than you, then that ideology by you might be very difficult to remove and understand other races. So if we want to truly treat people justly, we need to explore how we can remove our subconscious racist beliefs. Lastly, we need to create a society of “COLORBLINDNESS” where everyone will be treat fairly and equally without regard to race, culture, and ethnicity.