Blog Post #6

    This article discusses the recent evidence of the shocking racial bias in the police force of Ferguson, Missouri. One of the worst, most reoccurring examples was the excessive use of force, strictly based on race, not actions. In 2012, a 32 year-old African American male was approached by a police officer who accused him of being a pedophile and demanded his social security number and ID, he was then held at gunpoint after he did not allow the officer to search his car. He was given eight charges which were obviously made up such as a citation for "making false statements" when he said his name was Mike instead of his formal name Michael. The man then lost his job because of these charges. African Americans were also given 95% of minor traffic tickets such as "failure to comply" and "manner of walking in roadway" (a suspected source of income for the county). Another shocking piece of evidence was the highly offensive emails sent between officials using extremely racist language and jokes implying African Americans are all criminals and "can't hold a steady job for more than four years". Overall, less than 8% of Ferguson police officers were African American and accounted for 90% of officers use of force.
   This relates to our class because it shows the flaws in our system and incorporates American History to show that racism is still very present in our country. I'm not surprised at the statistics, I feel that the racial bias was pretty obvious after the shooting of Michael Brown and the responses to the protests. I hope that in the not-so distant future more measures will be taken to ensure the equal treatment of all minorities to caucasians


http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/politics/ferguson-justice-report-shocking/index.html