Racial Profiling: A Survey of African American Police Officers
Abstract
This article is an effort to provide data on racial profiling that are not as easily dismissed as anecdotal accounts of individual motorists. The authors conducted a survey of African American police officers in the Milwaukee Police Department in Wisconsin regarding their personal experiences of having been racially profiled, defining racial profiling as any situation in which race is used by a police officer or agency to determine the potential criminality of an individual. This study was not an investigation of the Milwaukee Police Department or of racial profiling within the department but rather of the extent to which Black police officers perceive they have been subjected to racial profiling by any police officer or agency. Police officers understand the intricacies, strategies, and techniques of lawenforcement. Therefore, the observations of Black police officers on the reasonableness of situations in which they have been stopped by police have exceptional validity.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
Anderson, E. (1990). Streetwise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bain, B. (2000, April 26–May 2). Walking while Black: The bill of rights for Black men.Village Voice Online. Retrieved October 25, 2000, from http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0017/bain.shtml
Barlow, D. E., & Barlow, M. H. (2000).Police in a multicultural society: An American story. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
Bast, C. M. (1997). Driving while Black: Stopping motorists on a subterfuge.Criminal Law Bulletin, 33, 457-486.
Chambliss, W. J. (1994). Policing the ghetto underclass: The politics of law and law enforcement.Social Problems, 41(2), 177-194.
Chambliss, W. J. (2001).Power, politics and crime. Boulder, CO.: Westview
Cole, D. (1999).No equal justice: Race and class in the American criminal justice system. New York: New Press.
Georges-Abeyie, D. (1989). Race, ethnicity, and the spatial dynamic: Toward a realistic study of Black crime, crime victimization, and criminal justice processing of Blacks. Social Justice, 16(4), 35-54.
Hall, R. (1996). Impact of skin color upon occupational projection: A case for Black male affirmative action.Journal of African American Men, 1(4), 87-94.
Harris, D. A. (1997). “Driving while Black” and all other traffic offenses: The Supreme Court and pretextual traffic stops.Journal of Criminal Lawand Criminology, 87(2), 544-582.
Harris, D. A. (1999). Driving while Black: Racial profiling on our nation's highways.American Civil Liberties Union Online. Retrieved October 25, 2000, from http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/index.html
Hughes, J. (2000). Some straight talk on profiling.LawEnforcement News, 26(530), 15-15.
Kennedy, R. (2000). Suspect policy. In Joseph L. Victor (Ed.),Annual editions: Criminal justice (24th ed., pp. 102-106). Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill.
Kurlander, N. (2000). Software to track traffic stop data.LawEnforcement Technology, 27(7), 148-153.
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights . (2001). Justice on trial: Racial disparities in the American criminal justice system.Leadership Conference Education Fund. Retrieved October 25, 2000, from http://www.civilrights.org/publications/cj
Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408 (1997).
Mauer, M. (1999).Race to incarcerate. New York: New Press.
McConahay, J. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the modern racism scale. In J. Dovidio & S. Gaertner (Eds.),Prejudice, discrimination, and racism: Theory and research. New York: Academic Press.
Miller, J. G. (1996).Search and destroy: African-American males in the criminal justice system. New York: Cambridge University Press.
New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981).
Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33 (1996).
Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106 (1977).
Russell, K. K. (1998).The color of crime: Racial hoaxes, White fear, Black protectionism, police harassment, and other macroaggressions. New York: New York University Press.
Russell, K. K. (1999). “Driving while Black”: Corollary phenomena and collateral consequences.Boston College of LawReview, 40(3), 717-731.
Sears, D. (1988). Symbolic racism. In P. Katz & D. Taylor (Eds.),Eliminating racism.New York: Plenum.
Strandberg, K. W. (1999). Racial profiling.LawEnforcement Technology, 26(6), 62-66.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration . (2001, June).National household survey on drug abuse, population estimates 2000. Washington, DC: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Tatum, B. (2000). Deconstructing the association of race and crime: The salience of skin color. In M. W. Markowitz & D. D. Jones-Brown (Eds.),The system in Black and White: Exploring the connections between race, crime, and justice (pp. 31-46). Westport, CT: Praeger.
United States v. Avery, 128 F.3d 974 (6th Cir. 1997).
United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982).
United States v. Travis, 62 F.3D 170 (6th Cir. 1995).
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2000).Crime in the United States, 1999. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
U.S. General Accounting Office . (2000).Racial profiling: Limited data available on motorist stops. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
Verniero, P., & Zoubek, P. H. (1999).Interim report of the state police reviewteam regarding allegations of racial profiling. Newark: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.
Walker, S., Spohn, C., & DeLone, M. (2000).The color of justice (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996).
Wilkins v. Maryland State Police, C.A. No. MJG-93-468 (D. Md. 1992).
Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 (1999).
Zingraff, M. T., Smith, W. R., & Tomaskovic-Devey, D. (2000). North Carolina highway traffic and patrol study: “Driving while Black.” The Criminologist, 25(3), 1-4.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published: September 2002
Issue published: September 2002
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Article usage*
Total views and downloads: 2714
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 0
Crossref: 60
- The diversity officer: Police officers' and black women civilians' epistemologies of race and racism in policing
- Demography of the Legal Profession and Racial Disparities in Sentencing
- “People That Look Like Me Commit Crime”: Racial Beliefs Among Campus Police Officers
- Skin color and Latines’ perceptions of criminal injustice toward Black people: a path analysis
- Law enforcement and academic studies in Italy and the United States: a comparison
- Policing Gender, Race, and Place: A Multi-Level Assessment of Stop and Frisks
- Training for War: Academy Socialization and Warrior Policing
- Racist Cops, Vested “Blue” Interests, or Both? Evidence from Four Decades of the General Social Survey
- Use of employee assistance programs to manage stress in policing: the effects of perceived adequacy of assistance and opportunity for promotion
- Difficult funds of knowledge as pedagogical resources for critical consciousness development
- View More
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
I am signed in as:
View my profileSign out
I can access personal subscriptions, purchases, paired institutional access and free tools such as favourite journals, email alerts and saved searches.
loading institutional access options
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
