Minorities In Police

Do police officers see minorities differently than white people?
There have been many incidents of police officers abusing their use of power against minorities. In the past, police officers used excessive force during events such as, the civil rights protests in the 60s, the beating of Rodney King in 1991, and the 1992 L.A riots. However, recent events (death of Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin,and Michael Brown) have sparked questions of whether police officers are racist towards minorities. Despite the progress in racism itself , minorities are still being affected by it from law enforcement. Police officers use excessive force on minorities despite being in a diverse environment. First and foremost, from more than 400 shootings from 2008 to 2015 in Chicago, 3 quarters of the people wounded or killed were black. Hispanics were 14% and whites were 8%. This data shows that police officers are more likely to be violent to minorities than to white people. According to The Washington Post, “Census data show that black, Hispanic and white people make up nearly equal slices of the city’s population.” (Berman). Even though populations in Chicago are equal, more minorities are being killed or wounded. In To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, Tom Robinson was killed by a police guard when he was attempting to escape prison. He was shot 17 times. Tom Robinson’s brutal
In the summer of 2014, 70% of the people stopped in Chicago were black. Chicago’s law enforcement are racially biased toward African Americans because they are stopped more often than white people. An example of racism in To Kill a Mockingbird is when Bob Ewell accuses Tom Robinson of raping his daughter Mayella. The Sheriff takes Bob’s word over Tom’s despite the Ewells being a disgrace of Maycomb. This event in the book shows racial bias by conveying the bias of the Sheriff not taking everything into consideration when the alleged rape