86 3 Police and Law Enforcement—Civil F:orensu;s
"The belief among a substantial segment of the population that law enforcement
officers act with bias or prejudice undermines the authority and effectiveness of law
enforcement and threatens law" (Hecker, 1997, p. 3).
Police Racism Does Not Occur
Despite evidence that suggests police discriminate against minorities and this dis-
crimination has a negative impact upon these populations, there are arguments that
suggest it is not police discrimination that results in such high arrest rates, there are
other factors which account for the high arrest rates of African Americans.
Despite numerous examples of cases in which African Americans have been
stopped by police for apparently no reason other than "driving while black," there
are arguments against the notion that police officers are racist. Although some of
the arguments do not deny that police target minority populations, they justify
the targeting of such populations by suggesting that the offense rate among these
populations is higher. The arguments defending police are that more minorities
are arrested because the areas in which they live tend to be patrolled more, that
more minorities are of low socioeconomic status and therefore commit more crime,
and that minorities, African Americans more particularly, engage in more criminal
activity than the general population, thus resulting in higher arrest rates (Schifterle,
1997; Texeira, 1995).
Wilbanks (as cited in Schifterle, 1997) provides several reasons why minorities
are more likely to be arrested. He indicates that minority neighborhoods are subject
to more police surveillance, which would lead to higher arrest rates. This argument
is supported by other researchers as well (Texeira, 1995). However Texeira (1995)
argues that such surveillance results from police racism toward minorities. Still, other
researchers could argue that minority neighborhoods are watched more closely by
police because minorities commit more crime. This appears to be the belief of
Wilbanks who claims that differential offending by African Americans can explain
for differences in arrest rates.
Other research indicates that minorities are more likely to be of low socioeco-
nomic status (SES), which leads them to commit more crime (Jefferson &^7 Walker,
1993). Researchers argue that only until SES is controlled in research on police
bias will we be able to determine if it is police bias or low SES that results in dis-
proportionately high arrest rates for minorities. While the notion of low SES may
adequately explain the disproportionately high arrest rate for minorities, it does
not explain for the significant number of minority traffic stops in which no traffic
violation occurred (Schifterle, 1997).
There is no way to determine if the final argument, that African Americans
commit more crime and are therefore arrested more than Caucasians, is true.
Not all offenders are known to police, and an officer's decision not to arrest an
offender may not be documented (Schifferle, 1997). Some researchers indicate