Taking Action to Reduce Police Violence
By Alexa Lofgren and Mikayla Ebnet
Over the last 100 years, at least, the arrest rates of racial groups has sky-rocketed and for what reason? We have come to see that this issue continues to grow each year hitting Minnesotans close to home when a black man, George Floyd, was brutally killed by a local police officer in the Twin Cities. Police brutality among racial minority groups has had such a strong impact to bring in a need for change across the United States as a whole. It is time to address these problems and make them known to all and begin to work together and fix these problems.
Research (Kahn et al., 2017) has shown that minorities who are fearful of being mistreated by the police are less likely to trust the police. The same study was done and found the opposite in white individuals, who are more likely to trust a police officer. If all people could trust police, there would be less minorities dying at the hands of police. A second study found that black and white young adults went through a version of a stereotype threat scale which found that black men experience far more stereotyping during a police threat than white people. The study also found the racial difference in stereotype threats still appears when all parties are involved in the same kind of police encounter (Kahn, et.al, 2017).
Another study was conducted with police officers to see how many experienced thoughts of being considered racist by others or felt a lack of confidence due to the nature of their work. A large percentage of the respondents stated that they have had feelings of being considered racist that has affected their work (Kerrison & Trinker, 2019).
We believe the solution to the problem starts in the classroom. Most law enforcement degrees do not require very many diversity classes (if any) to graduate the program. We believe with adding in more classes about diversity, psychology and sociology the amount of racism towards minority groups would begin to decline. Another step we think is imperative to continue the drop in racism among officers is more on the job training. Making sure all officers are up to date on the ever-changing social problems they may run into is very important to keeping the public safe. By more frequent on the job training, this will keep older officers more educated on topics they may not have learned while they were in college. Starting education on racism and diversity at a younger grade school age will help set up a safer environment for all to live in.
References
Trinkner, R., Kerrison, E. M., & Goff, P. A. (2019). The force of fear: Police stereotype threat, self-legitimacy, and support for excessive force. Law and Human Behavior, 43 (5), 421-435. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/lhb-lhb0000339.pdf
Kahn, K. B., Lee, J. K., Renauer, B., Henning, K. R., & Stewart, G. (2017) The effects of perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality and social identity threat on racial minorities’ attitudes about police, The Journal of Social Psychology, 157 (4), 416-428, DOI: 10.1080/00224545.2016.1215967