When I received the book “Are Cops Racist?” from the library, I laid it down on the table and got mixed emotions and responds. Some said yes, cops are indeed racist and they stay away from them as much as possible. Then there are others who feel that cops are not racist they are just doing there job. This is how Heather MacDonald feels in the book “Are Cops Racist?” Heather MacDonald has done a wonderful job on stating the facts and making everything plain, but I still have mixed emotions on the whole ideal of racial profiling. I agree with her in so many ways like when she says that people claim racial profiling but don’t look at the crime rate. There are a lot of crimes that are committed by the African American …show more content…
In New York, blacks are 50% of all persons stopped and frisked by the police, but only 25% of the population. Police critics look at these rates and automatically cry racial profiling. And this would indeed be cause for concern if crime rates were evenly distributed across the population. This is not the truth, however - not in New York, not anywhere. In New York, in 1998, 62% of victims of violent assault identified their assailants as black, meaning that blacks were 13 times more likely to commit a violent assault as whites. Remember: these are victims identifying the criminal, not the allegedly "racist" police. It turns out that blacks in New York are actually being under stopped, compared to their rates of violent crime. Also another part of “Are Cops Racist?” that I can totally agree with is the chapter she has on the “black cops that you never hear about”. I this chapter she talks to the black cops that no one hears. They agree with her when she says that cops are not racist and that its just the area they are in that they have so many African American arrest. Lieutenant Christian was say, “often the entire neighborhood is black, so of course we are going to be stopping blacks-based on there behavior.” This shows that it is not just the white community saying that cops are not racist, its is also the African American community too. Most don’t see that and they attack the cops by making the allegations of racial profiling. This hinders the cop because they don’t make the arrest needed because they don’t want to seem to be arresting too many