Improving Police/Minority Relations
A national problem dealing with young minority men and police officers’ is creating a
division between races. Within the past couple years, the news of Treyvon Martin in
Florida and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has the country wondering who is the
problem, and how do we fix in. These incidents even lead to violence against police
officers who were shot by rioters in Ferguson. In an interview on the Jimmy Kimmel Show
with President Obama “condemned the shooting of the two police officers during the
protest in Ferguson”. President Obama stated “there was no excuse for criminal acts…
Whoever fired those shots shouldn’t detract from the issue… They’re criminal. They need
to be arrested. And then, what we need to do is make sure that like-minded, good-spirted,
people on both sides- law enforcement, who have a terrifically tough job, and people who
understandably don’t want to be stopped and harassed just because of their race-that we’re
able to work together to try to come up with some good answers.”
John Lantigua of the Miami Herald spoke about the shootings of minorities around the
country. Lantigua pointed out that “The population of Ferguson was 67 percent black, but
50 out of 53 police officers were white. In North Charleston, South Carolina where a
fleeing Walter Scott was shot multiple times in the back and killed by white police officer
April 7, the city is 47 percent black, while the police force is 80 percent white… The death
of a black man, Freddie Grey, after his April 12 arrest by Baltimore police prompted
several days of rioting.” The black citizens of each community are outnumbered and
targeted by white police officers.
An investigation on the Tampa Police Department found a high number of arrests for black
men and women. With only having 26% percent of Tampa’s population being black, arrest
rates are at an all-time high.
According to the Washington post, President Obama spoke about the “release of the Justice
Department report that found the city of Ferguson, was systematically targeting black
citizens for traffic stops, fines, and arrests.” Solutions to this problem is community
policing and body cameras.
Community policing could be the key to solving a solution. Police officers are targeted for
being racist, so they must address the problems and create an organized strategy. For
example, having two police partners of a different race could lower the racist stereotype.
This way the person pulled over or arrested has no way of feeling targeted by a single
