Racial Profiling, Right Or Wrong?

2 Pages 429 Words

Some say racial profiling is just an excuse for minorities. Others say that those with power often abuse minorities, and that it is proven that they are hassled more than those that aren’t a minority are. This is especially apparent right now with people of Arab decent. I believe that racial profiling does exist in society today. It happens in the work place, in the malls, and on the streets.
This article deals with a group in Seattle that was created to analyze racial profiling in the city. Obviously there has been some controversy in Seattle. I would say that it does already exist if people are deciding to raise their voices about it to the City Council. This research group examined all of the traffic citations that were written by police in the last year. The statistics show that black people were issued almost 17% of the citations last year, even though they make up only 9% of drivers on the road. That is also only counting written citations, lord only knows how many more minorities were stopped and never written a ticket. I would say that those figures look a little disproportional to me. I feel that racial profiling does exist and that minorities are now trying to do something about it. They are just putting cold hard facts in front of the city council member’s faces, hoping that they will make some changes to make those statistics a little more proportional.
The police in Seattle say that racial profiling does not exist, and that the argument could go both ways since the data doesn’t clearly explain that race is a factor. The police department doesn’t keep that kind of information. The officer that was interviewed did agree that “racial disproportionality is a fact,” in this case. I think that the city council needs some dash cam footage of minorities being treated wrong so that there is evidence backing up the figures. But in order to do that you have to install them in every squad car, and that g...