Abigail George

10/25/2014
Criminal Justice 205
Test #2

Research on police and prosecutors revels that uniformly they disagree that
discrimination occurs in their agency and office. What they are basically saying that they dont
believe that discrimination occurs in there agencies and office when there is actually so much
evidence that shows otherwise. I dont agree with this for many reasons which I will be
explaining and giving examples that show how wrong this statement is. I believe that there is
racism in the agencies and office but I dont believe that that is the only thing. I believe that there
is all kinds of discrimination that police use. The types of discrimination that happens within the
agencies and office is things like how the police target the poor and people who live in areas of
poverty. One example of discrimination like that would be the case of a homeless man named
Kelly Thomas who was brutally beaten for resisting arrest. (Prezi: Justice on the Street? Police
and class) Also another form of discrimination is that the police target the younger people
automatically. If you are young, male, and of color you will be targeted by the police
immediately. In the article by Weitzer, Tush and Skogen it is explain how in the few studies
that examine interactions of age, race, and gender, young black men stand out. Lastly, racism is
also another main factor of discrimination against people in the communities. Racism has always
been said to be a factor that the police use as discrimination against people in the streets and this
is something that I think is very true for various reason and examples I will give.
Police have always seemed to target the poor communities. Police officers have always
gone to areas of poverty which happens to be one of the places where crime happens the most.

Klockers (1991) said that police focus on the control of the poor more because the poor need
corrective violence or at least close supervision. He also said that the poor commit more violent
crimes than other groups, resist apprehension by violent means, and more often free to avoid
prosecution. (Prezi: Justice on the Street? Police and class). What he is saying here is that he is
targeting the poor because he believes that they are all criminals who need supervision because
they are all up to no good. Klockers is giving a stereotype about all these people. This is a way of
giving a reason to target the poor and I believe that this is a form of discrimination and I do not
agree with what he is saying here. Klockers is judging a whole group of people by what a small
group of individuals are doing. In The Code of the Street it talks about how everyone has to
assimilate to the code of the street in order for survival and police wont understand this because
they are basing everything out of stereotypes and they have already been mentally trained to
think this way about people like this. They believe that people in these communities are all the
same and that they are up to no good so everyone in the community can be a criminal. In poor
communities police officers have more chances to have misconduct because people will not
report incidents like this because they dont believe the police will do anything about it and its a
loss cause. Minorities do not trust the police and have bad views of them because of the
encounters they have with police officers. The way an officer acts around the person is the way
the person will perceive the officer.
There is the case of Kelly Thomas who was a man beat to death by a group of police
officers for allegedly resisting arrest. Thomas was Schizophrenic which means that he was
mentally ill. Thomas did not want to corporate when the police officers show up trying to search
him and tries to resists. This is when six officers beat him to death because of that. (Welch 1).
This is a case where police officers had misconduct with someone and at this point they were

now abusing their power as police officer. There was an interview done to a police officer done
in New York City where they asked the officers if they beat up people who they arrested and the
officer responded No, wed just beat them in general. If theyre on the streets hanging around
drug locations then they interviewer asked why? While he responded To show who is in
charge (Prezi: Justice on the Street? Police and class). Police officers have shown that they will
most likely have misconduct with people who cannot defend themselves and will not report
things to the departments. These situations are most likely to happen in areas of poverty and
places where there is crime because they will be able to defend themselves and say they had to
do it. They want people to fear them and this is not what they are supposed to be trying to
achieve. People believe that the police will not do anything about whatever situation they have
and they shouldnt bother trying because nothing is going to happen. In the film Law and Order
in Philadelphia the police interview a group of young men to ask why they dont report things
to police and why they wont talk about all the things they know about and one young men say
because they cant do anything about it and the situation will not be solve. They said even if they
know who committed a crime they would not say anything because that is a rule of survival. You
dont talk and you did not see anything. They believe that the police cannot do anything and this
is something they have to solve on their own.
The code of the street (1) gives an example of a story of when there is a new family
that moves into the neighborhood people want to know who it is right away because they want to
know if they are still safe there. There is times when people do move into decent neighborhoods
that are not as bad as the neighborhoods that are poorer. When this happens people are anxious to
know who the person because they dont want it to impact the way they live and their safety.
There was a story of a women who moved in with all her children into the neighborhood and all

the neighborhood wanted to know who they were. As time went on they noticed all the things
that were happening and realized that she was a drug dealer. This happens a lot of the time when
people who are doing illegal things move into the neighborhood but the people around dont say
anything because they know that they cant and they will get problems if they do. I live in a city
where this happens a lot and this is nothing new to me. For many years I lived in a neighborhood
where this would happen all the time. A new family would move in and everyone knew what
they would do but wouldnt say anything because they knew it was not there business. After
something happened that they police would get involve the people would move again.
Police also seem to target younger people immediately. If you are young, male and of
color the police will most likely automatically try to stop you because they believe you are
involved in some type of criminal activity. In the article by Weizer, Tuch, and Skogan they
explain Age is another consistent predictor of police perception. Compared to older-age groups,
young people have greater contact with police officers, report more personal experiences with
mistreatment by officers, and hold more critical views of the police (Hurst, Frank, and Browning
2000; Leiber, Nalla, and Farnworth 1998. 401). There is a scene in the film Law and Disorder
in Philadelphia where a young guy is 19 years old is chased because the police believed that he
was selling drugs to another person when they saw him. They chased him down and knocked
him out to where he was unconscious for a couple of minutes. He explained that what he was
doing was just giving a cigarette to a friend and nothing else. The officers couldnt say he was
lying because there was no proof of that just what they had apparently seen. The reason the
police officers gave for doing that was because he ran away when they were approaching him in
the van. He said that they reason he had ran was because he got scared. He said that there is
drive-by shootings all the time in that neighborhood and they will shoot anyone who is in the

way. I think that the young guy gave a very good point to why he did what he did. I dont agree
with what was done here because I believe the main reason why the police approached the guy in
that way was because he is young, male, and of color. He was in the streets late at night and what
the officers did was target the young guy based on assumptions which is discriminating all young
people. The Code of the Street (2) talks about how you have to live by the code of the street in
order to survive in the streets. This means that you have to act a certain way and dress a certain
way in order for people to leave you alone. You have to earn respect for yourself and let people
know what you are capable of if you were to be put in a situation where you would have to
defend yourself. I believe this has an impact in the way the criminal justice system views young
people. They believe they are all involved in criminal activities and everyone who is dressed a
certain way and hangs out with certain people is automatically part of all criminal activity in the
streets. What the system doesnt understand is that, that is what they have to do in order to
survive on the streets. This plays a big role in why the system believe that all you people are
doing bad things especially if you are male and of color which adds more discrimination to this.
(Anderson 66-106)
Racism has always been the main reason people believe there is discrimination in the
criminal justice system and I believe that this is true. Racism has always been one of the main
beliefs that people have about the system. People believe that this is a way of discrimination
against us. One of the biggest ways that the courts discriminate based on race is when it comes to
bail. Minorities have many of disadvantages compared to whites because of the chances of them
being poor and not being able to get an attorney, chances of conviction are higher, and also the
chances of harsher sentencing. (Prezi: Deciding Justice: The power of the prosecutor). There is
studies done that have shown that even when hiring a private attorney it will still benefit

minorities less then someone who is white. When getting a public defender it still has less impact
on white and of course more negative impact on minorities. (Prezi). There is also bail research
done from 2002 that says people of color are less likely to have cases dismissed, more likely to
be detained and also more likely to receive more severe disposition for less serious offences.
(Prezi). Aside from discrimination with bail, there is also other ways that there is discrimination
based on race. People have always said that they have been stopped unfairly for things they
didnt do. In a 2013 Gallup survey on perceptions of being Treated unfairly 1 in 4 African
Americans said between the ages of 18-34 felt that they had been unfairly stopped by police.
There is also the Stop and Frisk Policy that happened in New York in 2010 where a report found
that African Americans and Hispanics in the city were nine times more likely to be stopped by
the police as were whites (street stops, not traffic stops), but they were arrested at the same rate.
(Walker 163). This means that even though people of color were stopped more often they had
much lower arrest rates than for whites. This shows that there is discrimination when people are
stopped and that they police doesnt always have a reason to stop somebody instead they look at
the race of that person.
Discrimination in the agencies and offices and not something that is going to be able to
change from one day to another. Discrimination is something that we are going to face for many
years to come and I dont believe it is something are going to be able to change anytime soon.
Discrimination in the agencies and courts is something that happens in an everyday basis and
even though the police and prosecutors disagree with the fact that there is discrimination there is
too many examples of things that have happened that make people think otherwise. The criminal
justice system is based on a macro and micro-economic system where the macro speaks to the
micro. Things are done from the prospective of the government. Whatever the people in power

want is what is going to happen and the people of the community are going to listen. There is
many example in which I gave examples of things that have happened in which there
discrimination is occurring. Weather it is with communities, young people, and with things like
racism discrimination does occur and will continue to occur so no I dont agree when police and
prosecutors say that there is no discrimination in there system.

Work Cited

1. Makin, Allen. Justice on the Street? Police and class. Prezi. Oct. 04, 2014
2. Walker, Samuel The Color of Justice Cengage Learning, 2007.129-231. Print.
3. William M., W., & USA, T. (n.d). Schizophrenic drifter's death sparks protests. USA
Today.
4. Weitzer, R., Tuch, S., & Skogan, W. (2008). PoliceCommunity Relations in a
Majority-Black City. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 45(4), 398-423.
Retrieved October 1, 2014.
5. Law and disorder in Philadelphia [Motion picture on DVD]. (2008).