When Police single out certain people in this country for harassment, and even worse -- simply because of the color of their skin -- then something is dreadfully wrong in this country.
If Senator Ben Cardin gets his way, this condoning and practicing of institutionalized racism, will no longer be blindly accepted, not at a federal-funding level, at least:
Cardin touts U.S. bill to end police racial profiling
wbaltv.com/news -- Jul 31, 2013
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin said it's time for a national policy banning racial profiling by police that would make Maryland and other states go much further to stop the practice than they currently do.
A long-time champion of the cause, Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, joined Michigan Rep. John Conyers in Washington on Tuesday to announce that a bill to officially ban racial profiling by law enforcement is under consideration in both chambers of Congress.
"We do not have a national policy definition of racial profiling, and there is need for this to be done," Cardin said.
[...]
Under the new bill, federal grant money would fund states to have best practices to eliminate racial profiling by training law enforcement officers to base their investigations solely on behavior, not bias, and by employing technology that would make states collect and analyze investigatory data, such as traffic stops. It would also identify officers engaging in or at risk of engaging in racial profiling.
[...]
It is the content of one's character that should matter, not the preconceived racial-bias some Law Enforcement officers bring with them, to their "public service" careers.
Injustices of Stop and Frisk
Editorial, NYTimes.com -- May 13, 2012
The department said recently that it was instructing precinct commanders to review the legality of all stop-and-frisk reports, according to a report by WNYC. But such reviews -- which should have been done all along -- will be meaningless unless independent investigators actually interview officers to determine the proportion of stops based on reasonable suspicion, as required by law, and the percentage based on improper racial profiling, in which blacks and Hispanics are singled out.
The statistics are getting worse by the year. Last week, the New York Civil Liberties Union released a report -- based on the department’s data -- showing the number of street stops had grown to 685,724 in 2011 from about 97,000 in 2002, the year Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office. On Friday, the Police Department released data showing that the stops have occurred at an even higher pace for the first three months of this year.
The pressure is increasing on the New York City Police Department to reform its stop-and-frisk program under which New Yorkers, nearly all innocent of any crime, were stopped by the police close to 700,000 times last year.
[...]
Like I said, when Police single out certain people in this country for harassment, and even worse -- simply because of the color of their skin --
WE have a problem.
Living while Black or Latino (and Native American) -- should NOT be treated like a crime, on any street in America ... but sadly far too often, it still is ...
Here are some stone-cold New City statistics, regarding their Police 'tactic' of Stop-and-Frisk:
STOP-AND-FRISK 2011 -- NYCLU BRIEFING
DATA HIGHLIGHTS -- Stop-and-Frisk
-- Young black and Latino men were the targets of a hugely disproportionate number of stops. Though they account for only 4.7 percent of the city’s population, black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011. The number of stops of young black men exceeded the entire city population of young black men (168,126 as compared to 158,406). Ninety percent of young black and Latino men stopped were innocent.
-- Though frisks are to be conducted only when an officer reasonably suspects the person has a weapon that might endanger officer safety, 55.7 percent of those stopped were frisked. Of those frisked, a weapon was found only 1.9 percent of the time.
CHARTS -- Stop-and-Frisk
Perhaps, President Obama put the right personal touch on this dehumanizing social problem -- that far too many still just blindly accept ... and far too many still just thoughtlessly take part in ...
oppression and prejudice can take many forms, whether intentional or not:
"There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me -- at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often."
And there are very few African American men in New York City
who haven't been Stopped-and-Frisked too -- simply for having the audacity of being born into a demographic group, that some Law Enforcement agencies have decided to "institutionally target" as suspicious and dangerous.
Law Enforcement, by such policies, will ultimately side-track many of those lives, into a downward track of having an 'Arrest Record' for usually minor offenses; Something that most of their White and Asian counter-parts, don't have the injustice of bearing.
Something that our Institutions do to ensure certain groups get a clean start in life; and to ensure that certain other groups start out life from 'behind the eight ball' ... with one or two strike against them. Before even stepping up to Home Plate.
Such practices are wrong and unfair. And until they corrected, WE will continue have a serious social problem, in this supposed land of "equal opportunity for all."