Friday, October 18, 2013

Who Do We Call for Help?


According to the book, Rethinking the Color Line, by Charles A. Gallagher, race plays a major role in the criminal justice system in a number of different ways. The author explains that African Americans are treated unfairly by the police and courts in different ways. Gallagher stated, “Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states, African Americans constitute 80 percent to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison” (Gallagher, 218). African Americans go to prison on drug charges quite often, but there are also white people who go to jail on drug charges as well. So why is the percentage so high for minorities?  According to the author, “About 90 percent of federal crack cocaine defendants are black. Indeed, a 1992 U.S. Sentencing Commission study found that in seventeen states, not a single white had been prosecuted on federal crack cocaine charges” (Gallagher, 211). Crack cocaine is just powder cocaine that is cooked up to turn hard. So, crack and cocaine are not two different things, but crack is a different form of cocaine. Gallagher explained a story on page 211 where a lady was convicted of selling drugs. This is just another example of how corrupt our governmental officials are. The lady was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. Gallagher wrote, “Had the cocaine in the package been in powder form, she would have faced a prison sentence of less than three years, with no mandatory minimum” (Gallagher, 211). As I stated before, the author explained that majority of the crack cocaine offenders are black, and you get more prison time for crack cocaine than a person who is caught with powder cocaine. Now that just screams racism. The police are given too much power that they tend to abuse it. But, the government allows this corruption to happen and continue to happen. The author wrote, “The dirty little secret of policing is that the Supreme Court has actually granted the police license to discriminate” (Gallagher, 221). In other words, they are allowed to stop minorities and harass minorities. I can relate to the police being abusive and “dirty” from my own neighborhood. I have lived on the south side and west sides of Chicago, and also a suburb of Chicago called Maywood. I have experienced two different police forces and they both had cops that abused their authority. I admit, I have had a number of run ins with the police, but most of the time I am stopped for no reason.  I have actually been in situations where the police told me that they pulled me over because it was too many people in my car, or I fit the description for a crime and they need to search me or my car. I have lived in Maywood for the last six years and the police there are not as bad as Chicago, but they are bad.  Maywood is a suburb, but it is majority blacks and Mexicans, and lots of crime, drugs, and gangs. The police are never around when a serious crime occurs, such as a shooting, but they are always outside harassing the young people. If there is a shooting near the block that my parents live on the police is going to harass every black male they see outside for at least a week. If the police spent more time policing instead of harassing the same group of people every day then maybe the crime will decrease.  The police and government do not show that they actually care about the black communities. But, President Barack Obama did pass the law called the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010. This law made it that an individual would receive the same sentences for crack cocaine or powder cocaine due to the racial bias, previous law.

This is a link to better elaborate on the Fair Sentencing Act:

Here is a link that discusses race and the war on drugs, as well as crack cocaine vs powder and police harassment:  
 

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