Within the event I attended Black History month which was hosted by the head of the sociology department Dr. Marcus Bell, we discussed certain issues within and outside the police system. To start off the meeting off Dr. Bell gave a few personal stories where he was victimized at a young age for the color of his skin. When one incident was him walking to the store with his older brother and another black man ran up on them and robbed them at gunpoint, he was only a child at the time and this was not his only incident. Another time he was on his way to football practice with a few of his brothers and one of them had a cap gun (which are fake), the bus driver called the police and next thing they knew he and his brothers were all at gunpoint. These two incidents show a very good representation of what Dr. Bell means by overpoliced, did the police think twice or did they only see the color of their skin? There comes a line where policing is protecting the good from the bad, but here are times where police protect partially all of society although from a racial bias they lead their decisions with. The overlying issue is that police are protecting people from what their beliefs contain. Another takeaway from Dr. Bell’s discussion was the fact that children should not have to live in these atmospheres where they are walking home, or on the bus going to football practice and lives are immediately on the line. They should be able to live within a protected safe atmosphere and have a comforting trust that the police are not there to cause harm.
To further add onto this, under protected areas are at a greater risk for crime whether it is interracial or not. Inter racial crime is often demonized which then puts a label on one whole race. We discussed the inter racial crime rates and how the “ghetto” was created by the government as a place for low income housing, this was then labeled as “black neighborhoods” which then developed into “the ghetto”, this entire process includes demonizing a race. If the ghettos are such a high crime rate area, why doesn’t the government do more to try and help protect/ keep these areas safe? One issue as to why this can be difficult is because many do not trust or like the police due to issues from their past, social class, beliefs. etc. This can be due to how society focuses mostly on police murders and when they kill someone unarmed. If society focuses on killings we normalize it and it is not good between community and law enforcement. Although the actual killing may be rare, the violence police choose to use against black minorities is daily. Whether it is hitting them when they are already in cuffs or hitting their head while putting them in the back of a cop car. It is the little things that go unnoticed by those it does not occur to. Although policing is nowhere near considered an easy job, we further discussed how police officers go out to work everyday not knowing if they will make it home. Not all of law enforcement should be labeled for the bad actions of certain officers. Although those officers should be held accountable for the horrible things they have done.
Overall the meeting outlined certain issues within and outside of law enforcement and the defying reasoning as to why our society is overpoliced and underprotected when it comes to those of African American descent. This will continue to be an ongoing fight but when will justice be served?
