I try not to be too political in my postings on this blog but, today, I just need to say something. Scrolling across the news screen this morning was the following line, “Trump orders Chicago to use stop and frisk tactics”. This practice violates the 4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 4th amendment states that all citizens should be secure in their person, house, papers, and effects of any unreasonable search and seizure. All searches require a warrant that asserts the probable cause for person and place of the search. In 1968, the Supreme Court modified this amendment slightly with the case Terry v Ohio. The ruling allowed police officers to search an individual without a warrant if the person is acting in a possible illegal and dangerous way. This slight change started the legal system down a slippery slope that is now known as stop and frisk rule. Most African-Americans living in poverty-stricken urban areas are aware of this rule as they are stopped going home from work, on the playground, at a bus stop, and just going about their normal day. By allowing the improper and unreasonable search of their person, they consent to the search. Not allowing the search could and has resulted in policy brutality and police involved shootings of unarmed African-American young men. Yet society shares the common belief that the police must have had a reason to frisk the person. I have thought that as well when passing police on the side of I-95 with a couple of African-American men on the side of the road in hand cuffs. Was I correct in that assumption or did I give in to racial profiling?
Our criminal justice system is not fair and equal. African-Americans make up the majority of prison populations in this country. Does that mean that black and brown people commit more crimes? No. According to the FBI’s uniform crime report, Caucasian-Americans make up 68% of all arrests and this make some sense since African-Americans make up 37% of the population. However, conviction and imposed punishment seems to travel along racial lines. According to the Sentencing Project, African-Americans make up 67% of the prison population and most of these sentences are for nonviolent drug charges. In the Maryland, the percentage is 70%. The war on drugs has given color to the face of crime and society backs up this belief by equating fear with that color. Mass incarceration of African-Americans has taken over for the Jim Crow segregation laws of the past. The criminal justice machine has gained momentum being fueled by public fear and misconceptions. Growing up “black” in America, gives a young African-American man a greater chance of police brutality, arrest, and conviction than their “white” counterpart.
Now the President of the United States is ordering stop and frisk tactics in the south and west sides of Chicago, home primarily to economically challenged African-Americans. Just one more way to enact racial profiling in Chicago. Chicago has had 2,349 shooting in 2018 so far. Some may say that stop and frisk is justifiable to remove guns from the street and keep people safe. Is it working? Apparently not because the shootings continue in spite of the justice systems approach. I have an idea. What if we used the money spent to lock up people in the poverty-stricken areas of the south and west sides of Chicago to orchestrate positive change instead? What if the City created opportunities instead of denied opportunities? What if Chicago enforced housing codes creating good living conditions for all? Doctors do not just treat the symptoms of a disease but rather the disease itself. Perhaps it is time that we stop spending so much money on treating the symptom of poverty and not curing the disease of poverty itself. This isn’t a new thought and I am not the first one to write about this. Yet we keep declaring “war” on things and spending money that continues to keep poverty alive. What is insanity’s definition? Doing the same thing expecting different results. It is time to stop the insanity.
Alexander, M. (2012) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. NY, NY. The New Press.