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

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/

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