Police Diversity Essay

Racial discrimination is an issue that so many professionals know about. Dealing with it may be the problem, but attempts to deal with it have been shown since the early times when it was noticed. According to Zeisel, there is evidence that the federal courts of appeal have been urged to take action on the administration of death sentences. Zeises notes that the death sentences in the federal courts, which he writes as a Florida experience, were administered discriminating against the black people (1981). In his writing, Zeisel states that two petitioners had provided evidence showing that the black offenders were being discriminated. The petitioners are, Maxwell V. Bishop who provided evidence to show that the black offenders were being discriminated against, and a petitioner in Spinkerllink v. Wainwright, who provided data showing that murderers of the white people were being discriminated against. This report by the petitioner from Spinkerllink indicated that there were high chances of murderers of the white to end up in death rows than murderers of the black people Zeisel, 1981). This though never received any action as the courts are noted to have refused to obtain evidence of racial discrimination. Zeisel notes that the data available in the criminal justice system of Florida, prove that there have been such kinds of discrimination (1981). This is a case that was identified in the 1980’s, but does it exist today? Has the system changed? Racial discrimination has been a major problem in most federal courts with most minorities, especially the black people, facing cruel judgments than the white people. Some reports indicate that more blacks are found behind bars than whites considering their number in the total American population. The people are few in number, yet if the number of people in prison is compared to the white people in prison, they are almost half the whites total. This is the aim of this paper. Analysis of data about arrests made in Florida will be done to determine if the minorities are arrested more and if still, there is racial discrimination. Data to be analyzed was obtained from the Florida department of Law enforcement, which was recorded in the year 2004 by UCR. Analysis Do minority commit more crimes? According to the statistics on arrests by age and race in Florida, there are several offenses for which the white, Indians and the black people were arrested. Whites constituted a bigger group of people arrested with a total of 672,987, this is followed by the black people who were a total of 351,871. The total Indians arrested were 1,496 (Department of Law Enforcement, 2005). There are some offenses that no Indian was arrested at all, for example bribery and embezzlement. Comparing this to the other groups, a total of 38 whites were arrested for bribery and 20 black people for the same offense. In the case of embezzlement, 363 blacks were arrested while 749 whites were arrested(Department of Law Enforcement, 2005. The offense categorized as miscellaneous had the highest number of offenders with 299, 442 white offenders, 159,378 black offenders and 1,034 Indian offenders. Drug arrest and simple assault also had high numbers of offenders. White people arrested for simple assault were 60, 018, while the black offenders in this case were 29,650, and the Indian offenders arrested for this case were 89. Drug arrests had these numbers; whites 84,829, black people 65,167 and Indians 112 (Department of Law Enforcement, 2005. These are examples from the data obtained about arrests made in the year 2004 under various offenses. Generally, the minority, which in this case is the black people, committed more crime. This is because the number of black people in Florida compared to the total population is small. Research reports show that in the year 2000, the percentage of non white people was 17. 8. The total population of Florida then was 15,982,824 (Schenker, 2008). From this data, it means that the non white people were only 2,844,943. This includes even the Indians. The population in the year 2007 is noted to be 18,680,367 indicating a growth of 16. 9%. This means that on average, each year, there was an approximate growth increase of 449,591 making an approximate of 177, 811,88 total population of Florida as at 2004. The rate of increase of the the non white population per year is approximated as 0. 31% (8,819) based on the fact that the total percentage increase of the total population by 2010 is 19. 8% (Schenker, 2008). This means that the total non white population based on the yearly increase was approximately 2,880,219 in 2004. If this population is compared with the approximated total population in 2004, then the number of non white people is small compared to white. This is proof that more blacks commit more crimes according to the data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. An example is in drug arrests. The number of white people arrested in this case is 84, 829. The total number of white people if approximated in the year 2004 was 14,900,969. From this the percentage of the white people arrested is 0. 569%. If this is compared to the number of black people arrested which is 65,167 on drug arrests, the percentage arrested to the nonwhite population is 2. 263%. This calculation is done using the total of non white people which includes Indians. If the number of Indians were excluded, then it means the total percentage would be higher. From this calculation, the number of black people arrested is higher by 1. 694%. How can this be judged? That these people commit more crimes? According to several sources, there have been so many cases of discrimination against black people living in America. This could just be a proof to it. It is though just an assumption since the number of people arrested cannot prove that the people are being discriminated against, though is a strong indication. Domnitiz and Knowles noted after research that black people were found to be guilty in police practices more than the white people. The economists note that â€Å"unbiased police practices as the police plans to do, can not prove that the guilt rates of motorists will be equalized among all races† This implies that however much the police try to show that they do not practice any racism in their policing, there is still knowledge by the public that there is racial discrimination in police practices. Domnitiz and Knowles indicated that motor vehicle search statistics show that the black motorists are singled out more that the white people (2006). The above case could therefore be considered as racial discrimination. Conclusion  From the above analysis, it is quite evident that there is racism. Just from the many sources that information is obtained, most of the cases are just indicating discrimination against the black people. In some sources though, black policemen were also found to be discriminative (Jaynes and Williams, 2007). This though is not indicated in the discussion but is an indication that even the black can discriminate against the other races. It may be therefore that, discrimination is due to the fact that the black are a minority. It is not easy to conclude this way though as there are other races in Florida too. What then can be the reason?