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Ethnicity and the Police

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Ethnicity and the Police
Donald Wilson Jr
CJA 344
February 13, 2014
Linda Fisher-Lewis

Ethnicity and the Police Police officers have a very demanding job. They are here to protect and serve all citizens no matter how those citizens treat the officers or what their opinion on those officers is. Everyone has a different opinion on how they feel about police officers. This opinion usually derives from things like past experiences, witnessing someone else’s experiences, and even your ethnic background. Many factors mold an opinion and may even change an opinion of an individual over time. Every ethnicity has a different overall opinion of the police. For example, Caucasians are very open and usually favor police officers far more than any other ethnicity. When polled Caucasians had the highest favorable rating for police officers. African Americans gave some of the lowest ratings when polled about their opinions of police officers in their community. Hispanics were also considerably lower than Caucasians when asked their opinion of the police force in their neighborhood. The difference between the African Americans and the Hispanics is that there isn’t much data that incorporates Hispanics, and there is as much data for African Americans and there is for Caucasians. Obviously there are many different reasons for these opinions, and not everyone of that particular ethnicity feels the same way. When looking at a neighborhood and talking about the crime rate of that neighborhood the first thing that comes to my mind is the economic makeup of that area. Areas with lower economies usually have a much higher crime rate than higher income areas, therefore officers in the lower income areas will respond to more criminal activity than the areas with a lesser crime rate. This causes a lot of interaction with the community and this can be a good thing or

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