A fundamental police role is to enforce and uphold the rule of the law, and to do so
equitably without regard to race, ethnicity, or social or economic status. Sadly, for much
of the Nation's history, the legal order has not only countenanced but sustained slavery,
segregation, and discrimination. And the fact that the police were bound to uphold that
order, set a pattern for police behavior and attitudes toward minority communities that
has persisted until the present day.
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In no arena is this continued discrimination more apparent than in America's "war on
drugs." Police chiefs have enough problems dealing with misconduct and abuse of
authority by some officers without the added burden of having to enforce laws that are
themselves mechanisms for discrimination, in the tradition of the Jim Crow era in
American history. Obligating the police to enforce unjust laws, most often in inner-city
and minority communities, perpetuated the legacy of fear and mistrust, and further
erodes relations between the police and the community.
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Not only is current drug policy targeting minority citizens in numbers disproportionate
to their numbers in the general population and the drug-using population, but these
policies are driving differential enforcement practices in many communities. Police are
making more arrests than ever for non-violent drug offenses. Although they constitute
only 13 percent of the drug-using population, African Americans are arrested at a rate
five times greater than white Americans. Simply put, drug arrests are easier to make in
inner-city neighborhoods where drug markets operate more openly than in middle-
class areas. Police enforcement strategies that target inner-city neighborhoods as the
primary method for addressing the drug problem will produce attractive statistics from a
quantitative perspective, but qualitatively the results will be skewed towards small-time
users and dealers. The big fish who finance and supply the drug markets will go
unscathed, but the prisons will be filled with the poor and underprivileged members
who live in these neighborhoods.
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A recent Police Foundation survey found that over 95 percent of rank-and-file police
officers believe that the most effective way to control crime is by working with citizens
and communities. What has come to be known as "community-oriented policing" is
predicated upon community trust in and support of police in order to form and maintain
police-community partnerships to combat crime and improve the quality of life in
neighborhoods. Discriminatory laws that force discriminatory enforcement seriously
undermine the ability of police to engage minority communities as partners in the "war
against crime." Without this community involvement and support, vital information
essential for crime control does not flow to the police, and both the community and law
enforcement suffer as a consequence.
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