Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Monday, May 9th, 2022

Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement

Author:     Michael German
Source:     Brennan Center for Justice
Publication Date:     August 27, 2020
 Link: Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement
Stephan:   Today I listened to politicians talk about more money for police as if that were the issue. The shallowness of thinking amongst American politicians is a national shame. On the basis of facts, not partisan politics, it should be clear to anyone with the ability to think rationally that there is something deeply wrong in American law enforcement, and it is not a lack of money. It isn't just that American police and sheriffs are the poorest trained amongst the developed democracies of the world, or that American police kill more people in a single year than the rest of those democracies combined kill in a decade. There is also the blatant racism, rightwing politics, and the grotesque inequality of enforcement. This excellent fact-based, fully documented, report lays out some of the major issues.

Introduction

Racial dispar­it­ies have long pervaded every step of the crim­inal justice process, from police stops, searches, arrests, shoot­ings and other uses of force to char­ging decisions, wrong­ful convic­tions, and sentences. foot­note1_t3c8c9h1 As a result, many have concluded that a struc­tural or insti­tu­tional bias against people of color, shaped by long-stand­ing racial, economic, and social inequit­ies, infects the crim­inal justice system. foot­note2_f8ppena2 These systemic inequit­ies can also instill impli­cit biases — uncon­scious preju­dices that favor in-groups and stig­mat­ize out-groups — among indi­vidual law enforce­ment offi­cials, influ­en­cing their day-to-day actions while inter­act­ing with the public. 

Police reforms, often imposed after incid­ents of racist miscon­duct or brutal­ity, have focused on address­ing these uncon­scious mani­fest­a­tions of bias. The U.S. Depart­ment of Justice (DOJ), for example, has required impli­cit bias train­ing as part of consent decrees it imposes to root out discrim­in­at­ory prac­tices in law enforce­ment agen­cies. Such train­ing meas­ures are designed to […]

Read the Full Article

2 Comments

  1. Rev. Dean on Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 11:37 pm

    I totally agree that our police must have a better training experience before becoming an officer; maybe even a degree in psycology.

    • Rev. Dean on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 at 8:22 am

      Also, I believe the police are taught to aim for center mass when shooting instead of just wounding a culprit to bring them down. I would make a law against this type of shooting with a more just way of shooting only when absolutely necessary, and then NEVER aiming for shooting toward center mass in encounters. We should have NO killing of citizens by police or sheriffs. That is my final word on the subject, except for making it illegal for police and sheriffs to kill anyone.