BY MIKHAILA LAMPERT | Guest Columnist | Discrepancies between minority population and minority representation in local police forces have caused large-scale debates and protests in recent months. This lack of cultural inclusivity may be due to large proportions of Caucasian-identifying people in the U.S. According to the Department of Justice, there are five times as many whites in America as blacks.
Here on campus, that gap is much wider. I think it’s important to address popular arguments about how the minority situation with police is overblown.
Studies have shown that it is detrimental for minorities to have a lack of people in power that resemble them. Furthermore, racial tensions in the U.S. spark conflict as many social institutions and socioeconomic gaps create racial barriers both in cultural experience and physical difference.
When minorities, especially blacks, encounter police there are higher rates of injury and arrest, which this author is arguing may come from a lackluster training regimen for officers of the law. The gap between police force representation and population numbers could be less damaging if police were trained more rigorously to deal with interactions that violate their “norm.” This could include anyone from a minority group, as well as foreign language speakers, disabled people or mentally inhibited offenders.
According to discoverpolicing.org, officers in the U.S. are required to have 60 hours of firearm training and 44 hours of self defense training. In contrast, they are only required 12 hours of non-lethal weapons training and even less time for studying hate crimes, human relations, cultural diversity or conflict management-- all of which total 11 hours each or less. Some only total up to 4 hours of required study.
That said, it is important to look at how these statistics affect the general population.
First, there is the natural human reaction to act more quickly and violently against an unfamiliar situation or subject. This affects the rates at which minorities experience injury, arrest and detainment in U.S. jails and prisons. This also inadvertently has an effect on tax dollars spent to keep offenders, often for petty crimes.
Secondly, the gap in representation and lack of cultural sensitivity increases the divide between racial groups in the U.S. as police are depicted as largely biased and minorities as overwhelmingly prone to crime. This hurts chances of gaining intersectionality and benefiting from a shared sense of nationalism.
Overall, there is a problem in the U.S. when it comes to law enforcement as primarily white officers come in contact with minorities and other underrepresented groups. As it stands, fault for current 'police brutality' issues falls by the wayside because protocol has been followed by officers in question.
That current protocol for most police stations is not sympathetic to the minority situation. I believe the gap that occurs when police are comprised of largely one racial group can be solved by increasing their training in tactics for cross-cultural contact. With more emphasis on hemispherical and communicative qualifications, rather than physical ones, police stations in states across the country and even here in Minnesota could greatly reduce the number of negative or even fatal cross-cultural interactions.