Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

https://www.netflix.com/watch/70267488?trackId=14170286&tctx=2%2C0%2C4681b394-33c3-49cc-b48e-0af1cf65e701-93327793%2C8daa9611-ceb7-402b-b32a-0d4d17c151ca_60737154X3XX1607298576555%2C8daa9611-ceb7-402b-b32a-0d4d17c151ca_ROOT%2C

The film I decided to write about is the movie called Fruitvale Station. This movie is about a 22-year-old black man named Oscar Grant, who is trying to get his life together for the sake of his girlfriend and for his daughter. The movie reveals the last moments of Oscar’s life, where he went to San Francisco to watch fireworks on New Year’s Eve with his friends and his girlfriend. On the way back home, Oscar was involved in an altercation with a few police officers that resulted in his murder. This sad story is based on a true story.

This movie presented some key points, the first being that there is a clear difference between the way white people are judged for committing crimes and the way black people are judged. In the movie Fruitvale Station, Oscar met a white man while they waited for their partners to come back from the bathroom. The man asked Oscar if he was planning on marrying his girlfriend, and he said that he wanted to but did not have enough money for a ring. The white man told Oscar that he stole the wedding ring for his wife before they got married, and told Oscar that he probably should not go down that same road. The producer may not have meant for it to be taken this way, but I believe that both the man and Oscar knew that there would be a different outcome if he had tried to steal a wedding ring for his girlfriend.

The most important part of this movie happens whenever Oscar gets involved in a fight on the train and the police are called. Whenever the police arrive, they grab Oscar’s friends and put them on the ground. Oscar, who is on the train at this point, tries to hide his face from the police. One officer yelled for everybody who was involved in the fight to get off the train. When nobody gets off, the officer steps on and pulls Oscar off the train. The officer did not even know who was involved in the fight, so racial profiling played a role in this incident. We talked about something similar to this in class. There was an elderly woman who was attacked in her home. She described the attacker as a black man, and in response, the police rounded up over two hundred black men and brought them in for questioning (Davis, 102).

Before watching this movie, I had my own stereotypes of police officers and how they do their jobs. I believed that there are a lot of police officers who are corrupt and use their badge as power. My stereotype was based on personal experience and what I have seen for myself. This movie only confirmed my stereotypes of police officers. In the movie, the police officers pushed, punched, kicked, and assaulted all of the black men. They treated them like animals, and whenever one officer felt like their power was being threatened, he used a derogatory term a number of times. It was uncomfortable to watch.

The last key point I got from this movie is how the system tends to fail the victims and their families. Most of the time, the officers who kill innocent minorities basically get away with their crimes. Other times, the court takes an excessively long time to reach a verdict, so the family has to suffer for an extended time. The police officers involved in this incident were fired, and the general manager and chief of the BART police department stepped down. The police officer claimed that he mistook his gun for his taser. After killing an innocent black man, the police officer who shot Oscar was charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to two years in prison, however, he was released after 11 months. It does not make sense to me how somebody who killed a person can get out after only 11 months. This movie relates to the essay we read called, Do Black Lives Matter to the Court? In this essay, the writers talk about how there are racial injustices in the way victims receive justice. “Almost fifty years later, the United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigations…detailed similar systematic racial discrimination that reflects the “double standard” of justice” (Davis, 258-2590. Black people have always been seen as inferior to other races, so we are the last to receive equality.

Police brutality is something almost everybody has seen a video of, however, I have seen it in real life. This is nothing new to me. I have seen my sister being slammed and choked by the police. I have seen my mother pushed and shoved by the police. It gets harder to watch with every new incident that occurs, but it is important to know about. That is why I think everybody should watch this movie. This movie kind of shows what it is like to be in the middle of an altercation like that. The movie was written by Ryan Coogler and was released in 2013.

Reference

Davis, A. J. (ed.). (2018). Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Coogler, R. (Director), Coogler, R. (Writer), & Bongiovi, N. Y., & Whitaker, F. (Producers). (2013). Fruitvale Station [Motion picture]. United States: The Weinstein Company

anonymous

Cole Montgomery

CRIM -410

Professor Engstrom

December 1, 2020

We Need Police Reform (Policing the Police Documentary).

The PBS documentary, Policing the Police, was a thoroughly informative video that shows the importance and need for police reform all across the United States of America.  Race and crime are very significant.  If you commit a crime and you are African American, you will either be more subject to excessive force, or you may receive a longer sentence than a white person would for that same crime.  As we know, the U.S. has gone through tense racial unjust with the recent killings of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and other unarmed African Americans at the hands of Police officers.  The documentary is narrated by Jelani Cobb, who is an avid activist for Police Reform in America.  The documentary focuses specifically on Newark New Jersey, a city where police reform had been enacted in on May of 2016 through the “Consent Decree.”  Newark has a long history of police brutality, and use of excessive force, fueled by implicit bias.  “On July 12, 1967, residents of Newark took to the streets to protest the abuse of a Black cabdriver, John W. Smith. That night, Newark police officers had beat him into paralysis and dragged him into the police station, simply because he drove his cab around their double-parked police car.”  (New Jersey Institute for Social Justice).  This incident, as well as plenty more around the country, sparked tense relations between the police and the public in Newark New Jersey.

While watching the documentary, I was extremely surprised of the way that the Police of the Newark PD performed their duties.  The Drug unit that Jelani Cobb was riding with, were frequently stopping and frisking African Americans, were racial profiling, and were using excessive force without being in physical danger.  As a result of multiple investigations, eventually a few officers of the department were fired and along came the Consent Decree, under mayor Ras J. Baraka.  “The Consent Decree requires the Independent Monitor to conduct an annual survey to assess Newark community members’ experiences with and perceptions of the NPD and public safety.”  (New Jersey Institute for Social Justice).  As of 2016, The Newark Police Department has been required to wear body cameras, has received extensive training on use of excessive force, and has been monitored plenty of times which has caused many more police reports regarding physical encounters to be documented.  Newark’s George Floyd protests throughout the summer of 2020, remained mostly peaceful as opposed to other cities around the country due to the police reform that had already been enacted in the city.  Other cities need to follow the example that Newark New Jersey has set regarding police reform.  I believe that it is crucial that the United States continues to reform our nations law enforcement system and our police officers.  Throughout professor Engstrom’s criminology class, we have learned plenty about Policing in the community and about the injustices that minorities face at the hands of the Police during their lives every day.  During one of our class discussions, we discussed the story of Clarence Aaron, as told in the class assigned book titled Policing the Black Man.  Like me, Clarence  was a college student at the time of his arrest.  He had no criminal record, and introduced a classmate whose brother was a cocaine drug dealer to a cocaine seller which he knew from his high school.  He happened to be present for the sale of the cocaine and he also received payment from the dealer.  According to Policing the Black Man, “After police arrested the drug group, the others testified against Aaron, describing him as a major dealer, which led to him being sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment in federal prison.”  (Mauer, 2018, p. 31).  This relates to the documentary because it is an example of the unjust that African Americans face caused by the Police.  Clarence’s sentence was extremely uncalled for, and he served far more time than white people who had committed the same crime.  This is just another example of how being African American will cause you to be treated unfairly by the Police, due to implicit bias.  Another example of something that I learned in class which I thought directly relates to Policing the Police, is the whole idea of “stop and frisk” in regard to racial profiling.  I learned this semester that racial profiling can be defined as “Any policing that subjects individuals to greater scrutiny based in whole or in part on race”.  (Hutchins 2018).  According to the Racial Profiling PowerPoint, “This includes incidents in which an individual was stopped based only on race, those in which an individual was stopped based on race plus other factors, and those incidents that result in entangling innocent people of one race into a wide net of suspicion.”  (Hutchins, 2018).  This is present in Newark New Jersey throughout this documentary, as Jelani Cobb observes drug unit officers racial profiling during a ride along.

The Frontline documentary, Policing the Police, was thoroughly informative and interesting especially in today’s climate of tense racial unjust.  I believe that Jelani Cobb did a magnificent job in putting together this documentary along with his colleagues at PBS.  It is crucial that police departments all over the United States are reformed.  We need to do so because excessive force is used far too much by police on African Americans.  I hope that when every police department is densely reformed in the future, our society will have a more positive view on our nations police officers.  In conclusion, Policing the police was an extremely interesting documentary and I recommend it to everyone.

References:

Building A New Relationship Between the Community and Police. (n.d.). New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. https://www.njisj.org/reimagining_policing

Hutchins, M. (2018). The endurance of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 31-56). Vintage Books.

Mauer, Marc (2018). The endurance of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 31).

Policing the Police 2020. (n.d.). FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/policing-the-police-2020/

‌

On October 18, 2016, Seven Seconds, A Netflix series created by Veena Sud and Gavin O’Conner and produced by Johnathan Filley, Shana Fishcer Huber focused on a story about the injustice of a 15-year-old African American male by the name of Brenton Bulter who has died in a hit-in-run.  The series starts off with, Peter Jablonski a white policeman, driving his truck on the phone and within a split second of him looking down he notices that he hits something. Getting out of the car he looks on the side to see a bike and automatically calls for backup. As he sits in the car, three police officers come to check out the scene. One police officer decides to go over on the other side of the road, where the body was laying, to see what he has hit. Seeing who it was, he goes back to the car and tells the other police officers not to go over to see who has been hit. Assuming that Brenton was dead, he advises officer Jablonski to go back to the hospital where his pregnant wife was and leave the crime scene. He adds that this incident was not seen by anyone and if someone was to find out, they will all get dragged, including the police department. Not knowing who he hits, Jablonski decides to take his friend’s advice and leave the body in the snow on the side of the road where it had been at. When Mr. and Mrs. Butler gets home, Mr. Butler plays a voicemail from the police station asking for the contact of Brenton Butler’s parents. Going to the hospital, shortly after Mr. Buter arrives a doctor tells them that Brenton is alive and stable. Once Jablonski finds out that he’s alive he goes to the police district and sees one of the police officers that were at the scene with him earlier that day. They get into an argument because Jablonski knows what they did was wrong, and he knows its going to blow up in their faces. The officer mentions that a white cop hitting a black kid showing up in the news is not going to express as an accident, so they have to try to cover it up or it’s over.

The public defenders of Brenton’s case Harper and Fish arrive at the hospital to let his parents know what has happened to him. The first public defender Harper, who is an alcoholic, notifies them that they have a man in custody, and he will be charged with leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident resulting in serious bodily injury suggesting the maximum sentencing for this type of felony (3-5 years). To sum things up, the cops try to cover the hit and run up by blaming it on an old white man but once Harper the prosecutor goes to the junkyard where the crime scene is, she questions where Dorsey, the person accused of hitting Brenton, is the one who actually it did once she noticed that his seat was inclined all the way back.

In this situation, you have corrupted police officers who are willing to lie and accuse an innocent old man of committing a crime. In class, we discussed how within the criminal justice system there are corrupted police. Some police officers will abuse their power and, in this case, accusing innocent people of a crime they didn’t commit. On the other hand, representing Brenton was a drunk prosecutor who in the film wasn’t organized and didn’t have anything in order. By law and in this case, Brenton was assigned an attorney, and judging by the way they reacted to the arrival of Harper they accepted them to represent them. Just because you are appointed an attorney doesn’t mean that you will have the best attorney and Harper wasn’t the best. This is a theme of a middle-class African American family who has a drunk attorney to represent them because that is what they can afford in an attorney. In class, we discussed that because of some people’s economic struggles they aren’t able to get the best support, and sometimes they won’t even get justice. This is something that needs to be corrected in the criminal justice system.

What I have learned from watching this episode is that police officers have no problem abusing their power and that justice often gets hidden just because someone can not afford a good lawyer. It is a shame that in society and within the criminal justice system that it is people out there that do not care for justice but would much rather cover themselves. In contrast, one thing that I agreed with in this film is that Officer Jablonski was willing to turn himself in because he knows he did wrong. The officers did not let him because they were scared that he was going to be ridiculed and he doesn’t need that right now because he is about to have a son. I think this was a great point that was made in this episode that sometimes it’s not the person that does the crime but it’s the people that know about it who can influence you to do things that you don’t want to do.

Hate Crimes in the United States

Summary

This YouTube video goes into detail about crime regarding white supremacists and hate crime. This film starts off showing you groups white supremacists and neo-Nazis members marching in Charlottesville that originally started because a confederate statue was taken down. Many counter protesters also showed up to this event. Some anti-fascist groups showed up and got into many physical fights with other groups of people. In the film you see many fist fights or people wearing helmets with weapons such as guns with them. So, it is clear that these marches are not very peaceful. On top of all the fighting that took place almost no one was arrested for fighting and the police never moved to stop it. To me it seems like the government was doing very little to stop the violence taking place here. People even went up to the police asking for help when some people were getting assaulted, but the police refused to help them. More extreme events even happened after someone plowed a car through counter protesters. Many people had to go to the hospital because of this and some even died. People had various opinions on what happened and why it happened, and this film goes into detail on these views. They said that only 10 people were prosecuted in Charlottesville during these events and that is strange considering how many violent acts happened. In the film the reporter tries to figure more out about these neo-Nazi groups and why the police are doing the minimum about this.

Analyze

In class we look at how race deals with crime and in this video, we get to see race on race crime to some extent. I found it interesting how the reporter in this film was looking that the past of one of the leaders to a neo-Nazi group and how they chose that ideology. It looked like the neo-Nazi leader obtained most of his views after he went to prison for stabbing someone where he was associated with white prison gangs. It makes you think that other people that go though the prison system might also pick-up similar views during their time. I wonder if it would be the prison system to blame for having so many gangs in them and if more could be done to reduce the number of gangs in prison. It was said that most of the people taking place in these violent protests were young people around college age. To me it was shocking that most of these people were younger so this might show that we might see more events like this happen in the future. From Davis (2018) page 178 when the author talks about the Jena six case this documentary reminded me of some aspects of that. For example, when the police let the violent fights go on without trying to stop it or arrest people. This shows that the police could be biased and choose who they want to arrest or choose who they ignore.

Another way this can be related to what we learned in class was the implicit bias test that we learned about in class prep 6 (Implicit bias pp). Implicit bias might be related to this because the film talks a lot about white supremacists’ groups or neo-Nazis, and you need to think about the biases that they have and how they got them which led them to join these groups. People in these group probably have some sort of explicit bias currently, but it might have started out as implicit bias. Finding out why people join these groups and trying to solve the problem from the ground up may be the only way to stop events like this from happening again, but it can be difficult because you only need a few bad actors to make a tragic event happen.

Personal Reflection and Rational

As someone who does not go to any protests or marches it is shocking for me to see how violent some of these can get. I am sure this film shows a more extreme violent example of this though. In the film we hear about many small extremist groups rather than big, organized ones. I think the small groups can be more dangerous than the bigger ones because you have less information on them so it can be harder to find out who they are. Something that I found interesting was how many of these groups have a large presence online so it can be easier for them to get younger people that use social media to see their views. I thought it was good that later some of the people responsible for the violence were charged with crimes. However, I do not think these violent hate crimes will stop anytime soon because many of these small groups are hard to stop and it can be extremely hard to change someone’s personal beliefs when they are set.

References

Davis, A. J. (ed.). (2018). The Prosecution of Black Men. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 177=208). Vintage Books.

Implicit bias PP. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2020, from https://d2l.iup.edu/d2l/le/content/2963644/viewContent/22757053/View

Matthew B.

The media I chose to look at for racial disparity was two different TED Talks. One of them was by Michelle Alexander who focused on how discrimination never really went away, it was merely altered so that those it focused on were criminals. She compares the criminal justice system to a newer version of Jim Crow as once you are incarcerated, you will be discriminated against for the rest of your life. African American kids grow up worrying about when they are going to get arrested and end up in jail. Most of the time, when they do, they go to jail for minor charges such as drugs, but by the time they get out it is on their record and they will have a harder time getting jobs or an education from then on out. Furthermore, the reason for so many of them being arrested and thus having their lives ruined was not even really something that was their fault. They are being arrested and convicted because the police get paid more the more they put people behind bars, and it is easier to catch black youths doing drugs than it is to catch white youths. There are so many laws against drugs that police can take advantage of simply because those they are using them against have no idea what they are or how to follow them. Schools are typically drug free zones, but the zone itself could extend for miles outside of the school, and what happens to those black youth who live within that area and do drugs? They go straight to jail (Mauer, 2018, p. 49). These youths are practically conditioned into believing that if they are not perfect one hundred percent of the time they will be going to jail, and even then, there is still an element of risk. Henning described this mistrust of police and authority figures as there being a lack of good legal socialization, and if these kids grow up with the idea that if they go to jail they lose all options for their life, it is no wonder they have such a deep distrust of police. However, even if people do desire to try and break this cycle of jailing people for minor offenses just to send them back into the system once they get out, there is no guarantee that it will even work due to the vast number of jobs that are supported by the mass incarceration of criminals.

The other TED Talk was by Baratunde Thurston and was also regarding race and how it affects those who are criminalized by the masses. His opening was a story of how he was dating a white girl and she had a little too much to drink when they were visiting her parents’ house, so he was driving her home in her parent’s car. While he was driving her home, they were pulled over and he signaled he was cooperating before pulling up under the brightest streetlight there was so he could use dashboard footage and had all the information necessary pulled out before the officer even left the car. He was lucky as the officer was nice and the only issue was that the registration was expired, but it could have turned out so much worse. He then begins to analyze different headlines and points out how many of them are regarding white people calling the cops on black people for issues that do not even necessarily need cops to resolve them.

I felt that these two TED Talks were good to watch together because both of them discussed the same issue and both argued that something was wrong with the racial injustice society shows. However, they share different opinions on what can be done about it. Alexander was of the belief that a complete overhaul of the system is impossible and the best we can do is to try and alter it little by little. In contrast, Thurston did not even mention changing the system from the law enforcement aspect. Instead, he argues that it would be more beneficial if people were to consider what exactly they were calling the police for and whether it is really necessary for the situation. Originally, I was of a similar opinion to Alexander that the system needs an overhaul but that the odds of that occurring are miniscule when you consider just how many jobs are gotten through the criminal justice system. However, Thurston has an optimistic look on the situation and if it were possible to get even a majority of people to agree to go along with the idea of considering whether or not police were even needed to handle the situation it would be a good first step. I would recommend watching these if you want to get another perspective on how the racial disparity in the justice system effects people and for what we can do about it.

References

Mauer, M. (2018). The endurance of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 31-56). Vintage Books

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZgkjEdMbSw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ6H-Mz6hgw

The media source I chose to view for ethnicity within the criminal justice system was the first episode of the Netflix documentary series Living Undocumented. The main focus within the first episode is on two families both with children and both with at least one adult of the family getting deported. Noah’s story is that of a sweet little three-year-old kid whose mother was taken in by ICE while she was pregnant due to the deportation warrant that was out on her. She was arrested when the car the father was driving got pulled over and her papers were requested event though she was asleep at the time. Noah was permitted to continue home with his father though at the time of this episode they are driving to an ICE location to hand Noah over as demanded by the warrant for him. There are lawyers working on Noah’s and his mother’s case in an attempt to keep them from being deported, but the episode ends before you find out whether the attempt was successful. An interesting point that was made by the lawyer was that under normal circumstances she would not have been arrested as typically you are not asked for the papers of all the people in the car, only those of the driver. The lawyer believed that the only reason as to why this occurred was because their appearances were similar to those of Mexican descent who are normally those who immigrate to America illegally. This is remarkably similar to an instance mentioned in The Black and the Blue where Fred Watson is told to exit his vehicle and hand over his identification before being written up on an enormous list of trumped up charges. Any white person present in that city would never have had such a thing happen to them, but because he was black Watson was charged with various crimes that were completely illogical in the context of what was happening (Horace, 2018, pg. 94-96). The other family that was predominately featured in this first episode was that of Alejandra Juarez. Alejandra was the wife of a former Marine who was discovered as an illegal immigrant in 2013. However, under Obama’s administration she was only instructed to check in with ICE officials and was not deported. Under the Trump administration though, she was one of the first people selected to be deported. She was originally given the time constraint of two months, but it was extended when she asked to be allowed to see her daughter finish elementary school with the understanding that she would not fight the deportation process. She had broken no laws while residing within the US and was being deported anyways simply because her name was on ICE’s radar from a routine traffic stop. Given this information, is it any wonder that people have a tendency to distrust police officers if this is what a routine stop can cause to occur? African American children are typically indoctrinated into the belief that they can not trust police from an early age as police will tend to stop them for no reason or always be looking to blame them for something (Henning, 2018, pg. 75-78). On the other hand, if immigrant children are caught it could mean deportation for their whole family.

I felt that this documentary allowed me to gain a better understanding of what life is like for those who came to this country illegally and their reasons for doing so. When asked, people tend to tell you that the reason immigrants are being deported is because they were in the wrong by coming into America illegally in the first place. What you never hear about is how they may have entered the country to flee from persecution or violence and that there are very few opportunities to enter the country legally. If someone did choose to go the legal route, there is ever possibility that by the time their name came up as being eligible they could be dead. However, even once you do manage to escape that which you were fleeing from in your home country, you have to constantly be on edge to make sure you are not found out as that could cause you to end up in an even worse situation. This fear is not something most of us can understand as we are citizens and do not have to worry about these kinds of things. However, we do have sympathy and we can feel it for those who are living in fear of what could happen if they were to relax their guards for the smallest second.

References

Living Undocumented on Netflix

(I used my friend’s account to watch it on our TV so I don’t have the link)

Henning, K. (2018). The role of policing in the socialization of black boys. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 57-78). Vintage Books.

Horace, M. (2018). The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, And Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group.

This documentary is called “Let the fire burn”. It was created in 2013 and is produced by Jason Osder. The MOVE organization was an outcast group founded by John Africa. This was an organization of colored people that operated mainly in West Philadelphia. They were a sort of religion; they did not conform to the rules of society. They oppressed the essentially the “normal” ways to do things. This group related to Edelman chapter 8, where he talks about groups in society that are oppressed (Edelman). They exclaimed that society was based on division, upon entering school, children were classified based on race, social status etc. The main purpose was to essentially fight for the rights of colored people, and fight for justice. Like our race timeline article about minorities fights for their rights to living wages and healthcare in 1985 (Race Timeline). To stop them from being beaten, jailed and imprisoned. The MOVE group and the Philadelphia police got into many scuffles in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. One incident was the killing of officer ramp, when a citizen called a noise complaint against MOVE. Three members were sentenced with 30-100 years in prison. Four officers were charged with assault, but all were acquitted.

These events would build to a fatal end. On May 13^th, 1985 Philadelphia police attempted to evict the MOVE from the neighborhood. They refused and barricaded themselves into their townhouse. After tear gas and a power hose were implemented, they did not work. A police chief authorized to drop a bomb on the house. The bomb was meant to destroy the bunker on the top of the house. It failed, and a fire started that spread to the rest of the house. The mayor testified that the decision was made to leave the house burn to get the MOVE members to come out. This was not the case, as eleven people and five children died in the fire. This included the founder, John Africa. Two people survived the fire. 60 residential houses were burned in the process. Many issues such as police brutality and inequality are displayed throughout the documentary. Such as the incidence mentioned earlier, when people called complaints on them, relating to violence and death. A related incident can go back the Black panthers in 1969, when a demonstration turned ugly and a member was killed in Chicago. The topics of race and crime that we have discussed in class strongly relate to this story. Many of the protests that occur because of police brutality can relate. Today we have protests for mainly the same reasons, and it is fortunate that we do not have these types of incidents today. This perspective seems to be a new perspective, as groups back then like fought for right, much like people are fighting today. They were not suggestions for improving the system. But I think we need to take charge of our police stations and change procedures and protocols. I should mention that these policy changes may prove to be ineffective, as they have many times before. A countrywide acceptance of what has happened, what is happening now, and what could happen should possibly have an impact. I agree with the process the city of Philadelphia took. The went through different proceedings to find out what really happened. In the end of course, the commission found the police department negligent. Then proceeded to not charge or convict anyone that had been involved. Although it is sad that people are still fighting for the same rights they were then, like nothing has changed. The documentary presents not many solutions to fix the problem, as these officers involved in the tragedy were again charged with negligence. No criminal charges were ever filed. This seems to be a reoccurring theme that nothing every gets solved with these tragedies. No matter how often they happen, or how many times history proceeds to repeat itself. I liked how the city took the initiative to rebuild the neighborhood after all the houses were destroyed. Although it was condemned in 2000 for sloppy building. It is also sad that most citizens have no knowledge of what occurred in 1985. It is important for us to accept that these things happened in the past, and there is nothing we can do to change them. But we can learn from it and move forward, so these things do not happen again in the future. I like to always that the past can hurt, but you can either run form it or learn from it.

Osder, J. (2013). Let the Fire Burn. Retrieved December 10, 2020, from https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/letthefireburn

1. (2020). Race Timeline. Retrieved December 10, 2020, from https://d2l.iup.edu/d2l/le/content/2963644/viewContent/22955061/View

Edelman, P. B. (2019). Not a crime to be poor: The criminalization of poverty in America. New York, PA: The New Press. Chapter 8

For this last media blog post, I listened to an episode of a podcast called Criminal Injustice and it was episode #75: Punishment for Profit. In this episode the host, David A. Harris, focuses on private prisons and the fact that they can make money off of how many inmates they have at a given time. This episode has a guest, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, and she is a senior counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program and she wrote a book where she dives into the world of private prisons and interviews inmates and staff alike.

The appeal of private prisons became especially prominent in the 1980s when it was made known that corporations of private prisons said that they could carry out the public function of incarceration and do so as safely as public institutions, but for less of a cost. Eisen found that private prisons actually cost more money than public prisons, and they tend to have more issues with contraband and the use of force of the prison guards. Even though they cost more money than public prisons, private prisons make money by cutting the programming for inmates, and not employing enough correctional officers. The less correctional officers a prison has, the less they have to pay their employees salaries and pensions. Eisen had some inmates in private prisons tell her that they wanted to go back to a public prison because they had more robust job training programs, and programs in general. The Obama Administration was looking to end the use of federal private prisons, but this was reversed by the Trump Administration. Since this reversal, the stock in private prisons has skyrocketed.

Contracts with the government and the corporations that own private prisons are strange, and it’s definitely something that I didn’t know. These corporations will have the government make full rate payments as if the prison is at 80-90% capacity, even if the prison is only half full. This blew my mind because I don’t understand how this is possible, and how the government has been allowing this for such a long time. If these private prisons get this extra money from the government, why do they not use it for programs to help rehabilitate and treat offenders, or employ an adequate amount of correctional officers? Eisen also found that private prisons would rather pay fines imposed upon them than hire more correctional officers because it is cheaper in the end. Private prisons will employ a monitor for the prison to make sure that they are following the guidelines and that everything is running smoothly, but most of the time they aren’t even employed there full-time. Many monitors who aren’t full-time will show up at the prison unannounced and walk around the facility to check on everything, but Eisen said that that is all some of them do. After they take their walk, they’ll leave because technically they did their job.

What some people also don’t realize is that ICE detention centers can also be privatized. In fact, 62% of immigration detention centers in the US are private. In many of these detention centers, most individuals haven’t been charged with an actual crime and are waiting for their hearings. Private prisons are for-profit prisons. Private prisons are paid to house inmates, even though most facilities and programs are inadequate and pale in comparison to public prisons. Private prisons are just one problem within the Criminal Justice System that deserves to be reevaluated.

References

Harris, D. A. (Host). (2018, February 6). #75: Punishment for profit. Criminal Injustice [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.criminalinjusticepodcast.com/blog/2018/2/6/75-punishment-for-profit?rq=mall%20incarceration

Jeffrey Poland

10/29/20

class and Police

The media blog podcast that I chose to research today was the podcast I Don’t Wanna Shoot You, Brother. This podcast was about an incident that happened in West Virginia in a town just outside of Pittsburgh. It happened in a small town where all police officers were praised and so were the veterans. A new officer named Mator was on the job one night when he got a call from dispatch there was a domestic going on in one of the neighborhoods. He pulled up and asked a man next to a car where 119 was and the man said right here. The officer hopped out of his car and asked the man to take his hands out of his pockets and the man refused. Officer Mator was deescalating the situation until two more officers came up to scene and within 5 seconds the backup officers shot and killed the black man who had an unloaded gun in his hand.

This story had a very twisted turn that the man that did not shoot the man with the unloaded gun was fired and the man who did shoot was praised for it. “When you do go to the honor and valor ceremony the award always goes to the guy who fired the gun.” (minute 37 of video). I found this quote very interesting because it is very true that the man that commits murder is the one who gets all the praise. Mator a month after the shooting was then fired from the job because the department found him unfit to be a police officer for not firing the gun. Mator was showing constraint to the man because later investigation showed the gun was not loaded and the man was trying to commit suicide by cop. The first officer mator pulled up on scene and was deescalating the situation very well and talking him down but as soon as the other officers showed up the man who was getting talked down was dead with a bullet in his head within 5 seconds of them showing up. Mator was then fired and hated by the other officers for being cowardly and not shooting the man and for showing constraint and compassion to a man who was “having the worst night of his life”. This goes back to the quote where the people who shoot and do not try to talk gets rewarded. We need to change this outlook and reward the ones who show restraint and are able to talk those who have mental problems or are just having a bad day off the ledge. This death was an unnecessary one and could have been avoided. It also does not help that he was also a black man with a gun. African Americans are 21 times more likely of getting violent treatment from an officer than a white man. This goes back to race and ethnicity and upholds those stereotypes.

“Their youth, their race, and their basic human dignity” (Davis 116). This is a quote from the book Policing the Black man. It was saying how the police are judging based off their race, dignity, ethnicity and other types of things. This should be shown that police need more training in just seeing people for who they are in the moment and not judge them on so many other things out of their control like race, ethnicity, and their age. In the video they did not give many solutions except for the fact that people just have to be more of a human being and realize some people just need to get talked to and not base how dangerous they are off their ethnicity or their race.

“He ran away from police because he was driving while black” (Edelman 83). Here is another instance of a black man judging a person by the way he looks and his skin color. This should not be allowed in any form of policing and should be cut at the knees for allowing someone to be treated this way.

In the film I heard many things I did and did not agree with. When the police officer was fired for not pulling the trigger and killing an innocent man for holding an unloaded gun, I find to disagree with the police department. He should be praised for holding out and trying to talk him down off the ledge or at least trying to before the other officers showed up and re escalated the situation to a state it did not need to go. I would most definitely recommend this podcast to someone else. I was very informative about what is happening not so far from where we live at IUP and let people see how some minorities are treated just by their culture and ethnicity and or skin color.

References

Edelman, P. B. (2017) Not a Crime to be poor. The criminalization of poverty in America. The New Press.

Davis, A. J. (2018) Policing the Black Man: arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment.

Podcast Link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/dispatch/i-dont-want-to-shoot-you-brother/

Jeffrey Poland

12/9/20

Ethnicity/ Immigration and crime

The subject I chose to talk about today was the correlation of ethnicity and crime in America today. The specific thing I chose to talk about was immigration and crime and how they are treated going through the criminal justice system and through trial. It is always hard with the immigrants or the undocumented immigrants because they could always feel like they do not have the same rights as a citizen. Or the authority on sight makes it seem like they have to respond.

One of the first things the lady talked about was how the immigrants were treated during arrest when the officer was speaking to them. “The immigrant may feel as though they might not have the same rights as a regular citizen” (lady speaker). Especially if they are not great at speaking English or something they may feel as though they may not have the same rights as a regular citizen of America. This may lead to them trying to talk their way out of the crime when what they should be doing is keep quiet until their defense attorney gets there and is able to defend them the proper way in court or in a deal. But the immigrant does not know of these rights because he has never been properly informed of his rights since he is a new citizen and may not know all the things that are allowed and not allowed by law enforcement. This can be related to class because we talk about people even in this country that have lived here their whole lives do not even know of the rights they have when arrested. Especially if they are in lower-level poverty or from an area with high crime rates and more of a minority base population. The police want them to be less educated so that they have an easier time of convicting them in court because that is all that their job consists of is arresting and trying to get them prosecuted for what they have done.

The next thing that they have to go through is the actual court room process and they entire law and sentencing takes place. The lady speaker which podcasts I listened for this is a defense attorney of the law. She has represented immigrants in the past and she said an ongoing theme for all of them was that “they just wanted it to go away as quickly as possible” (lady speaker). She said this was the biggest reason and motive was that they just asked the quickest way for them to be able to have the whole process be done with and be able to go back to work or whatever they have going on. The lady tried to explain that a few days in jail could impact their living here for the rest of their life. So she always urged them to fight it in court and possibly win instead of plea deals and basically be banished from this country for something small like a misdemeanor. I relate this to the book I read for class call Down out and under arrest. These people in skid row did something that changed their lives and were almost exiled out of the main part of the city into skid row and they stayed there and continued to do illegal things.

People in the country that are trying to come here and make a new life should be able to and be able to have some slack cut for them. There should be improvements in the system for immigrants and matter for all people that are minorities they all need the help they need. They should have classes in places where immigrants and people are able to go to learn all the rights that they have as new citizens of the U.S. How would they be able to know of all the rights that go along with the law if they are new to the country and do not even know the customs or even speak fluently in the language? Another improvement that could be made could be the treatment of police towards the immigrant that is being arrested. They might be scared or not know what is going on because they have never experienced this from their home country and now they are being thrown in the back of a random car they do not know of. It could be a scary thing to experience.

There are many issues with immigration/ ethnicity in this country that need to be fixed. It goes from the non-education of rights to them as they become citizens. Then the harsh trial where they get a bad plea deal and are banished from this country. If we just put some effort into reform it could improve immigrant and crime significantly.

Word Cited

Edelman, P. B. (2017) Not a Crime to be poor. The criminalization of poverty in America. The New Press.

Davis, A. J. (2018) Policing the Black Man: arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment.

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW5HgslDJQw