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Lonnie Jones

Cuddy

18 March 2019

English 102

How Police Bias Kills

In today’s society, police brutality against minorities has become an increasingly popular

topic of discussion. As time goes by it seems to feel like more and more innocent black and

minority lives are being taken and wrongly mistreated. A large amount of these instances happen

because these officers have implicit biases. In simple terms, implicit bias is when an individual

associates certain attributes and traits with a person because of the social group that they are

associated with. However, when it comes to minorities most of these biases can be negative and

cause poor choices to be made in the field, which result in tragic consequences. Because of this,

recently there has truly been a split between the average minority citizen and law enforcement.

As a criminal justice major, this split between these two groups of individuals who are meant to

work as one and benefit each other, is interesting and important to me. After all, the focus of

criminal justice is to create a safe and just environment, and as of right now law enforcement is

failing at that job because of these biases that these officers are dealing with. The implicit biases

that are held by these law enforcement officers are a true danger to minorities all around the

country. By using and reviewing statistics taken from law enforcement field work, results from

training exercises done by cops and tragedies like Eric Garner and Michael Brown that have

taken place on the field due to these biases, the audience will finally be able to understand how
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serious and dangerous implicit biases can be in law enforcement and how badly change is

needed.

Implicit biases can be an interesting and complicated topic to understand. In an attempt to

understand implicit biases and how they affect police officers’ actions, many people try to tie it

into racism, but that just isn’t true. Implying that a majority of cops are racist is the last thing that

I would do because that just isn’t true. However, they definitely have biases, almost all humans

have biases. An article by John Worrall described implicit bias as, “subconscious aspects of

perception, interpretation, and judgment that occur during the decision-making process.”

(Worrall 1176) Another article named “Implicit Racial Bias and Police Use of Lethal Force:

Justifiable Homicide or Potential Discrimination?” stated that “Implicit bias seems to be a

universal primitive function of all brains. Police officers have been found to have near universal

implicit bias against racial and ethnic minorities.” (Price and Payton 674) So even minorities

have biases against other minorities. It’s drilled into all of our heads since birth through the

media. Every time you turn on the news they are showing a new black or hispanic person

committing a crime, or in all of the childhood cartoons the “bad guy” would usually be a large

character who has a darker complexion or wears dark clothes. Either way, our whole lives,

danger, and evil have been associated with darkness through the media and it's coming back to

haunt society today.

These implicit biases that these law enforcement officers struggle with, is what is truly

responsible for these poor choices in the field that cause all these casualties. The implicit biases
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that these officers hold are usually negative when it comes to minorities and especially blacks. A

majority of the time minorities are seen as more likely to do certain illegal actions because of

these biases, which results in officers assuming they are more dangerous. Because these officers

subconsciously view minorities as more dangerous, their actions can be rushed and since these

officers hold so much social and firepower when their actions are rushed only bad things can

happen. One of the articles that I researched stated that “The vast majority of prior work

(especially early work in this area) reports that force is applied more often against minorities

than Whites” (Worrall 1174). This isn’t due to a larger sum of minorities committing crimes or

being hostile, it’s due to these dangerous biases that these officers hold. The same source also

said, “They also found that approximately 80% of people shot by police were minorities. Similar

findings were observed in the work of Fyfe (1982a). Interestingly, Fyfe (1982a) also found that

racial discrepancies were most prominent in “elective shootings of nonassaultive, unarmed

people” (p. 721). No officer would admit to shooting solely based on race, but that is not to say

shooting decisions are not still biased.” (Worrall 1175) This quote only supports my point that

these biases that these officers carry are a true danger to the minority community. It is

understandable and tolerable for regular civilians to have biases because it is a natural and

primitive action of the brain but once you become an officer you must be able to keep these

biases from affecting your actions. Officers are held on a pedestal of power in today’s society, as

they should because they risk their own lives to protect ours. However, once they have that much

power they should not be held to the same standards and expectations as the average civilian.

What is acceptable for a regular person is unacceptable for an officer of the law because in the

end innocent people are hurt, mistreated, or even killed.

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Society as a whole has been pulled into this police brutality discussion because of famous

deaths of innocent people at the hand law enforcement officers. These cases have been heard and

grieved nationwide. The loss of the innocent has brought outrage and anger to the minority

community and has inspired the creation of groups such as the movement black lives matter.

Arguably the most well-known case is the murder of Michael Brown. Michael Brown was

tragically murdered at the age of eighteen by a Ferguson police officer named Darren Wilson.

Michael stole a few items from a convenience store and then officer Wilson tried to stop him in

the middle of the street. They ended up getting into a little tussle and Wilson pulled a gun and

shot Michael Brown dead in the middle of the street. The death of Michael Brown arguably

became the fuel for black lives matter to be where it is today. The newspaper, USA today stated,

“​Since police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed teenager ​Michael​ ​Brown​ two years

ago Tuesday in Ferguson, Mo., the words "black lives matter" have morphed from a public

outcry into a national movement.” (Hafner 08a)​ Another known case is the murder of Eric

Garner. Eric was murdered in NYC in 2014. He was selling untaxed cigarettes on the street when

a group of police officers tried arresting him. Even though he was complying and wasn’t putting

up much of a fight one of the officers put him in a chokehold. The words “I can’t breathe”

uttered from his mouth just before he died of suffocation. These words are what continued to fuel

the next generation of protestors and black lives matter supporters. But cases like these aren’t

just old news, they are happening to this day. A perfect example is the death of Antwon Rose in

2018. He was riding in a car that was suspected to be in a part of a driveby when the cops pulled

the car over and began to put the driver in handcuffs he started to flee the scene. As he was
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running away, a police officer named Michael Rosfeld pulled his gun and fired at Rose, hitting

Rose in the back, elbow, and face. Antwon Rose was only seventeen when he died. Sadly

Rosfeld ended up being arraigned and released after an hour of jail time because he posted a

$250,000 bail. The New York Times stated that “Prosecutors argued in court on Wednesday that

Officer Rosfeld should be denied bail, but they were overruled. S. Lee Merritt, a lawyer

representing Antwon's family, said it was ''wholly inappropriate'' that the officer was released.”

(Haag A20) Not only was an innocent life lost, but no justice was served. These biases are

ruining the justice system not only because they cause the killings but they also have a part in

letting the murderers go too.

Police bias has always been around because bias has always been around. This isn’t new

to our country, it is just gaining more recognition and attention because of the power of social

media. Police bias has been the reason why minority parents need to train their kids to fear, look

out for, or act uncharacteristically when they encounter cops. It has also been the cause of

countless instances of abuse and murder of innocent minority civilians. The profession of law

enforcement used to be looked at as a noble profession, but the blood of the innocent has tainted

its reputation. Police officers used to be seen as selfless and brave heroes who were trustworthy

and loyal to the public’s safety, but the cries and screams from the mourning parents, siblings,

friends, protestors, and supporters has stripped them of their respectable title, leaving the public

to view them in fear and hatred. Police bias has been a problem ever since the beginning but it

must not stay a problem until the end. It must be solved. However, it must be recognized before

it can be stopped.
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