Saturday, November 3, 2012

Racial Profiling ~ hurts our communities

Racial profiling exists only in the mind of those who make it their own agenda either con or pro compliance with the laws and their own personal believe that it is happening to them or others. Therefore, conditionally, it does exist. It is not a universal concept applied by everyone or every police agency since we are talking about cops.

It is conditional in every sense of the phrase and subject to many moral values as well as existing laws and norm values in our society. This can be defined by demographics as well as geographical histories, customs, practices and traditions but nevertheless, a negative input on how we perceive things in our head.

What we have here is two arguments. The first finding the objective definition of racial profiling that includes compelling reasons that it does exist in content and context given. The second is what "we" believe is racial profiling. The truth lies somewhere in between and whenever you are subjective about any issue, then the power is swayed towards that "believe" and that you are right no matter how the law or truth is read. However, this is not a method of compelling reasoning and is flawed severely.

Contextuality expresses the fact that an action does not exist in a vacuum. When we examine an action, we cannot ignore that the action takes place in a given context. This context is necessary to evaluate the consequences of an action, because it informs the values that are affected by the action. Unlike the phrase “a picture tells a thousand words” there should only be one inference or understanding of what really happened and how it was created. This is called a finding. This is where the facts [hopefully objective in nature] come in to rationalize the event or behaviors and explains the truth in objective and clear sense rather than emotional or irrational in manner.

It is important here to understand that while values themselves are objective in all ways, their specific implementation differs from person to person and from culture to culture thus what may be normal in one setting may be abnormal in another setting. Hence each case is different and must be examined for facts, not feelings or believes one is telling the truth.
Community policing is effective when the police officers are culturally diverse and trained in recognizing these values as norms thus avoiding stereotyping when responding to a call or incident whenever possible. Police policies may differ from region to region, district to district and is applied by the officer's knowledge of such direction. It does not imply racial profiling per se but can come under scrutiny if there are acts or words said that warrant a closer look at this incident to acquire a truth statement or finding.

In order to win an argument that racial profiling existed during the event, the officer or the subject [or witnesses] must effectively prove or disprove “objective moral facts” in this type of case and provide a compelling reason to believe they exist within the statements provided making their statement more powerful and truthful in the end than the other person’ strong believe that was based on their own or individual subjective matter and personal values rather than facts.
In other words, racial profiling hurts law enforcement as it disconnects the community with those who are there to help them.

Unfortunately, the perception of truth may be distorted by the subjectivity involved on either side when the persons involved are viewed to be racist as this kicks in the defensive mechanisms we depend on for survival and self-defense. It is hard to convince another person you are not being a racist when they have already made up their minds that what you [cop] are doing is based on their believe you are profiling them on race hence the confrontation,relationship is heightened to a new and volatile level.

 

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