Ethical Dilemmas

A ongoing issue is racial stereotyping. Are officers stopping and arresting more people based on what race they are? This question is difficult to answer, especially since we can't review every single situation where a police officer stops someone. We also can't always fully understand every situation. So it is my belief that yes racial stereotyping does exist and happens but for most of the time officers are using other factors to asses each situation.

Police have more experience in knowing criminal activity and who is a criminal then a normal person. It is their job to decide who is criminal, it is what they are trained to do. They know what to look for and it may be in some situations to be certain race and may be subject to more searches but not necessarily because of their race. Police are held to the standard that you stop and arrest someone based on if the person is doing something wrong not because of race and that is something that may seem like it isn't happening but there are factors to consider. You have to understand that neighborhoods differ on who lives there and that certain neighborhoods can be dominated by whites, African Americans, Somalian's, really any race. In a certain area that is dominated by a certain race, it makes sense that there will be more arrests for that race than some other race that is in the minority. .

Racial stereotyping does occur though and part of the problem is that the diversity in the police force can very different. White males tend to dominate the law enforcement field, though not necessarily because of discrimination. An example of racial profiling is drug use. It has been surveyed that African Americans use marijuana about the same as white Caucasian people do but African Americans are more likely to be arrested and this has been argued that it could be racial profiling but more likely the different policies of departments and their enforcement policies of drug crimes.

I believe that the law enforcement isn't perfect and that racial profiling does happen but it is not as rampant as people may suspect. Police are the experts on how to tell what is criminal behavior an what is not and I say it leave it up to the experts to do their jobs.