Ethnicity and the Police Paper

This article will compare the research from three different research sources to report the findings on how law enforcement officers are accepted, perceived and the relationships between certain groups of people and the police. The relationship between the police and the community has been an ongoing challenge since the inception of law enforcement. The importance of how the public perceives and accepts the police in their communities lays the foundation of how the relationship evolves between the two groups. Major research studies, regarding the public’s perception of law enforcement officers, reveal that the primary source of information the public receives is from mass media. Prior research showed that members of racial minority groups, specifically African Americans, have a tendency to evaluate the police in a less favorable light when compared to Caucasian groups. (Miller & Davis, 2008; Reisig & Parks, 200; Schuck, Rosenbaum, & Hawkins, 2008). According to the research, the explanation for the evaluations being less than favorable is the fact that minorities have more interaction with the police, which is why they perceive the police to be a threat and the reason they are suspicious when the police come into their communities. Studies have also found that when there is a mixture of races in the community, but African Americans or Latinos represent the larger percentage that there is still a lack of respect and confidence in the presence of law enforcement officers. However, the percentage of the satisfaction level in an all-white community shows much higher mutual respect between the community and the police (McCluskey, McCluskey, and Enriquez (2008).

The first study compiled the data of university student’s views toward the police. Using different groups which included race, gender the responders were taken from a mid-sized, four year university in the Midwest. The participant samples for the survey where chosen from a nonrandom selection of departments within the university. This was done to ensure that the participants were gotten from various academic majors. These majors included participants from Criminal Justice as well as other majors which included geology, chemistry, dental hygiene and visual design (Mbuba, J. M. 2010, July-Sept). The survey was made up fourteen questions and the participants were advised that their responses where confidential, and anonymous. It was explained to the responders that the questions were based on a five point system in which they agreed or disagreed; the five categories were recorded as: 1 (strongly agree), 2 (agree), 3 (neutral/undecided), 4(disagree), and 5 (strongly disagree). After the results were tallied the survey showed that 69% of the responders had experienced a negative encounter with the police, however most of the encounters involved traffic violations.

The second study was conducted using African American and Latino participants from the Chicago